ROGER EBERT (1942-2013), REST IN PEACE

     Two days before his death, Roger Ebert wrote that he was about to take “a leave of presence.” He will be greatly missed. The depth of his passion for film and filmmakers made terms like “reviewer” or “critic” inapplicable; he was more of an advocate for movies he loved. And while he was an exceptional and witty wordsmith, he seldom seemed to revel in his own cleverness or profundity. The pictures came first.

     In 1967, along with Pauline Kael at The New Yorker, Ebert -- in his first year at The Chicago Sun-Times -- helped rescue Arthur Penn’s BONNIE AND CLYDE, writing a rave review after The New York Times and Newsweek savaged the film. Readers ignored the stodgier critics and came around. Now, of course, Penn’s movie is considered a classic, as well as a paradigm of modern film editing.

     A year later, Ebert did the same for Sam Peckinpah’s THE WILD BUNCH, reviewing it twice! The first time, he called it, “an important act of filmmaking” and said it “presents violence in such definitive (indeed, even excessive) terms that it becomes, paradoxically, a statement against violence and a reaction to it.” The second time, he watched it with a paying crowd and mused that its hyperrealism and excess made viewers aware that they were watching a motion picture. As self-reflexive cinema, wrote the critic, it called into question cheering for traditional Western heroes played by the likes of Gary Cooper, John Wayne and Hopalong Cassidy.

     For such insightful and impassioned writing, Roger Ebert received the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1978. But he became truly famous reviewing films on television with colleague Gene Siskel, first on PBS’ “Sneak Previews” (also in 1978) and, subsequently, on “At The Movies.” Tuning in to Siskel and Ebert’s debates exposed audiences to the joys of discussing what they’d seen at the multiplex. Quentin Tarantino’s dialogue between Clarence and Alabama, early in TRUE ROMANCE, may be a lasting tribute to “At The Movies”:

Clarence: ...after I see a movie, I like to get a piece of pie and talk about it. It’s sort of a tradition I have. Do you like to get a piece of pie after you see a good movie?

Alabama: Yeah, I love to get pie after a movie. 

Clarence: Would like to go get some pie with me? Alabama: Yeah, I'd love some pie.

     Ebert consistently argued for accepting a motion picture on its own terms. “When you ask a friend if HELLBOY is any good,” he wrote, “you’re not asking if it’s any good compared to MYSTIC RIVER, you’re asking if it’s any good compared to THE PUNISHER.” Thus he didn’t expect ANACONDA to be CITIZEN KANE.

     Unlike most American critics, Roger Ebert had experience in the trenches of Hollywood. He wrote the cult classic BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, directed by Russ Meyer, as well as Meyer’s BENEATH THE VALLEY OF THE SUPERVIXENS and UP!. So, to a degree, Ebert was an “industry insider.” This enabled him to love filmmakers, not envy them. And the feeling was mutual. Werner Herzog dedicated his 2008 film ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD to Roger Ebert. And in 2009, the Directors Guild of America made him an honorary life member.

     I was privileged to begin an occasional email relationship with Ebert when I started this blog. His response to the first post he liked was a pithy: “tweeted it.” More often, when he didn’t like a post, he simply didn’t tweet it. (He was so economical a writer, I told myself, he could say “meh” in less than one word.) When discussing a particular film, or baseball, on the other hand, he was more effusive.

     Roger Ebert was one of a kind: an American cineaste. Gone much too soon. Rest in peace. 

The 63d Annual A.C.E. Eddie Awards

     The annual A.C.E. Eddie Awards dinner reminds me of the Passover Seder.  Each year, when Jewish families celebrate the exodus of Hebrew slaves from Egypt, the youngest child asks, “Why is this night different from all other nights?”  (Ritual requires that four answers be given; these responses, each including the words “on this night,” have paradoxically become known as “the four questions.”) 

     Like Passover repasts, Eddie Awards ceremonies mark a divergence from the norm.  On this night, editors get together with a thousand peers to honor excellence in a craft that’s usually unnoticed or misunderstood, even by fellow filmmakers.  On this night, editors bask in the limelight.  On this night actors and directors seem to feel privileged just to be in the company of editors.  On this night editors receive full recognition for their work, even as co-writers and co-creators of performance.

