INTERVIEW: Rick Fichter
Artist and Cinematographer Rick Fichter on digging ditches, the magic of filmmaking, discovering the truth, and why you have to keep going forward.
By Michael Ferrence
July 19, 2018
MF: We met at Taylor Shellfish in Pioneer Square in Seattle a few weeks ago, and I thought you were extremely interesting and friendly and good-natured, and it seemed as though you had a truly great, compelling story to tell, and I wanted to know more. And I think others would like to as well.
Other than what I learned in that brief interaction, most of which centered around your upbringing and lifelong love of making art, I don’t know a whole lot about you. I couldn’t find all that much online outside of IMDb, but it appears you’ve had a long, successful, impressive career.
I have so many questions. I’m not even sure where we’d even start. I thought maybe we could just start at the beginning and you could talk a little bit about where you’re from.
RF: I was born on the East Coast and lived in and around New York City. My parents moved just across the George Washington Bridge into New Jersey before I was born, and I was born into a big family, and it’s not cool to say these days, but we were poor, and that’s where I came from.
I was in the middle of the family, in terms of age, and you kind of get lost, but it was cool. I just roamed around and I liked looking at people, and stuff like that, and somewhere along the line my mother must have noticed something and she encouraged me, and the artist in me. I guess I was the one who was interested in it. When I watched TV my favorite was John Gnagy drawing with charcoal, and that was from a very young age.
My father’s side is German and Eastern European. My mother’s side is Irish and Japanese. My Japanese grandfather was… Dirt poor. He was a painter. And my mother picked up some of it, and she saw that I had some skills in that area.
But I was into rebelling, and chasing girls, and I ended up in trouble. I quit high school. I ended up joining the Navy. That was actually just prior to Vietnam.
MF: How old are you now?
RF: I am 72. And I got really sick in the Navy and they put me in the hospital and I was in this ward and all these young guys were coming back from Laos and Cambodia and all the secret wars we had even before Vietnam, and having grown up on John Wayne, you think that you get shot in the shoulder and you get up and just keep going but all these guys that I was seeing come back, they were all pretty busted up and I’d never seen anything like that and it kind of worked me up.
MF: And how old were you at that time, in your 20s?
RF: I was 17.
MF: Oh my god! That’s so young.
RF: They discharged me on medical grounds. It was this infection that I got in my sinuses that created this pressure on the brain. They had some pretty primitive medical ways. They’d stick a spinal tap needle up your nose and smack it through with a little lead mallet. They told me they couldn’t resolve it and it was my choice whether I stayed or not. They were not going to be able to solve the problem.
So I ended up being discharged. I came home (to New Jersey). I went back and finished high school, which was a very difficult situation, but I pulled it off.
MF: Why did you go back? Was it your decision?
RF: It was always my decision. I was too rebellious. But I managed to get through.
MF: Was it a public school?
RF: I went to a Catholic grammar school, and that was part of my rebelling too, with organized religion.
Somewhere along the line I got it in my mind I wanted to be in the arts, I don’t know where that came from, so I started writing, in between working. Just knocking around.
My mom had a doctor’s appointment at one of the big places in the city, and she asked me to go along so I did, and after the appointment we were heading back on the subway, and I just followed her. I was just there to be any help that I could, and she took me too this place on West 57th, I didn’t know anything about it, and it was the Art Students League, a pretty famous school in New York.
We got inside and she said, “Do you want to take and look?” and I said, “Yes!”
I walked into the room and there were a bunch of artists, drawing and stuff, and there was this beautiful naked model, and my face turned red, I had never seen that before so I watched it for a while. Then my mother came in and she was Irish and Japanese so her faced turned red, and she said, “What do you think? Would you like to go here?” and I said, “Sure. But where does the money come from?” She worked it out so I could go there for a couple months. And I had 2 months of drawing people and it was wonderful, and I was just in love with the whole thing.
MF: Just to go back a little. You said you were knocking around at different jobs and you started writing. What were you writing?
RF: Stories. Made up stories.
MF: Fiction.
RF: I would do it after work. I worked for my dad. He had a small construction company. Or I worked at a gas station.
