Bruce Weber opens up to AnOther about his love of British cinema and his new favourite film, Weekend by British director Andrew Haigh, released next month...
"I’m a big fan of British cinema from the 50s, 60s and 70s. It sort of became my film school in a way. It really meant something to me to see them. Probably my favourite film was Lindsay Harrison’s This Sporting Life. I find the bleakness in it really romantic. It meant a lot to me in a lot of ways – it gave me the courage to do what I believe. With Weekend, it’s that kind of movie that stays with you. It has all the quietness of Antonioni’s films and underneath, it has this English sensibility of reserve which I thought was really wonderful. You don’t really see that in filmmaking today with its big explosions. It’s set in a part of England I’m not so familiar with because whenever I come to London I’m always working or seeing friends or going to galleries. So it was nice to see a part of England that wasn’t so posh.
It’s a film that quietly creeps up on you – it’s a good film to go home and to bed with. Today when I see films, I want to have the experience that I can take home- films for me were always meeting a stranger in a bar and going home with them and getting to know each other. In film or real life there’s this idea of a chance meeting, this idea that maybe you see the beauty in someone who’s not so perfect. I just love that. I think Andrew Haigh really tried to make you a part of the relationship. One of the things I think is really important in this film is the way people see gay people in films. They’re usually portrayed in a very conventional sense but in this film, there is that vulnerability and that is something that’s really beautiful. That was one of the great successes of the film – that anyone can look at this film and find something in it that’s very reminiscent of their own personal life. With (lead actor) Tom Cullen, I got a chance to meet and photograph him – we had a lot in common. He was really in love with Elizabeth Taylor. He grew up in a town in Wales where Richard Burton was from and he met Elizabeth Taylor and so we shared that. He’s a completely romantic figure. At the moment I’ve been editing a short film for Moncler. It’s been fun. The world’s so crazy these days, I just wanted to have some fun locked away in my editing room!"
“The wonderful thing about having a camera,” says iconic photographer, Bruce Weber, “Is you never know where it's going to take you.” Never has this been more true than for Weber who, in the course of an astonishing career that has spanned over three decades, has photographed the legendary writer Eudora Welty in Jackson, Mississippi, paid tribute to a New Orleans recovering from the devastations of Katrina and celebrated the sultry charms of Rio De Janeiro. His trademark synthesis of naturalism, classicism, and (homo)eroticism combined with a hefty dose of nostalgia has seen his often heartbreakingly beautiful vision of youth exhibited in London’s National Portrait Gallery, joining the likes of Richard Avedon and Irving Penn as photographers whose body of work stand the test of time. His 1982 photograph of the Olympic pole-vaulter, Tom Hintnaus in Calvin Klein white briefs was cited as one of the 10 Pictures That Changed America and through his campaigns for Klein and Abercrombie & Fitch virtually redefined the public obsession with hypermasculinity and male sexuality.
Over the years, he has indulged sporadically in moving image; firstly with his 1988 Oscar-nominated documentary about jazz legend and heroin addict, Chet Baker in Let’s Get Lost and then more recently with A Letter to True (his paean to his golden retriever pup) and Chop Suey, not to mention countless fashion films for the likes of YSL and Moncler. For Weber, whether making a film or taking a photograph, he sees it as a continual learning curve: "I like to start out each day from the beginning. I'm always learning things. If I had to say one thing, it's to have an experience and learn something, which I hope comes through in all of my pictures."
Weekend shows at the BFI London Film Festival and is on general release in November.
Suggested Reading: Read about Bruce Weber's five treasured Golden Retrievers in our AnOther's The Pets column here.
Text by Kin Woo
