Cinematographer John Bailey (Ordinary People, Groundhog Day et. al.) was one of the first people I met and became friends with when I moved from NYC to LA in 1982. He was already well established in the movie business, along with his Oscar-winning film editor wife Carol Littleton. Both were movie aficionados like me, only calmer and more humble, less arrogant and self aggrandizing than I was.
Though a few months younger than me, I relied on John for advice and honest assessments of my various attempts to conquer Hollywood. He never made me feel anything but an equal. I had written my first screenplay back in New York based on my experiences in 1962 being stationed in the then last legally completely segregated state, South Carolina, when I was in love with a "black girl".
The script found lots of admirers who wanted me to write screenplays based on their ideas and projects, but no one would do a mixd-race lovers story then. So I tried to get it made myself, and John generously offered to shoot it for free. Others offered their services as well, and I was approached by the agents of the then little known Sean Penn and Kiefer Sutherland but didn't see them playing my 20-year-old self.
I never did get it made and became busy raising my two then only kids as a single parent and trying to make the rent and other life dramas and saw less of John over the years, but never forgot his kindness and gentleness with me. Unlike me, his artistic goal was to be invisible, for his work to serve the director's vision so seamlessly that you couldn't see a John Bailey signature style.
I can say though that he was most proud of his work on Paul Schrader's Mishima, the biopic about the controversial Japanese novelist that mixed day-of-his-death documentary style scenes with scenes from his earlier life and scenes from his fiction. John shot each of the three intersecting stories on three different film stocks and insisted I come to a screening of the film with the spliced film stocks before it all was distilled into one rendition. One of the greatest movie-going experiences of my life.
Condolences to Carol and all who knew and admired John.
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