     And so, on this night - February 16, 2013 - it was delightful to see 1,000 esteemed colleagues at the Beverly Hilton Hotel celebrating nominees for and winners of A.C.E.’s highest honor.  Mingling with such editing luminaries as Alan Heim (NETWORK, ALL THAT JAZZ), Bob Leighton (THIS IS SPINAL TAP, A FEW GOOD MEN), Dody Dorn (MEMENTO, INSOMNIA), Mary Jo Markey and Marianne Brandon (STAR TREK, SUPER 8), Steve Rivkin (PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN: CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL, AVATAR), Kevin Tent (ELECTION, THE DESCENDANTS) and so many others, I felt both humbled and at home.  At home with filmmakers who understand what it means to combine several takes in order to create one well-performed line of dialogue!  Who know how, oddly enough, a film might improve as a whole when a good or even great scene is deleted to accelerate its pace.  Who know, as Paul Hirsch (STAR WARS, RAY) once told me, “The difference between a good cut and a bad one is a twenty-fourth of a second.”

     All of the above-named editors have found themselves in the limelight at one time or another, with Academy or Eddie Award recognition.  And this year, I found myself sharing the limelight, as co-presenter of the trophy for Best Edited Documentary with Josh Radnor (HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER, LIBERAL ARTS).  Arriving at the Hilton, I was invited by A.C.E.’s Marika Ellis, event planner extraordinaire, to walk the red carpet.  The irony of an editor smiling for paparazzi and fielding questions from journalists was palpable.

     But I truly enjoyed sharing the insights that those queries elicited.  Asked to name one quality that was essential to good editing, I recalled a moment from early in my career.  The producers of a tiny movie I was cutting showed a rough assembly to Jerry Greenberg (KRAMER VS. KRAMER, THE UNTOUCHABLES).  He commented that the work “showed some sensitivity.”  Sensitivity?  This, I thought, from the editor of such testosterone-fueled pictures as THE FRENCH CONNECTION and THE TAKING OF PELHAM 1-2-3!  What he meant, I learned, was that editors had to allow themselves to be moved by the raw material – by what was authentic, or beautiful, funny or sad - and that, regardless of literal matches or mismatches of action, good cutting mandated that the deeply affecting pieces of film make their way into the cut.

     The notion of sensitivity recurred, putting me in the spotlight once more, as the award presentations began.  Jon Voight (MIDNIGHT COWBOY, COMING HOME), with whom I’d worked on ANACONDA, took the stage to announce the nominees for Best Edited Student Film.  He’d asked me backstage if he could share a story about the snake movie, which he proceeded to do.  From the wings, I heard him recount that, in a shot where the enormous ophidian had spit him out at Jennifer Lopez’s feet, he winked at the camera, but no one on set had seen it.  I did see it, of course.  And, sensing that the wink was a key to finding ANACONDA’s arch tone, I used it.  The moment wound up in the final cut as a signal to the audience that, yes, it was okay to laugh at the movie.

     So… this night was different because a four-time Oscar nominee and one-time winner for Best Actor led the way in shifting focus away from thespians and directors, onto editors.   The celebration of “invisible artists” by those with high profiles continued when the winner of last year’s Golden Eddie, director Alexander Payne (ABOUT SCHMIDT, SIDEWAYS), co-presented a Career Achievement Eddie to Richard Marks (APOCALYPSE NOW, TERMS OF ENDEARMENT).

     In a callback to his hilarious yet touching Golden Eddie acceptance speech, Alexander Payne overemphasized the American Cinema Editors acronym when referring to Richard Marks, A.C.E. as he had when praising his longtime collaborator, Kevin Tent, A.C.E.  (Kevin was 2012’s winner for Best Edited Feature, Payne’s THE DESCENDANTS.)  The director spoke almost reverently of Marks, his former film instructor at UCLA.  It was wonderful for a roomful of cutters to hear Alexander Payne state unequivocally that he’d learned most of what he knows about filmmaking from one of our own.

      And how could an aspiring filmmaker not learn from Richard Marks, A.C.E.?  His credits include LITTLE BIG MAN, SERPICO, THE GODFATHER: PART II and APOCALYPSE NOW!, ST. ELMO’S FIRE and PRETTY IN PINK, BROADCAST NEWS and AS GOOD AS IT GETS, DICK TRACY,  SAY ANYTHING, YOU’VE GOT MAIL, JULIA AND JULIA and more.  Obviously, American Cinema Editors doesn’t mess around when giving a career achievement award.  

