Is That All You Can Do, Chris?

Christopher Doyle’s innovative perspective has made him one of Hong Kong’s wildest and most influential cinematographers. Forty years into his career, a new documentary finds him in front of the camera, giving a rare and revelatory insight into his life

- Zabrina Lo

On the final day of filming of Wong Kar-wai’s Ashes of Time, cinematographer Christopher Doyle was nowhere to be found. After four months shooting the 1994 action-drama in northern China, Wong’s longtime collaborator got so drunk the night before that the crew almost shot the climactic final scene without him. In it, Hong Kong actor Leslie Cheung was to leave a fictional city and set a building on fire as his farewell. “At two o’clock in the morning, my line producer called me up and said, ‘Big problem: Chris is lying in his bathtub,’” Wong recalled in a 2008 interview at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City. “He was key camera, and he just fell asleep.” Wong started trying to shoot the scene, but then Doyle woke up. “He said, ‘I’m totally sorry. I know what shot you want,’” Wong continues. As the story goes, Doyle stripped naked, covered himself in water, grabbed the camera, ran onto the fiery set, and got the shot in one take. “He came back to me and said, ‘Well, I’m sorry but this is what I want to do.’”