Downloaded from YTS.MX
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
[light rythmic music]
[upbeat music]
- In an age where everybody photographs everything,
the role of photography has changed.
[upbeat music]
It becomes more difficult as a photographer
to set him or herself apart
from the rest of people that constantly take snaps.
[upbeat music]
- Ah! [all laughing]
You make me crazy, lady!
Hey!
Yeah!
Wow!
Whoo!
Yes, yes, yes, yes, wonderful, yes, yes, yes.
- Images create desire, they create dreams,
they create disturbance, they create emotions,
when you see an image, a still image of something,
it is absolutely so important now as well
and the way in which you can feed off that.
- The impact that these photographs can have,
they don't lose their depth and meaning,
because they have power,
a photograph has power.
And it brings us closer to the subject
and closer somehow to the depth of understanding,
not just of the subject,
but of the life in the subject
and the knowledge of the subject.
- You can keep revisiting it,
you can keep going to it over and over and over again,
because somehow they've managed to capture so much meaning.
And I think that's what he's been capable of,
that's what I find when I look at his photos,
I still want to revisit them
'cause there's still something in there
that I'm trying to understand or something that the photo
is still trying to tell me
that I haven't quite absorbed yet.
- [yells] Yes, yes, yes, I love it!
Yes, yes, yes, I love it!
Okay yeah!
Yeah!
All right, Julia!
You got it, Julia.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, come on applause everybody!
- Trying to think of a favorite Douglas picture
is a bit like trying to pick a favorite child.
But I've been looking for,
at a number of his photographs
and I was only talking to him the other night
and I said, "Oh, I was looking again
at the Ann Margaret picture,
her riding the motorcycle,
in this kind of extraordinarily acrobatic pose
on a chopper in Vegas."
For some reason it filled me
with unbridled sense of freedom and joy.
- It's the combination of celebrity photography
and photojournalism.
It's not just pretty pictures.
[light upbeat music]
- If I had a huge wall, I would put it huge on my wall.
It's the self-portrait that Douglas did with Faye Dunaway,
for me it's the best selfie and first selfie.
I didn't know what a selfie was.
And I love that photograph
because everything is all about Douglas, it's fun,
it's sexy, it's a little bit dangerous,
it's full of beauty, elegance.
This photo for me represents everything
that Douglas does best.
[upbeat jazzy music]
- Doug gave me a picture for my birthday last year that was,
it's Judy Garland, and it's a capture of a moment,
it's not a stolen moment, it's a celebration of a moment.
I love that picture, because it shows character,
both of the photographer and of the subject.
And I think that has to do with the character
of the documentarian.
[soft music]
- The first time that I met Douglas
and the first time he photographed me
was on the set of "Somewhere."
And I was 11-years-old, so it was a little bit ago.
I had never heard of Douglas before,
I never met him obviously,
and Francoise, his wife, came as well.
But I do remember we were in one of the big suites
at the Chateau Marmont
and we mostly did all of our shots outside on the balcony.
I remember just feeling so,
I felt very comfortable and very open.
Stephen and I, we had already created a bond
and it was nice for Douglas to capture that.
- He's so disarming because he loves what he does.
[upbeat music]
- I don't think you ever meet Douglas,
just kind of energy appears, you know?
- I've seen his images all my life,
I grew with those images,
but I just didn't know more about the man who took them.
[shutter clicks]
- The best art of all,
it comes from people who are willing to be present,
willing to give their best,
and aren't full of shit.
- Hollywood has an insatiable appetite for glamor,
and celebrity photographers help create it.
They have to show the movie stars who they are.
- First of all, one does a mental check,
you are in such honored company to be photographed
by someone who's photographed people that you admire.
And all these images that he shot,
you feel like you're in a privileged situation.
So it was a real honor to sit with him.
- Human and vulnerable,
yet at the same time somehow different from the rest of us,
unique and charismatic.
It's a contradiction Douglas Kirkland's
been dealing with now for over 30 years.
- I felt completely inferior
and like this man's photographed
Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe.
- And then you kind of think to yourself,
how did I get here?
- Douglas is a lot like a director when he shoots you,
which is maybe why actresses love to be photographed by him.
[light music]
Even though it's a still image,
still he tries to create a fantasy or a scene around it
so you can really get in that headspace
of whatever he wants to capture in that moment.
- What's also really present in Douglas's pictures
is romance, the romance of cinema.
And I don't mean particularly per se love,
so much as romanticism is kind of
a heightened emotional experience,
and his pictures have this warmth and humanity,
but they're very, they have romance in them.
- Specials on a film set have enormous documentary value
in the sense that movies have shaped the cultural landscape
of our time and are iconic images,
a lot of them come from movies.
So what Douglas has done on movie sets
has kind of immortalized in still photography
those movies at the center of our cultural landscape,
like "Titanic,"
Baz Luhrmann's movies.
- You can't talk about movies, about the cinema,
without thinking of a specific frame.
The iconic movies without Douglas' pictures,
wouldn't be so iconic in a way.
Douglas Kirkland is [indistinct] of cinema,
he's the eye who catches
and that puts it in the legends of these movies.
- I think we can definitely say
that the span of the career of Douglas'
shows us the evolution of pop culture
in a way that is so cunning and so deep
and so playful at the same time.
- It's history.
It's history of not just movies,
it's history of our culture.
And you can see as our culture begins to change,
not just with fashion, but with the way that people are.
- Douglas Kirkland has probably explored
more stars than an astronomer.
But his are celebrities.
He is a master of photographing
the hidden personalities of famous people.
- The best of American culture is something
that crosses pop culture as well.
- And that he was the witness
and he's given all of that to us.