     During Marks’ acceptance speech, which he re-edited right down to the wire, he, too, mentioned sensitivity as an important attribute for cutters.  He said that as a student, Alexander Payne was “performance sensitive.”  That same quality in Richard Marks himself is what makes his films he so vibrant.  “Although I always try to protect the original intentions of the script,” he says, “a film has a life of its own and it evolves.”

     Documentaries, as a rule, are made without a script.  So on this night, legendary non-fiction editor, Larry Silk (MARJOE, PUMPING IRON) was acknowledged for career achievement in shaping compelling stories from hundreds of hours of film on each project.  Doc icon Barbara Kopple (HARLAN COUNTY, U.S.A.; MY GENERATION), presenting Silk with his trophy, talked about how honored she felt when he agreed to edit her Woody Allen piece, WILD MAN BLUES.  And who wouldn’t have been?  His work – on the CBS series THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (with Walter Cronkite), JOHNNY CASH! THE MAN AND HIS MUSIC, the aforementioned MARJOE and PUMPING IRON, and so many other projects – has always been groundbreaking.  Speaking of their collaboration, Kopple shared her awe as she watched Silk whittle her raw material down from hundreds of hours to fifteen hours, to five and, finally, to an hour and forty-five riveting minutes. 

     And on this night, 2013 Golden Eddie-recipient Steven Spielberg (JAWS, LINCOLN and everything in between), exuding a kind of humility borne of true greatness, also acknowledged editors as storytellers and close collaborators.  He spun a wonderful yarn about being on the Universal lot as a wide-eyed 19 year old, watching a television editor work with abysmal dailies of a courtroom summation.  The lead actor couldn’t remember two consecutive lines, spewing expletives more often than scripted dialogue.  So the cutter tossed out visuals of the star floundering.  He then deleted all flubs and swearing from the sound track, creating a serviceable audio version of the previously mangled monologue.  Next he strung together shots from throughout the show that illustrated the speech he’d rescued, creating an effective summation montage to go along with the salvaged performance.  Spielberg was duly amazed.  Always the gifted raconteur, however, he finished his story with a twist: the network hated the editor’s solution and reshot the scene as scripted.

     But the esteemed director moved easily from irony to love and gratitude.  Of his three decades-long collaboration with Michael Kahn, A.C.E., he simply said, “Without you, I wouldn’t be standing here tonight.”  His remarks about the cutting room itself – that it’s a “safe haven” in which you can try anything with your film in the utmost privacy – bespoke a profound understanding and appreciation of the process of editing.  And illustrating the kind of family-like closeness that develops in post-production, Spielberg said he’s been following the editing career of Michael Kahn’s former assistant, Billy Goldenberg, who, minutes later, won the Eddie for Best Edited Feature Film (Dramatic), for ARGO.

     The Passover Seder ends with a dessert known as the afikomen.  My Eddie Award dinner afikomen was presenting the Best Edited Television Documentary statuette to Pamela Arnold for AMERICAN MASTERS “PHIL OCHS: THERE BUT FOR FORTUNE.”  Pam and I started our editing careers together in New York, cutting “after school specials.”  At the time, I’m not sure we even knew Eddies existed.

     Of course, I congratulate all the award winners and nominees.  They should be extremely proud of their excellent work.  As should Jenni McCormick (a force of nature), Marika Ellis and Tami Flannery, producers of the 63d Annual Eddie Awards.

      

    

Some Random Thoughts and Opinions

    It’s hard to find time to blog while editing, so I haven’t posted in a while.  But during the holiday break from my current project I got a chance to watch films that were vying for Academy Award nominations.  And now that the nominees have been announced, it’s a good time to write.

     Here, then, are a handful of random thoughts and opinions:

     As always, there are movies that should be in the Oscar race but for some reason aren’t.  QUARTET, Dustin Hoffman’s directing debut, is high on that list.  It’s a tale of rekindled love, set in a home for retired musicians.  Filled with humor but equally long on pathos, it features stunning performances by Tom Courtney, Maggie Smith, Billy Connolly, Sheridan Smith and Michael Gambon.  Each of these fine thespians might well have been considered in the Academy’s Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress categories.

