No Formula
“[John Ford was] the director I liked working with better than anybody in the industry. You’d talk, I think you might say, 50 words to him in a day; you had a communication with him so great you could sense what he wanted. He knew nothing of lighting; he never once looked in the camera when we worked together. You see, the man had bad eyes, as long as I knew him, but he was a man whose veins ran with the business. He had a tremendous memory; he could come up with an idea from some picture he had made 30 years before, and suggest you did that.
“I’ve had people offer me money to give them the formula that Jack Ford used to direct. But he had no formula. . . .”
— Arthur C. Miller, who started as a cinematographer in 1910, interviewed for Hollywood Cameramen (1970)
Quotes