(7 April 1921 - 5 April 2023)
Bill Butler, the American cinematographer who worked with such notable directors as Spielberg, Coppola, Friedkin, Forman, Boorman, Philip Kaufman and Jack Nicholson, has died just two days before his 102nd birthday. From the late 1960s Butler had the fortune of collaborating with a new breed of director working without the constraints of the Hollywood studio system.
Wilmer Cable Butler was born in Colorado to a family of farmers who later moved to Iowa where he obtained a university degree in engineering. His film debut was as camera operator on the 1959 animated feature 1001 Arabian Nights. He worked as camera operator and photographer until 1962 when he shot William Friedkin’s TV movie The People vs Paul Crump. With director Philip Kaufman he filmed Jon Voight in Fearless Frank, on which he then became director of photography and later, as Wilmer Butler, did the same for Coppola’s The Rain People.
As Bill Butler he filmed Jack Nicholson’s Drive, He Said, and having done second unit work on Boorman’s Deliverance and Coppola’s The Godfather, Butler took over from Haskell Wexler at the behest of producer Nicholson on Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in 1975. Both cameramen shared Academy Award and Bafta nominations. Coppola had also replaced Wexler with Butler on The Conversation. This was 1974, the year of Jaws when Bill Butler had to shoot the shark scenes for the strongest audience reaction. He used a handheld camera in a clear box to get as near to the shark as possible. It seemed to work and won him the American Society of Cinematographers’ Lifetime Achievement Award.
After Demon Seed, Capricorn One and Damien: Omen II came the successes of Grease, Rocky II, III and IV with Sylvester Stallone. Less successful was Can’t Stop the Music with the Village People that bombed everywhere, but Ivan Reitman’s Stripes was the fifth most profitable movie of 1981. None of this affected Bill Butler with hits such as Neil Simon’s Biloxi Blues, Child’s Play, which introduced the evil doll Chucky, Hot Shots! by the Airplane! crew, and Anaconda which copped takings three times its actual budget.
Bill Butler also had a long TV career with such titles as Spielberg’s Something Evil and Savage, Lamont Johnson’s The Execution of Private Slovik and Daryl Duke’s The Thorn Birds. Irvin Kershner’s Raid on Entebbe and John Erman’s A Streetcar Named Desire both won Primetime Emmys for Butler. He worked up to 2009 when his last film was Evil Angel, a horror mystery with Ving Rhames.
Bill Butler married Alma Smith with whom he has daughters Judy, Patricia and Pam. After their divorce he married Iris Schwimmer with whom he has the actress daughters Genevieve and Chelsea.
MICHAEL DARVELL