- Douglas Kirkland, originally from Fort Erie, Ontario,
he is now Hollywood's photographer of the stars.
- It's like every time you talk about someone,
like you know, Michael Jackson, oh yeah "Thriller,"
I remember shooting on "Thriller," that's right,
you were on "Thriller."
He was kind of like the Zelig of pop culture,
he was like there.
[distant booming] [people chattering]
[light bouncy music]
- This is the camera that I took my first picture with,
the old Kodak Brownie.
They held it together with this garter.
- [Interviewer] It still had the magic click,
which would trigger Doug Kirkland from slow learner
into celebrated photographer.
- Just listen to this.
[camera clicks]
That was the click that started my career.
- My grandparents were not in the entertainment business,
however, my grandfather ran his own shop,
his own business,
and it was custom men's clothing.
And so he had an eye for fashion.
And he would go down to New York
and study what was in fashion at the time.
And his job, think about it,
was making men look good in suits.
But he really was about presentation.
And if you look at the old films,
look how well they're dressed
and look how well my father is attired.
So as a young man, when he was going into the world,
he really did the same thing with his photography,
which was to try to make people look their best.
- That's nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, real happier,
yes, nice, yes nice, nice, nice, nice.
Wonderful.
- I was working for his father in his father's tailor shop.
And his father had been telling me about his son,
a famous photographer, works for Life Magazine,
travels the world.
This is something that was unheard of for me,
that he would have a job like that.
He arrived at the store
wearing a full length leather trench coat,
and I just thought to myself, wow, this guy is so cool.
- This country is fascinating, it's extremely beautiful,
it's extremely large, it has it all.
And in each of the states is a different country.
The people are generous, the people are extremely open,
especially in the '60s and '70s and '80s,
people will open the door
and let you photograph them without any problem.
- Just like Douglas, I started in America, in New York.
For me, the challenge was,
if you can make it in New York,
you can make it anywhere.
- Nobody cared that I arrived and nobody was waiting.
So you kind of look at the expanse of the city
and you go like okay, here we go, most every time.
The first thought that I always remember coming was like,
where do I start?
It was like, okay, you land and then now what?
It's not like anybody was waiting for me.
Nobody called me to say,
hey, we need you to start work on Monday, you know?
- I was living in Richmond, Virginia,
and one of the art directors I was working with
made me aware of Irving Penn and how spectacular he was.
He was an extraordinarily big photographer at the time.
So I decided that I would like to meet this man
and hopefully get a job with him.
[upbeat music]
I came to the city from Fort Erie, Ontario,
which is where I grew up,
7,000 people in the Niagara area.
They said, "You want to go to New York?
It's dangerous, you can't make it there."
♪ I was chokin', chokin', chokin', chokin', chokin' ♪
- [Douglas] This is 80 West 40th.
- Oh, yes. How are you? - I used to work here.
♪ I was chokin'
- I got into the studio, I showed him my pictures,
he looked through them,
he said one of our assistants has to go in the military
and he's gonna be there for six months.
So maybe there might be an opening there.
And I knew early type C printing,
that was color,
and that was one of the reasons why Penn
eventually hired me.
There's a legend about one of Penn's assistants.
Frankly, that assistant was me.
Penn was out of town,
I, in my way of wanting to please him,
cleaned all the windows.
And when he came back, Penny was shocked.
You've taken the sense of Penn photos away
by cleaning those windows.
And that had given us special light.
On my last day at the Penn studio,
he said, "Is there anything I can do for you?"
He felt a little guilty I guess for pushing me out.
And I said "Yes, I would like to photograph you, if I may."
He hesitated at first,
'cause not that many people had photographed him.
And then he said okay.
♪ Sayin' nothin', nothin', nothin', nothin' ♪
- And I was over here so I'd have the light
coming over my shoulder,
and Penn sat on a chair and looked at me
and he posed for me in a very good way,
and in fact those pictures are considered
some of the best pictures of him which exist today.
[upbeat music]
[upbeat instrumental music]
- What I feel with him is that he isn't satisfied
until he gets a picture that tells a complete story.
And when you make a moving picture like a film,
you have a huge breadth of time to lay out your narrative.
You get a beginning, you get a middle,
you get an ending.
And in a still photograph, you don't get that.
But a truly gifted photographer can take a moment
and turn it into an entire picture,
to an entire story.
And that's what I feel when I see his photos,
that they're entire stories told in a single moment.
[upbeat jazzy music]
- Don't forget that he worked as a photojournalist,
we did many books together.
- Look and Life Magazine were extremely important
at the time and of course there was no internet.
But there was not that much television either.
And they were your window to the world.
Both Look and Life Magazine had photo stories, photo essays,
they called it the famous photo essay of Life Magazine.
And they would show you, they would tell you stories.
You know, it's not easy to tell a story in pictures,
it's sometimes easier to make a single picture.
Telling a story is a different talent
that Douglas has, by the way.
[printer whirring]
- I was sent to Las Vegas with my friend Jack Hamilton
who was the movie editor,
Elizabeth said that they will gives us an interview,
but no pictures.
I looked directly into her eye and I said,
"Elizabeth, I'm new with this magazine,
could you imagine what it would mean to me
if you gave me an opportunity to photograph you?"
And she was holding my hand still because I didn't let go.
And a couple of seconds later, she said, "Okay."
[upbeat music]
This was my first cover on Look Magazine
and the beginning of my career
photographing the movie world and superstars.
- The photojournalism had an evolution,
it is no more what it was.
In the '60s, the '70s, even in the middle of the '80s,
we had magazines printing a story,
because they have the photos.
Today the contrary,
they put the photo only because they want
to illustrate the text.
- Tell me about Detroit,
I mean, that seems like to be a radical departure
from your everyday work and incredibly interesting images.
