filmmaker's diary

THE 2012 A.C.E. EDDIE AWARDS

2012-02-22T10:04:00.001-08:00

The A.C.E. Eddie Awards give film and television editors the opportunity to recognize their colleagues’ excellence, and to be acknowledged in return. For practitioners of “the invisible art” – a pursuit that viewers and, for that matter, most people who work in film production don’t really comprehend – such an evening is delightful, perhaps even essential.

Listening to presenters and recipients’ insights and anecdotes at this year’s ceremony, I was reminded of a concert I attended as a young teenager. The great Ravi Shankar played sitar, accompanied by tabla player, Allah Rakha. During their performance, the maestros occasionally shared a smile. When asked why, Pandit Ravi Shankar said they did so at moments when a more knowledgeable audience would have applauded.

Presenting the 2012 Golden Eddie for career achievement in directing to Alexander Payne, Reese Witherspoon recalled asking him what part of filmmaking he liked best. She thought it was a rhetorical question; surely his response would be, “working with actors.” So she was deflated when Mr. Payne said he liked editing above all.

A room full of editors smiled the Ravi Shankar smile; we’ve all heard the same thing from directors. The set is chaotic, the cutting room serene. During principal photography, momentous decisions must be made in front of a large crew while, during post-production, bold experiments can be conducted in private. When cast and crew complete a scene, they don’t return to it, whereas a director can re-visit each and every moment of a story ad nauseam in the edit bay. Problematic moments disappear. Great moments are unearthed or even manufactured.

Ms. Witherspoon described such an editorially fabricated motif in ELECTION. She was surprised, upon viewing the film for the first time, to see freeze frames of her goofiest, most awkward facial expressions peppered throughout. Together, Alexander Payne and editor Kevin Tent, A.C.E. had combed footage for the actress’s silliest looks, some lasting only a tiny fraction of a second. Then they froze these shots and lingered on them during dialogue scenes, thereby establishing the story’s comical tone and, at the same time, commenting on Ms. Witherspoon’s character.

During his acceptance speech, Mr. Payne spoke not just about creating humorous moments during post-production, but about Mr. Tent himself -- glowingly and with great warmth and wit. He made it clear that respect, trust and (yes) love, are cornerstones of his relationship with his editor. This public acknowledgement of the intimate connection between director and editor made us smile the Ravi Shankar smile again. In post-production, we’re together 50 hours or more per week for months on end, and we become as close as family.

Clint Eastwood expressed similar high regard and affection for his cutter, Joel Cox, A.C.E., when presenting the trophy for career achievement in feature film editing. “My theory,” Mr. Eastwood said, “is surround yourself with good people and let them make you look good.” He continued, “If it isn’t relaxing and fun to do, there’s no reason to be doing it at my stage.”

The esteemed actor/director also spoke nostalgically about working with Mr. Cox, years ago, on upright moviolas. Today, of course, they use a digital system. For Mr. Eastwood, the newer technology provides more creative freedom. His editor will suggest things, “and I’ll say, ‘Sure, try it.’ Now with Avid, it’s so much faster and you can put it together two or three different ways.”

Accepting the Eddie from his director, Mr. Cox expressed pride in editors who began their careers as apprentices and assistants in the Eastwood cutting rooms. His remarks brought to mind how important it is to learn from masters of the craft, as Mr. Cox himself did. The ready availability of editing software hasn’t diminished the need for traditional apprenticeship one iota. To be sure, one can figure out which keys to hit on one’s own. But truly understanding why to cut to a close-up, for instance, and at precisely which instant, can only come from watching and listening to accomplished directors and editors at work.

The hundreds of decisions made in an edit suite each day require precision and subtlety, a fact acknowledged by award presenters and recipients alike. In the world of film editing, one frame more or less – a twenty-fourth of a second – can be the difference between clarity and vagueness, between laughter and deafening silence, between rapt attention and boredom. And only those who have toiled in cutting rooms truly get this.

Awarding Kevin Tent the Best Edited Feature Film (Dramatic) trophy for his work with Mr. Payne on THE DESCENDANTS underscored the vital and primary importance of editing precision in bringing the best of an actor’s work to the screen. Their film is a dialogue-driven relationship drama, and that fact resulted in a huge Ravi Shankar smile. For editors know that an engaging performance in a given scene almost never comes from an uncut recording of a single good take. Great performances are carefully pieced together in the cutting room -- sometimes a word or two at a time -- from many different takes. This is what Mr. Tent’s award was about.

Of course, all the nominees in for Best Edited Feature Film (Dramatic) built performances the same way. HUGO, THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, MONEYBALL and WAR HORSE showcase great acting because they were edited with precision and subtlety, combining superlative moments from an array of takes to create magical, mesmerizing performances.

The same is true of nominees for Best Edited Feature Film (Comedy or Musical). MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, MY WEEK WITH MARYLIN, BRIDESMAIDS and YOUNG ADULT all deserve the acclaim they’ve gotten. In singling out the work of Anne-Sophie Bion and Michel Hazanavicius’s on THE ARTIST, A.C.E voters recognized not only the power of editing to bring out the best from actors, writers and directors, but the fact that this picture’s editors did so without dialogue and sound effects – tools on which we normally rely quite heavily.

Documentaries, which don’t use professional actors or scripted scenes, of course, present editing challenges unlike those that arise in feature films. Because a doc’s dramatic moments aren’t scripted, they must be created in the cutting room. The same is true of non-fiction story structure.

Choosing Lewis Erskine and Aljernon Tunsil’s work on FREEDOM RIDERS for the Eddie, then, hailed them as storytellers. Nominating David Tedeschi for LIVING IN THE MATERIAL WORLD, and Joe Bini and Maya Hawke for CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS, did the same. Hailing their work again made us smile a` la Ravi Shankar and Allah Rakha, because we know documentary editors to be writers, not “technicians,” as the general public often sees them.

Like non-fiction film, television makes unique demands on editors. True, tv shows require precision in editing and performance construction just as features do, but cutting for the small screen is done with much tighter schedules, taking weeks instead of months. Sometimes, in fact, a half hour show only has days between the end of shooting and its airdate.

That’s why, again smiling the Shankar smile, we applaud all the television editing winners and nominees, particularly Doug Ibold, A.C.E., recipient of the career achievement Eddie for television editing. His work on MIAMI VICE was groundbreaking across all audio-visual media. That, and his editing on such shows as MAGNUM, P.I., QUINCEY, M.E., LAW AND ORDER and LAW AND ORDER, S.V.U. have become part of the fabric of American pop culture’s history.

All the 2012 nominees and winners are to be congratulated! And thanks are in order as well: to A.C.E.’s peerless executive director, Jenni McCormick, who produced the awards dinner, and to all who worked behind the scenes to make the evening a huge success. Thanks, also, to the evening’s host, actor/comedian Patton Oswalt. Mr. Oswalt seemed truly amazed at the fast pace of the presentations. But it shouldn’t have come as a surprise; editors have no patience for scenes that go longer than they should.

