Congrats to fellow Mizzou photojournalism alum, director Louie Psihoyos for his Oscar nomination and Directors Guild win for ‘The Cove’. As an old friend, I still remember Louie getting his film debut appearing in a Sylvester Stallone film in Dubuque, Iowa before going on to J-School…well look who’s invited to the Red Carpet this year…
Congratulations to the amazing Mo’Nique for her Golden Globe win for her role in “Precious” and my thanks for such a wonderful photo shoot! Good luck getting one Mo’ at the Oscars!
CREDITS:
Client: People Magazine
Editor: James Miller
Reporter: Amy Keith
Make-up: Sam Fine
Hair: Lena Palm
Stylist: Pamela Macklin
Publicist: Jeanine Liburd/BET
Location: Ambient Plus Studio – Atlanta
Last month my wife Fazia and I caught a screening of Up in the Air, the new George Clooney film (opening Christmas day at a theater near you.) George plays a business traveler intent on grabbing every mile he can in hopes of his goal of 10 million mile status on American Airlines. Of course it goes without saying that casting Clooney is about the only possible way to make an air mile geek sexy…
Okay, okay, I know I’m no George Clooney, but I do have 3.5 million miles on American Airlines (a bit more than 14 trips to the moon) good enough to land lifetime Platinum status which really helps avoid all those long lines at the airport, but for some reason I keep narrowly missing Executive Platinum.
The other day, I was staring at my American Airlines statement which was hovering at 97,302 miles for the year. Pretty good for what’s been a very strange year in the magazine industry – but still 2,698 miles short of qualifying for Executive Platinum. So I did what every red-blooded American male would do and asked myself, “what would Clooney do?” Well, you can be certain that he wouldn’t just sit around on his ass and accept defeat. No, he’d get his butt on a plane. So that’s what I decided to do.
It didn’t take too long to figure out that the last bargains of the holiday season (unless you want to travel Christmas Day or New Year’s eve – which I don’t) are this week before the planes get jammed up with travelers and the best deal was a cheap flight to Vegas good for 4,350 miles more than enough to push me to Executive Platinum with just enough time to zip over to the the Strip then jump on a flight home.
Sure, it’s a crazy thing to do and I figured that my wife would think I was nuts, but my baby was actually quite supportive and even came running to get me when Up in the Air director Jason Reitman was on Jimmy Fallon telling a story about how he once did exactly the same thing flying to Chicago for a slice of pizza just to make his mileage quota for the year.
This morning started with my easiest trip to the airport…ever. So this is what life’s like without the six cases of gear and luggage carts we take on the road? I fly through security with nothing but a single carry-on laptop bag. Hit the American Admirals Club to kill half an hour with a latte or three before my flight and off I go on a smooth flight to Vegas so I have enough time to grab a cab to The Strip to check out the grand opening of CityCenter jump back in another cab for my flight back to Miami.
On my flight home, I sat in seat 3F next to a former NBA General Manager. We started chatting and he asks if I was in Vegas on business, so I just say “it’s a long story.” I ask him what he was there for and can only laugh when mentions Up in the Air and says he’s heen living Groundhog Day that this is the THIRD trip he made to Vegas this week so that he could get his miles…what are the odds that the guy sitting next to me was not merely doing the same thing, but actually took this crazy exercise three times as far as I did? Perfect ending to a crazy day…
Fame is a funny thing. A lot of notions about fame and celebrity are based on which side of the velvet rope you find yourself.
There’s a great scene in Barry Levinson’s “PoliWood” where two actors shoot down any notion that Hollywood celebrities are motivated by the desire for photo ops.
Sure, it’s a necessary part of the business. Red carpet photo ops are one of the ways motion picture studios promote their latest releases. Just those 4-color flyers for your local hardware store.
But fun? I don’t think so…
Imagine running a gauntlet of this on your way into the movies.
Actually, to quite honest, the photographer who blasted me with his flash was extremely nice and quite personable. We ended up having a drink together. We were at a party, after all. If he seems more dapper than you’d imagine for a paparazzi, there’s a good reason for that. It’s actually actor Tim Daly giving me my 1/15 second of fame…
I ran into Matthew Modine at the Tribeca Film Festival premiere of Barry Levinson’s documentary PoliWood. After the screening, Matthew took the stage with several of his follow actors and director Barry Levinson to speak about the film. I loved Matthews’ response to a question about why Hollywood was…so…liberal.
I loved Matthew’s response. As he sees it, actors spend most of their lives preparing for a role – slipping in and out of different characters in all walks of life. When you’re constantly walking in the shoes of another person, you can’t help but have empathy for your fellow man.
