Rebel Citizen (Pamela Yates, 2015): USA

Reviewed by Wayne Derossett.  Viewed at the 2016 Santa Barbara Film Festival in the Fiesta Theater, Tuesday, Feb 9 at 7:00 PM.

Notable friends, colleagues, and fellow cinematographers, including Kevin McKiernan and Ron Dexter were in this SBIFF theater audience.

This timely documentary directed by Pamela Yates was a compilation of recent extensive interviews with famed cinematographer and social activist, Haskell Wexler, and includes many of the social issues that kept Haskel in the limelight.

Haskell is considered one of the ten most influential cinematographers as determined by members of the International Cinematographers Guild.  His extensive career spans over sixty-seven years from 1947 to 2014.

Six “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” films he worked on were identified by the National Film Registry; Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (inducted in 2013), Days of Heaven (2007), Medium Cool (2003), In the Heat of the Night (2002), American Graffiti (1995) and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1993).

He is also known for his strong civil rights position and his advocacy on work-hour restrictions for movie-set crews, known as “12 on and 12 off” or “Brent’s Rule,” following the sleep-deprived accident and death of Assistant Cameraman Brent Hershman after working 19 hours on a set.

Wexler recounts his experience of getting fired on One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest when his other documentary work covering The Weather Underground, a subversive group hiding from the law, led to F.B.I. inquires and his subsequent dismissal.  He was recognized later on Cuckoo’s Nest anyway with an Acadamy award nomination for Best Cinematography.

Pamela Yates, the producer of Rebel Citizen warns us, “It is not a film, it is a conversation.”

Unfortunately, much of this documentary feels rushed, and it probably was to make it to the Santa Barbara Film Festival only two months after Haskell’s passing.  The choppy and segmented pieces of conversation need more story and context.  What it also needs is a voice actor like Martin Sheen to form all the missing pieces in a narrative overview.  A voice over would build the connective tissue to make all the interview segments into a more palatable and cohesive history of the man.

I’ll give Pamela Yates the credit she deserves for this effort, but I’d like to see these interviews made into a complete biography to fully document Haskell Wexler’s rich life.