SUNDANCE 2012

2012-01-20T19:26:00.000-08:00

January 20, 2012

Josh Radnor’s LIBERAL ARTS is the sixth film I’ve edited to be chosen as an Official Sundance Selection. But screening at the festival is not something about which one becomes jaded. This year’s trek to Park City is as exciting as my earliest sojourn to the event, first described to me in 1984 as “a thing Redford puts on where you ski all day and watch movies all night.”

LIBERAL ARTS will have its world premiere at the Eccles Theatre, Sundance’s largest and most prestigious hall. The venue is named after a Republican Mormon banker, George S. Eccles, and his wife, Dolores. George, with his brother Marriner, founded The First Security Corporation in 1928.

But the Eccles brothers were nothing like today’s higher profile Republican Mormons. George and Dolores were most proud of their philanthropy, particularly their funding of arts programs. Marriner, though a member of the GOP, was invited to Washington by FDR to help shape the New Deal.

The latter Mr. Eccles, you see, had written, in his 1931 work, Beckoning Frontiers, that: “As mass production requires mass consumption (there must be) a distribution of wealth… to provide men (sic) with buying power.” He argued that The Great Depression was caused by concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands. Only by increasing the general population’s purchasing power could economic recovery come about. Demand for products, not tax breaks for the obscenely wealthy, would create jobs.

How strange to sit and watch independent cinema in a theatre funded by a family that reminds us that being Republican (and Mormon) didn’t always mean advocating greed as a socio-economic panacea! Indeed, the fact that Marriner Eccles was a Federal Reserve Bank chairman and a participant in the Bretton Woods negotiations that led to creation of both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund – a conservative c.v., to be sure – suggests how far right the political spectrum itself has shifted. Today, Eccles would be considered ultra-liberal. A Republican Mormon socialist!

Perhaps in the near future Sundance will feature an independently produced documentary about the Eccles family. Seeing it in the theatre that bears their name would be just the kind of “meta” experience for which indie films often strive.

HUGO

2011-11-30T15:38:00.000-08:00

This is my first post in six months. I’ve been hard at work cutting Josh Radnor’s new movie, LIBERAL ARTS, and my intention was to write first about why it’s impossible for a feature film editor to engage in extracurricular activities such as blogging while working on a picture. But I’m inspired, instead, to sing the praises of Martin Scorcese’s HUGO.

Mr. Scorcese’s new film is a profoundly moving, impeccably executed love story. With a twist: the love object is cinema itself. Appreciation of the movie, indeed, may be enhanced if viewers are as passionate about motion pictures as the director. But HUGO is so specific and detailed that its theme becomes universal; people who truly love anything will recognize their own fervor for what stirs them, and be deeply affected by the work.

The film’s central characters, Hugo Cabret and Georges Melies, are enthralled by the magic of filmmaking in the same way that baseball fanatics, for example, are captivated by the sport. Thus when Hugo introduces his young friend, Isabel, to the pleasure of afternoon movie-going, the scene is so sensuous and joyful that it transcends literal content. To be sure, the director and the actors deftly convey the heightened state we associate with viewing big screen movies in the dark. But the scene might also evoke, depending on the viewer, memories of an early childhood trip to the ballpark, a first visit to the seashore or even a first rock concert. Cinephiles, sports fans, beach lovers, audiophiles -- indeed, all of us who are fortunate enough to remain awestruck by things -- will feel a strong connection to HUGO.

Martin Scorcese’s collaborators on the film, of course, contribute a great deal to this sense of magic and wonder. Howard Shore’s brilliant hour and forty-five minute score, for instance, is deeply emotional without ever being manipulative. The composer uses period instruments such as the ondes Martenot (an electronic keyboard invented in 1928) and the musette (a French accordion), as well as guitars and pianos from the 1920’s and ‘30’s. But such choices never feel self-conscious; rather they lend authenticity to the movie.

Mr. Shore is just one of many whose work on the picture seems Oscar worthy. Bob Richardson’s 3-D camera work and lighting are astonishing, as is Dante Ferretti’s impeccably detailed production design. Thelma Schoonemaker’s film editing is brilliant, as always. Sandy Powell’s period costume design is inspired, and Tom Fleishman’s innovative sound mix (which keeps background dialogue low and principal dialogue relatively hot in order to enhance the effect of 3-D) feels groundbreaking.

Mr. Scorcese, to be sure, deserves an Academy Award nomination for Best Director. The picture itself should also be nominated. And Sacha Baron Cohen has to be singled out for blending bits of Jacques Tati and Peter Sellers with his own acting genius to create HUGO’s memorable Station Master.

Such recognition, for one and all, would be a boon to the picture’s box office. What’s unfortunate is that it may need the help. Opening weekend turnout was not strong. And with a film as great as this, we have to ask why.

The answer is simple and I could see it coming from a mile away: HUGO, which is truly a love story, was promoted as a children’s movie. The strategy -- sell a film about a child to kids -- was based on the absurd notion that viewers only want to see stories about people like themselves. This idea seems to have taken hold in movie marketing in recent years. But here’s no evidence to support it. In fact, both common sense and actual data tell us that the opposite is true.

When my generation fell in love with American cinema in the 1970’s, we were not Sicilian mobsters, beat cops chasing transnational drug-dealers, or satanically possessed pre-adolescent girls. We weren’t sex-addicted Beverly Hills hairdressers, ‘30’s-era L.A. detectives, shark-obsessed marine biologists, or Bay Area policemen with a penchant for vigilante justice. Movie-going gave us respite from our quotidian concerns. And that respite is the very thing that draws us to fiction.

Which is why we also loved -- and continue to love -- Italian, Swedish, French, German, Japanese and Indian cinema. It’s why the great John Hughes, Amy Heckerling and Cameron Crowe “high school” films of the ‘80’s appealed as much to pre-teens and adults as they did to teenagers. It’s why television viewers kept a show about Ozark Mountain yokels in Beverly Hills running for 11 years, why tens of millions of people tuned in to the travails of a Minneapolis news team each week, and why the tale of a physician falsely accused of murder drew almost all TV watchers to its final episode.

HUGO is appealing for the same reason our favorite motion pictures and television programs become classics: they transport us from the routines of our daily lives. The romance of Paris in the thirties, with its beautiful train stations and cafes, the magic of the dawn of cinema, and the exciting life of a movie-loving boy who lives with a robot inside a clock -- that’s right, a movie-loving boy who lives with a robot inside a clock -- will attract adults, just as the story of Truffaut’s young Antoine Doinelle drew older viewers to THE FOUR HUNDRED BLOWS. Kids will love HUGO, too, and should see it. But it’s a romantic, artful film, rich in detail and profound in ways that make it a truly grown-up experience.

So the picture’s high quality will win out over its ill-conceived marketing campaign. People will see HUGO because of its great reviews, because of its stellar word-of-mouth and because of the award nominations it will garner. And perhaps studio executives will move past the folly of trying to sell mirror-gazing to the public when that’s the opposite of what most filmgoers want.

Waiting for Comfort

2011-06-30T07:23:00.000-07:00

June 30, 2011

A few weeks ago I had the kind of hellish day that seemed to call for a stiff drink. But I needed more. Something better than booze or comfort foods like mac and cheese or meat loaf. What the doctor ordered was a comfort movie.

