Tag: Paul Schrader

Tokyo Takeaways: Seven Themes From the Film Festival and Market

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The 38th Tokyo International Film Festival and its industry market TIFFCOM unfolded under clearer skies than last year’s typhoon-soaked edition, and the mood matched the weather. From Oct. 27 to Nov. 5, the festival filled venues across the Hibiya-Yurakucho district while TIFFCOM brought deal-making energy to Hamamatsucho, where 322 exhibiting companies descended on the Tokyo Metropolitan Industrial Trade Center – a record that reflects Tokyo’s evolving identity from regional showcase to pan-Asian co-production hub.

This year’s edition revealed an industry at an inflection point. Japanese producers are flush with IP gold – anime alone hit $25.3 billion globally – yet grappling with structural barriers that make international collaboration maddeningly difficult. Meanwhile, a new generation of female producers took center stage to share how they’ve navigated an industry that, until recently, kept them firmly in supporting roles. And perhaps most tellingly, the entire event was tinged with anticipation of Japan’s 2026 spotlight as the Cannes Film Market’s Country of Honor, a coronation that arrives just as Korean and Chinese competitors are nipping at Japanese content’s heels.

Here are seven themes that emerged from the festival and market.

TIFFCOM Pivots From Sales Market to Co-Production Hub

TIFFCOM 2025 hosted 322 exhibiting companies, up from 283 in 2024, with booths nearly sold out by early July as CEO Shiina Yasushi emphasized the market’s transformation from a purely sales-driven event into a co-production and financing hub. The market is increasingly recognized as a comprehensive platform bringing together film, television, animation and IP business under one roof, with diversity of Japanese content and Tokyo’s cultural energy cited as major strengths. The Tokyo Gap-Financing Market selected 23 projects including multiple Japan co-productions spanning Korea (manga adaptation), Taiwan, and Spain, marking increased international collaboration.

Japanese IP Adaptation Frenzy Reaches Global Studios – But Faces Regional Competition

Sony Pictures International Productions’ Shebnem Askin revealed at TIFFCOM that the studio is actively seeking live-action remakes of Japanese anime properties, taking “so many great meetings” with companies producing anime stories as one of her key missions at the market. TIFFCOM rebranded its Tokyo Story Market as Tokyo IP Market: Adaptation & Remake, expanding from adaptation rights specialists to include production companies holding remake rights, with six major participants including Kadokawa, Kodansha, Square Enix, and Toei. Examples cited include China’s “Yolo” remake grossing approximately $480 million and Netflix’s live-action “One Piece” series demonstrating explosive global demand.

The appetite is driven by hard numbers. Japan’s anime industry reached a record $25.3 billion in 2024, with overseas sales accounting for nearly 80% of the total market and growing at double-digit rates annually, according to figures released by the Association of Japanese Animations during TIFFCOM. The sector has doubled in size over the past decade, making Japanese content a high-stakes battleground for global studios.

But attendees at The Future of Japanese Intellectual Property in Global Adaptations, a TIFFCOM keynote presentation by producer Fujimura Tetsu, came away with a different, more positive impression: For all the problems of the Japanese entertainment industry, beginning with an insular mindset that makes it slow to respond to international opportunities, it still generates IP with enormous growth potential.

Founder and CEO of consulting firm Filosofia, Fujimura illustrated this thesis with not only a wealth of data and examples, but also his own story of joining hands with top Hollywood producers to bring Japanese IP to the world, from the 2017 live-action sci-fi “Ghost in the Shell” to the hit Netflix “One Piece” series.

As Fujimura noted, Japanese anime has moved beyond a niche interest internationally to the global mainstream, led by the record-setting earnings of the “Demon Slayer” franchise. He also presented a long list of Japanese IP, from comics and novels to games and toys, that is now in the Hollywood content pipeline. His takeaway: Japanese IP has become a key national industry rivaling the country’s fabled automakers in earnings. Toyota may be struggling against Tesla in the global EV sweepstakes, but Hello Kitty is conquering the world.

