Reynaldo Villalobos Urban Cowboy (1980)
Reynaldo Villalobos (born 1940, El Paso, Texas) was the cinematographer on Urban Cowboy (1980). The picture was his first feature credit as director of photography.
Villalobos came up through the camera department on Westerns and Sergio Leone
Villalobos's family worked in Mexican film production; he came up through the camera department on Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) and Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969), among others. His first DP credit was Urban Cowboy. James Bridges hired him for two reasons: Villalobos spoke the West (the camera lineage was Westerns, and his eye knew the light), and he was willing to shoot inside Gilley's during business hours under available-fluorescent and beer-sign lighting.
"Jim Bridges said: I want this picture to look like a documentary about Texas. Don't pretty it up. I said: I will not pretty it up. We shot it like a news crew with film stock." — Reynaldo Villalobos, American Cinematographer (1980)
The Gilley's interiors are the picture's signature visual achievement
Gilley's was a working honky-tonk. Villalobos shot the interiors using mostly the existing fluorescent and neon and a few small bounce sources he could hide behind the bar. The dolly shot down the long bar in the first-night-at-Gilley's sequence is the picture's establishing visual move; it is also a documentary-grade tracking shot through a real room with real customers, lit to the room's own light.
"We didn't dress the place. We didn't add anything. We just turned the lights down a little and shot what was there. The place was already a movie." — Reynaldo Villalobos, American Cinematographer (1980)
The bull-pit sequences are the picture's other distinctive look. Villalobos shot the bull on long lenses from across the pit, treating the rider's relationship to the machine as a physical contest rather than a ride. The audience is always at a slight distance, the way the audience is at Gilley's — a few feet of beer-stained floor between the bull and the spectator.
The career after Urban Cowboy was steady and varied
Villalobos went on to shoot Coal Miner's Daughter (1980, Michael Apted, second-unit), Endangered Species (1982), Conan the Destroyer (1984), Punchline (1988), A Bronx Tale (1993, Robert De Niro), Mi Familia (1995, Gregory Nava), Selena (1997), American Me (1992, Edward James Olmos), and Cabeza de Vaca (1991, Nicolás Echevarría). He has been active across both Hollywood and Mexican cinema for forty-five years.
"Rey Villalobos is a serious cinematographer. He shoots a place the way a place wants to be shot. That's not a trick. That's a discipline." — Edward James Olmos, American Cinematographer (1992)