Laslo Kovaks

It's amazing what you learn from obituaries. Who knew that many of my favorite films were shot by the same cinematographer, or anything about his heroic capture of the Soviet invasion in 1959.

Kovacs was born to Imre and Julianna Kovacs and raised on a farm in Hungary when that country was isolated from the Western world, first by the Nazi occupation and later during the Cold War. Kovacs was in his final year of school in Budapest when a revolt against the communist regime started on the city streets.

He and his lifelong friend Vilmos Zsigmond -- who also went on to become one of Hollywood's leading directors of photography -- made the daring decision to document the event for its historic significance. To do this, they borrowed film and a camera from their school, hid the camera in a paper bag with a hole for the lens and recorded the conflict.

The pair then embarked on a dangerous journey during which they carried 30,000 feet of documentary film across the border into Austria. They entered the U.S. as political refugees in 1957.

"As a man I loved him," said Zsigmond, reached in North Carolina where he is shooting the film "Bolden! "We always had a great time together."

Their historic film was featured in a CBS documentary narrated by Walter Cronkite.

After working on several smaller films during the 1960s, Kovacs was approached by Dennis Hopper in 1969 to film Easy Rider. Kovacs turned it down, but Hopper was persistent and met with him to act out all the scenes.

"At the end of that meeting, I asked when we could start shooting," Kovacs recalled in a 1998 interview with the International Cinematographers Guild. "That's how I happened to shoot Easy Rider. We knew it was something special, but none of us realized that it would win awards and become so influential."

The counterculture classic, also starring Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson, was shot during a 12-week journey from Los Angeles to New Orleans, entirely on location.

"That was the style of Poetic Reality, basically making movies that look real," Zsigmond said. "The lighting is real, and the people in the theater think they are seeing the real thing."

Kovacs worked with many of the leading directors of his time, among them Peter Bogdanovich ("Targets," "Paper Moon," "What's Up, Doc?"), Martin Scorsese ("New York, New York," "The Last Waltz"), Robert Altman ("That Cold Day in the Park") and Bob Rafelson ("Five Easy Pieces," "The King of Marvin Gardens").

Not mentioned in his obit is that he got his start in Hollywood working for Roger Corman, "King of the Bs." It was Corman who suggested "Leslie" be the cinematographer for "Targets."