Yet despite this dominance, the emergence of world-beating IP from South Korea and China, including games, animations, movies and streaming shows, has seemingly threatened the longtime supremacy of regional pop culture powerhouse Japan.

Japan’s Cultural Confidence Returns With “Kokuho” Leading Local Box Office Renaissance

Lee Sang-il’s three-hour Kabuki period drama “Kokuho” has grossed $109 million since its June release, marking the third-highest total ever for a live-action Japanese film. The film premiered in Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes and has become a major cultural phenomenon, with government officials highlighting how it has re-inspired public interest in traditional Kabuki theater.

The success reflects renewed appetite for prestige studio filmmaking reminiscent of Japan’s Golden Age auteurs, a theme that resonated throughout the festival. At a standing-room-only TIFF Lounge event, 91-year-old directorial legend Yamada Yoji engaged in conversation with Lee about craft and the future of Japanese cinema. Other TIFF Lounge sessions paired Kore-eda Hirokazu with Oscar-winner Chloé Zhao, Fujimoto Akio with Thailand’s Pen-ek Ratanaruang, and Miyake Sho with Cambodia’s Rithy Panh, reinforcing Tokyo’s positioning as a hub for inter-Asian filmmaker dialogue.

The festival’s opening ceremony featured American auteur Paul Schrader, whose 1985 film “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters” finally made its Japan premiere this week after four decades of being blocked due to controversial content. The screening, timed to the 100th anniversary of Mishima’s birth, exemplified the festival’s growing confidence in bridging cinematic history with contemporary cultural diplomacy.

Unlike last year’s TIFF, which brought stars Paul Mescal, Fred Hechinger, Connie Nielsen and Denzel Washington to Tokyo for a Centerpiece screening of “Gladiator II,” this year’s edition was short on Hollywood glamor, though director Chloé Zhao stepped on stage to present her drama “Hamnet” as the closing film and “Elvis” producer Schuyler Weiss presented two masterclasses. The festival compensated with a robust international star presence on the red carpet, including Chinese superstar Fan Bingbing (competition entry “Mother Bhumi”), French actor Juliette Binoche (presenting her directorial debut “In-I In Motion”), Hong Kong filmmaker Peter Chan, and festival ambassador Takiuchi Kumi, alongside Japanese talents including Yoshinaga Sayuri (who received a lifetime achievement award), Saitoh Takumi, and Morita Misato.

Japanese Women Producers Break Through at Industry’s Highest Levels

Long shunted into support roles, Japanese women are now active as producers at the peaks of the industry, both locally and internationally. Proof was on stage at the From Tokyo to the World – Japanese Woman Producers Go Global talk event, a part of TIFF’s Women’s Empowerment section.

Miyagawa Eriko, an Emmy winner for the hit streaming series “Shogun,” Eiko Mizuno Gray, producer of the Cannes competition entry “Renoir,” and Murata Chieko, whose many credits include the box office sensation “Kokuho,” took different routes to the top, but all have carved out careers that would have been next-to-impossible a generation ago.

Miyagawa tasted success by finding opportunities in Hollywood, Mizuno Gray by launching an indie production company and Murata by climbing corporate ladders in Japanese subsidiaries of Hollywood studios. In the process they have paved the way for the next generation of female producers by showing just how limitless opportunities are for those with oversized talent and ambitions.

Rising Production Costs Drive Asian Co-Production Pivot

Producers in Asia are cognizant of rising costs in their domestic markets. Seminars conducted at TIFFCOM devoted perhaps as much time to discussions of salary and production caps in high-cost markets, as it did to funding. The boom in production costs has been blamed on high talent prices, stemming from extravagant spending by big streamers in recent years. There is a sense that local producers are leaning towards coproductions with producers in other countries, not just to ameliorate the financial burden, but to wean themselves away from over reliance on commissions and acquisitions from streamers.

