Having long since established himself among a very elite group of celebrity cinematographers (with a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame to prove it), Haskell Wexler, ASC has been recently spending more of his days in front of the camera than behind it.

Click To Enlarge

In 2004, he let his son Mark make him the subject of Tell Them Who You Are. The documentary that not only chronicled his career through interviews with some of the A-list filmmakers he'd worked for over the years-including Milos Forman, Norman Jewison, George Lucas and John Sayles-but provided an candid portrait of a complex father-and-son relationship.

"It's terrible," says Wexler, describing the experience of being filmed.

Still, on a Thursday morning in Venice, Calif., he sits on a couch in the sunlit living room of documentarian Joan Churchill, and is back in front of the camera, chatting with a magazine reporter-yours truly.

Churchill is capturing the proceedings with a Sony HVR-Z1U, while taking consultation from production partner Alan Barker. Churchill, who recently served as cinematographer on Barbara Kopple's 2006 Dixie Chicks doc Shut Up and Sing, has a history with Wexler that goes all the way back to the early 1970s, when the latter mentored her into the film business.

Now, she and Barker-a veteran sound specialist who also worked on Shut Up and Sing-are frequent collaborators with Wexler. Barker says it's his job to teach Wexler everything he can about digital production. Notably, the trio worked closely on Wexler's 2006 documentary Who Needs Sleep?, which chronicled the effects of sleep deprivation on hardworking production pros driven by impossible work schedules.

"We've been filming Haskell on and off over the last few years," says Barker, who claims he and Churchill have captured hundreds of hours of footage featuring the two-time Oscar-winner. Wexler is an ideal subject for two reasons, Barker explains. First, "We happen to know that Haskell is an incredible human being and a ball of energy," he says.

Wexler also has Barker's second key attribute for a successful documentary subject: accessibility.

Just days earlier, Wexler lost his contentious bid for the presidency of the International Cinematographers Guild to incumbent Steven Poster, ASC. Among other things, Wexler ran on his key concern, the sleep deprivation suffered by his overworked peers.

That leaves open the subject of "what's next?" for the octogenarian, who recently shot an episode of HBO's drama Big Love but seems to have stepped away from photographing feature films-his body of work including such classics as Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, In the Heat of the Night and Bound For Glory.

Shot on Sony PD-100 and PD-150 cameras and requiring two years of editing, Wexler self-financed Who Needs Sleep?, which premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Fest, and he's not sure when he'll have the wherewithal to shoot another doc feature. "The kind of documentaries I make take time," he admits. "I'm looking for someone who would pay for it."

All of this leaves Wexler free to participate in Barker and Churchill's project, which seems a bit informal and open-ended at this point. "It's a process," says Churchill, who concedes she has no idea what the finished product will look like or when it will be ready. "You have to be open to where it goes."

If anything, Wexler seems to view the project as fertile ground to express some opinions-he has many-and to conduct a few on-camera experiments.

"This serves a purpose for me to ask myself, 'Do I think we're artists?' When you're working and you're in the swim day-to-day, it hard to ask those questions," he explains.

Wexler agreed to DV's interview request on the condition that it be filmed for the documentary. He wonders aloud how the camera will affect the interview.

He staunchly rejects the notion that documentary filmmaking can exist in a vacuum and not influence its subject matter. He's eager to find some way to prove to "the purists" that the camera has an undeniable, inescapable effect on all of its subjects.

"For example, I know I'm a lot more verbose today because Joan is here," he says, adding that being on camera has provided him with a new perspective. "Now I know why the people I film feel obligated to do something they think is good for you."

At the same time, he notes that advances in convenient, low-budget digital filmmaking have made the documentary process less intrusive than ever. To hammer home this point, he picks up the bulky Éclair NPR 16mm camera he used in the 1980s while filming such politically charged docs as Target Nicaragua, which required that film mags be swapped out every 11 minutes, or whenever the filmmaker transitioned from indoors to outdoors.

Wexler wonders, with so many inexpensive options available to them, why don't more established filmmakers today do what he did 20 years ago-take a break from Hollywood and head to a hot spot, say the Mideast? He and Churchill cite Laura Poitras' Oscar-nominated My Country, My Country (2006)-which captured tribal life in Iraq from several perspectives-as one of the more notable digital documentary achievements to date.

"It created insight into people who are often demonized by the press," Churchill says. "It's a great example of the power of small-format technology."

"Artists have to speak to authority, and not just in Bush times," Wexler adds. "At some point, videomakers have a responsibility to themselves and a social responsibility until all these basic things-the destroying of our air, our water, our food and our climate-are addressed. The technology is there."