     Woody Allen’s TO ROME WITH LOVE may not be as fully realized or fulfilling as last year’s PARIS I LOVE YOU, but it’s a thing of beauty.  Darius Khondji’s cinematography is as suited to romanticizing Rome as Gordon Willis’s was to heightened passion in MANHATTAN.  Woody’s jokes (about exchange rates, parental neurosis, inside straights, Ambien with scotch chasers and, of course, mortality) are as sharp as ever.  Performances are uniformly exceptional, all worthy of Oscar nominations.  The Roberto Benigni chapters about our culture’s obsession with celebrity are deeply incisive without ever failing to entertain.  And Woody’s reworking of Fellini’s THE WHITE SHEIK in one of the film's subplots is so fresh that many fans of the esteemed Italian auteur didn’t even know that’s what they were watching.

      Walter Salles’ adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s ON THE ROAD is commendable, oddly, because it doesn’t suck.  It’s easy to screw up a period film, misinterpret a literary touchstone or in some way fall short of fans’ expectations on this kind of project.  But Salles avoids the pitfalls.  A Charlie Parker-based soundtrack, seasoned with Dizzy Gillespie, sets the pace for this adrenaline and amphetamine-driven “mad-to-live” story.  ON THE ROAD is further infused with bebop energy by its editor (Francois Gedigier), who, boldly, as though playing at Massey Hall, never “lets scenes breathe.”   And screenwriter Jose Rivera does an estimable job of balancing faithfulness to the novel with natural colloquial speech. 

     Where the film falls short is in its male casting.  Except for Viggo Mortensen (as Old Bull Lee/William Burroughs), the actors reduce characters defined in the novel by their divinity and wildness to mere mortals inspired by an oddball.  One recalls, while watching a just-okay portrayal of Dean Moriarty/Neal Cassidy, that Kerouac’s first choice for the role was Marlon Brando.

     But ON THE ROAD’s somewhat flawed acting seems brilliant compared to the laughably inept performances (of melodramatic and clunky dialogue) in ZERO DARK THIRTY.  Obviously, I haven’t imbibed the same pro-Katherine Bigelow Kool-Aid as many others whose opinions I respect.  Sitting down to watch her film, I expected something at least well-written and directed, albeit with a pernicious pro-torture message and a hostile attitude toward due process of law.  But this crude propaganda piece is so bad I’d almost believe some of the tastemakers who embraced it were paid to do so.  One key dramatic moment made me laugh out loud:  A CIA bureaucrat berates his subordinates for being ineffective.  “What are you going to do about it?” the man roars.  Then he pauses, bangs on a table and yells, “Bring me someone to kill!”  For real!

     I’m violating an unspoken rule of this blog – be positive about films and filmmakers – not just because ZERO DARK THIRTY supports torture and illegal assassination (even Adolph Eichmann, after all, was given a 14 week open trial in Jerusalem), but because the movie is poorly made.  While decrying the racism of BIRTH OF A NATION one may, nonetheless, appreciate D.W. Griffith’s filmmaking genius.  Viewers revolted by the fascist ideology of TRIUMPH OF THE WILL might still recognize Leni Riefenstahl’s directorial skill.  But Kathryn Bigelow’s film, though well-edited, seems otherwise to have been made by simple-minded amateurs using trite episodic television tricks.  Even its musical score sounds like a porno track.

   

     Such tripe is, at best, D-level freshman film class stuff.  And we’re not in a freshman film class.  This is Oscar season!  So Mark Boal’s laughable, insipid screenplay is competing with the work of such masterful writers as Tony Kushner, David O. Russell and Quentin Tarantino, not to mention un-nominated scenarists such as Tom Stoppard and Woody Allen.  Does anyone really think that Boal’s hackwork belongs in the same category as the output of those scribes?  That it measures up to scripts by Lucy Alibar and Benh Zeitlin (BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD), Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola (MOONRISE KINGDOM) or Michael Haneke (AMOUR)?

     Brooks Barnes writes in The New York Times, “The brutal (torture) scenes (in ZERO DARK THIRTY) are presented with no obvious political tilt, creating a cinematic Rorschach test in which different viewers see what they want to see.”  This viewer sees that characters Bigelow paints as heroes acquire information by torturing their captives, in violation of U.S. and international law.  Those “heroes” use this information to assassinate their target without due process.  Thus ZERO DARK THIRTY has an obvious “political tilt” – toward a benign view of torture and contempt for well-established legal conventions.  It is, as they say, “somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun.”