- Well, it's a very important thing, I think.
I felt last year, the end of the year,
what is the most important thing happening in this country,
the United States, and it's the economy.
How do you show the economy?
- Storytelling was, for me, is what made
Look and Life Magazine so special.
Not only did you have pictures and stories
but you had double page, a cover,
sometimes a story would run 10, 15 pages, photo essays.
And those unfortunately are gone on the press as paper.
You can see it in the internet.
- There's so many people that are suffering
because of the faltering economy,
but I thought of Detroit
in what an individual automobile worker must go through
when he's been unemployed.
[solemn music]
The automobile industry
in the United States was collapsing.
I managed to get myself a contract
with the New York Times Magazine to go to Detroit,
and on my own, I searched for some people
that would tell the story.
I finally found a couple that brought it all together,
because he had worked in Detroit
in a plant that made trucks.
And his father had been there before him.
Generations were there
and it seemed originally like the automobile industry
would never go down.
It definitely did and he went down with the collapse of it.
And he was laid off and he lived in a trailer
or a caravan, you might call it,
in a very questionable part of town.
And it was winter, it was gray, it was very cold,
just went there with two cameras, two small cameras,
and a little tape recorder.
And what I did, as I was looking for someone,
such as this couple,
I recorded an interview with them
and then said at the end,
"Could I take some pictures of you?"
I stayed in the background,
I shot only with black and white,
and I really cared about them.
But the interesting thing is I could have reached
in my pocket and bought food for them and everything,
but sadly I couldn't do that,
because that would've changed our relationship.
So there's another side to this story however.
The children were born
and I was with a Roman Catholic Bishop
working on another Life Magazine story
down in Texas, of all places,
and I told him their story,
and he said, "You get them down here,
we'll find him work."
I bought them a plane ticket to go down to Texas.
We did and then he moved the family down
and it all worked out beautifully.
[distant clattering]
[crew chattering]
[soft twangy music]
- Probably the hardest thing
was him traveling and being away from us.
And I missed him terribly when I was young.
And it did cause stress for my mother
and I could feel that stress in the household.
So that was the only thing, was the absence of him.
♪ All this time
- Later I've asked him about that and he said to me,
"I thought I could better help my family
and provide by doing these trips and doing my job,"
which I agree with.
[light music]
- Judy Garland and I traveled together for one month.
She had been a hit and the records were selling like crazy.
I went for the opening of "Judgment at Nuremberg"
in Germany with her.
At the end of the day of shooting,
we talked more about the difficult period of her life
and I just started to say,
"Judy, nobody knows what is Judy Garland entirely,
show me the hard times."
And at that point, a tear came into her eye
and that's where this picture happened.
I feel like I've had an opportunity to see her.
- It's a long way from Fort Erie, Ontario
to the Hollywood Hills.
For Douglas Kirkland, it was as much a journey
of the mind as of the miles.
Those who know him well
say that he wasn't corrupted by the trip.
- The real fear when you're photographed,
we're photographed all the time
and we have absolutely no control whatsoever
about which images are used.
And so it's scary to put yourself
into the hands of strangers
and allow them to interpret you.
[upbeat music]
- You're just fantastic, you're just ah!
- What I felt like with Douglas
is that he allowed me to be me.
- He's not looking for put on a fakeness, or a show,
it's if you're feeling angry that day
or if you're feeling sad or if you're feeling very happy,
he wants to capture that real feeling.
- But there's certain photographers that stand out,
there's certain photographers
that bring something out of you.
And it's an old cliche expression,
but beauty is in the eye of the beholder
is genuinely true with the photographer,
because the moment that they snap
is the moment that they capture.
And there's something about Douglas,
there's a relationship that he has with you
through the lens, that's almost not through the lens.
It's a relationship between his heart and yours.
- We shot outside and we shot in one of the rooms,
we went out, up into the hills,
and we did some photos of me.
- He took you into the hills?
- We went up on,
I don't know where we were,
up in the hills a little bit.
- That's awesome, I trust him. - A bunch of us went,
it was the whole crew,
and we did all these photos of me jumping in the air,
he wanted me to jump in the air.
[upbeat music]
He just comes alive, his face just starts getting red
and he's screaming, he's getting really excited,
and he gets this high when he shoots you.
It was so incredible to witness that.
- Oh that's nice, that's nice, I love that, I love it.
Okay you guys, I know what you're waiting for,
you want that one last picture, okay, here it is!
- In that moment, on that day,
he took me as I was,
but he also wanted me to be my best.
That's what I see when I see that photo, I think gosh.
Well firstly I was so moved to have crossed paths with him,
to have played Marilyn and then to have been able
to meet someone who had been in her life.
And for her to have been photographed by him
and then for me to be photographed by him
felt like what she felt in his hands.
And never in my life could I have imagined
this sort of circumstance.
[dramatic music]
- Marilyn Monroe is probably the most significant shoot
that I did in that early period of my life.
She formed who Douglas Kirkland is.
[sultry jazzy music]
We went off to her apartment to meet her,
which for a boy from this small Canadian town,
was exceedingly exciting.
She said, "I think there's something wrong here,
I want to be alone with this boy."
And I started taking pictures with my camera.
At a certain point, she suggested,
"Why don't you come over here and come close to me?"
And she suggested that we, say whatever you want,
it was a suggestion of making love.
You know what I did?
I kept taking pictures,
because that was really what was most in my heart.
And I'm glad I did to this day.
And that's where these pictures have come from.
- This session with Marilyn Monroe was astounding.
Everyone else wanted to be on her.
And he gave her some space and let her feel free
and safe and went up, away, and let her be free.
