Film Courage: Do you remember the first time you picked up the camera? Bruce Logan, Writer/Director/Cinematographer: I do I haven't I
have a photograph of it and it's me and to raise who was a friend of my parents
and there's a picture of me with this it's not a box brownie but it's like
it's one level up from that and you can see me kind of struggling with the
controls and I guess I must have been free something like that you know and
and then later on I picked up my father's he had this Kodak camera that
had the bellows that opens up and the bellows stick out and I did a lot of my
early work with that camera and why not keep it as a hobby what how did you
there's so many kids pick up gadgets of all sorts what why continue on
I suppose I it was kind of in the family because my my father worked for the BBC [The British Broadcasting Corporation]
he was a drama producer and he he was one of the pioneers of three camera
drama and he produced about an hour of live television every week and
even though I could see the stress on his face you know it was it was
definitely an area that I was going into so my earliest memories of my father was
he would come home and he would work at home and he had a map of the plant view
of the studio and then because the cameras were all they all had cables on
them he would have a piece of string on this like plastic representation of the
camera and and where it plugged into the the wall and his his job was to block
the show without a camera ever running over another cable because they were on
wheels and they couldn't they couldn't run over the cable so that's like a very
early memory of me and his workflow but no if I only
really ever wanted to be two things and one one was a film director and the
other one was a rock and roll star so I can animate and John Bonham's [Led Zeppelin drummer] job was already
exactly what's he crowded professions you grew up in the United Kingdom I did
I I was born in central London on the Tottenham Court Road and I believed we
spent our early years and Notting Hill Gate and then we moved out to what was
then the country but it was really suburbia to a place called bushy Heath
which is near Watford which is where Elton John owned his football teams so
that gives you a reference and it was also situated halfway between Elstree
Studios and Pinewood Studios so for me it was a really good place to live
because I can commute to either one of those studios and then at what point did
you leave the UK well I got a my dream job which was to work for my favourite
director ever standard Kubrick on a movie called 2001 a Space Odyssey and
that was when I was 19 years old and so I worked for like two and a half years
on that movie which is actually the longest gainful employment that I've
ever had in my life you know in in one stretch and at the end of that movie I
was asked by Doug Trumbull who had originally hired me onto that movie to
come and work for his new special effects company in California so I came
right after that movie in 1968 and really I've been here ever since
it's my country at that time what was Kubrick's um he
wouldn't have been a legend of course at that time as he was in his 20s or early
thirties no he was I'm not sure what age he was but he was definitely a legend he
you know my dad had taken me to see PATHS OF GLORY which was his first big picture
I think with Kirk Douglas and they had these wonderful tracking shots through
the World War 1 trenches and it was also a courtroom drama so I think that was a
you know before that he had done two others but they
were they were smaller movies so I think positive glory was his first in a really
big movie and then you know he made movies like Lolita and Dr. Strangelove
or how I learned to stop worrying about the bomb and loved it
I think that's the byline of the movie and no he was he from me and because my
dad had taken me to see all these movies and then some of them I went to on my
own he was a pretty big deal he was mine he was my favorite director so to get
hired by him that movie was the stars must have aligned very carefully for me
to get that opportunity and you know I had some really good breaks in my life
you know but I've always been ready for them I'd always laid the groundwork so
when I got when I got the call to work on that movie I had I had a very strong
training in animation so I was hired as an animation artist and then that when
they found out I could shoot animation I became especially interesting to them
because there's a process in animation where the animators animate and then the
animator they write a dope sheet which is an instruction sheet
to tell the the cameramen how to shoot it so it's it's a it's like frame by
frame it tells the camera and what to do so I was able to do the artwork and then
put it on to the camera and I've skipped that dope sheet phase of the process so
I became very useful to them in that way and that's how I got promoted very
quickly you know do you remember what it was like the first day you reported for
the job
yeah I was excited to be there but I certainly wasn't nervous about it you
know it was I think it's the arrogance of youth that you don't really know what
you stepped into and I just felt I felt very at home I felt very supported by
everybody that was around me and you know I had this background in animation
I had taught myself you know I was a huge Disney fan as a kid and when I was
about 12 I wrote a book on how to animate cartoons which was a focal press
book and I taught myself how to animate and to do cells and then my dad bought
me a nine point five millimeter camera which was able to take single frames so
now I was able to get my animated drawings and turn them into animated
films so I had done that and then after school I got hired by an animation
company to do to be a trainee rostrum cameraman a Russian Russian cameraman
the name of an animation or a photography process so I had done that
and so I had this whole background that I'd been working on for years so it
seemed like I I got this really lucky opportunity and I jump right into it but
I had this underlying base of knowledge and practical skill in that
before I before I got there do you remember your first meeting with
Stanley Kubrick I do originally when I came to work at MGM we were in the front
offices because the the production hadn't really taken over the studio as
it would in in you know within within six months we were on every stage and
every department but at the moment that we were in this little tiny front office
building you know they had probably about eight or ten offices in that and
so I'd started off working in in this room with Doug Trumbull who had hired me
and another guy from the Film Board of Canada called Wally gentlemen
and there was Stanley just kind of like walking walking through the offices and
he seemed very relaxed he was smiling and laughing and joking and a very
affable guy you know and and very very personable so he was you know pleased to
meet you and it was I remember well he came in with Arthur Clark who had
written or co-written 2001 with him he had written a short story that Stanley
had based it on and the end they were just wandering through the office there
was no like formality to it you know it was just it was very nice and and
Stanley's office remained open throughout the throughout
the production so you could go into his office he had a he had a newer on his
wall saying no half-baked idea you know you don't want to come in with anything
that you haven't thought about and present to him that's not not a
formalized plan you know so very interesting guy you know so really an
open-door policy not just what some HR paperwork says exactly yes yeah and and
you know he he was you know he had some strange toy
to him he he he liked to have nothing in his pockets so I think I think he come
you know in America you have to carry your ID and your wallet and your car
keys and you know so he had had nothing on him
so he would bum cigarettes off other people so he didn't have to have a pack
of cigarettes on him and he drove in this plastic rolls-royce
that was at the studio and he had a driver but that was really the only the
only kind of you that you could call formal pretense of something that's
around it and and I have to say I was a very irresponsible kid when I was on it
and I would frequently be late to work so it would be like 9:30 and I'm coming
into the parking lot and the only other guy that's walking into the studio was
it was Stanley you know and he he never seemed to be angry with me for not being
there was just like a nice polite wave and I'd go in so so it was weird because
there wasn't really a pressure to work the pressure of the work was on you so
as I so it seems like I would come in and we would look around and would talk
about what we've done today before and then it was tea time and then we'd have
tea and then it seems like nothing really got done before lunch and then
and then round about three o'clock I'd start really shooting in earnest and by
the end of the day I don't more footage shot than anybody else that was doing
the same kind of work you know so it was the arrogance of you but I guess with
some talent did you have long hair I did I think that's another reason I was
hired you know he looks like the Beatles you know
we should hire him were you well received being so yawns that or were
there other people that were 1920 know that what people as young as me I was
really the youngest around and I was very well received in our little group
but I think a lot of people in the English film industry it's a much more
kind of clothes and nepotistic loop you know then than it is here and that was
one of the great things about coming to America was everybody was very open
about everything and invested in your success but there was always kind of
like her there was always a feeling like no he's he's around he's maybe a little
too big for his britches in there over there so some you know the people in our
department were very very enthusiastic and and helpful but others were a little
like what what's he doing here you know that's not sure about that
you