Bruce MacCallum, a veteran camera operator and longtime union activist, died Monday in Los Angeles, the International Cinematographers Guild announced. He was 70.
MacCallum served as a camera assistant and operator for more than 40 years, with credits including All That Jazz (1979), Witness (1985), Heartburn (1986), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), I Am Legend (2007), Julie & Julia (2009), The Adjustment Bureau (2011), Winter’s Tale (2014) and Broadway’s Hamilton.
He was the recipient of the Camera Operator Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013 and was nominated for the 2017 Camera Operator of the Year Award in Television for his work (along with Ben Semanoff) on HBO’s The Night Of. He also recently worked on NBC’s The Blacklist.
A native of Hackensack, N,J., MacCallum began his career in 1973 as a personal assistant for actor Dustin Hoffman on the movie Lenny. He went on to help train and mentor many fellow members of the ICG (IATSE Local 600), for whom he served as national assistant secretary-treasurer between 2007 and 2016.
His final weekend was spent at a national board meeting.
MacCallum once described his favorite shot as a camera operator, when, in The Adjustment Bureau, Matt Damon and Emily Blunt come through a door, run up a flight of stairs out onto a rooftop, look both directions into Central Park, run back down to another roof level and then out of frame. It was on a set with green screen and a 50-foot Technocrane.
“It was just like this amazing shot that we rehearsed for a couple of days before we get it,” he said, “and then when you see it in the film, it’s like, ‘How did they do that?’ In the film, it looked easy. That would be my favorite shot ever.”
Survivors include Linda, his wife of 32 years. The cause of his death was not announced.