There was something about just allowing her
the safety that was so elegant.
- That for me is so special,
there's such a fragility to it
and there's such a delicacy to it and an honesty.
- Because no one was trying to force her into those clothes
and force her into the Marilyn Monroe of it all.
And so you go to see her aura in this way.
- She's almost like a cat,
like a really beautiful cat in the photograph.
- He was so close to her, we could see that in the picture.
She's so romantic and sexy in the Douglas Kirkland pictures.
- I like when I see an image that isn't
sort of exploitive of her
but is very loving towards her and protective of her.
- We have the feeling she's naked in front of him for him.
It's an extraordinary moment of intimacy
with a huge star like her.
- She was seducing the camera, truthfully.
What the pillow represents
is what she would like to be doing to a man.
And I could have been in there and been the pillow,
but I chose to keep taking pictures,
'cause that's who Douglas Kirkland, really, bottom line, is.
He wants to get the snaps.
[crew laughing] - Fantastic, perfect!
[exciting music]
[retro rock music]
- [Douglas] The '60s was a time of exploration.
We did it with music, we did it with words.
There were so many things to explore,
and that was the '60s for me.
- Doug is not Doug alone,
which is, I think, important to say.
It's Doug and Francoise.
It's the team of them that is so wonderful.
[soft music]
- 1965.
I was a student,
I was at the Sabon and I was studying as well
to be a simultaneous interpreter.
I was just turning 22.
I was sitting in my mother's office
and I was looking at some contact sheets
or something like that,
and in comes this very tall, very very beautiful man.
He didn't say very much, he sat in a chair,
and then he put his feet up on a desk,
you know, you don't do that in France,
it's not terribly polite, it's very American.
And he fell asleep.
So I had about 20 minutes to look at him sleeping,
and he was quite gorgeous.
So he woke up and kind of stretched
and the next thing I remember him saying
is something that sounded like,
"Do you want to go out to dinner?"
And in the middle of dinner, Douglas said to me,
looking into my decollete, he said,
"You have very, very blue eyes."
And that was the beginning of our love affair.
[light music]
- Douglas and Francoise's relationship
is indivisible from his work as an artist
and a photographer.
I think that she is also part of the passion,
of the journey to take the most incredible pictures.
- She allows him to completely concentrate
on what he loves to do best, to take pictures.
- I was an 11 year old boy growing up in Paris,
and my mother worked for various studios.
And she was working on a movie
called "How to Steal a Million Dollars"
with Peter O'Toole and Audrey Hepburn.
And the studio had flown in a photographer
from the United States to be the set photographer.
And my mother met him that day,
came home and talked about him
and thought how charming and interesting he was,
and to make a long story short,
he set him up with my sister.
I was very happy for her, I was very excited,
and most importantly, my sister fell madly in love with him.
- Then Douglas changed his plans
and he stayed an extra week in Paris.
So I was with him all the time.
And then he got a job to go to America with Brigitte Bardot.
She was going to America for the first time
to promote "Viva Maria" so he was flying with her
on her plane with a journalist
and I thought, well, I'll never see him again,
'cause I knew Brigitte Bardot really liked him.
So I cried all night and he kept saying,
"I promise you, I'll come back,
I promise you."
And we used to sing some songs together and he said,
"I promise you we'll sing this song together again."
- She loves being part of that storytelling process
and seeing the magic of taking pictures
happen in front of her.
- She is not only a wife,
she is a partner in the photography,
she is a manager,
she is his muse.
- I did not know that Douglas was famous
and I really didn't, couldn't have cared less.
And I was not particularly impressed
by the fact that he was photographing movie stars,
because being sort of a snobby French girl,
I didn't think movie stars were very interesting.
I mean, if he told me he photographed Picasso,
I would have probably been more impressed.
But like Marilyn Monroe or Audrey Hepburn,
it meant absolutely nothing to me, really nothing.
[light music]
[camera clicking]
- I think what's magical about Douglas' work
is the relationship that he has with the subject
and how you see that relationship,
and are brought into it right away.
It's so difficult to achieve that natural feeling,
like he has this closeness and this intimacy
with his subject that is all the more amazing
because a lot of them are celebrities
and those are people who are not used
to showing their kind of real face.
When you look at the essay he did on Coco Chanel,
for example, for Look Magazine,
the magic of it is the journalistic feeling,
her holding the cigarette
and just kind of capturing the moment,
you don't feel like it's staged.
You feel like he's talking to her
and her personality is coming out
and it's so intimate and so raw
and I think that was just the amazing way
he brought the spontaneity and feeling
of capturing the moment from photojournalism
and merged it with portraiture,
where you really got to know who that person was.
- Chanel had a great influence on me in many ways.
One day, I had finished my work with her for the day
and I was walking back to my hotel
and I saw a headline, "Marilyn est morte."
And one of the first things I did
is ask one of the people at the hotel,
"Is Marilyn Monroe dead?"
I couldn't believe it.
And that was a shock.
[soft emotional music]
[retro rock music]
A lot of uncertainty at the beginning of the '70s
because you look at Life
and the publications I had been working for
suddenly vanished.
The question was,
was I gonna be able to survive at all?
Fortunately I did.
- We were very happy in New York
and then Look Magazine closed
and it was completely unexpected.
And for Douglas it was a terrible shock emotionally.
It wasn't the work, because he had enough work,
he worked with other clients,
but it had been his big dream.
This is the very first place that we bought.
- [Douglas] The Upper West Side.
- So we were going vacation
with the children to Long Island,
so I had the car packed
and it was sort of here on the street.
- [Douglas] I had to get in and buy some nails.
- [Francoise] I don't know why he had to get some nails,
but he had to go to the hardware store.