Japan’s Production Committee Model Emerges as Co-Production Barrier

Separately, Japanese producers are very excited to and desirous of, coproducing with international partners, but language and culture still remain massive obstacles. For example, the Production Committee style of film producing, that is common in Japan, came in for criticism, and was compared poorly to Korea’s less bureaucratic and more swashbuckling style of filmmaking, which is usually helmed by just one company. Similarly, producers complained of having to spend more money hiring bilingual crew and cast when coproducing in Japan. In a similar vein, Japanese media startups and companies might express a desire to expand overseas, but their content continues to be local focused, with less thought and effort devoted to translating distinctly Japanese content to be easily consumed by international audiences. For example, in one platform’s presentation, none of the content demonstrated was localized into English, and video clips shown were not stripped of the extensive Japanese text overlays that are a hallmark of Japanese television, despite the platform being meant for international producers.

Cannes 2026 Country of Honor Signals Belated Global Ambitions

Japan’s selection as the Cannes Film Market 2026 Country of Honor will see the nation co-host the market’s opening night gala for 1,200+ delegates and feature across flagship programs highlighting animation, genre cinema and co-production opportunities. Officials plan to use the platform to demystify Japan’s production committee financing model for overseas producers, with the goal of enabling more meaningful international co-productions, as Japan produces around 1,200 films annually with $1.31 billion in box office receipts.

Despite the language barrier, Japan in general, still looms large in the imagination of Asian filmmakers. The sui generis nature of Japanese culture, practices and lifestyle continue to be a font of inspiration for directors in the region. The number of international filmmakers, actors and producers presenting films with a Japanese link, is testament to that continued fascination about Japan.

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Naman Ramachandran

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November 5, 2025
In ‘Mr. Scorsese,’ fitting a filmmaking titan into the frame

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NEW YORK (AP) — The first time the filmmaker Rebecca Miller met Martin Scorsese was on the set of 2002’s “Gangs of New York.” Miller’s husband, Daniel Day-Lewis, was starring in it. There, Miller found an anxious Scorsese on the precipice of the film’s enormous fight scene, shot on a sprawling set.

“He seemed like a young man, hoping that he had chosen the right way to shoot a massive scene,” Miller recalls. “I was stunned by how youthful and alive he was.”

That remains much the same throughout Miller’s expansive and stirring documentary portrait of the endlessly energetic and singularly essential filmmaker. In “Mr. Scorsese,” which premieres Friday on Apple TV, Miller captures the life and career of Scorsese, whose films have made one of the greatest sustained arguments for the power of cinema.

“We talk about 32 films, which is a lot of films. But there are yet more films,” Miller says, referencing Scorsese’s projects to come. “It’s a life that overspills its own bounds. You think you’ve got it, and then it’s more and more and more.”

Scorsese’s life has long had a mythic arc: The asthmatic kid from Little Italy who grew up watching old movies on television and went on to make some of the defining New York films. That’s a part of “Mr. Scorsese,” too, but Miller’s film, culled from 20 hours of interviews with Scorsese over five years, is a more intimate, reflective and often funny conversation about the compulsions that drove him and the abiding questions — of morality, faith and filmmaking — that have guided him.

American film director Martin Scorsese gestures during a news conference in Rome to promote his movie “New York, New York,” Oct. 14, 1977. (AP Photo/Massimo Sambucetti)

“Who are we? What are we, I should say?” Scorsese says in the opening moments of the series. “Are we intrinsically good or evil?”

“This is the struggle,” he adds. “I struggle with it all the time.”

Miller began interviewing Scorsese during the pandemic. He was then beginning to make “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Their first meetings were outside. Miller first pitched the idea to Scorsese as a multifaceted portrait. Then, she imagined a two-hour documentary. Later, by necessity, it turned into a five-hour series. It still feels too short.

“I explained I wanted to take a cubist approach, with different shafts of light on him from all different perspectives — collaborators, family,” Miller says. “Within a very short amount of time, he sort of began talking as if we were doing it. I was a bit confused, thinking, ‘Is this a job interview or a planning situation?’”

Scorsese’s own documentaries have often been some of the most insightful windows into him. In one of his earliest films, “Italianamerican” (1974), he interviewed his parents. His surveys of cinema, including 1995’s “A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies” and 1999’s “My Voyage to Italy,” have been especially revealing of the inspirations that formed him. Scorsese has never penned a memoir, but these movies come close.

