When James Cameron hired Russell Carpenter, ASC — this year’s recipient of the ASC Lifetime Achievement Award — to shoot the feature True Lies, it was the cinematographer’s first shot at a massive-budget, tech-heavy science-fiction project, though nobody could say Carpenter hadn’t paid his dues. Having worked his way up from low- to modestly budgeted horror films like Pet Sematary II, Critters 2, The Lawnmower Man and others, the spy thriller starring a peak-of-his-popularity Arnold Schwarzenegger was a great leap in Carpenter’s evolution. The enormous success of True Lies paved the way to Cameron and Carpenter’s feature reteaming for Titanic — which earned Carpenter the Best Cinematography Oscar — and to more than 20 features that followed, including The Negotiator; Shallow Hal; and a small Indian film called Parched, which the cinematographer is quite proud of. It’s been a long road, filled with surprising ups and downs, but to hear Carpenter and his colleagues tell it, he’s always loved the work.
https://ascmag.com/articles/russell-carpenter-asc-passion-for-the-craft