We all have such films -- dvds we’ve watched dozens of times and will watch many more, because they cheer us up or so engage us that no matter how often we view them, they provide consolation. The content of my comfort movies is eclectic, and it’s not always lighthearted. To wit, The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, JFK, Chinatown and Dog Day Afternoon all have prominent places on my cinema of solace shelf. But so do Bull Durham, A Room with a View and Stop Making Sense.

I could have watched any of these. Yet I craved the special soothing that only a comfort comedy can provide. Christopher Guest’s Waiting for Guffman called out to me as it has many times before. In fact, if Guffman were a vinyl lp, I’d have “played the grooves off it” by now. Yet somehow I’d never viewed the “special features.” So that night, seeking an adult dose of comfort, I watched deleted scenes from the film, as well as its insightful commentary track by Eugene Levy and Mr. Guest, for the first time. And the bonus material proved to be quite healing indeed.

The film’s wit, warmth and intergalactic flights of imagination came across even as Levy and Guest chatted away. But listening to their dialogue about making the movie and watching the excised material also affirmed the power and beauty of film editing.

Everything a lover of cinema or budding filmmaker should know about the process is here. One just has to listen carefully. First, the director refers repeatedly to 58 hours of raw material he ultimately turned into an 82 minute picture. As he worked on Waiting for Guffman over a period of many many months, he and editor Andy Blumenthal created numerous iterations of the movie. In an early one, around 10 weeks into post production, Corky St. Clair (Guffman’s protagonist, played by the writer/director) had actually become a minor character. Producer Karen Murphy talked Guest into rethinking that choice. Fine tuning individual scenes, reworking the order of others and dropping some altogether -- lots of careful work -- resulted in a seemingly effortless and side-splitting yet deeply affecting comedy.

What is likely to feel counterintuitive to non-filmmakers is the fact that Guffman was vastly improved by the deletion of a dozen or so truly great scenes. Some were removed to enhance the flow of its story, others to make a given character or relationship less dark. How hard to believe but true it is that one often has to take out great material in order to make the movie as good as it can be!

The first delightful Guffman outtake is an alternate version of Libby Mae Brown (Parker Posey)’s audition for “Red, White and Blaine,” Corky’s amateur theatre piece celebrating Blaine, Missouri’s 150th anniversary. Posey delivers a two page monologue, speaking to a stuffed doll she holds while standing over her hospitalized brother. He’s had a nervous breakdown and is also (inexplicably) on life support. When Libby and the brother were younger, she tells her doll, he overpowered her and made her do things she “did not like and that made (her) sick.” The bit is brilliant. Brilliant! But so is “Teacher’s Pet,” the song and dance audition that remains in Guffman. And that scene is much more concise and lighthearted; it also establishes that Libby can, in fact, sing and dance.

Another fine moment which the director and editor cut from the final version shows how Ron (Fred Willard) and Sheila (Katherine O’Hara) feel when Corky quits the production. Such a scene seemed integral to the story when Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy wrote it. What’s more, Fred Willard and Katherine O’Hara perform the material brilliantly. Sheila is hung over to the point of catatonia. Ron, wiffle bat in hand, recalls two landmarks in sports history that inspire him to keep going with the show. The first is mediocre hitter Bill Mazeroski’s game-winning homerun for the Pittsburgh Pirates in frame seven of the 1960 World Series against the Yankees. The second is Joe Dimaggio’s batting successfully in 17 consecutive games immediately after his record breaking 56 game hitting streak was snapped.

Had I been editing Guffman, I confess, I might have urged Christopher Guest to leave this scene in the movie. The Pirates upset in the 1960 series (the Yanks outscored their opponents 55-27 over the course of 7 games) is, I think, my first childhood memory of baseball in all its dramatic glory. Willard and O’Hara give memorable performances, conveying perfectly how Ron and Sheila feel.

Yet as cut, going from the cast learning that Corky has quit to a shot of the group marching up to his apartment and begging him to return, the film’s final version doesn’t feel like it’s missing anything. Viewers know exactly how the characters feel: they want their director back.

A scene in which Corky is hospitalized after a nervous collapse was also excised from the final cut of Waiting for Guffman. His breakdown occurred after Blaine’s town council denied a request for $100,000 to finance his one night only community theatre production. While writing Guffman’s script, the need to show how its protagonist was affected by rejection seemed obvious to Guest and Levy. But a simple shot of Corky brooding in his bathtub -- picked up during 3 days of post-production shooting -- addressed this dramatic requirement elegantly and succinctly.

Again, there is much to be learned here. First, as Woody Allen has pointed out, an audience will never miss a scene of which it was unaware. It’s hard to imagine viewers wishing Guffman included a segment with Corky in a mental hospital without having watched that bit in a rough cut. So if the movie feels slow to the director and editor, and one shot conveys the character’s emotional state as well as pages of dialogue might have, there’s no reason not to enhance the pace by lifting the longer scene from the picture.

Movie buffs and budding filmmakers, by the way, should also take note of the fact that good films do indeed shoot additional material during post-production. Although Woody Allen is most notorious for extensive “reshoots,” picking up new material while editing has always been a mainstay of high quality filmmaking. Howard Hawks shot new scenes of Lauren Bacall during a protracted post-production period on The Big Sleep, for example, to enhance her performance and to capitalize on the the fact that To Have and Have Not made her a star while he was editing Sleep. Robert Flaherty even reshot on the classic documentary, Nanook of the North. (long story for another post.)

Of course, much of Waiting for Guffman’s commentary has nothing to do with editing. One of the joys of the play-by-play is Eugene Levy’s description of Dr Pearl’s performance of a particular joke as “Pearl doing Carson doing Gleason while delivering a Pat McCormick joke.” It’s a wonderful “inside” moment, revealing the passion and intensity with which a contemporary master of comedy has studied the work of great comics who came before him.

One more fascinating remark from Christopher Guest is that “in another context, ‘A Penny for Your Thoughts’ (a musical number he performs with Parker Posey) would be moving.” Doesn’t he know that it is moving? It is deeply so. To quote Woody Allen on filmmakers and viewers seeing the same work differently, “It’s amazing how subjective those things are.” My very strong feeling is that “A Penny for Your Thoughts” should have earned an Oscar nomination for Guest and his co-writer Michael McKean.

The idea of subjectivity is a good place to conclude this piece, because what one finds comforting is itself quite subjective. Discussing this topic with crew members in Ohio last week (I'm editing here), The Shawshank Redemption was named by many as a comfort movie. So when we discovered that Mansfield Prison, where that film was shot, was a short drive away, we took a field trip to the facility. Disconnected from the motion picture, conditions were as far as one could imagine from comfort But movies are magical. Watching Shawshank, one is far more deeply affected by the comradery and the triumph of the “good guys” than by the brutality of penitentiary life.

HAPPY 70th BIRTHDAY, BOB DYLAN

2011-05-24T19:51:00.000-07:00

May 24, 2011

A busker in Central Park named Peter Ferarra used to introduce “Like A Rolling Stone” by saying, “This should be our national anthem.” If Peter was right, and I think he was, then May 24th, Bob Dylan’s birthday, should be a national holiday. He is, after all, a national treasure.

