Phillips made his major feature film debut as the cinematographer for 1995's The Basketball Diaries, which was directed by Scott Kalvert and starred Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Wahlberg.
[1][2] Phillips, who grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, received his bachelor's degree in English from Boston University.
[1] Phillips early cinematography also included several music documentary films, including Midnight Oil: Black Rain Falls and Twelve Deadly Cyns...and Then Some, the companion to Cyndi Lauper's 1994 greatest hits album of the same name.
[1] Phillips' television credits included the 1996 HBO series, The High Life, as well as several episodes of Saturday Night Live during the mid-2000s.
[1] Phillips died from natural causes in New York City on February 4, 2017, at the age of 65.