RIP Haskell Wexler

[AaronJ]

Famous cinematographer and director Haskell Wexler passed away today at age 93. From "Thompson on Hollywood!":

Haskell Wexler, the cinematographer on classics of the 1960s and 1970s "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?," "In the Heat of the Night," "Faces" (uncredited), "The Conversation" (uncredited), "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "Bound for Glory," and "Coming Home," among others, died peacefully in his sleep this morning, according to a Facebook post by his son, Jeff, and an announcement on his personal blog. He was 93.

The two-time Oscar winner—for "Woolf" (1966), shot in black and white, and "Bound for Glory" (1976), in color—also directed 12 features of his own, including a slew of documentaries that reflected his progressive politics and 1969's portrait of a TV news reporter embroiled in the violence that erupts around the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago,"Medium Cool"—which remains, along with "Network" and "Broadcast News," one of the finest films ever made about American television.

The tireless Wexler, who shot for such luminaries as Hal Ashby, John Cassavetes, Elia Kazan, Mike Nichols, Milos Forman, Terrence Malick, and Francis Ford Coppola, was working right up until the end: he served as director of photography on the TV movie adaptation of Ian Ruskin's one-man play "To Begin the World Over Again: The Life of Thomas Paine," currently in post-production. He will be sorely missed.

Sad news indeed.