So she, my mom, had saved up the money to put me in there, and that was pretty amazing. I was never close to my parents being such a rebellious kid, and I was really taken aback by that.
MF: Why were you so rebellious?
RF: Part of it was the times. I think there were disappointments in growing up. You grow up poor. During that time frame, a lot of wealthier people were moving out of the city and into New Jersey. So you grew up, and kids had a lot. I wasn’t jealous of them but I wanted stuff like that, and I was kind of angry. I always seemed to be working and everyone else seemed to be out enjoying themselves. I was really embarrassed about not having any money and having to work. You start seeing things. You start seeing, at the time, you saw that black people lived in these little enclaves, and they were very poor. When I worked for my dad, one of these guys was African American, and he was a really nice guy, and I realized that he didn’t have shit. And he worked his ass off, and he was getting older. I worked with him because I was one of the guys who, I didn’t take to construction very well, I didn’t understand it, so I was one of the guys who worked with Nick, because I didn’t know enough to hang sheet rock, or even paint decently, so I did ditch digging, and stuff like that.
MF: Did you go to college?
RF: Yeah. It’s kind of a story. I got into a car wreck, and it was pretty bad, and it took me a little while to get over that, and it was one of those wrecks where it was caused by drinking, and it was a bad situation, and it had to go to court, and I came away with some damage, and some money was thrown at me, and there I was, still digging ditches. I was 20 or maybe 21 by that time.
My older brother was going to go down to school in Florida. I had a very bad dream, and woke up the next day and knew that I had to go to school too. He was working on an assembly line, and he knew he was going nowhere, and that’s why he decided to go, and I decided to tag along with him, thinking… I decided I wasn’t going to get any place with art because I wasn’t fast enough or good enough, and writing I just didn’t seem to have it either, so I decided I was going to go to this school with my brother, for film making. I had written some scripts for a friend at the School of Visual Arts on 23rd Street. And while he was making the films that I had written I looked through the camera and I go, “This is magic.” So with the little bit of money that I got out of the lawsuit I was able to, instead of investing it in buying a fast car, I decided I was going to go to school with my brother in Florida. He was 3 years older than me. He went for construction technology. I thought I was going for filmmaking. I get down there and the courses they said they had, they really didn’t have.
MF: What?! What school?
RF: It was Miami-Dade College. And I’m trying to sign up for these classes, and they really didn’t have them. They said, “We don’t really have them.” I said, “I came down here. I’m investing this money. And then you tell me you don’t have the classes.” They didn’t know what to do either. I said, “What am I going to do?” And they said, “Why don’t you choose something close to it?”
I said, “Like what?”
They said, “How about theatre?”
And at that point I had never thought about theatre but the thing was, I thought, I can’t turn around and go back. I said, “OK. I’ll take theatre.”
I started taking the classes, doing designs for sets, and trying a little acting, and there was this teacher who showed up, a very young guy from the city, New York City, and he kind of fired me up on acting, he got me interested, and I kind of threw myself into it.
I went to the instructor, the head of the theatre department. I said, “It seems to be I deserve better than a C or a B, I did really good work.”
They said, “You did. You did some of the best work. But you’re not committed to it.”
I said, “That’s because I came down here to study film and I’m studying theatre!”
I was pissed off.
MF: Did you feel like you were putting in the effort?
RF: Oh yeah. And they even admitted it. So I just figured, oh shit, I’ll just get through this next semester, I’ll go back to New York, and figure out what I’m going to do. So this young teacher came in and fired me up, and I got into it, and suddenly everyone was taking notice of my acting, and they said, the administration of the theatre department, the head, came to me towards the end of the year, and said, “What are your plans?”
I said, “I don’t know. I don’t have the money to come back here. I feel like I’ve kind of blown the money on a year that I feel was wasted.”
He said, “Are you interested in it?”
I said, “Yeah, I’m enjoying what I’m doing, but I don’t have the money.” So that’s that.
So I left, and this fellow who was my instructor, he was going to direct a play, off Broadway, and he asked me would I want to do it. I said, “Sure.” It’s either that or dig more ditches.
