Bill Butler, the Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated cinematographer best known for lensing Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws,” died on Wednesday, five days short of his 102nd birthday. The American Society of Cinematographers confirmed his passing in a statement.
Butler was working at WGN-TV when he met director William Friedkin who asked Butler to be his cinematographer on the documentary “The People vs. Paul Crump” about a prisoner on death row. The film resulted in the prisoner’s death sentence being commuted and is what Butler dubs his first “actual job in the film industry”.
That led to his first films as a cinematographer, including Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Rain People” and Philip Kaufman’s “Fearless Frank”. He did some uncredited second-unit photography on John Boorman’s “Deliverance” in 1972 and Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather” in 1973 before hitting a cinematic trifecta.
As a cinematographer, he shot Coppola’s “The Conversation,” then Spielberg’s “Jaws,” then Milos Forman’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” back-to-back.
It was a hell of a run, but it was hardly the end. He went on to lens “Grease,” “Stripes,” the second through fourth “Rocky” films, “Capricorn One,” “The Secret of NIMH,” “Damien: Omen II,” “Hot Shots,” “Child’s Play,” “Frailty,” “Sniper,” “Flipper,” “Biloxi Blues,” “An American Tail,” “Raid on Entebbe,” “Big Trouble,” “Ice Castles,” “Redline,” “The Sting II” and “Anaconda” along with “The Thorn Birds” mini-series amongst others.
He received the American Society of Cinematographers Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003. He is survived by five daughters and his wife, Iris.
Source: The Wrap
