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Vilmos Zsigmond

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Filmmaker

The Resume

    (June 16, 1930-January 1, 2016)
    Born in Szeged, Hungary
    Cinematographer
    Won the Oscar for Best Cinematography for 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' (1977)
    Nominated for Oscars for 'The Deer Hunter' (1978), 'The River' (1984) and 'The Black Dahlia' (2004)
    Was also cinematographer on the films 'McCabe & Mrs. Miller' (1971), 'Deliverance' (1972), 'The Long Goodbye' (1973), 'The Sugarland Express' (1974), 'The Rose' (1979), 'Heaven's Gate' (1980), 'Blow Out' (1981), 'The Witches of Eastwick' (1987), 'The Bonfire of the Vanities' (1990), 'Playing by Heart' (1998), 'Life as a House' (2001) and 'Jersey Girl' (2004)

Why he might be annoying:

    His name is hard to spell and pronounce.
    Early in his career, he half-Anglicized his name, going by 'William' Zsigmond.
    He got his start in America working on ultra-low-budget Z-grade flicks like 'The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies,' 'Psycho-a-Go-Go' and 'Satan's Sadists.'
    His one directorial effort, 'The Long Shadow' (1992), went straight to DVD without a theatrical release.

Why he might not be annoying:

    He and fellow cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs filmed the Soviet army crushing the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, then escaped to the West with 30,000 feet of film.
    He and key grip Dicky Deats built the first portable camera crane in America.
    He noted about his emergence in the 70s, 'I was lucky because I was around when all these young filmmakers came up.... They were searching for new guys to shoot [their films], and we were the new guys.'
    The International Cinematographers Guild named him one of the ten most influential cinematographers in film history (2003).

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 9 Votes: 66.67% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 3 Votes: 33.33% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 21 Votes: 33.33% Annoying
    In 2015, Out of 9 Votes: 55.56% Annoying