While the bulk of “Mr. Scorsese” are the director’s own film-to-film recollections, a wealth of other personalities color in the portrait. That includes collaborators like editor Thelma Schoonmaker, Paul Schrader, Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio and Day-Lewis. It also includes Scorsese’s children, his ex-wives and his old Little Italy pals. One, Salvatore “Sally Gaga” Uricola for the first time is revealed as the model for De Niro’s troublemaking, mailbox-blowing-up Johnny Boy in “Mean Streets.”

“Cinema consumed him at such an early age and it never left him,” DiCaprio says in the film. “There will never be anyone like him again,” says Steven Spielberg.

Director Martin Scorsese gestures during his presentation of the Platinum Award to Leonardo DiCaprio at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, Jan. 30, 2005, in Santa Barbara, Calif. (AP Photo/Michael A. Mariant)

It can be easy to think of Scorsese, perhaps the most revered living filmmaker, as an inevitability, that of course he gets to make the films he wants. But “Mr. Scorsese” is a reminder how often that wasn’t the case and how frequently Scorsese found himself on the outside of Hollywood, whether due to box-office disappointment, a clash of style or the perceived danger in controversial subjects (“Taxi Driver,” “The Last Temptation of Christ”) he was drawn to.

“He was fighting for every single film,” Miller says. “Cutting this whole thing was like riding a bucking bronco. You’re up and you’re down, you’re dead, then alive.”

Film executives today, an especially risk-averse lot, could learn some lessons from “Mr. Scorsese” in what a difference they can make for a personal filmmaker. As discussed in the film, in the late ’70s, producer Irwin Winkler refused to do “Rocky II” with United Artists unless they also made “Raging Bull.”

For Miller, whose films include “The Ballad of Jack and Rose” and “Maggie’s Plan,” being around Scorsese was an education. She found his films began to infect “Mr. Scorsese.” The cutting of the documentary took on the style of his film’s editing. “In proximity to these film,” she says, “you start to breathe the air.”

Nearness to Scorsese also inevitably means movie recommendations. Lots of them. One that stood out for Miller was “The Insect Woman,” Japanese filmmaker Shōhei Imamura’s 1963 drama about three generations of women.

“He’s still doing it,” Miller says. “He’s still sending me movies.”

“Mr. Scorsese” recently debuted at the New York Film Festival, where Miller’s son, Ronan Day-Lewis made his directorial debut with “Anemone,” a film that marked her husband’s return from retirement. At the “Mr. Scorsese” premiere, a packed audience at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall came to enthusiastically revel in, and pay tribute to its subject.

“You hear all those people laughing with him or suddenly bursting into applause when they see Thelma Schoonmaker or at the end of the ‘Last Waltz’ sequence,” Miller says. “There was a sense of such palpable enthusiasm and love. My husband said something I thought was very beautiful: It reminded everyone of how much they love him.”

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October 26, 2025
Oscar Nominee Paul Schrader Says He’s Ready to Make an AI Movie (and Have AI Review It)

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Before he wrote Taxi Driver or Raging Bull, Paul Schrader was a film critic. “I went to the dark side in the ’70s and started screenwriting,” Schrader, who can currently be seen reflecting on his decades-long collaboration with Martin Scorsese in the new Apple TV docuseries Mr. Scorsese, recently told Vanity Fair. “But you cannot write criticism and make films at the same time. The danger of offending someone is too great.”

But as he approaches 80, Schrader has begun to embrace that danger. Schrader is chronically, confidently online: He has called Saltburn a “bad film,” Joker: Folie à Deux a “really bad musical,” and declared that modern moviegoing audiences are “dumber” than they used to be. His later-career films, from The Canyons to Oh, Canada, have cast some of the biggest (and most controversial) stars of the 21st century. The auteur has also openly expressed his support for AI, documented his hatred for President Donald Trump, and urged his followers to partake in No Kings protests. With his 2022 film Master Gardener—about a horticulturist whose torso sports hidden neo-Nazi ink—Schrader even inadvertently anticipated the viral controversy of Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner and his Nazi tattoo.

