Bef or e
i t passes
t hr ough t he edi -
t or ’ s hands, a f i l m
i s a col l ect i on of
l ong t akes f r om
var i ous
there appear to be a movie here at all? Sometimes technical
problems develop – shots go out of focus, the director loses
the light at the end of the day and doesn’t get some angles he
fears he needs, the negative gets damaged in the lab. When
this sort of thing happens, it is imperative that the director see
the scene cut together as soon as possible so he can deter-
mine if additional shots are needed or, perish the thought, the
entire scene needs to be rescheduled.
I’m often struck by the number of people, including those
in the movie industry itself, who have little or no idea what a
film editor actually does. “Oh, you cut out all the bad parts,”
is the usual salvo when I’m introduced as a film editor. Almost
as frequent and worse: “Oh, they say an editor can make or
break a film.” The one conceives the job more or less as glo-
rified bean counting, the other invests it with far more power
than it actually has. When I tell people that I usually do my
work on my own, as first cut is done while shooting is going
on, which means the director is filming while I’m editing,
they’re often taken back. Doesn’t that almost mean that
you’re
directing the film, not the director? Of course not. An
editor’s power to radically alter a scene is much less than peo-
ple often think. For one thing, you want to keep your job, so
you’d have to be egotistic to the point of professional suicide
even to try to cut a scene much differently from the more or
less clear intent with which it was shot, at least on first cut or
without discussing your ideas in advance with the director.
For another, you’re limited by the material itself. A
well-placed reaction shot can make a character appear more
or less sympathetic; if you’re given a fairly wide range of read-
ings (not usual, but not atypical either), you can pitch a per-
formance higher or bring it down by your selection of takes;
you have the option of playing dialog on or off camera. But it’s
the really unusual film that would allow the editing as such to
transform the direction into something else entirely.
I’ve had directors tell me many times that I’ve “saved” a
scene. This is always flattering, but also a little puzzling, and I
usually reply that I didn’t shoot any new footage, so whatever
I did was there to be found in the material. For one of the
most valuable things a good editor can contribute is a fresh
perspective. That, of course, and his basic talent for story-
telling, his taste and sensitivity in shaping performances, and
his imagination in how the shots can be most effectively com-
bined. Sometimes colleagues tell me they like to hang around
the set to soak up the feel of the movie, but I’ve never found
them convincing. Anyone who has spent any time on a film set
soon finds out there is little “feel” for the story to be
picked up there – not with production assistants,
camera crews, sound recordists, costumers,
assistant directors, service people, and the
countless other crew members necessary
to the making of a movie milling about.
And if the editor is hanging out
there, he plainly isn’t editing the film,
which is what he should be doing. I
prefer to approach the raw footage
with as little knowledge as possible of
what went into getting it. It doesn’t
matter if the star was sick and not on
best behavior; it does me no good to
know that certain essential setups were
never filmed owing to inclement weather
or a camera breakdown. All that makes for
interesting dinner conversation or frustrated
venting over a drink, but is of no consequence
one way or another when it comes to working with
the footage.
Every film is in fact three films: the film that
is written, the film that is directed, and the film
that is edited. Sometimes they’re all the same
film, sometimes they’re not, and I can’t
think of any necessary correlation in qual-
ity between when they are and when
they aren’t. I do know that the only film
you finally have is the raw footage
that has been developed and is wait-
ing to be cut. Everything else is
academic.
Early in my career I was on a
job interview; present were the
director, the producer, and the two writ-
ers who were also associate producers. One
of the writers asked me who I thought should
get the right to final cut. Talk about being on the
spot. I replied that insofar as it devolves to a single per-
son, I believe it must be the director. (Whatever prob-
lems I have with the auteur theory, I nevertheless
believe that the director is the overall “author” of
a film, because a screenplay is not a final any-
thing – it awaits realization on film, for
which the director is responsible.) But I
went on to say that my experience sug-
gests it is the film itself that deter-
mines the final cut, the film itself
that soon becomes the last, best
arbiter. A movie that is good
or has a chance of becom-
ing any good eventually
develops a life of its
own. And every direc-
tor and every editor
who are good keep
themselves alert to
this process and bend
their egos to helping
this emergent organism
assume the shape it desires,
to letting it, in a word,
live
.
The director with the greatest editorial imag-
ination of them all, Sam Peckinpah, used to
say that he knew what he saw in
the material, he wanted to
see what others saw in
it. Of one of his
favorite
editors,
Robert Wolfe, Sam
once told me, “Bob
will come back with
20 ideas. I might hate ten of
them, but that still leaves ten that I’d
never have thought of that’ll make my
movie better.”
Different directors work dif-
ferently. Some give you copi-
ous notes at dailies, right
down to which specific line
readings they want and
how they’d like the shots
used. I’ve been lucky, I