- [Douglas] I got stopped by a neighbor over here.
He was a photographer as well
and he said he was going to sell his house
and move to the country.
- It took half an hour for him to buy nails
and I'm waiting in the car
with the kids to go to the country,
and he says "Oh by the way,
I bought the house across the street,"
and I thought, oh my God.
I remember Douglas saying to my father
that he wanted to move to California and my father said why?
And Douglas said, "You can drive your car there."
And my father looked at him
like you mean you're gonna move somewhere
because you can drive your car?
We had a couple of scripts that were interesting
and we knew people, it was very easy in California
to make contacts with people at that time.
So it was Easter
and Douglas mentioned something more about California
and I said, "Okay, I'm gonna give you
a couple of hours to think about this.
You can decide if you want to move to California,
but after that, we won't discuss it anymore."
So then he kind of looked at me like sheepishly and he said,
"I think I'd like to move to California."
And I said, I opened a bottle of champagne and I said,
"Okay, we'll be there."
[upbeat music]
We had a Mustang convertible,
a yellow Mustang convertible,
we put things in the backseat
and we started driving across country.
Then we got to Houston
and he got this assignment for Town & Country
to go and shoot Margaux Hemingway in Key West.
So we locked our car in the garage of the hotel
and then we flew to Key West.
And while we were in Key West
he got an assignment to go to Los Angeles.
So when we were finished in Key West,
we took a plane that stopped in Houston,
I got off the plane, I went and got the car,
Douglas went to Los Angeles
and I started to drive the car to Los Angeles.
And by the time I got to Los Angeles,
Douglas was in New York again.
But anyway, he came back.
That's how we moved to California.
- Kirkland lives and works out of his house
in his studio in the Hollywood Hills.
Here his work centers around the motion picture industry.
[upbeat band music]
- There was a time when you were told
you have to move to Los Angeles
because that is Hollywood and that's where,
and that doesn't exist now.
I would think for Douglas,
that was where you got to photograph
these people a lot of the time,
so there was a sort of a glow
around Los Angeles at that time.
- Douglas, there is two personalities,
there is Douglas, the very kind and novel person,
when you talk to him and you meet him on a personal level.
And then there is the wild guy
when Douglas starts photographing
and when he gets in front of a crowd.
He gets like a teenager and sometimes even reckless,
which is really surprising to see.
[upbeat music]
[audience applauding]
- I worked on more than 150 movies through my career,
and I have had a lot of varying experiences.
I've had good experiences and surprises.
One of the best experiences I had
was working on "The Sound of Music."
It was a very special time for me
because I had never been on a movie set
of that capacity and size.
- There are some pictures from "The Sound of Music"
that capture more than the film.
They capture an iconic, romantic understanding
more than film, poetry, music, lyrics,
story, fantasy, imagination,
color, structure, theme.
- One of the experiences I had on "The Sound of Music,"
I thought I should get a picture
that encapsulated the entire film.
And suddenly a helicopter came down
and that was the end of my shot.
And they said, "Get that guy out of here!"
[upbeat music]
♪ I was there once
♪ And you were there too
♪ I was
- With Douglas, the feeling is to be loved.
♪ Finally got caught
- I have very precise memories of the day
in which Douglas came on that set.
Someone told me that Douglas,
who I knew very well his work, was in town,
and he wanted to come and see the set.
I remember how excited I was during that moment.
And he showed up mid-afternoon in the house
and I liked the way he moved, he was very investigative
in the way he was seeking the space.
He brought a fantastic aura to the set.
- On "Out of Africa," I went and I worked 45 days in Kenya,
and I got along very well
with Meryl Streep and Robert Redford.
At a certain point I was very flattered
because I was told that David Watkins,
the director of photography for that movie,
had seen some of the pictures I was doing,
and he was moved to do the same things, similar things
and I was very pleased.
[soft music]
I worked on "Titanic" the movie and that was extraordinary
because it was so big and major.
Eventually it went off all the charts all over the world.
I was supposed to do some advertising setups
which were very critical to the advertising of the movie.
- There is one specific image that I really like,
and it's a portrait of Leonardo DiCaprio,
a black and white portrait,
and when you look at it,
the perception of his emotions, change.
- Finally at 3:00 in the morning,
they had gotten to a point where I was told
I could have Leo and Kate.
But Leonardo had fallen asleep at 3:00 in the morning.
And fortunately I gently woke him up
and he bounced right into position
and he even been gave the dialogue that he'd been giving,
and it was perfect.
And it worked.
[crowd chattering]
[upbeat jazzy music]
- I do know that it was early on in "Moulin Rouge,"
and there was this idea of having
a very short list of the great photographers
on the planet come and interpret "Moulin Rouge."
And it was talked about,
and I was certainly aware of legends
and I was like maybe we could have
Douglas Kirkland come, great.
Doug has an ability,
and it's not really an ability,
it's a character trait,
that he just walks into the room
and he fills it with light and energy.
And I just remember the kind of light and energy
which stopped me kind of in my tracks, you know?
- The first time I arrived in Australia
on the set of "Moulin Rouge,"
which was being done by Baz Luhrmann,
he announced to everybody who I was,
and I couldn't believe it.
That had never happened to me on a film.
- The reason that I announced Doug's arrival
was first of all he's a legend,
and I thought we were so honored
to have him come and participate.
But I also wanted to give him, not knowing him that well,
but I wanted to give him extreme license,
I wanted to make him part of the crew,
I wanted everyone to see that he was part of the crew,
because there's always a conflict on set
between exactly where that camera is there,
that camera is there, and of course people shooting stills,
say this shot, you want the camera there.
So this conflict about where the camera is.