Matthew’s words rang true. In fact the words he spoke hit very close to home. As a magazine photographer, I’m constantly dropping into the lives of the people I photograph. I’d have to say that the best part of my job is that one day it could be a conservative billionaire, the next day a rapper. This has given me an opportunity to meet people from every sector of society – even if it’s a just a brief glimpse. I’ve witnessed the best and the worst of humanity and come to realize that on my worst days, I’m luckier than most.
One thing that I learned the first time I met Matthew is that he’s quite a good photographer himself. Matthew showed up on the set of Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 Vietnam War masterpiece Full Metal Jacket, in which he starred as Private Joker, armed with his weapon, his gun and his Rollei. You can read Matthew’s behind-the-scenes account of the making of the motion picture and see his photographs in his book Full Metal Jacket Diary. It’s a wonderfully revealing look inside the movie making process. If you’ve ever been curious about how movies are made, or what it was like to work with Stanley Kubrick, Matthew’s book lifts the curtains and takes you inside.
I shot this photo of Matthew a few years ago as he was preparing for a role in Arthur Miller’s final play Finishing the Picture which Miller wrote as a thinly-veiled autobiographical examination of the time Miller and his then-wife Marilyn Monroe spent shooting The Misfits. For this shoot, we went old-school, shooting with a 1950s Graflex Super D camera and Polaroid positive/negative film.
We shot this while Matthew was filming Transporter 2 across the street from me. Matthew and Amber Valletta were my movie “neighbors” in the film. If you watch closely, you can catch a glimpse of our house in the background of the driveway kidnapping scene…
I’m in New York attending the Tribeca Film Festival premiere of Barry Levinson’s film PoliWood with my friends from The Creative Coalition. The film both examines lobbying efforts by Hollywood celebrities as well as how the television media has changed since it’s origins as “profit” has overtaken “public service”.
Since I was working on the book Art and Soul as Levinson was editing his film, I was invited to a rough cut screening. Watching the transformation from rough cut to release is a fascinating process if you’ve never seen it. After the rough cut screening I was aked by Levinson and producers Robin Bronk and Robert Baruc, for suggestions about what they should change. I must say that I thought the idea of giving “notes” to the Oscar-winning director of Rainman may seem absurd. But what this taught me was that though Levinson might not have need a critique of camera angles, he clearly wanted to know how he could better communicate his message.
“Better Communication of Your Message” Can’t we all learn from that? If an Oscar-winning director like Barry Levinson wants to know how to communicate better, shouldn’t we all?
"PoliWood" world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival.
"PoliWood" director Barry Levinson with Frank Luntz, Matthew Modine, Tim Daly, Josh Lucas, Wendy Malick and Ellen Burstyn at the Tribeca Film Festival world premiere.
"PoliWood" producers Robert Baruc, Robin Bronk, director Barry Levinson and producer Tim Daly at the "PoliWood" after-party.
Tim Daly and Brian Smith at the "PoliWood" after-party.
Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Brian Smith has been creating bold, graphic portraits of celebrities, athletes and executives for magazines and advertising for more than 25 years. Smith's photographs of famous and infamous faces of the noteworthy and notorious have graced the covers and pages of hundreds of magazines.
Brian Smith's first magazine photograph appeared in LIFE Magazine when he was a 20-year-old journalism student at the University of Missouri. Just five years later, Smith won the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography for his photographs of the Los Angeles Olympic Games. He was again a finalist for the Pulitzer for his photographs of Haiti in Turmoil. His photograph of Greg Louganis hitting his head on the diving board at the Seoul Olympics won first place in both World Press Photo and the Pictures of the Year competitions.
He's been featured on the cover of the Photo District News Portraiture Issue and in the Communication Arts Photography Annual, American Photo Magazine, After/Capture and Pop Photo magazines.
Smith is a Sony Artisan of Imagery and a X-Rite Coloratti and has appeared on Fine Living Channel teaching a Little League Mom how to become a Big League Sports Photographer. His photography career began as a high school swimmer clearly not destined for the Olympics in the pool, yet this provided him with the opportunity to photograph swimming and other sports as a stringer for the Ames Daily Tribune.
Smith is President of Editorial Photographers, an organization of 2,000 of the top magazine photographers and newspaper photojournalists from around the world. He is frequently a speaker at photography seminars and to photo students at colleges, universities and art institutes around the country and can often be found on a flight headed to the Caribbean, Latin America or the American South from his home in Miami Beach, Florida.
I’m in New York attending the Tribeca Film Festival premiere of Barry Levinson’s film 
