Oscar-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler can't help himself. He insists on telling his son, Mark, how to shoot a documentary about him.

		'Tell Them Who You Are' Rating: R for language and some sexual images. Director: Mark Wexler.

They argue about almost everything, from Mark's request that Haskell step onto a hotel balcony so Mark can capture the city and setting sun behind him to whether Haskell needs to explain he's in a room housing a lifetime's worth of camera gear. "You're making a [expletive] documentary, so you don't have to have me say where we are," father snaps at son.

Haskell initially refuses to sign the release form for the movie, asking, "What if you make a film I find insulting?" His exasperated son replies, "You gotta trust me."

The resulting documentary, "Tell Them Who You Are," which opens Friday at the Harris Theater, isn't a warm-and-fuzzy portrait of the cinematographer who won Academy Awards for "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" and "Bound for Glory" and made the classic "Medium Cool." It's a look at a talent who chafes at authority, who attributes his firing from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" to the FBI, who still longs to work at age 80 and does, who is as left-leaning as ever, and who shows a tender side when he visits an ailing ex-wife.

The Wexlers have a tangled, often uneasy relationship and it's on display in "Tell Them," the title of which refers to something Haskell used to say to his bashful boy. "Tell them who you are," meaning tell them you're the famous photographer's son.

The Wexler name opens many doors, including those of the insightful Jane Fonda, George Lucas, Michael Douglas, Sidney Poitier and longtime family friend Conrad Hall, a cinematographer who was almost a second father to Mark.

"Tell Them," which mixes interviews with family photos, home movies and film clips, doesn't allow Mark to step out from his famous father's shadow. But he squeezes into his space rather nicely, if uncomfortably, in this film that's fascinating for movie fans and anyone with a complex parent-child relationship.

Haskell tells Mark, "What I do for a living, which is making movies, is not me." He advises his son to probe the head and the heart. Mark doesn't bore into the core but, to his credit, he peels away a few layers and brings his father into sharper -- if not perfect -- focus.