And I really wanted no one to be fearful of Doug
and I certainly wanted the crew
to embrace Doug as part of the fabric of the show.
And it was really a great thing to do
because he was loved by the crew as he is by everyone.
And I think that's probably what is so majestic
and really, really wonderful about him,
is that he brings life to a set
and he brings enthusiasm no matter what's going on,
and that brings out the best in everyone.
[fast-paced tense music]
- We were on the same movie, Douglas and I,
in a movie called "Pirates."
- You know what happened with this picture?
I told them I wanted to get this picture and he said,
"Well if you will do it, I will do it.
And I want you to do it first."
[friend laughing]
So I did it and then I jumped.
[both laughing]
And we have a jump picture of me somewhere.
- You see his understanding
that it's more than just a photograph.
We're telling a story through image,
we're telling a piece of humanity, of heart,
of thought, of creativity, of glamor,
of that desire to reach beyond.
He understands what we need to get from the depth
of our humanity to the height of our poetic desires,
all in the photographic understanding with technique,
with character, with thought, with foresight,
and with the classic training.
[intense music]
- The DNA of Australia was like sort of
a "Gone With the Wind" and "Out of Africa" in a sense.
I mean I loved "Out of Africa" growing up
and we screened it in my cinema in my little country town,
there's a little bit of the messianic
going across the Serengeti
and King George going across the plains
in Northern Australia.
There's a little bit of that.
- One of the stories that Douglas and I
worked on at Life was we covered the making
of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video
and we were the only journalistic team
that was allowed on that set.
We were very frequently paired up
because I was the show business reporter at the time.
And we pretty much had the run of the place.
We were downtown when he filmed the scene
where Michael and his girlfriend
emerge from the movie theater
and we were in the forest when Michael is a werewolf,
jumps out of the forest.
We were on the set when he was
dancing in the streets as the goblins.
- Nancy Griffin, she got herself into one of the pictures,
and she was in the booth selling tickets to "Thriller."
Everything just exploded, everything was "Thriller,"
and that's what Michael brought to it.
[light solemn music]
- I like photography and when the production told us
that Douglas was gonna be on set,
I couldn't believe it.
I couldn't believe that we were gonna have him
take the pictures of the movie.
"The 33" was my first Hollywood production also,
so everything was new to me.
And when he got there,
I was just surprised,
I was just thankful that I got to meet him,
to work with him.
But the beauty of it was really who he is,
then in comes this beautiful, beautiful guy,
with this amazing energy, and he was so kind,
I remember he was just so kind,
he was just absolutely supportive
of letting me show my character.
- You know, he's a brilliant person,
a brilliant artist,
and I certainly admire the art,
but even maybe more important,
is it hasn't affected his ego in any way.
He's still a wonderful, warm person
and I think I admire that he's remained a warm person.
[light music]
- [Douglas] In the '80s, publications were sending me
around the world, looking into other worlds
and looking up and I still look up at times.
[upbeat music]
- One day in the life of the United States,
when he photographed the sunset and the sunrise
from the plane over the United States,
which is a moment in 24 hours that he did,
that was a moment of photojournalism for Douglas
and it was superior.
[upbeat music]
- I met Douglas during the project
"A Day in the Life of Australia."
It was the first of a series of projects
where 100 photographers from all over the world
convened in one country to photograph at a single day.
And the subtitle was, "The best photographers of the world."
When I got there, I saw all my heroes.
Amongst them was Douglas Kirkland.
- [Douglas] "A Day in the Life of Australia"
became a landmark in photography.
- We made a book about the people in Australia
and now we made a book about the people in Canada.
- And that started our friendship.
- Take the goddamned pictures, boy.
- Okay! - Okay.
[upbeat music]
- I can't think of any better way to begin
"A Day in the Life of Canada" than somebody shaving.
He's my father and at least he's cooperative.
Can you turn your head that way?
That's good.
I wonder if I had to ask permission from my own parents.
- I think that with Douglas,
he's continued to grow as an artist
and has had an extraordinarily long career
because he's able to adapt to changing times,
to changing aesthetics,
without ever losing himself
or the absolutely core values he has as an artist,
but to me, it's the greatest advantage,
because it keeps his work relevant.
People still want Douglas to take a picture,
because he's not stuck in a world that has been left behind.
[speaking in foreign language]
- I choose my camera principally for the one that works best
at that period in my life.
I met Victor Hasselblad in New York one evening,
he was walking down the street and he looked up at me
and I was taking a picture for Popular Photography,
and he said, "Do you like that camera?"
And I said, "Yes."
And I started to tell him about it
because it was the latest Hasselblad, and he said,
"I'm very glad you like that camera
because I make that camera,
my name is Victor Hasselblad."
And he walked off into the night.
- A great photograph tells as much about the subject
as it tells about how you feel when you press the shutter.
And in that way, I see in Douglas' photography
this immense love for people,
the immense love for his subjects,
the closeness that he can arrange.
[upbeat rock music]
- [Douglas] I love women, yes I do,
I like women on many levels.
I like them first as people.
- Wow. You make magic.
- Since he is in the business
of making women look beautiful,
a sort of seduction happens
and it can develop into something
or it doesn't develop into something.
But he is not really a seducer.
I mean there are a lot of celebrity photographers now,
really sort of are in hot pursuit of the stars
and the publicist and everything.
Douglas has really not got that interest,
his obsession is photography.
And even for me, women have come second.
I mean his first passion is photography.
- Beautiful.
- I would never want to do something like that.
[all laughing]
- You would hate it, wouldn't you?
- He's simple, he only has to go to war.
- Just war.
- Doug, you have made this a specialty.
How did that happen?
Did it just happen or did you say
I'm gonna make women look dynamite or whatever?
