Mary Cybulski, a veteran script supervisor-turned-productions stills photographer with over 40 feature films to her name, has died. She was 70 years old.
The longtime creative’s team shared the news Friday that she passed Nov. 8 after living for four years with glioblastoma multiforme. She’s remembered as one of the industry’s elite script supervisors who collaborated with such renowned directors as Ang Lee, Stephen Frears, David Mamet, Jodie Foster, Jane Campion, Charlie Kaufman, M. Night Shyamalan, Tony Gilroy, Nancy Savoca and John Sayles.
Cybulski also authored “Beyond Continuity: Script Supervision for the Modern Filmmaker” in 2014, which has become a go-to resource for those interested in the profession.
“Our specialty is storytelling. It is our job to understand the bones and the spirit of the story,” she said of the script supervising craft. “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.”
Screenwriter Kaufman, who worked with Cybulski on his Oscar-winning “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and “Synecdoche, New York,” described her as a “calm, clear presence” during the creative process.
“There was always a crowd of crew and cast around her asking, What the hell is going on?,” he recalled of their time on “Synecdoche,” which featured “a confusing storm of warehouses within warehouses and characters playing actors playing characters.”
“Mary even made an extraordinarily detailed map of the Matryoshka warehouses to guide us,” he said. “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.”
Cybulski had described working with Kaufman on “Eternal Sunshine” as a “life-changing” experience.
The American filmmaker eventually switched to unit photography in 2010, working with many of the same directors of her script supervising days (Lee, who worked with her on “The Ice Storm,” said she “snapped the soul of the production”), as well as Martin Scorsese, Judd Apatow, Todd Haynes, Terrence Malick, Jim Jarmusch and Steven Soderbergh.
She co-directed the 1997 feature “Chicago Cab” with her husband, John Tintori, and over the years mentored many up-and-comers in the industry.
Cybulski began her career in film while attending the University of Michigan, where she met and began experimenting in the craft with Tintori, who is today professor at the NYU film school. She is the mother of Ray Tintori, also a filmmaker, and Sophie Tintori, a molecular biologist and professor.
