Film and stage director Mike Nichols is dead at age 83.
Nichols directed films such as The Graduate,
Catch-22, Who's Afraid
of Virginia Woolf? and Charlie Wilson's War.
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/...21-11qxze.html
I recollect in the 1980's reading some of the professional cinematography
magazines in the university library collection.
When Nichols and cinematographer David Watkins had initially shot the
sequence in Catch-22 where Doc Daneeka explains to Yossarian what
"Catch-22" is, they initially had lots of other people working as extras
in the scene.
However, when they watched the
dallies, it didn't look right.
The scene needed to be more like a dream. And in a dream they reasoned
you don't tend to see lots of other people in the background. So they re-shot
it. This time they still had aircraft and vehicles moving but now there
was just the main characters moving through this landscape.
And so we enter Yossarian's nightmare.
Nichols himself said :-
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Mile Nichols
"The book and, as a result, the film, have to be somewhat dreamlike, not quite real--either something remembered, or a nightmare," said Nichols. "That's very hard to do with living actors, with pores and noses, because they're so definitely there."
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It was thoughtful touches like this that made Nichols such a fabulous
director.
That sequence was also used as the film's trailer :-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G41SJUIawVo
Shot in Mexico in 1970, they assembled every B-25 they could get their
hands on - 18 in all - and they made them all airworthy.
See
http://www.aerovintage.com/catch22.htm
