Lazlo Kovacs 1933-2007

Just learned that Lazlo Kovacs passed away early Sunday morning. If you don't know the name, you've surely seen plenty of the films for which he was director of photography or "simply" a cameraman. A sampling of titles: Easy Rider, Paper Moon, Shampoo, Ghostbusters, Say Anything....

Reuters revealed an amazing aspect of his early years as a college student in Hungary:

Kovacs was born and raised on a farm in Hungary when that country was isolated from the Western world, first by the Nazi occupation and later during the Cold War. Kovacs was in his final year of school in Budapest when a revolt against the Communist regime started on the city streets.

He and his lifelong friend Vilmos Zsigmond made the daring decision to document the event for its historic significance. To do this, they borrowed film and a camera from their school, hid the camera in a paper bag with a hole for the lens and recorded the conflict.

The pair then embarked on a dangerous journey during which they carried 30,000 feet of documentary film across the border into Austria. They entered the U.S. as political refugees in 1957.

Their historic film was featured in a CBS documentary narrated by Walter Cronkite.

Against the odds, Kovacs and Zsigmond went on to become two of Hollywood's most influential directors of photography.

What a story! You will be missed, sir.