Eric B. Schwab

Eric B. Schwab is an American film director and second unit director who is best known for his collaborations with Brian De Palma.

Career

Schwab started his long-running partnership with De Palma on the 1984 film Body Double and The Untouchables, where he would serve as location manager. For their next film together, Casualties of War, Schwab would begin serving as second unit director.^{[citation needed]}

His and De Palma would next work on the 1990 film The Bonfire of the Vanities. In one notable scene in the film, Maria Ruskin (Melanie Griffith) arrives in New York on an Air France Concorde. The film's second unit director, Eric Schwab, calculated the time and day when a runway at JFK Airport would line up exactly with the setting sun, to serve as a backdrop, and managed to film in the single 30-second time period when this occurs in any given year, while winning a bet that he could make the scene an essential part of the movie.^[1] The 5-camera shot cost $80,000^[2] and lasted just 10 seconds in the final cut. Cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond claimed credit for the shot in an American Cinematographer article.^[3][4] Schwab also directed the opening title shot—an almost equally elaborate and expensive set-up requiring a 24-hour timelapse of Manhattan, from a camera platform beside a gargoyle on top of the Chrysler Building.

Schwab would later work with De Palma again on the first Mission: Impossible and continue all the way to De Palma's most recent film, Domino. He would later direct second unit on 2022's Top Gun: Maverick.^[5]

Filmography

Year	Title	Director	Notes
1981	True Confessions	Ulu Grosbard	Location scout
1984	Body Double	Brian De Palma	Location manager
1985	St. Elmo's Fire	Joel Schumacher
1986	Crossroads	Walter Hill
1987	The Untouchables	Brian De Palma
1988	Vibes	Ken Kwapis
1989	Casualties of War	Brian De Palma	Second unit director
1990	The Bonfire of the Vanities
1993	Carlito's Way
1996	Mission: Impossible
1998	Snake Eyes
2000	Mission to Mars
2006	Mission: Impossible III	J.J. Abrams	Visual consultant; Second unit director, Germany unit
2007	Redacted	Brian De Palma	Co-producer; Second unit director
2008	Valkyrie	Bryan Singer	Visual consultant; Second unit director
2019	Domino	Brian De Palma	Second unit director
2022	Top Gun: Maverick	Joseph Kosinski

References

1. "'The Bonfire of the Vanities' (1990)". The Independent. London. Archived from the original on November 18, 2007.
2. Salamon 1992, p. 243.
3. Fisher, Bob (November 1990). "The Bonfire of the Vanities". American Cinematographer. Vol. 71, no. 11. p. 52. ProQuest 196321472.
4. Salamon 1992, p. 385.
5. "Eric Schwab: Director/Second Unit Director". Retrieved 2 November 2024.

Sources

• Salamon, Julie (1992). The Devil's Candy: The Bonfire of the Vanities Goes to Hollywood. New York: Dell. ISBN 0-385-30824-8.