The Man Who Wasn’t There

Director: Joel Coen
Cinematographer: Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC

Awards Won at Cannes

Film Summary:

L-R Tony Shaloub and Frances McDormand. Photo by Melinda Sue Gordon, copyright USA Films 2001

The Man Who Wasn’t There premiered at the 2001 Cannes International Film Festival. Written by Joel and Ethan Coen, the story takes place in 1949 and follows barber Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton) who is dissatisfied with his life in a small northern California town. His wife Doris' (Frances McDormand) infidelity presents him with an opportunity for blackmail but his scheme uncovers darker secrets that eventually lead to murder. The Man Who Wasn’t There earned Roger Deakins ASC, BSC an American Society of Cinematographers Outstanding Achievement Award and a BAFTA Award, as well as an Oscar nomination®. The Coen brother’s screenplay was recognized with Golden Globe, Writers Guild of America, and the London’s Critic Circle awards nominations.

Cinematographer:

Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC. (Photo by Douglas Kirkland)

Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC was born and raised in a small seaside town in Devon, England. He completed his education at the National Film and Television School. After graduation, Deakins focused on documentaries for some seven years, on subjects ranging from the wars in Rhodesia and Eritrea, to a nine-month trip on one of the entrants in a yacht race around the world. He earned his first feature credit shooting the low-budget Another Time, Another Place for Channel 4 television. Earlier this year, he earned his eighth Oscar® nomination for The Reader. His previous nominations were for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford; No Country for Old Men; The Man Who Wasn’t There; O Brother, Where Art Thou?; Kundun; Fargo; and The Shawshank Redemption. His body of work also includes such unforgettable films as Doubt, Revolutionary Road, In the Valley of Elah, A Beautiful Mind, The Village, and Dead Man Walking.

“Joel and Ethan had been talking about their ‘black-and-white film’ for years. I think they felt it should be black and white for the period and also for the noir-ish idea, but maybe there was no specific reason. It’s how they write. When they finally gave me the script (The Man Who Wasn’t There) to read, I thought it was a funny and absurd story but there is something about the main character that is touching and haunting … it moves you.”

The Man Who Wasn’t There: How Roger Deakins Lensed

a Black-and-White Film in Color

Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC describes The Man Who Wasn’t There as a small, character-driven story that presented a formidable technical challenge. The writer-producer-director team of Joel and Ethan Coen envisioned a black-and-white film, but the distributer, USA Films, was obligated to provide a color master for the video release in some markets. That meant Deakins had to shoot one film for both black and white and color.

            Deakins had previously collaborated with the Coen brothers on Barton Fink, Fargo, The Hudsucker Proxy, The Big Lebowski and O Brother, Where Art Thou?

“Joel and Ethan have been talking about their black-and-white film for years,” says Deakins. “I think they felt it should be black and white for the period and also for the noir-ish idea, but maybe there was no specific reason. It’s how they write. When they finally gave me the script to read, I thought it was a funny and absurd story but there is something about the main character that is touching and haunting…it moves you.”

The Man Who Wasn’t There is set in Santa Rosa, a small northern California town during the summer of 1949. Ed Crane, played by Billy Bob Thornton, is a barber in a small shop operated by his brother-in-law, Frank, played by Michael Badalucco. The opening sequence paints a mundane picture of Ed’s life. One day, a talkative stranger (Jon Polito) comes into the shop for a haircut. He tells Ed about his plans for opening a dry cleaning shop, and complains that his investor has stood him up. Crane decides it is his chance for a better life, but he needs $10,000 to become a partner. Ed believes his wife Doris (Frances McDormand) is having an affair with her boss, Big Dave (James Gandolfini), who owns the local department store. He decides to blackmail Big Dave, but his scheme goes awry, resulting in the unraveling of an intricate story that probes beneath the surface and reveals voyeuristic insights into the lives of interesting characters who are coexisting in a humdrum world.

Billy Bob Thornton in a scene from USA Films’ The Man Who Wasn’t There.Photo by Melinda Sue Gordon, copyright USA Films 2001

During preproduction, Deakins shot a series of tests comparing Eastman Plus-X and Eastman Double-X black-and-white films to various color negatives. He also experimented with techniques for converting color negative to black-and-white prints. Deakins quickly decided the black-and-white negatives were too grainy. Some color negative stocks when used in combination with certain black-and-white stocks rendered sharper images, richer blacks, purer whites and a wider range of tones that revealed nuances in shadows and highlights. Deakins credits Beverly Wood, technology vice president at Deluxe Labs, with suggesting use of a high contrast, black-and-white film (Eastman High Contrast Panchromatic Film 5369) commonly used for main and end titles as a print stock.

“This film has been around for a long time,” Wood says. “It is designed to reproduce white letters on the blackest backgrounds you can get. Roger felt the first tests were too contrasty for his eye. He didn’t want it to look like a color image printed on black-and-white film. Roger wanted a rich, black-and-white look. We experimented with the gamma until we were able to give him the look he wanted.”

Deakins decided to record The Man Who Wasn’t There on the Kodak Vision 320T film 5277. He describes it as a low contrast negative with a tight grain structure that worked with the black-and-white title film used for making prints.

 The Man Who Wasn’t There was framed in 1.85:1 aspect ratio to stay consistent with the scope audiences have seen on films from that period. It was produced at practical locations in and around Los Angeles and on several sets on the Paramount studios backlot.

“We always saw dailies on (53)69, which was our reference for timing numbers,” Deakins says. “If we had a negative that we exposed as a blue night scene, we had to keep in mind that it would translate to black and white differently than a warmer tungsten-lit night interior. We had to adjust our thinking and trust the guys at the lab.”

Wood explains, “We made interpositives and internegatives on the Kodak intermediate stock, and matched them to the 5369 guide print.”

Deakins concludes, “The decision to print in black and white affects the way the audience experiences this film the same way you influence them with your choice of lenses, camera movement, composition and decisions about what is lit and what is in shadows. If you do your job correctly, no one says, ‘Look at the wonderful black-and-white images, lighting or composition,’ but subconsciously it is all part of the story.”

(This interview originally appeared in a 2001 issue of In Camera magazine)