It’s not just that Dylan is one of the greatest songwriters of the last century and an astonishing rock performer, he’s a true Renaissance Man. Accepted even in adademic circles as a genuine poet (“Boots of Spanish Leather” appears in The Norton Anthology of Poetry), Dylan is also a painter, a novelist (Tarantula), a memoirist (Chronicles, Volume One), a peerless radio host, a delightful actor and a film composer and director.

Quite a few Bob Dylan songs show him to be a film buff as well. In “Desolation Row” he pays homage to Bette Davis, in “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,” he mentions a “a movie called Gunga Din,” and it’s said that “The Might Quinn” is about Anthony Quinn in The Savage Innocents.

There’s also a scene in the first film Dylan directed, Eat the Document (1972), in which he reels off movie star names like Tyrone Power, Ronald Coleman and J. Carroll Naish. Document is a cinema verite feature photographed by D.A. Pennebaker (director of Dont Look Back, which itself is a record of Dylan’s1965 tour of England). Dylan’s piece captures more surreal aspects of touring than Pennebaker’s. Its “pet groomer” scene, in which the director/star turns dozens of words into abstract found objects and quickly reassembles them into a surreal word collage, is simply astonishing.

In both Eat the Document and Dont Look Back, the folk rock icon seems to be acting, creating a character called Bob Dylan. Viewed in the context of film history, his performances belie the commonly accepted notion that portable 16mm. cameras were so unobtrusive that they were unperceived by documentary subjects. On the contrary, Dylan seems hyper-aware that he was being filmed. (Today -- with literally pocket-sized cameras like the Canon 7D -- such a view of 1960’s verite films, made with noisy 30 pound rigs, seems almost nonsensical.)

Even though Bob Dylan documentaries were shown in commercial movie houses when they were released, they are decidedly not “Hollywood” pictures. And Dylan’s other directing project, Renaldo and Clara (1978), is equally “art house;” it mixes concert footage and a dreamlike narrative, both performed by Dylan in white face make-up.

Of course, Dylan never intended his films to be “mainstream.” His neighbors, when he lived at the Chelsea hotel in the 1960’s, included such underground experimental cinema luminaries as Taylor Meade (Lonesome Cowboys) and Jack Smith (Flaming Creatures). If Dylan-directed movies have been more widely seen than those of visionary avant garde filmmakers, it’s simply because he’s a superstar.

But Dylan has, of course, toiled in the trenches of Hollywood. “Rainy Day Women” is used to great advantage in Forest Gump (1994). And “Things Have Changed,” written for Curtis Hanson’s “Wonder Boys,” won an Academy Award for Best Original Song (2000).

Dylan’s most ambitious Hollywood venture, though, was his stint as both actor in and composer of the score for Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973). His highly stylized portrayal of a character named Alias is -- at least for his fans -- one of the best things about the movie. His Tex-Mex tinged score is extremely moving and the song “Knocking on Heaven’s Door,” which he wrote for the film, is nothing less than classic.

Indeed, Bob Dylan’s singing and songwriting do come to mind first when thinking about his contributions to film. In addition to all of the above, for example, songs are the centerpiece of Martin Scorcese’s PBS special “No Direction Home” (2005). In fact, Scorcese seems to build the entire first half of the show around a performance of “Like a Rolling Stone.”

Which brings us full circle. I may be going out on a limb here, but I believe that “Like a Rolling Stone” is important for filmmakers, because the song is rife with editing lessons. Its unforgettable four verses and choruss are, according to Dylan, cut down from the 50 (!) he originally wrote. The lesson: cut ruthlessly.

On the other hand, the song’s 6 minute duration is an object lesson in not cutting, and in not compromising. When Columbia released it as a single in 1965, radio stations wouldn’t play any record longer than 3 minutes. A year earlier, AM disc jockeys had chopped The Rolling Stones’ 3 verse hit, “Satisfaction,” by a full third to make it fit the format. And two years later, they deleted 4 minutes of virtuoso playing on the Doors’ “Light My Fire” for the same reason. But in 1965 Bob Dylan and Columbia Records stood their ground. The artist wanted a record out there that he’d listen to, and that was unlike any he’d ever heard; only with the equivalent of “final cut” could he have gotten that.

So today, we celebrate a milestone for an uncompromising artist from whom we’ve all learned and by whom we’ve all been entertained and uplifted. Happy 70th Birthday, Bob Dylan!

FORTUNE FAVORS THE BOLD: A CONVERSATION WITH OLIVER STONE, Part II

2011-04-28T15:58:00.000-07:00

APRIL 28, 2011

Reponse to Part I of this interview has been overwhelmingly favorable. Thank you, one and all.

Before continuing, I want to remind readers that the picture we’re discussing is Alexander Revisited: The Final Version," not the "director's cut." The iteration known as "director’s cut” was made in 2004, at the time of the Alexander’s theatrical release. Only after years of deep reflection and hard work in his editing room did Oliver Stone release the extremely moving Final Version, exclusively on dvd, in 2007. It is now available on iTunes and "on demand." Make sure you see the right one.

Prior to the end of this post's first part, Alexander’s director spoke about the great pre-1960’s “road show” movies, which were exhibited with intermissions. Such breaks, he pointed out, enabled viewers to digest what they’d seen in the first two hours and, thereby, have a heightened experience of the end of the film. Mr. Stone remarked that this was before Hollywood studios were gripped by “incessant screaming about grosses and running time.”. He continued:

Because of the flexibility of the dvd format, I could add an intermission. No one at the studio could object to the length of a film viewers would see in their own homes. And you need that breather in order to absorb a complex narrative with so many characters. In the first part of the movie, Alexander gets all the way to the Himalayas, to the Hindu Kush, and he sees that Aristotle’s map is wrong; these mountains are not “the end of the world.” His response is, “We must get to the end.” He didn’t know where or what that was, he just knew he had to get there. This was Alexander’s nature. He was always going further out. But the end he sought was really inside -- in himself. Anyway, he gets to the Hindu Kush, and that’s the moment to pause and walk out. You can walk out for a week, for an hour, or for just 20 minutes, which is what I suggest. But you can definitely view it a day or a week later.

Yes, taking a break there feels very organic.

If I’d had the guts, which I didn’t -- this is all in hindsight -- I would have gone to Warner Bros. and said, “I want to make a two part movie, like Tarantino did with Kill Bill. Just trust it.” But I didn’t. That would have been the gutsy thing to do. 2 hours for the first part, an hour and 34 minutes for the second part. Or put them in separate theatres at the same time, since they didn’t want to do road shows anymore.

I should have done it with JFK, but I wouldn’t have won that battle either. The intermission would have been right after the scene with Donald Sutherland and Kevin Costner in Washington, D.C., which is chock full of byzantine, new information, all of it coming at you very fast. There’s a natural break there.

There is. I rewatch JFK a lot and often stop there for a breather.

The film was released that way in Holland and a few other countries, but not in the U.S. Yet it makes sense. We should have the road show back. That’s why I actually put an “intermission” card on the dvd.

Which is great. You even have music accompanying the card.

