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Born in Tahiti, Conrad L. Hall (right) -- son of Mutiny on the Bounty coauthor James Norman Hall -- studied movies at USC. He shot TV shows (the original Outer Limits) and ads, then graduated to features. Here he aims his viewfinder at career highs and lows.

1966 INCUBUS Outer Limits creator Leslie Stevens tapped Hall for this demonic-love-conquers-all story, written and acted entirely in Esperanto and starring a young William Shatner. ''The negative and prints got destroyed after it came out. Then two years ago, they found a French-subtitled print in an archive, so they had to put the English titles over those. It's a metaphysical witchcraft picture. Lots of mist and people with horns. We shot in Big Sur in black and white, very Ingmar Bergman. Why Esperanto, I don't know.''

1967 COOL HAND LUKE Hall's second film with Paul Newman, after 1966's Harper, reinvented the chain-gang flick for the Vietnam generation. Audiences buzzed about the egg-eating scene, where Luke downs 50 hard-boileds. ''Paul would pop the eggs in and chew and chew and, Cut! Spit them out, needless to say. We did all kinds of high jinks to bring a visual interest. Lots of quick cuts. We had the camera sort of rocking back and forth like a swing when Luke is doing knee bends. Otherwise it'd just be a bunch of people walking and talking.''

1967 IN COLD BLOOD* Despite stark lighting just this side of German expressionism, Hall gave a documentary feel to the story of two real-life killers played by Robert Blake and Scott Wilson. ''The studio wanted it shot in color, but [director] Richard Brooks saw it as black and white. And then that was the first year the Academy Awards didn't have a separate category for black-and-white cinematography, so we were up against color work.'' (The Oscar went to Burnett Guffey for the shockingly red-blooded Bonnie and Clyde.)

1969 BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID* Hall got his Oscar for the hazy, desaturated, mythic look he brought to screenwriter William Goldman's revisionist Western, which starred Robert Redford and Paul Newman. Hall and third-billed Katharine Ross were lovers, and when he let her operate a camera one day on a multi-camera setup, director George Roy Hill kicked her off the set, letting her back only for her scenes. ''Anything we could shoot through smoke or steam or branches, we did. I made the posse [pursuing Butch and Sundance]a sort of metaphorical presence by using extremely long zoom lenses and always shooting them from a distance. Sometimes five miles away, so even when you zoomed in, you barely saw them. They were a faceless technology that put bandits out of business.''

1975 THE DAY OF THE LOCUST* With director John Schlesinger, Hall gave an epic sweep to Waldo Salt's adaptation of Nathanael West's story about the underbelly of 1930s Hollywood. ''A really good film and not a popular one. That scene with Donald Sutherland pouncing on the [child] -- oh, my God, I hated watching that scene. But it was to show people are capable of the most horrid violence when frustration builds to the boiling point.''

1976 MARATHON MAN Again partnered with Schlesinger, Hall mapped out one of the all-time horrifying, white-knuckle movie scenes: Laurence Olivier's sadistic ex-Nazi drilling Dustin Hoffman's teeth sans anesthesia. ''We didn't invent that scene, you know. It was written [by William Goldman], and then beautifully executed by the actors. I kept it very stark, sort of one light over Dustin Hoffman, one behind him, creating a kind of adversarial look to Laurence. Like an interrogation chamber.''

1988 TEQUILA SUNRISE* Mel Gibson and Kurt Russell played old pals on opposite sides of the law, with Michelle Pfeiffer caught between them in impossibly gorgeous settings. ''It was a subject [writer-director] Robert Towne wanted romanticized -- what happens to friends who've drifted. You don't have to do much to make these actors look good. Michelle Pfeiffer is just the most beautiful woman. Big, wide, separate eyes that are so full of meaning.''

1993 SEARCHING FOR BOBBY FISCHER* Screenwriter Steven Zaillian made his writing-directing debut with this tale of a chess prodigy. ''I added tension by leaving the players' eyes so close to the top of the frame, it gave you a sense of unease that they might move out of the image any second. What else was there to look at? A bunch of out-of-focus chess pieces is not interesting. I came to the idea that chess could be like basketball -- a rhythm of fast break, then slam dunk.''

1994 LOVE AFFAIR A misbegotten remake of the Charles Boyer- Irene Dunne tearjerker with Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, directed by Glenn Gordon Caron. ''I wanted out of it after Robert Towne [who cowrote it]left. But Warren is one of the most persuasive persons I've ever known. He took me to a Mexican restaurant and plied me with guacamole and margaritas. I felt seduced. I figured, hey, Warren directed Reds, how bad could this be? I do love him, and we're friends now, but we had fights like you couldn't imagine. I've never gone so ballistic on a picture in my life. Warren would drag me through relighting him over and over again. But Kate Hepburn sent me a wonderful little note complimenting me on how she looked.''

1998 A CIVIL ACTION* Hall's second team-up with Zaillian starred John Travolta as a crusading lawyer and Robert Duvall as his corporate adversary. ''We shot this big, wonderful finale with Travolta serving Duvall papers for a new lawsuit out at a ballpark, which of course got cut from the movie. We'd had to blow-dry snow off the field to see grass. When Duvall came out, there was general, respectful applause. When John walked on, it was like bobby-soxers at a Sinatra concert. People were screaming, flashbulbs flashing. Just a wild melee, out of control. That is a big, big movie star.''

*Academy Award nominee for Best Cinematography

Posted Oct 08, 1999 | Published in issue #506 Oct 08, 1999 | Order Article Reprints