The Art of Cinematography: Farrah Fawcett and the Halo Effect

The Cannonball Run is a zany comedy about a group of auto racers competing in a cross country trek from Connecticut to Los Angeles. In addition to Burt Reynolds (who stars as J.J. McClure), Roger Moore, Farrah Fawcett and Dom DeLuise, it features an all-star cast of wacky characters played by the likes of Adrienne Barbeau, Bert Convy, Jamie Farr, Jackie Chan, Mel Tillis, Terry Bradshaw and others. The film is directed by former stuntman Hal Needham, who was known for testosterone-fueled action-comedies like Smokey and the Bandit and was by no means a master of film photography. Nevertheless, as unlikely as it seems and in spite of the genre and subject matter, in Cannonball Run, Needham and cinematographer Michael C. Butler teamed to shoot a handful of gorgeously lit rom/com-like scenes that made the already stunning Farrah Fawcett look positively ethereal. 

One of the methods employed was halo lighting, which uses bright, focused backlighting. This technique makes the subject stand out from the background and creates a glowing, halo effect around it. In Cannonball Run, early scenes introducing Farrah's character Pamela Glover use halo lighting to help establish her as the exquisite, almost otherworldly object of J.J.'s desire. Notice how the backlighting helps carve Pamela from the background and draws you in -- much like J.J. is drawn in when he first spots her in a crowded bar.

Later in the film, J.J. and Pamela share a quiet moment in the back of an ambulance and the two become closer. Needham and Butler employ the same sort of halo lighting to create a romantic glow around Farrah. The technique is especially effective with Farrah because it further accentuates one of her best features -- that golden mane of hair for which she's well known.

The soft, warm light creates a form of halation and gives her character an almost angelic quality. A similar result can be seen in the below shot from 1984's The Natural, where halo lighting is used to both set Glenn Close's character apart in the crowded stands of a baseball stadium and also symbolize the sense of goodness and purity her character possesses.

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Happy New Year (from Belinda Carlisle!)

From the Pop Culture Fiend Archives, here are a couple of rare photos from a 1980's shoot with Belinda Carlisle. Happy 1989 everyone!

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Great Album Covers: Breakfast in America, Big Lizard in My Backyard and She's So Unusual

The cover for Supertramp's 1979 smash Breakfast in America is nothing short of a masterpiece of composition. It features the view from an airplane window of a wonderfully inventive interpretation of New York City. In the foreground, a smiling waitress poses like the Statue of Liberty. In her right hand she holds a tray with a glass of orange juice substituting for a torch. In her other hand, instead of a tablet, is a menu featuring the album's title. Behind her is a model cityscape of Manhattan -- an assortment of high rise buildings and skyscrapers represented perfectly by plain but cleverly arranged salt and pepper shakers, condiment bottles, coffee cups, egg cartons and other breakfast-related items. A year following its release, this album deservingly won a Grammy Award for Best Recording Package.

Cover art doesn't get much more on the nose than what you see on this, the Dead Milkmen's first album. But the cartoonish illustration (designed by the band's drummer) is also whimsical and consistent with the band's style of injecting humor into its hardcore punk.

Photographed by the legendary Annie Leibovitz, the cover of Cyndi Lauper's 1983 debut LP She's So Unusual helped establish her zany persona. The shot captures Lauper in the middle of some jerky, uninhibited barefoot dancing in front of a wax museum in Coney Island, a Brooklyn, NY neighborhood close to where Lauper grew up. The photo's kinetic energy and the cover's bright splashy colors convey the playful, care-free spirit of both the artist and American zeitgeist in the early 1980's. Interestingly, decades after the album's release, several additional photos from this cover shoot surfaced (see below.)

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How Today's Teenagers Are Embracing Nirvana and Other 90's Pop Culture

There are no less than three high schools within four miles of where I live. As a result, the neighborhoods I travel are always crawling with teenagers. In the last several months I've noticed a very curious fashion trend among this set, in that they're often sporting hoodies, sweatshirts and t-shirts featuring 90's bands. Hardly a day goes by in fact when I don't see a pimply-faced sophomore in Nirvana gear. I've also seen Metallica quite a bit, Snoop Dogg, Death Row Records, Foo Fighters and Slipknot. Now I need to stress that this is more than anecdotal (I'm not a big fan of any of these acts so I have no subconscious tendency to notice anyone repping them.) This is something that's both very real and being perpetuated with intention. Apparel makers are cranking out 90's-related clothing and retailers are aggressively promoting it in the teen market. 

Just the other day I saw a large poster in Tilly's window featuring a kid wearing a Nirvana shirt. It made me wonder -- why are merchandisers reaching back to pop culture from thirty years ago to appeal to today's teens? Are they just giving these kids what they've newly discovered and are now embracing? 

Beginning points for cultural trends are often difficult to pinpoint but at the same time, retro style is nothing new. Fashions, music and pop culture figures are often resurrected as they experience periods of nostalgia, usually about twenty years after they first emerged. The 1970's looked back at the 50's with Sha Na Na, American Graffiti, Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley and Grease. The 80's saw comebacks for big hair, stirrup pants, miniskirts, paisley ties and penny loafers -- all popular in the 1960's. The 90's saw revisits to the 70's in The Brady Bunch films, That 70's Show, and the re-release of the original Star Wars trilogy. But currently, for unknown reasons, it seems the first decade of the 2000's is being overlooked in favor of what was popular in the 1990's. 

