The Way I See It: Lance Acord

American cinematographer and director Lance Acord, 46, is co-founder of Park Pictures, which recently opened a branch in London. Acord began his career as an assistant to photographer and filmmaker Bruce Weber before breaking out on his own. His work includes award-winning spots for Nike (Before) and adidas (Impossible is Nothing: Laila Ali and The Long Run), as well as Volkswagen’s recent Super Bowl hit, The Force. His feature film credits as DP include Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are. Acord talks to Diana Goodman

How would I describe myself? I am 5’11” tall, 165 lbs., brown hair, blue eyes, still somewhat fit, a little stiff in the knees.

When I look in the mirror I see the hair at the top right and left of my forehead locked in a dead heat towards the back of my head.

I was born in Fresno, California, a small city in the middle of the San Joaquin Valley. My mom and dad were both born there as well, and grew up on farms just east of Fresno. They were high-school sweethearts and I was born the same year they graduated high school. My mom stayed home and took care of me while my dad went to work painting signs for the small businesses in town, bagging groceries, and taking art classes at the community college. When I was around two, we moved to LA, where my dad attended the Art Center College of Design. The school was then located in Hancock Park, about two blocks from where I live now.It was the late 60s and I remember we always shared the places we lived with my dad’s friends from school. 

I always remember feeling loved and cared for, but my parents were basically still kids when I was born. I had a very unconventional upbringing. My mom’s job barely covered my dad’s tuition, so nannies and babysitters were out of the question.
I went everywhere, and did everything with them. I would sometimes go to art school with my dad and have memories of hanging around the automotive design department, playing with the clay used to build large-scale car models.

My parents took me to most movies they went to, with the assumption being that I would probably fall asleep. Some of my most vivid memories from that period – around five to 10 years old – are of the films I saw. The Last Picture Show, Little Big Man, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, 2001: A Space Odyssey and American Graffiti all made a deep impression on me at such a young age. As a parent, it is a bit disturbing to think of my own 10-year-old seeing some of those films and they were definitely not considered “appropriate viewing”. But what the hell, my parents were still in their early 20s.  

When I was around five years old, my parents split up. My mom moved to Ocean Beach, San Diego where she finished school. She then went on and opened various businesses. After graduating from art school my dad went on to work for Needham Harper & Steers, an ad agency that was then in Westwood. When I was 13 we moved to Northern California, where my dad worked for J. Walter Thompson in San Francisco.

My dad designed the typeface and logo for a fuel additive called Wynns. When I was around nine we would go to the Friday-night drag races out in Riverside. Most of the dragsters and funny cars would have a big Wynns sticker on the side and I remember thinking that was the coolest thing. 

Dad always noticed advertising and, in turn, I began to notice it too. But when I was formulating what I wanted to do with my life, advertising was not part of the equation at all; I wanted nothing to do with it and in fact I wanted to subvert that idea by taking the fine art path.

I came around, not so much as the result of a philosophical reckoning, but more in terms of falling in love with the process of filmmaking and taking advantage of every opportunity to shoot film in whatever shape or form; commercials became a place to practise and experiment. The more filmmaking you can do – the more opportunities you get to ply your craft – the better you become.

I’m currently working towards directing a film of my own and my ideas about features inform my decisions on commercial projects. They’re a very good place to work out ideas, be it with performers, photography, staging or different techniques.

When I was between five and 12 we were constantly on the move and I went to a different school almost every year. I always had to deal with being the new kid and at the beginning of each year would usually get into a fight or two.

There was never any question of what school I should go to; it basically boiled down to whichever public school was closest. It’s crazy to think how different things are now with kids and schools. It is borderline absurd the amount of time, energy and discussion that can go into deciding on a school – and I am not talking about college; in LA and NYC it all starts with pre-school.

My high school graduation present was a round-trip plane ticket to Europe. While travelling in Portugal I hitched a ride with two couples driving a VW bus. One of the couples, Mark and Amanda Oppe, owned a courier company that operated out of a small office on Rathbone Place in Soho. Only one other guy rode a push bike and we took endless shit from the bikers hanging out at the dispatch office. But once I learned my way around I did pretty well.