     Meanwhile, Quentin Tarantino was unfairly overlooked in the Academy’s Best Director category, probably because of inane political objections to DJANGO UNCHAINED.  Spike Lee has stated, without seeing the film, that it “insults his ancestors.”  Yet it’s impossible to watch this amazing antebellum western and conclude that Tarantino finds slavery to have been anything but horrific.  Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, slave-owner Calvin Candie, is villainous.  Overseers, traders in human flesh and enabling house slaves are also shown to be reprehensible.  The movie’s heroes – a liberated African-American bondsman and his German benefactor – (legally) kill those who own and live off the forced labor of other human beings.  The freeman (the eponymous Django) rescues his wife from Candie-land and they ride off into the sunset to live happily ever after.

     Why, then, is Spike Lee so upset?  I believe his unwarranted and unseemly rage is directed at precisely what makes DJANGO UNCHAINED a remarkable motion picture:  The film tackles a big subject with a style uncontained by the conventions of made-for-television or mainstream Hollywood movies.  In his best work, Quentin Tarantino stretches the boundaries of genres that fascinate him.  Here, the autodidactic film scholar/auteur explodes the “spaghetti western.”  And from his opening frame, when the theme song from Sergio Corbucci’s 1966 DJANGO kicks in to underscore blood-red Caelian-type titles, viewers know they may never see westerns the same way.

     Unlike most  “oaters,” as they were once called, Tarantino’s takes place before the Civil War.  Civilization is being brought to the antebellum South, not to the frontier, as in most of the genre's films.  And its apostle isn’t an Eastern lawman or returning Civil War veteran, he’s an urbane European dentist.  His name:  Dr. King… Schultz.

      Ironically, in light of objections by Mr. Lee and others, DJANGO UNCHAINED may be the most non-racist western ever made, and the most overtly anti-racist, because it takes on the very institution of slavery and those who benefited from it.  John Ford’s highly esteemed THE SEARCHERS is also about bigotry.  But it’s a personal story.  Its central character is a former Confederate officer named Ethan Edwards (John Wayne), whose virulent hatred of Native Americans is finally melted, to an extent, by the love of his niece.  In other words, Ford views his protagonist as flawed and, finally, redeemed.  Tarantino’s heroes, on the other hand, oppose slavery and the inhuman ideology upon which it was built from the outset of his story.   

     What does link DJANGO UNCHAINED and THE SEARCHERS, then -- aside from the fact that Tarantino pays homage to his esteemed predecessor by composing a “doorway onto the world” shot straight out of the 1956 western -- is that both attack race prejudice in ways that make some viewers so uncomfortable they see the works themselves as racist.  And arguably, Ford’s classic does harbor unenlightened views of race even though Ethan Edwards’ prejudice is seen as a profound imperfection.   

     DJANGO UNCHAINED, though, is not an unenlightened film.  It is willfully misperceived as such simply because its characters use the “n” word, as the media call it, ad nauseum.  The pernicious house slave does it, as do plantation owners and overseers.  But the “good guy,” Dr. Schultz, never does.  And Django does so solely when tricking racists into thinking he’s “one of them.”  Only the most uncritical and insensitive viewer (or in the case of Spike Lee, non-viewer) could miss this.

     But Quentin Tarantino’s film ruffles feathers for another reason.  As only the most sophisticated motion pictures can, it mixes genres – western, spaghetti western and slave liberation drama.  While doing so, its writer/director states, implicitly but boldly, that one needn’t be African-American to explore African-American themes.  

     In similar fashion, forty-five years ago, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist William Styron ran afoul of black critics when he wrote The Confessions of Nat Turner.  His work was derided in a collection of essays called William Styron’s Confessions of Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond.  Some objected to the author’s depiction of the leader of an 1831 slave rebellion as moody and sexually disordered; most simply thought it was wrong for a white author to address the subject at all.  But there were dissenters from the pack.  Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin appreciated the novel for its literary merit, and historian Eugene D. Genovese defended Styron’s right to create a fictional version of the historical Turner.

     Obviously a glutton for punishment, Styron stuck his jaw out for Jewish critics to whack, twelve years later, when Sophie’s Choice was published.  His tale of a Catholic concentration camp survivor who falls in love with a paranoid schizophrenic Jewish American shocked those who’d convinced themselves that gentiles couldn’t write about the Holocaust and that all Nazi victims depicted in American literature had to be Jews. In a missive to his daughter Suzanna, which appears in the recently published Collected Letters of William Styron, the novelist writes:  “A foolish ass of a Yale professor named Harold Bloom told me that the word was out that Sophie was violently anti-Semitic and would be dealt with accordingly…  Can it really be that the furor over Nat Turner is going to be duplicated?”