I ventured into the aforementioned Tilly's to see if I could discover more and realized that my observations were one hundred percent accurate. The store was loaded with apparel celebrating 90's pop culture, including Mike Tyson, the Chicago Bulls (who won six NBA titles in that decade) and Ice Cube. During a subsequent perusal of Tilly's website I found even more 90's apparel -- Friends, The Simpson, Aaliyah, Tupac, and tons and tons of... you guessed it... Nirvana. What is it about that particular band that elevates them so much among today's youth?... Is it their music?... Almost certainly not. This 90's craze that's taking place wasn't triggered by teens going through their parents CD collection and discovering grunge classics like "All Apologies" and "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Could it be the imagery and typography?... After all, the "Nirvana" lettering is pretty cool and the album covers for Nevermind and In Utero, as well as the "zonked out smiley face" logo are all pretty iconic. Yes, the aesthetics of graphic designs for the band are certainly a factor -- but the main reason Nirvana apparel is so ubiquitous today is largely due to the 90's nostalgia I've described and the fact that, while grunge didn't age well or sustain its popularity in subsequent decades, Nirvana is almost unquestionably the seminal band of that era. The same way the Sex Pistols and The Clash still carry the mantle and are revered in punk rock (the most significant rock sub-genre of the 70's) that's the esteem that Nirvana is held in when it comes to grunge (the most significant rock sub-genre of the 90's.) 

And so it was that I came to realize that the reason I'm seeing so many Nirvana shirts is less about the band and their music and more about the position they hold in connection with 90's. When you think about it, it could just as easily have been Pearl Jam except Curt Kobain's premature death by suicide has led to a certain romanticization of the artist's life, thereby creating greater recognition and appreciation for his work. 

In any case, if there's one thing I can't abide it's posers. If they truly like Nirvana's music that's one thing, but these teenagers running around in the band's tees just because all the other kids at the mall are are just plain annoying. And hey, as long as we're paying tribute to 90's alt-rock, I say we get retailers cranking out apparel featuring Smashing Pumpkins, Sonic Youth, Blind Melon, 4 Non Blondes, the Pixies, Liz Phair and of course Alanis Morissette.

Matthew Perry was Beloved by All -- but his Untimely Death Hits Gen X-ers the Hardest

Matthew Perry's recent, sudden death sparked an outpouring of grief and fond remembrances within the Hollywood community. It also brought a great deal of sadness to fans of the actor and just about anyone who's ever watched and loved him on television. Perry's talent extended far beyond a single TV show (I first noticed him in a guest shot he did on Just the Ten of Us in 1989 and also thoroughly enjoyed him opposite Salma Hayek in 1997's Fools Rush In.) Still, the actor will always be most remembered most as hilarious smart-aleck Chandler Bing on Friends. And therein lies the reason why Perry's death is especially painful for those of us in Generation X. It's because Friends is undeniably a Gen X show. 

In Friends first season (1994) we learn that Monica (and her high school classmate Rachel) are twenty-six years old. The rest of the gang is also right around this same age, with Ross (and possibly Phoebe) only slightly older. So when you do the math, Monica was born in 1968, placing her and the rest of the Friends squarely in Generation X. Numerous storylines and references throughout the series back this up. From Ross's fixation on Princess Leia in Return of the Jedi, to Chandler's Flock of Seagulls haircut and admission of rushing the stage at a Wham concert, clearly these characters grew up in the 80's and thus are unquestionably part of Generation X. That clarified, it's no wonder that Perry's death hits us the hardest. We've lost one of our own. 

My high school class recently had a well-attended reunion and though I wasn't able to make it, I took time to pour over the gallery of photos that were posted online in the days after. While clicking through, I smiled and laughed seeing faces from my past for the first time in literally decades. The funny thing was I wasn't even friends with most of these people. I made all of my lifelong friendships during college and to this day remain in touch with only a single high school pal. Nevertheless it warmed my heart to see people I spent four of my most formative years with and know, despite the abundance of receding hairlines and expanding waistlines, they were alive and doing well. Somehow, we all tend to have very strong sentiments towards our peers and those with whom we've shared a common, significant experience. But the flipside of that feel-good sentiment is the gut-punch and sense of loss we suffer when we learn that one of our comrades is now gone.

That's what many of us are feeling with Matthew Perry's death. Friends was the ongoing story of six Gen X-ers trying to make it in the world as they laughed with, leaned on and loved each other. As we did with the abundance of teen movies in the 1980's (e.g., The Breakfast Club, Fast Times, Risky Business) Gen X-ers saw authentic versions of themselves and their lives in the Friends characters -- whether it was Ross (smart and sensitive and carrying unrequited love) or Phoebe (so unapologetically authentic in her flakiness) or Chandler, with his rapier wit and brandishing sarcasm hiding underlying insecurities.

Many will say that Friends is a show that belongs to far more that just a single generation and that it appeals to Millennials and Zoomers as much as any other age group. This is certainly true. Enough time has gone by now that we can safely say that Friends, and many of it's themes, storylines and characters are classic. Nevertheless, the show provided a different experience for us Gen X-ers who tuned in during its original run. We were watching ourselves -- young adults in their mid-20's, living post-college life in the 90's, going through the same things we were at that same moment in time. For example, when Friends debuted, many Gen-X women (my girlfriend included) had just moved out of their parents' house, started their first real job and were realizing independence for the very first time -- just like Rachel in the pilot episode. Like Joey, many of us were pursuing a career in acting or the arts and working odd jobs to pay rent while we pursued our dream. And while young people watching the show for the first time even today can definitely relate to universal themes like this, at the time it originally aired Friends meant the most to Gen-Xers who got to come home, click on the TV and see Ross, Rachel, Monica, Phoebe, Joey and Chandler living their same lives -- or perhaps the lives we wished we had. These were our peers... our contemporaries... our cohorts. And losing one of those is often the hardest blow to take... 

R.I.P. Matthew.