What do Wes Anderson, Paul Feig, Drew Barrymore, Kevin Smith and Robert Downey Sr. have in common? Robert Yeoman, the cinematographer whose work on Anderson’s “The Grand Budapest Hotel” makes him a first-time nominee at Sunday’s Academy Awards. Yeoman has shot all of Anderson’s live-action movies, and his work on three Feig titles — “Bridesmaids,” “The Heat” and the forthcoming “Spy” — prompted the director to ask Yeoman to shoot his female-centered “Ghostbusters” reboot, too. (No deal has been made on that one yet. “There’s always a lot of politics going on,” Yeoman told The Huffington Post.)
HuffPost Entertainment caught up with the 63-year-old a few days after the Oscar nominations were announced. In celebration of his wide-ranging career — which has also placed him behind the camera of films directed by William Friedkin (“Rampage”), Robert Downey Sr. (“Rented Lips”), Gus Van Sant (“Drugstore Cowboy”), Kevin Smith (“Dogma”), Sally Field (“Beautiful”), Roman Coppola (“CQ”), Wes Craven (“Red Eye”), Peyton Reed (“Yes Man”), Drew Barrymore (“Whip It”) and Nicholas Stoller (“Get Him to the Greek”) — we selected a handful of films and asked Yeoman to name his favorite scene or discuss one that evolved during the filming process.
“Drugstore Cowboy” (1989)
Yeoman’s first solo cinematography credit came with William Friedkin’s 1987 thriller “Rampage.” He then shot the comedies “Johnny Be Good,” “Dead Heat” and “Rented Lips.” But no film was as defining as 1989’s “Drugstore Cowboy,” Gus Van Sant’s breakout feature about a heroin addict (Matt Dillon) and his gritty misadventures. Yeoman was 38 when the indie film drama opened to acclaim. The following year, he won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Cinematography. But the touchstone of his time on the “Drugstore Cowboy” set was meeting Beat writer William S. Burroughs, who cameoed (in a role based on one of his short stories) as a priest turned junkie who doles out smack to neighbors in need. Yeoman’s fondest memory involves a scene in which Dillon encounters Burroughs and the two stroll down the block discussing the latter’s memories of the neighborhood.
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“Wes said, ‘Let’s just reshoot it,'” Yeoman said. “Luckily we did because we went back and that particular day a giant fog moved in and had this amazing feeling to the background that hadn’t been there when we shot the first time. Our whole goal in shooting these exteriors was natural light without any artificial light being added to it, so we shot it with natural light and the shot turned out way better than it would have the first time anyway.”
“Spy” (2015)
Before “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” Yeoman fulfilled DP duties on “The Heat,” starring Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy. That means “Spy,” which premieres at South by Southwest next month and opens in May, is his third project with both McCarthy and Feig. The comedy satisfies the director’s longtime desire to make a “James Bond” movie. Yeoman cites “Casino Royale” and “Skyfall” as the “mantra” he and Feig used while shooting the action-heavy film, in which McCarthy plays a modest CIA analyst who goes undercover to penetrate a deadly arms dealer’s operation. One might assume “Spy” was a relatively comfortable endeavor for Yeoman, but in fact it’s the first movie he shot digitally.
“As opposed to past comedies, [Feig] really wanted to make certain scenes very dark and sinister from a cinematography standpoint,” Yeoman said. “He really pushed me. It was my first digital film, so Paul was able to see on the monitor exactly what we were shooting and he would often push me to a darker place than what we initially had, which is very different than what I’m used to. Usually directors want to make it much brighter, but he was the opposite. So it’s an action-comedy and has a lot of gunfights and fistfights and knife fights and things in the film. Yet it has certain comic Paul Feig aspect to it, as well, obviously — it’s a combination of the two.”