     So it would appear that Quentin Tarantino is in lofty company.  Like William Styron, he has dared to tread where white men are suspect.  What’s more, he’s dared to make DJANGO UNCHAINED brilliantly and relentlessly entertaining.  That kind of accomplishment seems to anger jealous filmmakers even as it delights audiences.

                                                     ………………..

     As a film cutter, I must make an unrelated comment about Tarantino’s film.  It’s the director’s first outing without his longtime editor, Sally Menke, who passed away last year.  It can’t have been easy for him to make the picture without her.  But he can be proud of how well cut it is, as I think Sally would be on his behalf.

                                                 ……………..

     One final (random) remark:  Congratulations to this year’s Oscar nominees and to all my colleagues vying for A.C.E. Eddie Awards.

    

     

ON LOCATION WITH LIBERAL ARTS

     This time last year I was scrambling to get a rough cut of LIBERAL ARTS in shape for submission to The Sundance Film Festival.  Things turned out well.  The movie became an Official Sundance Selection and received standing ovations at every one of its Park City screenings.  It was acquired for distribution by IFC Films, which will bring it to theatres in New York and Los Angeles on September 14.

     One of the nice things about having time between the completion of a motion picture and its theatrical release – over 9 months in the case of LIBERAL ARTS – is that it provides an opportunity to reflect on one’s work.  Looking back at the production period, which began in June 2011, it’s clear that being on location with the cast and crew was extremely valuable to me as an editor.

     Of course, shooting on location was, in and of itself, essential to telling writer/director Josh Radnor’s tale.  The movie is about an admissions counselor at a large New York City university who returns to his alma mater, a small Midwestern college.  So filming in the Big Apple and at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio gave LIBERAL ARTS an authentic look and feel.

     But while it might seem obvious that a movie should be made where its characters live, a screenplay’s setting doesn’t always determine its shooting venue.  In recent film history, location selection is based as much on exchange rates and tax rebates as it is on narrative exigencies. Film crews flock to Vancouver, Toronto, Louisiana and Michigan for economic advantage rather than scripted geography.  THE LAST SHOT, a 2004 comedy starring Matthew Broderick and Alec Baldwin, captured this phenomenon well:  it’s about a filmmaker who’s convinced to shoot a southwestern desert story in Rhode Island because of the state’s tax incentives.

     So LIBERAL ARTS was wonderfully “old school.”  Like a John Ford western made in Monument Valley, a war epic shot in Southeast Asia or a Woody Allen movie set in Manhattan, Paris, Rome, Barcelona or London, it was made where its story takes place.  The advantages of doing so were numerous.

     First, Kenyon College looks just like what it is: a small Ohio institute of higher learning founded in the early 19^th century.  Perfect for a film that tales place at a small Ohio college founded in the early 19^th century!   In addition to providing the right mise en scene, the campus, no doubt, gave the cast a sense of place in a way that a studio back lot wouldn’t have.

     And as I said earlier, being on location was a boon to editing as well.  It always is, because the give and take between director and editor becomes so easy.  During principal photography on LIBERAL ARTS, Josh Radnor dropped by my editing suite several times a week to review dailies and cut material, and to give me notes.  Such communication facilitated delivery of a rough assembly that was much closer to his vision of the film than it might otherwise have been.

      There’s a sequence – one of my favorites – in which Josh’s character (Jesse) and Lizzie Olsen’s (Zibby) correspond via “snail mail” while listening to classical music she’s selected.  It’s a “getting to know you/let’s fall in love” montage of considerable length.

     When I’d edited the scene that precedes the montage, I had to cut in the first bit of score to kick things off.  The director had already given me recordings he wanted to use, which were loaded into my Avid editing system.  Because the montage begins with shots of bucolic landscapes, I chose the first movement of Beethoven’s 6^th, his “Pastoral Symphony.”  Josh loved it.

     Watching this sequence begin to take shape while LIBERAL ARTS was still being filmed, I believe, informed directorial choices made while shooting letter writing (days later) and New York street scenes (weeks later).  Also, seeing how important a role the classical music CD itself played in the sequence convinced Josh we needed an insert (close-up) of the disc going into Jesse’s deck.  During post-production, this was always referred to as “the greatest insert ever shot;” its perfect fit into the cut and cinematographer Seamus Tierney’s rock star lighting of the prop are, indeed, remarkable.