It’s a protest against the studio system.

And an entertaining one... Now, since you brought up JFK, I want to ask about something that links it with Alexander, and with Nixon and Natural Born Killers -- namely, horse symbolism. These animals seem to have a deep meaning for you. In JFK, there’s a racetrack scene with Jack Lemon and thundering horses. In Nixon, there’s another powerful, violent and frightening scene at the track. And in Alexander...

There’s the power of Bucephalus (Alexander’s steed).

Yes. Do equines have a specific and consistent symbolic content for you?

I can’t say that they do in that way. Subconciously, of course, they do mean something to me. There’s certainly the aspect of “the beast” in the power of horses. Nixon, because he’s scared, views the beast as something inside himself and something inside the state, inside the country. The same thing is true for Jack Lemon’s character. He’s terrified when he’s talking to Costner. The pounding of the horses hooves reflects that. It’s a sinister thing. There’s tremendous, fearsome power in the horse.

In Nixon, at the end of the scene in which the he chats with student demonstrators, Anthony Hopkins refers to the system as "a beast" -- one over which he has no control. It’s a shocking moment. You realize Nixon’s not running the system, it’s controlling him... and he knows it.

Whereas Alexander seems to conquer the beast. His fear of Bucephalus at the beginning of the story was very important. When he gets on the wild, bucking horse as a young boy, he wins his father’s approval for the first time. And it’s a wonderful scene, based on history. He could see that the animal’s wild behavior came from fear of its own shadow. So he rode it toward the sun, preventing it from seeing its shadow, and calmed it down. I love that scene. Alexander rises above the Jack Lemon character and above Nixon in that moment.

Through astute observation...

And by overcoming his fear. The whole movie is about the conquest of fear. Alexander believed that if you could conquer fear, you could conquer death. So he did subdue his own terror. I think he was one of the most courageous men who ever lived, for that reason.

In the movie, Bucephalus is killed at the end, during the battle of Multan -- in a scene where the horse rises and, for a breathtaking moment, holds his own against an elephant. In reality, Bucephalus was killed earlier in Alexander’s life. But the film takes some artistic license. It seemed poetic to show that the grievous wound from which Alexander never recovered was inflicted by an arrow that hit and passed through his steed. This beautiful animal, which connects him to his father and to overcoming fear as a child, dies, of course. Only then is Alexander, finally, ready to go home. His troops are happy to return and get rich. But Alexander himself is a dead man at this point. He’s ready to go back to Babylon; his death is foretold.

The shot of Bucephalus and the elephant facing each other is one of the most stunning in the movie, with the horse relentlessly moving forward and rising against a towering, gargantuan beast. I get chills thinking about it.

That shot was amazing. And it wasn’t digital. It was real.

Whoa!

The horse was astonishing. So was the elephant. It was as though we willed the moment, with both animals rising on their hind legs. The horse was a Spanish breed, which we found in the Netherlands. We brought four of them to Thailand for that shot. And Colin was actually riding the horse. Amazing!

At this point, unfortunately, the interview had to break off. Oliver Stone had graciously given me more time than had been scheduled, and people with whom he had to meet were waiting. During our dialogue, it was clear that his willingness to share carefully honed, fascinating ideas as well as his precious time reflected a great generosity of spirit -- one that infuses his work. Mr. Stone clearly loves his actors, his crew members and the very process of filmmaking. His unstinting nature and his passion have made Alexander Revisited: The Final Version a stunning, rich and deeply moving film.

FORTUNE FAVORS THE BOLD: A CONVERSATION WITH OLIVER STONE, Part I

2011-04-25T13:30:00.000-07:00

April 25, 2011

On Friday, April 8, I had the privilege of discussing Alexander Revisted: The Final Cut with director Oliver Stone. This ultimate version of the film, which played on the big screen for the first time last month at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York, is now available on iTunes. A Los Angeles big screen event, I’m told, is in the works.

Mr. Stone undertook a major overhaul of Alexander more than two years after its 2004 theatrical release. He restructured the film, made it longer (by more than 40 minutes) and added an intermission. The result is an epic motion picture with much more clarity and resonance than either the theatrical release or the original “director’s cut.”

By editing strictly for home entertainment media, Mr. Stone avoided the costs and constraints that come with wide studio distribution. Not only was he able to make Alexander as long as it needed to be -- 3 hours and 34 minutes plus a break between acts -- he could restore explicitly sexual material that would otherwise have resulted in an NC-17 rating.

Mr. Stone explained: “The extra scenes and the intermission were added to make the film more clear to the public. It was always difficult to understand.”

But the final version of Alexander isn’t just easier to grasp; it packs a more powerful emotional punch than the first two cuts. I was moved to tears several times while watching it. So the first question I asked Oliver Stone was, “Do you see a relationship between narrative clarity and emotional impact?” His response:

Of course. Very much so. The older films I studied as a young man surely gave me that insight. By cutting pieces of film together, you trigger emotions in viewers. As you know, actors sometimes rise to the occasion, in part, because you make them look good with the cutting you do. Their emotion is manufactured; you create it on the stage -- with lighting, with the script, with their craft... But it’s a simile of what happened in life, just a version of it. We see it, respond to it and go back to our routines. Yet when a great story is told with clarity and focus, it can become a model for your life. The other night, for example, I was looking at what you could call a classic, The Best Years of Our Lives -- a very well-made film, very well-edited by (director) William Wyler and his editor (Daniel Mandell). (The film won 7 Academy Awards in 1947, including Best Picture and Best Film Editing.) It manipulates some very strong emotions, and it works as a film. It always has. You mentioned crying. You cry when you see it the first time. As you get older -- 20 or 30 years go by -- you cry about other things in the film. It’s all manipulated.

At this point in reading the interview transcript, my inner Kevin Costner/Jim Garrison admonishes, “Ask the question, ask the question!” That being, “Are you considering an adaptation of this classic about three World War II veterans and their painful return to civilian life?” But I merely commented, “Today, studio executives would cosider The Best Years of Our Lives’ 3 hour running time excessive and would probably pressure Wyler to trim the movie." Oliver Stone continued:

Dana Andrews’ character gets screwed over by his shallow wife. Does he “get the girl” who will love him in the end? You might not even remember, and it’s not important. Because the movie’s not about that. It’s about the return of the veteran and the heartbreak of not being accepted... and it’s about not understanding the new life; to which they’ve returned that's the keynote of the movie.

Alexander’s life, to me is one of the great stories. I’m very touched that you were moved to tears by it because that’s exactly the emotional effect I wanted. When I saw the movie at the Museum of the Modern Image (in Astoria, Queens) last month, with an audience of 300 people -- it’s the first time I’ve watched the final version on a large screen with great sound -- we could see the agony, the difficulty, the sheer tenacity in his life. Alexander is one of the few movies today that, because of its length, can fully explore the journey of a man’s life. And, of course, even there, I left out many events. There were 15 to 20 more battles... just an enormous amount of things that had to be cut. Probably the greatest military defeat he suffered was coming back from India through the Gedrosian desert, and we dispensed with this in 7 or 8 shots The idea being, as Ptolemy (Anthony Hopkins) says, he should have died in India. And when I watched the movie, even in its reconstructed form, I thought, “What a great exit point!” You could wrap it up there and have1 movie instead of 2. Because he achieved his greatest goals in India and, in a sense, he did die there -- at the battle of Multan, where he sacrificed himself for his men, sustaining greivous wounds.