So I went back and worked with him, I worked off Broadway on a couple plays. A little bit of acting. Set designing. Building. What we’d call production management.
MF: And you were just learning as you went, and you were enjoying that?
RF: Yeah. Well, you know, I was doing it. And I seemed to know what I was doing. So what happened then was, the teacher from the school contacted me and said, “We’d like you to come back. We’ve got you an educational opportunity grant.” And another grant. So I realized I could go another year of school in theatre so I went back and he said, this teacher, Richard Wright was his name, “What do you want to do this year?” I had written some plays and he said, “Let me read them.” And he read them and he said, “Maybe what you should do is direct these plays and present them.
So anyway, this is getting long winded.
MF: It’s OK. This is great. I like it. So, did you go back and graduate from that school?
RF: They had me do these plays. They were very short plays. They went over very well.
MF: What were they about?
RF: One was an anti-war thing. Another one was about Nick, the African American man that I worked with.
MF: Oh right! Yeah.
RF: Another one was about a love relationship.
MF: And it was all presented? They actually all went on stage?
RF: Yeah. This Mr. Wright and I, we ended up working with others, and we ended up the first student experimental theatre in a junior college and this is where we presented them, and I became the artistic director and would oversee the other students.
MF: Is this still in Florida or back in New York?
RF: No, this is all in Florida. And then I graduated. They gave me this creative artist of the year thing and all this other stuff and I headed back north, you know, without any way of making a living. So I went back to digging ditches. I would take food to my friends who were starving actors and stuff, and they were barricaded in the Hotel Prince Edward down in the Village, but you know, I was just working, and I was talking to a friend, and I told him about the situation, and he said, “You should apply to other schools, maybe, see what happens.” So he suggested I apply to these schools and I didn’t know what I was doing so I applied to NYU, USC, and UCLA. I didn’t know how I would pay for it. I thought it would be interesting to see if I could get in and maybe there was some way in the next year or two I could… But I quickly found out that NYU was SO expensive, I didn’t stand a chance.
But I was working, in between, digging ditches, and then my friend asked me to be a photographer at this job he had.
MF: Were these childhood friends, or guys you met working or what?
RF: Yeah, childhood friends. Actually the guy I had written scripts for when he was at the School of Visual Arts, He had gotten a job working at the media department of the Seafarers International Union down in Maryland, and he said, “I need help, can you come down?” And I said, “Sure.” I went down and I had done some photography at the junior college, and I liked it so I became a photographer at this union school covering all these events and stuff. Then, somehow, he had gotten a chance to teach this art class at St. Mary’s College, in film. And Thankfully, he wasn’t… He’s a great guitarist. And to this day he is a jazz musician in the city, but he wasn’t really very good at film, and I had more interest and understood a bit more about it then he did so we, he decided, we would teach it together, and I ended up kind of teaching the class of these art students who wanted to learn something about film making. So I ended up teaching it and he went back to the city to pursue his musical career so I ended up having to finish out teaching so I finished out teaching, and I went back to the city to live, to dig ditches again, until I could figure out what I was going to do, and I got into a construction accident and damaged my knee, and at that time I received an acceptance from USC, and a turn down from UCLA because I was an out of state student and they weren’t accepting anymore. USC accepted me and said I could apply for a scholarship. I didn’t think I could pull it off so I was just continuing to dig ditches.
My older brother, who I’d gone to Florida with, told my parents that I’d been accepted by this pretty prestigious school for filmmaking. At the time, my older brothers were away, and finances were picking up, my father’s business was doing better, and he said, “I heard that you were accepted.” And I said, “Yeah. I was accepted.” He said, “Why didn’t you tell me?” And I said, “Why should I tell you? I’m not going any place.” And he said, “Maybe I can scratch up enough money to loan you some.” So he loaned me enough money, thankfully, just to get through a year at USC. So, I packed a bag, went out there, got to USC, and then found out that even though I was accepted, and was accepted for cinema, that didn’t mean I could take classes. I had to go through some rigmarole in order to get into the classes.
MF It’s always something.
