Rare treat for 'Rookie' shooter

LOS ANGELES, April 26 (UPI) -- Cinematographer John Schwartzman, best known for big-budget pictures like "Pearl Harbor" and "Armageddon," was trying to change his life when he signed on to shoot the inspirational baseball movie "The Rookie" -- never dreaming the job would bring him face to face with President Bush in the White House private screening room.

Schwartzman has made movies with Ron Howard ("Edtv") and Mel Gibson ("Conspiracy Theory"). Besides "Pearl Harbor" and "Armageddon," he also made "The Rock" with Michael Bay.

But "The Rookie" is having an impact on audiences that the big-ticket productions have not had.

"'Pearl Harbor' obviously generated a lot of publicity -- good and bad," said Schwartzman. "This, I did strictly as a labor of love because the story was so moving and I'm a huge baseball fan."

He also admired the work of director John Lee Hancock, and wanted to be involved in telling the story of a high school baseball coach who challenges his team to play up to their potential. When he has to "walk the walk," he ends up pitching in the major leagues, 12 years after his minor league career flamed out due to an injury.

It's probably no surprise that President Bush wanted to see "The Rookie," given his passion for baseball. A former owner of the Texas Rangers, one of Bush's earliest acts as president was to have a Little League field installed on the White House grounds.

Cinematographers typically are not included when filmmakers get invitations to White House screenings, but Schwartzman did -- and found himself watching President Bush watch his movie Tuesday night.

"I watched him cry where everybody else cries in the movie," he said. "I watched him and the head of the CIA and everybody in the theater cry -- just like every audience I see this movie with."

Schwartzman said he still cries at the movie -- and he's seen it 20 times.

Executives at the Walt Disney Co. might cry tears of joy over the movie's performance in the marketplace.

"The studio will probably end up making more money in terms of pure profit than they did off of 'Pearl Harbor," said Schwartzman. "This movie was made for about one-fourth of the visual effects budget for 'Pearl Harbor.'"

Schwartzman said he wanted to do something in which his creativity wasn't going to be overshadowed by the gigantic scale of the movie. In "Pearl Harbor," for example, his camera placement was limited to spots that weren't going to be blown up.

"Not that I didn't have fun with the other pictures," said Schwartzman, "but they're so big and so complicated and at times dangerous. On 'The Rookie' I wasn't worried about what if a plane crashed or something blows up and we get hit by flying debris."

He said another reason he took the gig was to expand his repertoire, and show producers he is capable of doing work that has depth as well as epic scope.

"I wanted to reinvent myself," he said. "I was having no trouble getting $100 million movies, but how many of those touch your soul?"

Not that he's against big pictures.

"I'm sure 'Spider-Man' is going to be a great ride," he said, "but you don't really remember big movies when you leave the theater."

President Bush is known for dispensing nicknames -- even to people he has just met -- but Schwartzman said he didn't come away from the White House with a new nickname.

"I don't think we were there long enough," he said. "But he was like all the Texans I met in my life, an absolutely gracious host. He was absolutely disarming. There were about 40 of us and no seating plan. The president sat down next to one of the producers. We talked about baseball and we laughed."

Schwartzman said he thinks the movie has a kind of "universal appeal" in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and it showed at the White House screening.

"The wife of a senator was sitting next to me and she was crying," he said. "It was a cathartic thing for everybody, especially for President Bush, who I think misses Texas very much. It was a night he could forget about the rigors of running the country, have a couple of hours for himself and slip into something that was a wonderful kind of journey."