But we had the issue of going on. And that ,to me, is where the movie really has to work from the beginning. Because you have to care about the man and his fate. Emotional attachment has to be built up througthout the movie. Alexander’s journey was one of the most original and amazing ever made by a human being -- he went to unexplored lands with a fucking mobile empire! Given my limited budget, I could only hint at the enormity of it Yet I think we were successful.

But we didn’t succeed with the original release of Alexander. Frankly, that version was badly cut by me, badly structured. I had time limitations in editing because Warners wanted the movie for November 2004 and we didn’t finish shooting until early that year. So it was a rush to get it together and to make it under 3 hours. And I was limited in what I could say about Alexander’s sexuality because of rating constraints.

When did you realize these limitations resulted in a cut that was less clear and, therefore, less emotional than you wanted it to be?

That took time. Editing, as you know, can be very self-deluding. You work your ass off and, sometimes, the more you work, the less you see. You become blinded by the fatigue, the hours and the pressure. We were rushing just to make the release date.

I had spent a long time on the script, much of it doing research, because I loved Alexander. And you fall in love with so much of the detail. The research guides you on questions of what to leave out of the story and what to keep in. What ended up in this final version is pretty much what we decided to shoot back then. But when we had to whittle it down to 3 hours, we seemed to have too much movie... too much story. That’s when I came up with the disastrous idea -- not in the script, which opened with the Battle of Gaugamela -- the disastrous idea of cutting from a truncated version of Ptolemy’s description of Alexander as Promethean to Alexander’s birth in Macedonia. I was so in love with Alexander I thought the audience would just go with watching this kid grow up... that they would go with his lifestyle. I was so “into” the story I forgot that viewers weren’t knowledgable about the mores of this pre-Christian era -- about the general acceptance of homosexuality or the kind of mother/son relationship in the movie . Not to mention boys wrestling! I was just a lover of history making a movie about what he loved, trusting that I could tell the story in a chronologically narrative form. But my script started with the battle.

So in the final version of Alexander, you restored what was in the script?

I not only restored the script, I went further. By the time I began to work on this cut, I had clarified, for myself, the idea of the story as a twofold journey. There’s the “outer” part, where he goes to the edge of the world as it was known then -- what Aristotle called “the end of the world.” And there was, at the same time, Alexander’s “inner journey.” The idea was to pace it so the journeys were parallel. He’d go out, then go into his source -- his origin -- which was his mother/father. And mother/father would be explicated. Was Alexander the son of a god, as Olympias told him, or was he his father’s son? Was there a harmony available to him? Could he unite his (inner) father and mother?

The script evolved with that in mind. But I don’t know if it was all there in that form. When to go back and forth in time is crucial to the movie. For instance, when do you go to the revelation that Alexander’s mother may have paticipated in his father’s murder? It's a big issue. We do it very late in this version.

Maybe that’s why this section of the film is so moving now. Right before Philip is murdered, he turns and tells his son he wants the people to like him. It’s quite poignant. Seconds later, you see Olympias watching with a subtle look of approval, as Philip is killed. So it does seem she was complicit.

The idea is she had to be... well, maybe not complicit, but she was exalted and she benefited from the assassination, and so did Alexander. And because of his mother’s behavior and attitude, he had to live with that stain on his honor; he didn’t want to benefit from his father’s death.

You’ve said that the classical, Oedipal mother/son relationship was difficult for Alexander’s early audiences. Let’s discuss the other tricky subject you mentioned: homosexuality. You’re no stranger to exploring homosexuality and political power...

(Laughs.) They’re tied.

You make that point in Nixon, in the scenes with Tolson and J. Edgar Hoover, and in JFK, which depicts some of the conspirators as part of a 1960’s “homosexual underworld.”

It’s just the way life is. Alexander definitely had “a thing” with Bagoas (a eunuch, played by Francisco Bosch). We know this from history because of what he willed to Bagoas. We’re less sure of what Alexander’s relationship was with Hephaestion (Jared Leto), but we know they were close. “Soul mates,” I call them. You never see them together in bed, whereas you see Alexander in bed with Bagoas and with several women. I would say Alexander was tri-sexual. Bagoas was transformed into another gender altogether; a third gender -- a man/woman -- which was done in those days to make great lovers. Their relationship makes me think of Alexander as being close to the “god state.” Because he was willing to travel to where Prometheus went and, at the same time, he treated Bagoas well. In Mary Renault’s fictionalized account, The Persian Boy, you see that relationship.

But the Bagoas sub-plot was completely bowdlerized in the original version. When I showed a cut of the film with those scenes to Warners executives they were aghast. They couldn’t stand that part of the movie. So I wound up showing Bagoas only minimally in the 2004 release, which undercut the whole concept of Alexander’s love for mankind.

The relationship is a powerful part of Alexander Revisited. Bagoas and Alexander’s kissing scene -- passionately and unselfconsciously played by both actors -- was stirring...

The kissing scene was great. So was the scene at the end -- which really moved me -- where Bagoas tends to his dying lover, propping him up, holding his hand. Alexander says, “You have given me all, Bagoas.” Bagoas responds that Alexander has given him his happiest times. The great warrior reflects on how fleeting those moments have been and Bagoas says, “Still, you have given me much happiness, Alexander.” I’m a sucker for this stuff because I love the old “road show” movies. I love Hephaestion’s death and Alexander’s, too. And I hacked away at both of them in the original version beccause I thought I was overdoing them -- because of the running time element. But you have to allow these kinds of scenes to unfold and to breath... to oxygenate themselves.

In the final version, Hephaestion’s death is cut differently. It’s an interesting editing exercise. In the theatrical release, I cut to Alexander at the wrong time, and I showed Hephaestion in the background dying too overtly. Also, the music was too sentimental. Each change was subtle, but all together, they made a huge difference. Audiences watching the earlier cut would snicker, but there was no snickering the other night (at the Museum of the Moving Image).

I also went full out with Alexander’s death in this version, restoring everything that had been in the earliest assemblies. The death was elaborated. In reality, it took 9 days, so I wanted to give a sense of a man lingering on the edge. I did everything I wanted to do with Alexander’s death, which, to me, was great.

Another thing I feel good about was that I let loose with Ptolemy in the final version. Critics had slammed the theatrical release for using Ptolemy as a narrator, saying this was an old-fashioned technique -- stodgy and boring. But Anthony Hopkins’ performance, for me, was absolutely stunning. Only by allowing him to speak what was written could I finally make that come across. By cutting the words, or trying to find ways to make it less grandiose, I inadvertantly created the impression that I was ashamed of or embarassed by this tour de force. So in this new version I used all of what was written.

With complete success. The new version of the epilogue, in which Ptolemy eulogizes Alexander, is the third instance, for me, of being moved to tears while watching the film.

I love that, too.

