Wally Pfister, ASC, and Christopher Nolan implode cinematic boundaries again for their dreamy new thriller, Inception. By Bob Fisher

“My fate cannot be mastered; it can only be collaborated with and thereby, to some extent, directed. Nor am I the captain of my soul; I am only its noisiest passenger.” — Aldous Huxley

Somewhere in movie heaven Robert Altman has a big smile on his face. When the legendary director arrived in Washington, D.C., during production of the HBO miniseries Tanner ’88 some 22 years ago, he saw a young man in the crowd, Betacam in hand, waiting for his turn at a casting call. That would be the last callback for Wally Pfister, ASC, but the camera never left his hands. Altman recruited the shooter for a nonspeaking role as a news cameraman, and said he might as well roll his camera while playing the part. Altman clearly knew talent when he saw it, and later encouraged the would-be film student (who had already applied to the American Film Institute), to shift his focus to narrative filmmaking. Buoyed by that chance meeting with a film icon, Pfister opted to make cinematography his focus at AFI, later launching his feature film career working on crews for Janusz Kaminski and Phedon Papamichael, ASC on Roger Corman films. Was meeting Altman a random meeting or destiny’s unassailable plan?

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