RIP Lazlo Kovacs

The Hollywood Reporter is reporting cinematographer Lazlo Kovacs died Saturday night in his sleep. He was 74.

Hungarian born Kovacs was a witness to the failed 1956 revolt against Communism,

He and his lifelong friend Vilmos Zsigmond made the daring decision to document the event for its historic significance. To do this, they borrowed film and a camera from their school, hid the camera in a paper bag with a hole for the lens and recorded the conflict.

The pair then embarked on a dangerous journey during which they carried 30,000 feet of documentary film across the border into Austria. They entered the U.S. as political refugees in 1957.

Their historic film was featured in a CBS documentary narrated by Walter Cronkite.

He went on to a long and successful Hollywood career. He worked on some of Hollywood's classics: The Last Waltz, Paper Moon, New York New York, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Easy Rider. He also worked on such films as Two Weeks Notice, Return to Me, Miss Congeniality, My Best Friend's Wedding, Ghostbusters, and one of my personal favorites, Say Anything.