In the final version, you feel a genuine personal connection between Ptolemy and Alexander. And there’s a sense of deep regret, on Ptolemy’s part, that readers of historical accounts will never really know Alexander.

Yes. The scene is about how history gets transmitted. And about Ptolemy’s own role in things. He implicates himself, saying, “I was partly responsible for the murder. I consented by silence.” He was Alexander’s chief body guard, you know, and they did divide the kingdom... they did get rich. So there was a lot of motive. It was like the JFK killing; at the end of the day, you have to ask, “Cui bono?” We know who bono’d here. (Laughs)

At the same time, Ptolemy does put the lie to it. He recounts this lengthy, complex and glorious history to a scribe and then says, “Oh, throw all that away, Cadmus. Write that he died of a fever, in a weakened condition.” And on top of that, as we point out in a title card at the end of the film, Ptolemy’s library -- containing his memoirs of Alexander -- were destroyed in a fire. So we don’t really know what he wrote.

The scene with the scribe resonates for editors. It’s always a bit of a shock -- even when it improves the narrative as a whole -- to delete an entire scene, as the scribe is more or less told to do.

Also, an editing student can see the huge difference in the Ptolemy scene because of dozens of small changes made after the first 2 versions. And, of course, that’s true for the whole film. Obviously, the theatrical release bothered me for years. I feel like an ancient Greek talking about it. It wasn’t what I set out to achieve, what I paid so dearly for. And on top of it, to be ridiculed and mocked, or have Alexander ignored in biographies... it was a stain on me. So I had to go back in there and do it the way I thought was right. And I could do it on dvd in a way that was impossible on film because of MPAA restrictions and all that. It was gonna be an unrated, full-length road epic in the best tradition of DeMille. Which is to say shameless.

It’s been decades since the studios released 31/2 hour motion pictures with intermissions. Did you approach Warners’ with the idea of an act break while editing the theatrical version?

They wouldn’t have done it.

And yet you rightly point out that Alexander is the kind of film that needs an intermission, because of the complexity of its story and its large number of characters. You need a pause, at an appropriate midway point, to digest what you’ve seen. It’s a delightful way to watch Alexander, the way you watched the road shows you loved as a kid.

They did allow that with the old movies. There wasn’t the incessant screaming about grosses and (how they’d be adversely affected by added) running time. I grew up in New York, and we had beautiful elaborate movie palaces, and many, many shows with intermissions, up until the early sixties. With a well-made movie, you really do need that second part.

Oliver Stone and I continued to talk about the importance of Alexander’s intermission, about the dvd format per se, about thematic elements that connect many of the director’s films, and more. But since this post is already twice as long as most on Filmmaker’s Diary, we’ll pause here to digest the above. Be back in a day or so with more of the insights Oliver Stone so graciouosly shared about his work we fimmaker's diary!

INTERMISSION

SIDNEY LUMET, REST IN PEACE

2011-04-14T22:14:00.000-07:00

April 14, 2011

Sidney Lumet, one of the truly great directors, died on April 9th. His passing caught me off guard. A colorist at Deluxe Labs in New York told me that while finishing Before the Devil Knows Your Dead, Mr. Lumet (who I never heard referred to as anything but Sidney) familiarized himself with digital internegative color correction in less than a day. He directed Devil, a very hip "'perfect murder' gone wrong" story, when he was 82 years old! It just seemed like he would go on forever.

Everyone currently making movies has learned much from his work. Whenever I start a new editing assignment, I watch Dog Day Afternoon and marvel at how cinematic this essentially one-set movie is. Of course, I'm always dazzled by Dede Allen’s cutting. But everything about the picture is amazing -- Frank Pierson’s script, Mr. Lumet’s staging, the sense of heat he conveys... and the performances! Pacino, Cazale, Sarandon, Broderick, Durning, even the bank tellers!! Wow!!!

Then there’s Network -- with Paddy Chayevsky’s brilliant screenplay, Allen Heim’s pitch-perfect editing, the inspiring acting... you name it. And it doesn’t end there, of course. The list of Mr. Lumet’s towering achievements in film direction seems endless: 12 Angry Men, The Verdict, The Pawnbroker, Murder On the Orient Express, Fail Safe, Long Day’s Journey into Night, and on and on.

In addition to being a consumate filmmaker (as if that weren’t enough) Sidney Lumet was a great teacher. His dvd commentaries -- on which he shares thoughts about lens choices, color schemes, rehearsal strategies and countless other aspects of filmcraft -- are graduate level cinema studies classes. And his book, Making Movies, is a must for anyone who’s serious about the art form of which Mr. Lumet was a master.

On a personal note, I can’t think about the late director without recalling a “golden age” of filmmaking in New York’s Brill Building in the 1980’s. At that time, while I edited pictures there for Paul Schrader and Joel and Ethan Coen, Mr. Lumet was a tenant alongside Martin Scorcese, Francis Coppola, Jonathan Demme, Elaine May, Warren Beatty and a “who’s who” of editors, sound designers and re-recording mixers. Occasionally I’d run into him at a third floor coffee station or waiting for an elevator, and he always had a kind word and a ready smile. It seemed like he not only loved making movies, he loved everyone who shared his passion.

Deepest condolences, of course, to Sidney Lumet’s friends and family. He will be missed.

A FEW SHORT ENTRIES

2011-04-04T21:44:00.000-07:00

April 4, 2011

I only have time for a few short entries, as I busily prepare for two exciting projects. The first of these is a Filmmaker’s Diary interview with groundrbreaking auteur Oliver Stone, to be conducted this coming Friday. Mr. Stone is, in my opinion, one of the greatest living directors.

The second project is a music video I’ll direct for the incredible Amanda Jo Williams this coming Saturday and Sunday. Ms. Williams was named “one of the Top 10 bands to watch in 2011” by the L.A. Weekly. Deservedly so.

Getting ready for the Oliver Stone interview has already begun to entail extensive editing, because there are countless subjects into which I’d love to delve with Mr. Stone. But I know our dialogue will be more effective with a sharp focus. While his cutting edge work on films such as JFK, Nixon and The Doors has inspired me and continues to give me insight into my own craft, he and I will probably discuss one motion picture: Alexander Revisited. As an editor, I’m fascinated by the fact that he re-cut the film years after its theatrical release, restructuring and lengthening it in a fashion that, as he says, “will make those who liked the original like it more and those who hated it hate it more.”

Preparation for directing a music video has been a huge learning experience. It’s not that I’ve ever underestimated how much work goes into “helming,” as the Hollywood trade papers call it. I’ve watched Truffaut’s Day for Night (repeatedly), read books on the subject and edited films for many talented practitioners of the craft. But bearing ultimate responsibility for every pixil of the finished product is quite different from merely knowing a director does so.

So... exciting stuff going on!

I just want to mention one more (unrelated) thing before slipping further into preparation mode and not posting another piece until the interview appears. Angelinos transplanted from the east coast often complain (justifiably) about how much more live theatre there is in New York. But there are good plays here -- just not as many. I highly recommend The Actors’ Gang’s Tartuffe, currently running at their theatre in Culver City. The company’s commedia dell’arte approach is perfectly suited to the Moliere comedy. Jon Kellam’s direction and the whole cast are excellent.