I also pulled pints at The Lamb and Flag, a small pub in Covent Garden. I worked under this guy named Bob the Yank. The money was crap and I had to endure endless drunken rants about being a Yank, beer, real football...

It was music that actually triggered my interest in shooting film. Around the time I graduated from high school the world of music and video was beginning to merge and take shape. At that stage in my life I was more interested in non-linear abstract interpretative work, like the videos Brian Eno was creating as companion pieces to
his ambient series. That, along with some of the videos from Talking Heads’ Remain In Light album and Bowie’s Scary Monsters, was a source of inspiration for me.

Working with Bruce Weber and moving to NYC was a pivotal stage in my career. Bruce has this fearlessness to his approach, wherein he was always open to change. His portrait sittings would evolve and grow into something completely unpredictable and fantastic. There is something to be said for having a game plan, but having the courage to throw it to the wind when inspiration takes hold is always much more exciting.  

My favourite piece of work from that time is a short film I shot for him called The Teddy Boys of The Edwardian Drape Society. It was the early 90s and we were in London shooting a campaign for Versace. It was an insane time, with all the big girls – Christy, Cindy, Stephanie, Naomi et al – and Gianni, Donatella and her husband Paul, and the rest of the crew holed up at The Dorchester. I had heard about this pub in north London that had become a big gathering spot for Teds. Everyone would show up, swap records, sell stuff, listen to music, and yes, drink beer. Bruce, another photo assistant and I went up to check it out. Bruce loved it and a week later we were back with a couple of Bolexes to film. We shot on 16mm tri-x reversal and Bruce cut the film to a beautiful opera piece. The finished film was somewhat haunting and sad. I have not seen it in a very long time.

The filmmaker I most admire is Terrence Malick. His films consistently transcend the conventions of narrative storytelling and are incredibly personal, sublime, beautiful works of art. 

Spike Jonze and I are very close friends and share many creative references. More often than not, our instinct is to embrace what is real about a person, place or thing, rather than creating our own more stylised version. We both prefer a stripped-down approach, where we never let the size and weight of the production dictate creative decisions.

In the past, when Spike and I have been bogged down with the demands of covering dialogue, I have always joked about relying more on the “language of cinema” and less on the “language of words” (that’s hard to do on a Kaufman script, by the way). I feel we accomplished this in Where the Wild Things Are.

Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are and In The Night Kitchen made a deep and profound impression on me when I was a kid and I had absolutely no reservations whatsoever about working on a children’s film. Sitting with my wife and kids at the Lincoln Center for the world premiere was one of the all-time greatest thrills of my life.

With [Super Bowl spot] The Force, the main actor, little Max Page, did such a great job. It was streamed online before it was shown during the Super Bowl, which is pretty genius – to get a buzz going so people will be looking for the commercial during the event. Within the few days before the Super Bowl, the ad had more than three million hits.

Advertising is changing, but what’s interesting is that it’s also staying the same. You’re watching Jon Stewart online or reading The New York Times and you click on a link which takes you to a commercial; when you see it, the ad takes the same shape as any other.

Jackie Kelman Bisbee and I started Park Pictures in NYC in 1998. We wanted to create a company where cinematographers could direct when they weren’t shooting jobs for other people. There are some inherent conflicts in being a cinematographer which arise when you begin bidding against the directors you shoot for. We found that keeping the company small, and being somewhat under the radar, worked to our advantage.

We’ve opened a London branch of Park Pictures because it feels like the right move to better serve our directors. Joachim Back, 300ml and Alison Maclean all have a very English/European sensibility to their work.

There are definitely differences between British and American commercials. Oftentimes, one client can really make or break an agency and in the US at present there’s a lot of fear-based decision making, which can affect the creative. In general, a lot of work out of England pushes the boundaries. They’re a bit more willing to take chances. Of course, I live in America so I’m not watching TV there on a regular basis; it’s just what I see on the awards circuit.

Awards seem to function differently in the US than they do in Europe. When you consider how important they are to agencies, production companies and directors, I am always amazed by how little attention is given to awards by US advertisers themselves. I recall having a discussion after Cannes one year with an ECD and partner at a large West Coast agency; after winning the whole shooting match, they could not sell a script for months. 

I have only been to Cannes once and we all had a very good time.