RF: Yeah! And so, I appealed the decision, and took these little films in to the staff of the film department, and I explained my background. I had gotten really good grades in theatre. I had gotten the awards there. And I taught this little class at St. Mary’s, and I showed them these little films that I was making on my own, and one of the teachers was really taken by the films because it was kind of a experimental style film, and she stood up for me in this group of professors, and they accepted me in the department and allowed me to take the beginning classes.
I made these films and everybody was impressed by them, in the first courses, and before I knew it I had a scholarship.
MF: What I like about this story, so much, is this theme of relentlessness and determination and grit. At no point in your life did it seem like you knew exactly what to do. You just did it, something, anything, and you learned from it, and pursued the next best thing.
RF: Yeah. The fact is. I had to go forward. Going back, I mean I didn’t really have a choice. I would literally have gone back to digging ditches. Or pumping gas in the gas station that I used to work in. And I knew this was a dead end and it would be hard to put together a happy life digging those ditches. I looked at Nick and here was this guy, and the white guys I worked with too, the older you got in construction, your body just got so beaten up that there was no place to go after a while. And I looked at that and I realized, I gotta be able to make a living, and I had no way to go but forward. I had to go forward. I had to figure out some way to make a living.
I just was scared most of the time that I didn’t know how the hell I was going to get a steady job. So here I am, at USC, and I’m on scholarship, and eventually I graduated. But I came out of there, and I had built up some debt, and I came out with debt, even though the scholarship really helped, and I didn’t know anybody in the film industry. I was just this schmuck from New York City area. I had no contacts, very few friends. We started out with 89 kids in my class, my first class in film at USC. By the time I got out of there, there were 13 of us left. I saw some very talented people, far more talented than me, who didn’t survive.
We came out with 13 people left. Over the years, probably another 5 or 7 years later, there were less than 7 of us left.
MF: Why? What was it about the 7 of you that was different?
RF: The attrition rate in film. You know, there are a lot of intelligent kids that showed up and normally you’d expect, a lot of kids were graduates, they’d already gotten a degree in architecture or teaching or something, but there wasn’t a natural skill there. In other businesses, you can kind of teach somebody, and they can learn it, rote, but I think in the arts, rote just doesn’t make it, therefore the attrition rate of a lot of very intelligent people, if you don’t have a natural skill for it, you fall out. The only way you continue is by connections, and that’s why Hollywood is so much a function of connections.
MF: So if you didn’t know anybody, how did you get in, or begin to make connections? How did you make that your career?
RF: It was fear motivated. I did the lowest jobs, any jobs I could. I started out making little set pieces and props for guys who were making educational films, in that field. That’s how you did it. You started at the lowest rung and somebody needed a grunt to do some props or somebody needed a grunt to carry equipment on one of their shoots.
MF: Did you have higher aspirations or a dream to get into big movies and do all this or were you thinking you just had to do anything you could to get work and make money?
RF: You gotta understand that I originally wanted to make experimental films, not Hollywood films.
MF: Like David Lynch style?
RF: Well even smaller and more experimental. I worked with a bunch of people in New York City in experimental films. I just got mixed up with them when I was at the Art Students League, you know just making friends. And that’s what I wanted to do. I had no intentions of getting involved in feature films or anything. That was just beyond. I just wanted to learn and piece together some films, maybe little portraits of people, but it was certainly not any of this big stuff. When I got out there were only certain areas that I was skilled for. I had a degree in film production, but the only employers were the feature films or the educational or the documentaries or the educational. Some of the people I met along the way were doing educational films. Then, somewhere along the line, you get recommended. Somebody was doing a documentary, and you just kept working at that. At the same time, I was starving because there was so little work for someone like me, and I had so few connections.
MF: Did you ever consider quitting?
RF: Yes. I had considered quitting. I had spent a weekend; I drove up to San Francisco because I was so bummed out by the work situation. I thought that, you know what, I’m going to quit film, move up to San Francisco, even if I have to pump gas, or dig ditches. This is just not working. People are not hiring me. I don’t know them, and it seemed to be what it was all about.
