BLUE MAG

Lazlo Kovacs was a cinematographer who named himself after Belmondo’s character in Breathless after moving from Hungry to America. It was almost as if he were saying he was born from the movies once he got to Hollywood. He was at film school in his native Budapest when a revolt against the Communist regime started on the streets. With classmate Vilmos Zsigmond, he borrowed a school camera and filmed the conflict. They smuggled the footage into Austria and entered the U.S. as political refugees in 1957. The historic footage was later featured in a CBS docu narrated by Walter Cronkite. Once in Hollywood, Kovacs went on to make the images for “Easy Rider,” “The King of Marvin Gardens,” “Paper Moon,” “The Last Movie,” “Shampoo,” “New York, New York,” “Ghostbusters” and many others. I’m not sure this man was created by the movies but he was certainly created for them.

He was won or was even nominated for an Oscar but shot with Bogdanovitch, Rafelson, and Scorsese on some of the best films of the 1970s. Do yourself a favor and watch one of the many films he made this week.