Heinecken in Retrospect

I was so sorry to hear about Robert’s passing, I thank you so much for making his life so full, and I can only hope his last years weren’t too grim (for him or for you). I imagined his mind turned into one of his double-sided photograms, shadows of images, some in negative, some recognizable. Who knows? If nothing else, it’s inspirational to think that someone who smoked that much could live so long anyway.

As you know, his guidance, kindness, and vision of what a photographic image could be changed my whole perception and, ultimately, the direction of my life. What more flattering thing could you say about a teacher.

In the decades before “special effects” became commonplace, he challenged the “truth” in a photograph. A photograph no longer needed to be a reflection of light from a subject into a mechanical box. The photographer, not the camera, made the image. Whether by collage, montage, accident, obsession, or design, the photo was just the starting point. Through Bob’s work, I began to realize that our contemporary landscape was littered with commercial photos and non-verbal messages that I had woven into my own personal history. These icons brought with them a personal link to each viewer’s intimate experience with them. My own variation on the thesis was that my generation’s bombardment with television images had shaped who we collectively became. Bob was right on board encouraging me to see where the trail would lead.

During the student uprisings in the early 1970’s at UCLA, education, sports, and especially the greek social scene seemed inconsequential compared to the injustice of Nixon’s expanding war (perhaps the draft had something to do with it, too). Anyway, in that climate, no one wanted to do a yearbook. So I proposed a dual volume to UC, one book of all the jock’s pictures and another that could be sent to all the campuses that showed the internal mind-set that we shared that had nothing to do with basketball scores. Since I was the only applicant, they said yes, but I needed a “faculty sponsor”. Bob and Robert Fichter both agreed to be my sponsors. Bob then left on sabbatical, and Fichter let me and my co-conspirator, Louie Schwartberg, use the labs all night. Most importantly, they both trusted us to pursue our artistic vision.

As the climax to our non-verbal “trip” into the inner thinking of the barely post-adolescent mind, I took a photograph of an ice cream cone dropped onto the bare belly of a reclining figure. They symbolized, to me, the two things that represented pure pleasure–Sex and Ice Cream (which Heinecken later embellished in his book Food, Sex, and TV). In my way of thinking these were the only two things you never HAD to do, always things you WANTED to do. Perhaps there was some clue to ultimate happiness hidden in the iconography? What did I know, I was only nineteen years old!

Unfortunately, the Chancellor, who was much older, thought it was pornographic. Someone saw it as an ice cream IN someone instead of ON abstract flesh. Ooops! I was instructed by the UCLA communications board to reshoot the picture (which I did happily, since I’d re-thought and improved my lighting techniques since the original shot). What I didn’t know (until twenty years later) is that Bob had been called into the Chancellor’s office to defend my use of a NUDE picture. After getting the academic version of the “Spanish Inquisition”, he reportedly told the chancellor, “It’s fine. The kid’s OK, and the book has something to say, what’s your problem?”

About a year later, I got a phone call at home from a film maker named Bob Able. He was a former student of Heineken’s and was directing a couple of documentary films centered around rock n roll revival shows. The concerts were pretty dull and he wanted images from the era both moving and photographic to enchance the visuals. Bob Able (who is most famous for later helping invent the field of computer graphics) introduced himself by saying, “Heinecken told me, ‘I’ve got this student you have to meet, You’ll like his eye’”.

“You’ll like his eye” is the phrase that began my 30+ year career making films. Each successful job built to the next until I had become a producer, director, writer, editor, award winning blah, blah myself. In my later years as a television producer and head of my own production company, I derived the most pleasure when I could give some talented and cocky kid like myself a chance to show off how good they can be. So many people just need that first break, and Bob was instrumental in making sure I got mine.

He’d ask me to retell this story every time I saw him. I hope he knew how much I loved him. (even when I got bit in the ass by his neighbor’s dog while visiting him in Beverly Glen). I always felt I would have liked to hang out with those rogues more if I only could have stood the second hand smoke. In those days, they were the hard-drinkin’, hard-livin’ outlaws of photography. I’m so grateful for the ways he touched my life. I hope he’s happy wherever he is.

all my best,
Phil Savenick