John Bailey
Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images
John Bailey, the cinematographer on Ordinary People, Groundhog Day, As Good as It Gets and dozens of other notable films who endured two “stressful” terms as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, died Friday. He was 81.
Bailey died in Los Angeles announced his wife, Oscar-nominated film editor Carol Littleton (“ET The Extra-Terrestrial”).
“It is with deep sadness that I share with you that my best friend and husband, John Bailey, passed away peacefully in his sleep early this morning,” she said in a statement. “During John’s illness, we remembered how we met 60 years ago and were married for 51 of those years. We spent a wonderful life full of film adventures together and made many long-lasting friendships along the way. John will live in my heart forever.”
They worked on more than a dozen features together.
Raised in Southern California, Bailey served and worked as a cinematographer for director Paul Schrader on American Gigolo (1980), Cat People (1982), Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985), Light of Day (1987) and Forever Mine (1999). with Lawrence Kasdan on The Big Chill (1983), Silverado (1985), The Accidental Tourist (1988) and Wyatt Earp (1994).
He had another fruitful relationship with director Ken Kwapis, working with him on six films: Vibes (1988), The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2005), License to Wed (2007), He’s Just Not That Into You (2009), Big Miracle (2012) and A Walk in the Woods (2015), where he reunited with Ordinary People director Robert Redford.
Bailey also directed Michael Apted’s “Continental Divide” (1981), Stuart Rosenberg’s “The Pope of Greenwich Village” (1984), Wolfgang Petersen’s “In the Line of Fire” (1993), Robert Benton’s “Nobody’s Fool” (1994) and Sam Raimi’s For Love of the Game (1999). ) and Callie Khouri’s Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002).
In a 2020 interview for American Cinematographer magazine, Bailey said his philosophy was “infused with an international perspective” – one of his touchstone films was the Vittorio Storaro-directed “The Conformist” (1970) – and that he had “a unique focus on I have this kind of films that I wanted to make even when I was an assistant and [camera] Operator.”
“I didn’t want to make cheesy films,” he added. “I didn’t want to make exploitative or violent films. I persevered really hard, sometimes at great personal expense, literally in terms of money, to make films that I knew would build a resume that, when I became a cinematographer, was part of me .”
He has been a member of the American Society of Cinematographers since 1985 and received a lifetime achievement award from the group in 2015.
John Bailey (right) with director Lawrence Kasdan on the set of 1983’s The Big Chill
Bailey was also a longtime Academy board member when he succeeded Cheryl Boone Isaacs as AMPAS president in August 2017, making him the only one from the film industry. He won re-election the next summer before being succeeded by David Rubin in August 2019.
His tenure was marked by a huge increase in membership, particularly among international and non-Hollywood people; the expulsions of Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby and Roman Polanski from the academy; a Kevin Hart hosting an imbroglio; and three measures to boost Oscar TV ratings that were torpedoed amid intense criticism: creating a “popular Oscar,” eliminating three live performances of the best songs from the show and moving four winners’ speeches to commercial breaks .
“I had no idea how stressful this job would be,” he said.
John Ira Bailey was born on August 10, 1942 in Moberly, Missouri, the son of a machinist and grew up in Norwalk, California. He edited the student newspaper at Pius X High School in Downey, California, then attended Santa Clara University and Loyola Marymount University, graduating in 1964.
He decided to pursue cinematography while spending two years at USC in a new film studies graduate program.
Bailey spent more than a decade as a trainee cinematographer/cinematographer for artists such as Néstor Almendros, Vilmos Zsigmond and Charles Rosher Jr. on films such as Monte Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), Terrence’s Days of Heaven (1976). Malick Robert Altman’s The Late Show and 3 Women, both released in 1977.
The first studio film he made as a DP was Boulevard Nights (1979), directed by Michael Pressman.
Bailey’s breakthrough came when two films he worked on back-to-back – the stylish neo-noir American Gigolo, only the third film Schrader directed, and Redford’s understated Oscar winner Ordinary People Directorial debut – released within seven months of each other in 1980.
Boulevard Nights producer Tony Bill recommended Bailey Redford. “Not many debut directors back then would have hired an inexperienced cinematographer,” Bailey said on an ASC podcast in 2015, “but Redford definitely had the experience and confidence.” [from his years as an actor] to do that.”
For Bailey, the script was always of paramount importance when it came to taking a job, and he was credited with great scripts for Groundhog Day (1993), co-written by director Harold Ramis, and the Oscar-nominated film Working Together (1997), co-written by director James L. Brooks.
His film resume also included Honky Tonk Freeway (1981), That Championship Season (1982), Without a Trace (1983), Racing With the Moon (1984), Brighton Beach Memoirs (1986), Swimming to Cambodia (1987) and My Blue Heaven (1990), Extreme Measures (1996), Living Out Loud (1998), The Anniversary Party (2001), How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003), The Producers (2005) and The Way Way Back (2013 ).
Bailey also directed several films, including Lily Tomlin’s The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (1991), China Moon (1994), Mariette in Ecstasy (1996) and Via Dolorosa (2000 ).
Bailey said he is seeking the academy’s presidency primarily to support the organization’s film archive, the Margaret Herrick Library, the Nicholl screenwriting programs and international cinema. “I didn’t want to worry so much about the Oscars,” he said in 2021. “The studios are investing in the Oscars, the studios are going to make the Oscars take care of themselves one way or another.”
“Everyone seems to have an idea – and they think their idea is the best – about what the Oscars should look like. The absolute nonsense, coupled with the hubris that sometimes comes with it, especially on the part of certain industry and media critics… it really bothered me all Oscar season to have to read day after day the drivel some of these journalists said they knew , how to fix the Oscars.
He and Littleton, who is scheduled to receive an honorary Oscar at the postponed Governors Awards in January, had no children.
“All of us at the Academy are deeply saddened to learn of John’s death,” Academy CEO Bill Kramer and Academy President Janet Yang said in a joint statement. “John was a passionate member of the Academy and the film community. He served as our Academy President and Governor for many years and played a leadership role in the camera industry. His influence and contributions to the film community will be remembered forever. Our thoughts and support are with Carol at this time.”
Donations in his memory may be made to the Academy Foundation.
Bailey said his formative years in Hollywood taught him that becoming a successful cinematographer was more about learning how to use the equipment.
“It’s about learning how people work together, building relationships, dealing with the stress and unexpected accidents and gifts you get every day, and developing the perspective that when you go to work in the morning, it’s not you “Doing a draft based on storyboards or discussions or something,” he said. “You are in a living, changing, spontaneous, human change. Anything can happen at any time.”