Schrader caught up with VF to chat about having his finger on the pulse of culture for half a century, becoming a pioneer for boomers using social media correctly, and why, sure, he’d make an AI movie.

Vanity Fair: Did you anticipate that your film criticism on Facebook would go so viral?

Paul Schrader: It’s not very viral. It’s 56,000, I think, is where it is now. That’s a stadium full of people, but it’s not, you know, a K-pop star.

But a lot of your Facebook posts get screenshotted, then go viral on X.

Apparently. I’m not on [X] myself, so I don’t know—but I’ve heard this.

Have you felt as though you’ve started a conversation? Do you respond to comments?

Yeah, a number of times. I don’t think that it’s the place for vitriol. If anybody uses vitriol—and by that I mean name-calling and slander, vulgarity, language—if anybody gets into that lane, I immediately block them because I’m not interested in that way. I have to try to keep my comments encouraging of conversation rather than being judgmental.

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Samantha Bergeson

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October 24, 2025
All the Best Red Carpet Fashion from the 2024 Cannes Film Festival

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Eva Green. Getty Images

It’s time for one of the most glamorous events of the year—the Cannes Film Festival. Every May, filmmakers, producers, directors, actors and other A-listers make their way to the French Riviera for 12 days of movie screenings, parties and, of course, plenty of glitzy red carpets and exciting fashion moments on La Croisette.

The Cannes Film Festival is surely one of the most exciting red carpets of the season; it’s a solid 12 days of fashionable celebrities bringing their sartorial best to the resort town in the South of France, and attendees never fail to go all out with their ensembles. The Cannes red carpet has already given the world some truly iconic fashion moments, from Princess Diana’s baby blue Catherine Walker gown and Jane Birkin’s sequins and wicker basket ensemble to Madonna’s Jean Paul Gaultier cone bra and Anne Hathaway’s white Armani Privé frock, and the 2024 iteration of the film festival is sure to add even more to the list.

The 77th annual Cannes Film Festival is already sure to be an especially star-filled extravaganza; Greta Gerwig is serving as the jury president for the main competition, and the three Honorary Palme d’Or awards will be given to Meryl Streep, Studio Ghibli and George Lucas. The star-studded film line-up of highly anticipated movies includes Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis (starring Adam Driver), Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds of Kindness (with Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons and Willem Dafoe), Paul Schrader’s Oh, Canada (with Richard Gere, Uma Thurman, Michael Imperioli and Jacob Elordi), Andrea Arnold’s Bird (with Barry Keoghan) and so many more.

The 2024 Cannes Film Festival runs from May 14 to May 25, and we’re keeping you updated on all the best red carpet moments throughout the entire spectacle. Below, see the best-dressed looks from the Cannes Film Festival red carpet.

Meryl Streep. WireImage

Meryl Streep

in Dior

Eva Green. Getty Images

Eva Green

in Armani Privé

Greta Gerwig. WireImage

Greta Gerwig

in Saint Laurent

Léa Seydoux. WireImage

Léa Seydoux

in Louis Vuitton

Taylor Hill. WireImage

Taylor Hill

Helena Christensen. WireImage

Helena Christensen

Heidi Klum. WireImage

Heidi Klum

in Saiid Kobeisy

Lily Gladstone. WireImage

Lily Gladstone

in Gucci

Romee Strijd. Corbis via Getty Images

Romee Strijd

Jane Fonda. Getty Images

Jane Fonda

in Elie Saab

Juliette Binoche. WireImage

Juliette Binoche

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Morgan Halberg

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May 14, 2024
John Bailey, ‘Ordinary People’ Cinematographer and Former Film Academy President, Dies at 81

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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, his wife, Oscar-nominated film editor Carol Littleton (E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial), announced.

”It is with deep sadness 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 reminisced how we met 60 years ago and were married for 51 of those years. We shared a wonderful life of adventure in film and made many long-lasting friendships along the way. John will forever live in my heart.”

They worked on more than a dozen features together.

