I attended my first evening at the B.U. Cinematheque tonight, a crowded and hellishly hot affair that featured a screening of the Harvard Law School classic The Paper Chase followed by a question and answer session with the film’s director of photography, Gordon Willis. Willis is a luminary in the world of cinematography, having had a hand in the best work of Francis Ford Coppola, Woody Allen, Alan Pakula, and other directors in their 1970s heydays. The film was ok, I guess, nicely shot but strange, in that 1970s kind of way, when relationships on screen don’t seem to make any real sense to me. I think Timothy Bottoms really only had one really great movie, and this wasn’t it. Now he’s too busy playing W to do anything else. I expected to see more familiar faces among the crowd of law students; besides Edward Herrmann, only Blair Brown stood out, and I didn’t even recognize her until I saw her name in the credits; whatever happened to Molly Dodd? After the film, Willis was interesting, and the questions were good, for a change. He said something like “Don’t confuse motion for accomplishment” or something like that; it seemed useful at the time, but I can’t remember it exactly, now, which isn’t that helpful. People were interested in his interactions with Marlon Brando and Barbra Streisand, and Woody Allen came out as the easiest director to work with. On a final note, check out this typically entertaining McSweeney’s piece (why did the store have to close?) about stalking Gordon Willis.