     Wild tracks -- audio recorded without picture – were also vital to construction of the letter writing montage.  Sometimes, in a pinch, editors assemble scenes using “temp” voice-over recordings of cutting room personnel, in order to make critical judgments about the timing of shots.  Having actors perform their character’s lines is decidedly more effective.   But with tight production schedules it’s sometime hard to fit such wild track shooting in.

     Because I was on location I was able to nag the director, first assistant director and line producer often enough to get what we needed… on the last night of principal photography.  Using a makeshift recording booth built by sound mixer Jim Morgan, Josh and Lizzie, essentially, acted out the eight-minute sequence as a radio play. Much of what was recorded that night remains in the picture.

     Along with recording “wild tracks,” shooting inserts and “pick-ups” is always important to editors during the production period.  And being on location, we become aware of the need for such additional material sooner than we would have if we were thousand miles away in Hollywood.  What’s more, working near the crew, the cutter can simply go to set (or lunch) with a laptop and show the director why new setups are necessary.  Several transition shots in LIBERAL ARTS – a café exterior, a chapel exterior and students chatting on campus, for instance -- were added to the production calendar as a result of such interaction.  Like the voice-over, they appear in the final cut.

     Advances in digital imaging technology enhanced the value of being on location by enabling me to view and edit what was shot the previous day first thing every morning.  Before motion pictures were photographed digitally, film dailies were processed in a lab (most likely in New York or Los Angeles), shipped back to location and then synchronized, coded and catalogued in the editing room.  What was shot Monday was cut-able on Thursday afternoon at the earliest. 

     Until recently, digital processing entailed a similar time lag.  But on LIBERAL ARTS our brilliant Digital Imaging Technician (DIT), Patrick Neri, ran what amounted to an on-set lab.  At the end of each day, he brought a dailies drive to the cutting room with Seamus Tierney’s color correction built in.  This material was transcoded on the Avid overnight and organized each morning by assistant editor Becca Berry while I was still on set.   The amazingly efficient "work flow" made me realize that not being on location would have delayed the editing process.

    What's more I would have missed daily trips to the set.  These visits were so valuable!   And not just because of the ease of in-person dialogue with Josh.  Watching him compose and stage shots, then go over dialogue and blocking with the actors gave me deeper insight into his intentions for each scene.  Being there as an observer as well as an occasional consultant helped me truly “get” the movie we were working on.

     Finally, there are certain intangible advantages to editing on location.  Producers have always benefited from moving film crews away from the demands of their everyday lives.  In a small town without family, friends and quotidian responsibilities, one is more likely to be focused on work more of the time.  This is especially true because filmmakers on location spend most of their time with fellow cast-and-crew members.

     As a result, deep friendships are formed.  And that, too, is good for the film.  I always fall in love with the cast of films I work on, developing something akin to real movie star crushes.  (I think most editors have the capacity to do this.)  Then it becomes second nature to be diligent about finding actors’ best work inside a hundred hours of dailies. How easy that was on LIBERAL ARTS with the affable Lizzie Olsen living two doors away!  With Richard Jenkins telling great, funny stories over dinner!  And with Josh Radnor being a kind, witty, generous Kenyon neighbor.

     This was my second film with him, and I must say that as a director, actor and friend, he’s easy to love.  To see Josh when fans of “How I Met Your Mother” approach is to see a real mensch; he knows that meeting him is the high point of their day and always behaves accordingly.  He’s ingenuous, curious, funny, smart and, again, generous.  On location, I mentioned Patti Smith and her memoir, Just Kids, showed up in a gift bag shortly thereafter. Also, to paraphrase Dean, a character in the movie, “we have the same favorite writer,” about whom we speak often.

    

     It was easy, too, to love the film’s production crew.  We all lived in the same housing complex and spent most evenings eating and drinking together.  Many of us, including actors and producers (Josh’s producer, a friend from childhood named Jesse Hara, is a genius at making sure his crew is happy) regularly sat around a fire at night, playing music and chatting.  (It was eventually dubbed The Ring of Fire.)  We hung out together on weekends – tube rafting, bike riding, even visiting Mansfield Prison where THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION (a company favorite) was shot.  So it became easy, while still focused on story and performance, to want the film to look and sound its best, too – for one another as well as for Josh.