Have drink or drugs ever been a problem for me? Funny you should ask that question right after the one about Cannes. Is there some sort of implied connection here?

Because I grew up in the 60s and my parents were very young, there were always a lot of drugs around so they could never be a way for me to express rebellion. It was different for me than my friends, some of whom smoked pot every day before high school. I smoked it when I was very young and by the time I got to high school it had lost its mystique. 

That said, I do have periods of my life where a good portion of time was wasted because of the amount of drugs I was doing and looking back that seems regrettable because I could have been more productive. At this stage of my life, the punishment you have to endure the day after means that drugs are seldom worth it.

I have been to therapy a couple times with my wife and I liked it. The therapist always looks at me with this super sad expression and says, “Yes, but how did it make you feel?” I try and tell her but she always asks me the exact same question again.

The products I would never work on are tobacco and the military. I’ve had opportunities but they’re not something I’m interested in.

What I add to a creative concept changes completely from script to script, so it is hard to be specific, but the finished project is almost always an evolution or elaboration of the original idea. The most important thing to me is that as the concept evolves, there is a willingness on behalf of the agency to go in and resell the idea to the client.

As a consumer, I usually react to advertising with impatience. I do not watch that much TV, but when I do, it is primarily sports. The Brits got it right by not giving in to corporate interests and allowing commercial timeouts in football and rugby. Give them an inch and they will take a mile, and before you know it the whole rhythm of the game is gone.

Politically, I am a disillusioned Democrat. I am disappointed with Obama but I am even more disappointed with the level of political debate in the United States: how lazy and dumbed down it has become and how susceptible the American public is to the quick story, the punch line. What Fox News has done to political discourse in our country is horrible.

What does it mean to me to be an American? Strange how loaded a question that has become. I feel, historically speaking at least, we have been handed the imperial baton (or stole it, depending on how you look at it) and are now recovering from the brutal hangover of being drunk on manifest destiny for all those years. We are too full of pride to really understand and accept all the blow-back being spat in our faces right now.

My main interests outside work are sports with my kids. Both my daughter and son are shaping up to be amazing athletes. As a kid, aside from skateboarding and surfing, I was a bit more artsy. I guess you could say I am living vicariously through them now.

My daughter’s volleyball coach passed away recently. He was going to meet a friend at Starbucks and was discovered dead, slumped over the wheel of his car. He was an incredibly endearing man and meant a lot to Pearl and her team-mates. It was extraordinarily sad to see my daughter endure a loss like that.

Music is a very big part of my life. I just shot a video a few nights ago for Conor Oberst and his band Bright Eyes. After all the years of making videos, I still find it a thrill to experience the performance of a song through the lens of a camera.

The use of music in advertisements is hugely important. One of the good things you could say about the demise of the record business is that it has made commercials a viable option for artists to get their music out into the world. Sometimes the music is the most memorable component of the ad.

I do much of my work from home and the internet has become the primary way in which I interact with the world. From the start of the research and conceptual stages, to locations, casting, technical execution, and on into editing and post, almost everything flows through the web. It is strange, because it has all developed so fast and now that we have it, it is hard to imagine how anything got done without it.

What makes me really angry is having to hear the word ‘no’.

I judge people by their actions.

I think the greatest human discovery is probably chlorine. I read somewhere that a good half the population of the world would die of waterborne diseases without it.

My greatest weakness is not having the discipline to always use my time wisely.

The worst thing that has ever happened to me is being capsized in a small sailboat by a rogue wave, getting completely tangled in the ropes and rigging, and being held under water for an uncomfortably long time.

I never used to be afraid of dying, but now that I am married and have kids it has taken on new meaning.

Do I believe in God? I believe there are examples of inherent design in the universe that go beyond random chaos.

My greatest regret is not having had more kids. We are sort of in the clear now and it would be tough to go back.

I think that what children need most is for their parents to be around them as much as possible until that day when they want absolutely nothing to do with you anymore.

I think that marriage is the passageway to enduring bliss. Come on, really? I think the most common misconception of marriage is that somehow, emotionally, it is more of a constant than being single. 

If I could change the world, I would eliminate mankind’s capacity for cruelty.

If I could relive my life, I would not change much, because when you get right down to it, the life you have led is your story and that’s all you really have.