I was starving. I. Was. Starving. And I was thinking, here I am, 30 years old, and I’m starving. The chance of getting married, you know, by that time, it seemed hopeless so I decided that when I turned a certain age, I was going to pack my little Volkswagen up and move to San Francisco, and screw this whole thing.
I got this call one day, and it was from this guy I had worked with. He was a very difficult person to work with, but I seemed to be the only person who could get along with him, and he called me and said, “What are you doing?” And I said, “Well, Jim, I’m trying to do the same thing. I’m trying to get work. He said, “Would you be interested in coming up to San Francisco for 3 months to work?” And I said, “In a heartbeat.”
Then he explained what it was. He had gone through MIT. He was a scientist, very, very knowledgeable. He was intent in making it in film in some way. Oddly, somehow he got hired at Lucasfilm doing some really difficult work that nobody really wanted to do.
MF: How did you know him, again?
RF: I starved in Los Angeles, after getting through USC, for 5 years. And during those 5 years I had met him. He had gone to SC, and along the way he had given me a little bit of work, and we developed something of a relationship. I would help him. He would help me. He just disappeared for a while, and I thought, that’s another employer I won’t be able to get any work from. And he had pursued this Lucasfilm thing. He thought the technology was wonderful. And at the time this was very leading edge technology that they were using, the motion control and all that, and it was even before computers, per se, were put in use. He had that technological bent that intrigued these people at Lucasfilm, so he got the job, and he needed somebody to help him, and since I was the one guy who seemed to get along with him, he called me up. So, I got pulled up to Lucasfilm, and it was going to be for 3 months, and I guess I, they valued my work; later on he left, and I stayed with Lucasfilm.
MF: What was your role there, what was your very first job?
RF: I became a first assistant cameraman. Over the 3 years that I was there, I became a ‘hot rodder’; a hot rod cameraman was where I eventually ended up. I was considered one of the best cameramen.
MF: They call it a hot rodder? What does that mean?
RF: It was just, you know, it was truly, they threw really some of the most difficult shots at me, and I would figure them out and do them. And I was liking it, and they would send me out on location, and that was something I really enjoyed. The whole thing with Lucasfilm is a long story, but eventually I worked on Empire Strikes Back, and then they sent me overseas to work on Dragon Slayer, and I ended up, basically, being an onsite supervisor because there is no adult supervision there. I didn’t know what I was doing, so I had to call California all the time and discuss this. Somehow we lived through it. Anyway, I went on working with them, they found that I was valuable to them, I became, you know, this was before computers, we had electronic banks that controlled one switch at a time to record the information electronically, and gradually they developed early types of computers for motion control at Lucasfilm.
MF: As that technology was being developed were you then instantly getting to use it and learn it?
RF: Oh yeah. I was right on the leading edge. And, you know, I got, there’s a rebellious side to me, and I don’t like being talked down to, basically. And they were sending me out on location, for a reason, because I knew how to get the work done. I knew how to work with crews. A lot of the people in special effects were kind of nerdy, they didn’t know how to get along with people. I got all the jobs that I wanted, and I was really enjoying myself, but I was getting tired of special effects. I just wanted to do these little experimental films. Here I was making, I was, you know, the best paid guy in my position at Lucasfilm, and that was, you know, poor kid finally getting paid a lot of money. It was very seductive.
MF: Especially since you were about to quit, and leave, and then you get this one opportunity, something that in some ways was completely out of your control…
RF: I had expected just to be there for 3 months, so I was going to do this, they were gonna move me up there, I was going to get a little apartment in San Francisco, and that was going to be my transition to San Francisco, and I’d apply for a job as a cable car driver, or whatever, that’s what I expected it to be. But the job just kept getting better and better, the money better and better. I was considered really good at what I was doing, but I had this tragic flaw where, when you pushed me too far, I’d lose my temper, and I had that old Navy cursing and swearing attitude.