- I guess it's just the way I am, David.
I just like women, I like girls,
I can't help myself.
Irrepressible.
- Lover of women, right? - And modest.
[all laughing]
- Douglas genuinely loves women and always has.
He's never taken advantage of any relationship
with a woman or a movie star or an actress in particular.
- He shoots from the hip,
he doesn't use lights,
he doesn't use tripods,
he tries to get people in their element.
- Sure.
This is really you.
- He has foraged close relationships with many of them,
but it's not exploitation ever with Douglas.
- [Reporter] Another assignment for Kirkland.
The French magazine Paris Match
wants a picture story on Catherine Deneuve.
They want it to be special,
they've flown Doug 6,000 miles from Hollywood to shoot it.
- [Douglas] We're having some difficulties with Catherine,
did you hear?
- Yes I know. - Yes.
- We're supposed to have... - I was under the impression
that we all were,
that we would be able to get the entire day with her.
Yeah but it's all at night, that's the problem.
- [Reporter] Catherine Deneuve is making a movie,
it's behind schedule, she has very little time,
that could be a real problem.
At Paris Match, Doug maps out a plan
to make the short session pay off.
- If I speak English, will you understand me?
You will?
I usually work fast,
I like to work fast.
But sometimes a situation develops
that just gets out of hand.
She said 6:30, I hope she's not upset.
What do you think?
Do you think she's alright?
- Hello. - Hi, how are you?
- How are you? - Nice to see you.
Just you and me, nobody else.
Do you remember what I did the last time?
I shaved the mustache for you.
- You shaved the mustache for me?
- A few years ago.
- Because you thought I was going to kiss you.
- Yeah, that's what I thought.
Very, very nice, very nice.
[singing in foreign language]
Very, very beautiful.
Okay, beautiful. Just give me a second.
Turn your, yeah, that's good, yes that's good,
lean a little more.
Yes, that's nice, yes.
That's the shoot.
What I had to do was be as persuasive
and quick as I could,
and nothing is more awful than no picture.
And I must bring something back.
People often ask me, the prized question
is what is Catherine really like?
That's an answer I cannot give you, not on the air. [laughs]
[upbeat music]
Every decade's brought new ideas to Douglas Kirkland.
And the '90s were no exception.
- When you look at the work through the decades,
the '60s, the '70s, the '80s, and the '90s
and even to this day, Douglas kept changing.
He is way ahead of many of his peers in that field.
And in the '70s when Look Magazine closed,
he just went on normally to Life Magazine,
which is in this industry unheard of,
very few photographers made the switch,
and he just did.
He just went from Look to Life.
Through the decade, Douglas kept changing
and evolving with his world of photography.
He is a photographer that can photograph many things,
people, celebrities, world footage,
documentary photography, travel, fashion, portraiture,
it's amazing, it's just amazing.
And he's excellent at everything he does.
- Early adopter of digital photography,
early adopter of Photoshop
and digital manipulation of the images,
early adopter of very large scale printing in house
so he could have enormous control over the images himself.
And to me, that's just allowed his work
to keep fresh and alive and very contemporary.
- Douglas is changing and growing and staying curious,
which is what you want as an artist
and which is how you span decades.
You don't span decades by saying this is what I do
and this is it and I've arrived,
you span it by you grow and you manage to have longevity,
I think, by changing and growing
and morphing into other things.
But that also comes from what your essence is,
whether you're curious,
whether you're willing,
whether you're open,
whether you're still engaged in the world and in people,
because if you have achieved a lot,
you can easy just retire and go, that's it, I'm done.
But I love that he hasn't done that,
I love that he's stayed relevant and stayed hungry.
And I have worked with directors like Kubrick,
who have also spent decade upon decade
because of their ability to be in the world now
and present in the world now
and never thinking that they've reached the pinnacle,
rather thinking that they're still on the journey.
- Stanley Kubrick had been originally a photographer
at the magazine I worked for, Look Magazine.
And I worked on 2001,
and he said, "I want to show you my favorite camera,"
and it was a little Olympus that he pulled out of his pocket
and that was one of his loves
and certainly Douglas bought one shortly thereafter.
- I was only talking to Douglas
about a series of pictures that he took
with a large format camera
and just how touching and extraordinary they were,
the fact that they seemed to,
this huge camera and Douglas seemed
to look inside the soul of the people.
[upbeat music]
- I usually photograph with a modern digital camera
but for Bernardo, to me,
he's such a special individual, a treasure,
that I wanted to get the most out of the image.
And I chose to use a very old but very good technology
and it's a 20 x 25 centimeter camera,
or 8 x 10, as we call it in the United States.
And it's a look from another time and it's very special,
that's why I wanted to do this this way.
- You get to feel all the things that are around the edge
of it that you're not actually seeing in the frame.
You wonder what the story is,
who was on the other side of the camera?
What was just said?
It's like the whole moment gets conjured in that photograph.
- Right at the last second, he tipped his head down,
and he spoke to the camera, that's Bernardo.
He knew and understood and to me,
that's the richness of this great director.
- You see that camera in photographs,
in period photographs and in movies and things like that,
but very rarely have I seen it being pulled out
into a photo shoot and sliding in the big frame
and putting yourself under the hood.
So it was exciting, to see what would come out
of that situation with that type of camera.
- Douglas' openness and energy just brought out
very poignant and very tender and
very nuanced images.
- Both photography and music are cultural methods
for being able to capture the various aspects of life.
Inspiration is everywhere,
it's flying around whatever space you're in.
There's a moment where you commit to something
and it's a matter of being able to tune in
to that inspiration from wherever it may come from
in the spatial environment around you.
And Douglas, he demands it
and commits to being in sync with that moment.
