Mary Cybulski, a veteran script supervisor who worked on Ang Lee’s Life of Pi and The Ice Storm and many other films and also served as a set photographer for several top directors, died November 8 of glioblastoma multiforme. She was 70.
Along with Lee’s films, Cybulski was a script supervisor on movies from Stephen Frears, David Mamet, Jodie Foster, Jane Campion, Charlie Kaufman, M. Night Shyamalan, Tony Gilroy, Nancy Savoca, John Sayles and others. She also authored Beyond Continuity; Script Supervising for the Modern Filmmaker, a book that many consider the bible for the profession.
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About the role of a script supervisor, she wrote: “Our specialty is storytelling. It is our job to understand the bones and the spirit of the story. We imagine all the little bits of the movie we are making: what they look like and sound like, how they move, and how they impact each other when they are put together. We carry around a living, growing movie in our imagination.”
Said Lee of Cybulski work on his Palme d’Or-nominated 1997 film: “On the set of Ice Storm, I felt she was mothering the whole thing. She’s like mother/courage, providing warmth and courage. I totally understand why she was a downhill ski racer. She’s a daredevil. So she’s two things together, warmth and courage, and, of course, talent.”
Her dozens of credits as script supervisor also include Syriana, Mad Dog and Glory; Too Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar!; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; Maid in Manhattan; Best Picture Oscar nominee Michael Clayton; Synecdoche, New York; Lady in the Water; The Last Airbender; Eat Pray Love; and 2011’s Arthur.
“As the script supervisor on Synecdoche, New York, Mary was the calm, clear presence at the center of a confusing storm of warehouses within warehouses and characters playing actors playing characters, the film’s writer-director Kaufman said. “There was always a crowd of crew and cast around her asking, What the hell is going on? Mary even made an extraordinarily detailed map of the Matryoshka warehouses to guide us. At the end of production she drew the map on a t-shirt for me. Mary helped me so much. She was brilliant and kind, and I loved her.”
In 2010, Cybulski began a new career as a set photographer, going on to become a go-to shooter for filmmakers including Martin Scorsese, Judd Apatow, Todd Haynes, Terrence Malick, Jim Jarmusch, and Steven Soderbergh.
Cybulski also directed one film, Chicago Cab, with her husband John Tintori. It earned her a nomination in the New Directors Competition at the 1997 Chicago Film Festival.
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