And here I was working with George. They put me on this night shift, so I was unsupervised. George would give me storyboards, and I would work from them. I would figure it out. Now, we would talk, we would go over the stuff, and I was given the most difficult sequence of Return of the Jedi, and so I started on it, and there was nobody, you know, I guess it was in the stars, I wasn’t that happy working at night, and I wasn’t that happy staring at the blue screen, and I thought that this was going to be the rest of my life, but the money was good, and I was involved with this woman, and you know, this that and the other thing…
MF: What was the scene?
RF: It was a Death Star surface sequence, and then into the tunnel in the Death Star, and basically, this involves difficulties with equipment that was designed, that George put a bunch of money into, that didn’t work very well. So here I was with this very difficult sequence working with equipment that was the latest but was still troublesome.
I gotta tell you the story about how I left Lucasfilm. Here I am working on this stuff and my supervisor comes to me and says, “This is how you gotta do it.” I said, “Richard, I’ve already tried this. It’s not going to work. Whatever the plan was, it’s not going to work.” And I tried to show him, and he realized that it wasn’t going to work. And he said, “Well, what are we gonna do?” And I said, “I don’t know. I’ve gotta do this freehand. I’ve gotta design these shots on the fly. Design how I’m going to solve the problem of delivering to George the shot that he wanted. So, I’m working on the shot, and I get it, basically it’s on film. It’s very confusing. I delivered the film to the editor to show George during the day, and I thought that I got the shot the first night. It was a very difficult shot, but I got lucky. So I get it done, and the next day I come in, and they say, “George wants to talk to you. He’s waited around until you came in.” So I go into the editing room and I say, “George, what do you think? It looks pretty good, huh?” And he said, “Uh, it’s not good. It’s not what I wanted.” And I’m thinking, OK, so what do you want? He said he looked at the film. So OK, he looked at the film, it’s no good, I am totally lost. I said, “What is it you want to do?” He explained it to me, and I said, “OK. I’ll try it.”
Of course all the bigwigs are standing around, cause they all kind of want to be around George, and this is a troublesome sequence, and I’m a hot rodder, one of the hot rodders, there was another guy, but he was moving onto bigger and better things. I go back to it that night and I produce another thing that I think, OK this should work. It’s not what I thought should work but this appears to be what George wants so I delivered that. The next day it’s still not acceptable so this goes on for 2 full days, and I am really questioning my skills now. I thought I was one of the best, and I was lost. I could not figure out what he wanted, so finally, and I’m just on these nights, so I’m a bit on edge, I wasn’t adjusting to the work-through-the-night thing. I come in and George wants to talk to me again. So we go into the editing room, and we’re talking, and I said, “George, everything you’re telling me, I thought I got that the first night.” And he said, “I didn’t see it. I hadn’t seen it all week.” I said, “Let me pull out that first one because that’s what I felt comfortable about. Let me see what you don’t like. So I pull out the thing. Normally the editor would want to set it up, and I said, “Look. I’ll do it.” George and I, and there were just a couple people around because they knew it was a difficult situation so everybody started to get out of the room. They saw that George was unhappy. I was unhappy because something wasn’t working. They were afraid because they weren’t able to get George what he wanted so they wanted to disappear. It ended up George, myself, and 2 other bigwigs or something. So I set the movie up, and I play it, and he says, “That’s it.” And I said, “George, I had this the first night. I changed the equipment configuration. I changed everything. I had this the first night!” And he said, “This is the first time I’ve seen it.”
I turned around and I asked the editor, I said, “Didn’t you show him this?” And he said, “Yeah, I showed him this.” And so we’re going back and forth, and suddenly I realized the editor hadn’t presented this to him the way I had instructed them to that first night and I blew up. My language was, it would have curled your ear. I was fucking angry after a week of struggling, and the pressure, and so I said, “George, I don’t know if I can get back to this.” And he said, “Well, this is the shot I want.” I said, “OK. I’ll do my best.”
My supervisor comes in and I said, “Richard, I don’t know if I can get your equipment back into its original configuration. He said, “Well, you gotta do it.” I said, “OK.”