When I'm photographed by a great photographer
like Douglas Kirkland,
the image that he captures is so powerful,
sometimes, is that really me? [laughs]
- One thing I always do is I always anticipate
there may be something,
so I make the principle picture,
and then what I honestly do is I watch.
The Royal Wedding, it was magic for me.
I got a very special place, very close to the,
where they came out after the ceremony.
The interesting thing is most of the photographers
had run out of film and I kept some in my camera,
and at that point he kissed the bride, his bride, Lady Di.
And that was magic and those pictures
still are used to this day.
- [Reporter] Even trite to describe this tale
of a beautiful maid who marries a handsome prince
as a fairy story.
It's certainly sentimental to do so.
And what's wrong with that?
[upbeat music]
- [Douglas] As the 2000's arrived,
I was one of the first to embrace the digital age
and digital cameras and photography.
And I love that and it remains with me to this day.
- I've seen difficult times for my father
and some of those were
the profession itself
and what's happened to photography.
And he has had to figure out ways to keep working
and keep making money as a professional photographer
when many, many photographers have quit.
And one of the ways he's done that
is by adapting to the changes and recognizing
things are gonna be different.
But he's always told me
it's more interesting that way anyway.
- It was a dream come true to shoot with Douglas.
I've always admired those Marilyn Monroe photos
of her in the bed and always wanted to do a shoot like that.
[camera flashing] [exciting music]
- Very, very nice, very, very, very good.
Very good.
Whoa!
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!
Woo!
The world loves you!
Yes they do!
Certainly the photographer does!
Okay, I'd like to try something new.
- I love how passionate he is about his photos
and you can really tell when you see them.
- You are good!
You're fantastic!
I love you!
I love you for the pictures!
This is a nice tease.
- [Paris] Yeah, sexy.
- I think we're finished, my love.
- Yay, thank you. [crew applauding]
So to be shooting with this legend was just incredible.
- An honor to shoot with you.
[light music]
- The first time I met Douglas was about 25 years ago,
a really long time ago.
And it happened here actually,
in this place, in this theater,
here at [speaks in foreign language] in this foyer,
and it was through the agency Grazia Neri
and I was actually very surprised
that he decided to photograph me.
But it happened and I already knew about his work
and he was a really great photographer.
I was just appointed the principal dancer of the theater,
I was 21 and for me it was a really fantastic experience
to being photographed by one of
the greatest photographer, I mean, ever.
- If I have to think of Douglas and Roberto Bolle,
I think the two together are able to create the magic
of dancing even in one frame.
In Douglas' pictures you can see the power of the body,
the energy, the perfection of the muscles
and the proportions of the dancer,
but you can also feel the passion
and the emotion that Roberto puts in his dance.
And I think the two together have done
the best pictures of a dancer ever.
- Of course ballet is the art of movement
and photography is the art of stillness.
But I like to be photographed
because I like sometimes in all the movement I can do,
to capture one movement of beauty,
and it's quite a strong thing sometimes,
to see a dancer flying on,
doing some kind of position
where you can see all the muscles for a moment.
And the two things are so much different,
opposite I would say, they come together in the photography.
So you can really freeze a beautiful moment of dance
and you can see it forever.
- There are new challenges every day.
And you want to keep reaching
and that's truthfully how this book began.
It's physical poetry, alphabet.
This all started with Erica and Erica Lemay is the subject,
she's been with the Cirque Du Soleil
and she can do things with her body
that no normal person could do.
Like look at what she has in the B there.
This is something we really care about,
we put a lot of time into it.
[light music]
- So the Alphabet Project is a composite photography project
of portraits and visual elements that we shot in house.
So we took things like flowers, jewelry, and objects,
and then designed them
around Douglas' portraits of Erica Lemay.
So after working on the Alphabet Project
for a year and a half,
it was amazing to see it come to fruition in London
at the book launch party that was accompanied
by Erica Lemay performing and doing
some of the acrobatic things
that she was doing in the actual project.
[crowd chattering]
[upbeat music] [crowd chattering]
- In Canada, on a cold Christmas Day,
they allowed me to make one click.
That was where all this dream began.
♪ I'mma drive my car like I never got stopped ♪
♪ Like I never got out
♪ Like I never could die
♪ Lookin' for
- I am very moved.
♪ Keep going
♪ Gotta keep going
- I can't believe it
as I look at all these lives I've lived.
♪ Camel paint
♪ Find a big white board, spray my name ♪
- If you have a chance to become a Douglas Kirkland,
I would recommend it,
'cause I have been extremely fortunate.
♪ For days tryin' to find the cure ♪
♪ I think I'm gettin' kinda close ♪
♪ But I can't be sure
♪ Could've built all that I am
- The future is very exciting
because I know there are new discoveries,
and I don't want to ever stop.
This is me, I'm going!
♪ Gotta keep going
- [Douglas] Francoise [laughs], don't go away. I see you.
[speaks in French]
Directed by Luca, he's the man who puts his finger
on the button and he gets you going.
And the production is by Matteo and Giovanni
and they're very special.
This would not exist without all this combination of talent.
The cinematography is by my friend Gianfilippo De Rossi,
and he has always been a very special friend
and he gets the images.
The sound from Matias,
this guy gets it all up here in the mic.
And you have the best producer in the world, Silvia Bizio.
And I have known her for longer than you want to know.
And I love you all.
♪ You need to keep your will for you ♪
♪ I found it all, and got no rights ♪
♪ Didn't even miss into paradise ♪
♪ Lookin' for the night
♪ Gotta keep goin'
♪ Ya gotta keep goin'
♪ Gotta keep goin'
♪ Ya gotta keep on
[upbeat music]
[uptempo instrumental music]