The Southern California-raised Bailey served as the director of photography 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) and collaborated 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 shot 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), 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 “imbued with an international perspective” — one of his touchstone movies was the Vittorio Storaro-shot The Conformist (1970) — and that he had “a singular focus on the kinds of films I wanted to make, even from the time I was an assistant and [camera] operator.”

“I did not want to do tawdry films,” he added. “I did not want to do exploitive films or violent ones. I really held out, sometimes at great personal expense, literally, in terms of money, to do films that I knew were building a résumé that when I did become a director of photography, that was part of who I was.”

A member of the American Society of Cinematographers since 1985, he 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 also was a longtime board member at the Academy when he followed Cheryl Boone Isaacs as AMPAS president in August 2017, becoming the only one to come from the cinematography branch. He won reelection the next summer before being succeeded by David Rubin in August 2019.

His tenure was marked by a huge increase in members, especially for international and non-Hollywood folks; the ousters of Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby and Roman Polanski from the Academy; a Kevin Hart hosting imbroglio; and three moves meant to boost Oscar TV ratings that were torpedoed amid great criticism: the creation of a “popular Oscar,” the elimination of three live best song performances on the show, and the sidelining of four winners’ speeches to commercial breaks.

“I had no idea how stressful that job was going to be,” he said.

The son of a machinist, John Ira Bailey was born on Aug. 10, 1942, in Moberly, Missouri, and raised in Norwalk, California. He edited the school 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 graduate program for film studies.

Bailey spent more than a decade as an apprentice cinematographer/camera operator for the likes of Néstor Almendros, Vilmos Zsigmond and Charles Rosher Jr. on such films as Monte Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven (1976) and Robert Altman’s The Late Show and 3 Women, both released in 1977.

The first studio feature he shot as D.P. was Boulevard Nights (1979), directed by Michael Pressman.

Bailey broke through when two films he worked on back-to-back — the stylish neo-noir American Gigolo, just the third film that Schrader directed, and the restrained Oscar best picture winner Ordinary People, Redford’s directorial debut — were released within seven months of each other in 1980.

Boulevard Nights producer Tony Bill had recommended Bailey to Redford. “Not that many first-time directors back then would have hired an inexperienced cinematographer,” Bailey said in 2015 on an ASC podcast, “but Redford certainly had the experience and the confidence [from his years as an actor] to do that.”

For Bailey, the script was always paramount when it came to taking a job, and he had great screenplays to work with on Groundhog Day (1993), co-written by director Harold Ramis, and the best picture Oscar nominee As Good as It Gets (1997), co-written by director James L. Brooks.

His cinematography résumé 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), 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 a handful of 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 sought the Academy 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 about the Oscars so much,” he said in 2021. “The studios are invested in the Oscars, the studios are going to make sure the Oscars take care of themselves, one way or another.

“Everybody seems to have an idea — and they think their idea is best — about what the Academy Awards should be. The absolute inanity, coupled with the hubris that comes with it sometimes, especially on the part of certain trade and media critics … it just really bothered me that whole Oscar season, day after day, having to read the drivel by some of these journalists that said they knew how to fix the Oscars.”

He and Littleton, who is to receive an honorary Oscar at the delayed Governors Awards in January, had no children.

“All of us at the Academy are deeply saddened to learn of John’s passing,” Academy CEO Bill Kramer and Academy president Janet Yang said in a joint statement. “John was a passionately engaged member of the Academy and the film community. He served as our president and as an Academy governor for many years and played a leadership role on the cinematographers branch. His impact and contributions to the film community will forever be remembered. Our thoughts and support are with Carol at this time.”

Donations in his memory can be made to the Academy Foundation.

Bailey said his formative years in Hollywood taught him that becoming a successful cinematographer had more to do with just learning how to operate the equipment.

“It’s about learning how people work together, forging relationships, dealing with the stresses and the sort of unexpected accidents and gifts that you’re given day to day and developing a perspective that when you go to work in the morning, you’re not executing a blueprint based on storyboards or discussions or anything,” he said. “You are in a living, changing, spontaneous, human flux. Anything can happen at any given moment.”

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Mike Barnes

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November 10, 2023