So I go back and work on it, and that was a Friday night, and I felt confident that I got it, and I shot it. I shot all the layouts, I shot the color passes and stuff, and I went home for the weekend, and I was exhausted. Totally exhausted. So there I am, I had just bought this little house in Bodega Bay where Hitchcock did The Birds, and I’m just there, and the production manager, or producer who was running ILM at the time, who was actually a guy I had recommended at one point and got the job there, we were friends from years ago. He had worked at Encyclopedia Britannica. I had done some camera work for him. He eventually got the job, and was then the production manager of the place, and I was riding my motorcycle around, it was Sunday, and he called later and said, “I’m gonna drop by, is that OK?” And I said, “Sure.” So he comes by and he tells me, he said, “Lucasfilm is gonna let you go.” I said, “What?!” He said, “Yeah, you shouldn’t have blown up like that in front of George.” All this sort of stuff. He said, “They’ve decided to let you go.” And he said, “I went to bat for you. I spoke to George, and George said he didn’t get involved in things like that.” He didn’t want to get involved in personnel things. I couldn’t believe it. I was producing the stuff that nobody could. So I was totally shocked.
MF: And you actually had it from the very beginning. You nailed it.
RF: Yeah. And I actually finished it that Friday night, and George was really concerned about it. That’s why they put me on this sequence because I was the only one that could get it!
So, anyway, what happened, I said, “OK.” I didn’t know what I was gonna do. He said, “We’re gonna give you 2 weeks severance.” I said, “Fine.” He said, “But you have to work it.” And I said, “You are going to require me to come into work for 2 weeks of humiliation after being fired?” He said, “Yeah.” And I thought, OK. Well, I need the 2 weeks of pay, I just bought this goddamn car, and I had pretty much, with the house and the car, kind of emptied my bank account out, thinking I was gonna go on for another year before quitting. So I showed up at work, and I walked into see my supervisor, and he’s just standing there, and I said, “So Richard, what now?” He said, “You can’t lose your temper like that, Rick.” And I’d been told that before in other situations and I said, “Ok. You’re right. I know. But, I had that shot the first night! And I worked 5 additional days, and still got the shot.”
So anyway…
Everybody couldn’t believe it. But, you know, it’s like anytime when you get fired from a job, and it was one of the first times I’d ever gotten fired, but nobody wants to talk to you because they’re afraid that they’ll somehow get fired, or something. So there were a few guys, one of the other guys that I respected as a cameraman, and he said, “I just can’t believe it. I cannot believe that they let you go.”
I said, “Well, that’s that.”
So anyway, for 2 weeks, I was like a bump on the log doing bits and pieces, etcetera, and they moved another cameraman over to do the sequence. Well, eventually, George, I found out and saw in the film, in retrospect, that he had to cut the sequence.
MF: What?!
RF: He cut the sequence out of the movie. Nobody could do the sequence.
MF: Unbelievable.
RF: It didn’t make me feel better because I really wanted to do that sequence. It was a great vision. George had designed a great sequence, and I was really stoked about doing it. But, that’s what happens…
MF: Rick, I totally appreciate it, we’ve been talking quite some time, and I don’t want to keep you much longer, although I could probably listen to your story for 20 more hours, but I have a few more questions.
RF: Yeah.
MF: Did you ever get to do the experimental film that you’d always wanted to do?
RF: I did one after I retired. It took me 10 to 12 years to do it. It’s a modified experimental film, in the sense that my sense of design changed over the years.
MF: What’s the name? Is it available?
RF: It’s called Les Perdue. It’s on YouTube. You can get there through my website.
MF: Thank you so much for sharing this incredibly inspiring story. Any advice to those of us who are working hard trying to make it doing what we love?
RF: You are who you are. You don’t have a choice, except to keep going. There’s no way around it. You have to do it. There’s no choice. You can’t let other people design your life. You have to do what you feel inside, what you believe in. And it’s one thing to read that or hear it from say, somebody like me, but it’s another thing when you finally experience the truth of that.
Rick Fichter is a retired cameraman, cinematographer, and writer with credits on movies such as: Star Wars- Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, Poltergeist, The Right Stuff, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Top Gun, RoboCop, Alien, Sleepless in Seattle, Starship Troopers, Terminator Salvation, and Les Perdue. He resides in Seattle, Washington.