ELIZABETH TAYLOR, REST IN PEACE

2011-03-23T22:10:00.000-07:00

March 23, 2011

I can’t shake the idea that Elizabeth Taylor has majestically (if drunkenly) swept past St. Peter and, while gazing upon heaven, made her pronouncement: “What a dump!” Those words -- her character Martha’s first in Mike Nichols’ production of Edward Albee's Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf -- were originally spoken on screen by Bette Davis in King Vidor’s Beyond the Forest. It's a mark of Ms.Taylor’s greatness that her reading has all but eclipsed Ms. Davis’s.

Elizabeth Taylor combined movie star beauty with amazing depth as a character actor. So, while she was as much of a Hollywood “sex symbol” as Marylin Monroe or Jayne Mansfield, she tackled rich, complex roles those icons would never have attempted. Her Maggie in Richard Brooks’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Kate in Franco Zefferelli’s Taming of the Shrew and Catherine in Joseph L. Manciewicz’ Suddenly Last Summer were mulitidimensional characters who spoke in poetry penned by the likes of Tennessee Williams and William Shakespeare.

What’s more, Ms. Taylor held her own among truly heavyweight actors. In Manciewicz’ picture, she stood out in a cast that included Katherine Hepburn, Montgomery Clift and Mercedes McCambridge. Her portrayal of “Maggie the Cat” was as moving as performances by cast-mates Paul Newman, Burl Ives and Dame Judith Anderson. And, of course, her work with Richard Burton in Taming of the Shrew and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf was astonishing.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Elizabeth Taylor's career, though, was its longevity. From Lassie Come Home, National Velvet and Life With Father in the 1940’s; Father of the Bride, Giant, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Suddenly Last Summer in the ‘50’s; Butterfield 8, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Taming of the Shrew in the ‘60s -- and right on through voice work on The Simpsons in 1989, Ms. Taylor’s work was known and embraced by generation after generation.

In 1981, I got to see her on stage in a Broadway production of Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes. Live theatre is always the test of whether or not an actor is truly skilled; there are no re-takes, no editing, no tricks. Indeed, Elizabeth Taylor truly “had the stuff.” And, as in her films, she shone brightly in a stellar cast.

Austin Pendleton contributed a piece to The Los Angeles Times about directing Ms. Taylor in the play. “I never met anyone more generous than she was,” he wrote. “She was generous in every way -- emotionally, artistically. She shared every moment on stage with the other actors -- she didn’t act like the star, which she was. I never met anyone of her celebrity who could so instantly put people at ease. I think she (was) known for that.”

Indeed, Elizabeth Taylor was one of those rare Hollywood luminaries about whom no one ever had anything bad to say. Even Carrie Fisher, who was two years old when Eddie Fisher left her mother to marry Ms. Taylor, issued the following statement: “If my father had to divorce my mother to marry anyone, I’m grateful that it was Elizabeth.”

CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS

2011-03-13T15:15:00.000-07:00

March 13, 2011

Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams, which premiered at the 2010 Toronto Film Festival and which opens theatrically at the end of April, is as powerful as any film I’ve seen. Leaving a recent screening of the 3-D documentary and gazing upon a Wilshire Boulevard bathed in smog-refracted sunlight, I felt unsettled. It was the same busy throroughfare I’d been on 90 minutes earlier, but it looked different.

I was reminded of seeing movies on the big screen as a young child. After watching Snow White and the Seven Dwarves at the Merrick Theatre on Jamaica Boulevard in Queens -- I might have been 4 or 5 years old -- I could never look at my mother’s sewing kit, or apples for that matter, as I had before the show. Similar experiences as an adult film-goer have been rare: Alain Resnais’ Night and Fog, Bergman’s Persona... a mere handful of exalted masterpieces have been truly transformative for me.

Herzog’s documentary belongs in that elite group. Its intensity is emotional, intellectual and, yes, spiritual. Using 3-D, the director makes viewers feel at once claustrophobic and exhilarated. Stalactites and stalagmites in the Chauvet Cave he explores -- discovered by spelunker Jean-Marie Chauvet in 1994 -- seem within reach, even though they’re literally untouchable. (The French government has imposed many restrictions on access, in order to preserve the site.)

A visual strategy that one tends to associate with “tentpole” special effects movies Is perfectly suited to convey the wonder of Herzog’s exploration. As his 4-person crew (director, cameraman, sound recordist and production assistant) go deeper and deeper into the cave, viewers feel themselves moving further and further into pre-history. Filming only a few hours a day from narrow metal catwalks, with lights that emit no heat, Herzog’s team show the paintings in vivid detail and in relation to their environment.

Looking at these artifacts far from the mouth of the cave, it becomes clear that the paintings in these deep recesses were made by torchlight. Exigencies of production result in an approximation of that same kind of illumination. Small lights on crew helmets moving with each head turn, reflected by wet rock formations, set the ancient paintings aflicker. And seeing them in this state -- close to the way their makers had seen them -- somehow enhances the awe-inspiring nature of the works’ very existence.

Goosebumps, arm hair standing on end, mouth agape in wonder -- all induced by Herzog’s imagery! People... made pictures... 35,000 years ago! Some were made with charcoal from the burnt torches (and, therefore, easily carbon-dated), some with red ochre. All were preserved because a rockslide 20,000 years ago sealed the cave hermetically. And this fortuitous act of nature enables us to connect to our progenitors with an intimacy unimaginable before watching Cave of Forgotten Dreams.

Interviewed by Herzog, Dominique Baffier, archaeologist and curator of the Chauvet Cave, draws viewers’ attention to something revealed by red ochre handprints on one of the walls: their maker had a crooked right pinky. Thus, looking carefully, we learn something about a man who walked the earth millenia ago that we mighn’t even notice about a co-worker or neighbor. Wow!

Particularly exciting for filmmakers and cineastes is the fact that a number of the charcoal paintings reveal artists’ attempts to create the illusion of movement, 350 centuries before our time. Three such stabs stand out:

A bison illustration shows the animal’s four legs and, faintly, another four; clearly this is meant to suggest the creature in motion. Even more sophisticated, though, is a succession of bison images, each with the beast’s legs in a different position. It’s as though the pre-historic artists made animation cels eons before Disney, Fleischer and others we think of as motion picture pioneers. And Herzog unites film and cave art by playing a delightful clip from Swing Time, in which Fred Astaire dances with shadows on the wall.

The third attempt to depict movement on the cave’s walls isn’t referred to by Herzog as such: A painting of two rhinos facing each other in battle brings to mind the “collision of opposites” formulated by Sergei Eisenstein in his theory of cinematic montage. Viewers feel the same sense of dynamism from this picture that they get from the Soviet director’s films or those of D.W. Griffith.

Indeed, Cave of Forgotten Dreams as a whole brings to mind classical film theory. Andre Bazin, groundbreaking scholar and guru to several French New Wave directors, wrote, in “The Ontology of the Photographic Image” (1958), that the origin of representational art lies in the quest to live on after death. “By providing a defense against the passage of time,” he argued, “it satisfied a basic psychological need in man, for death is but the victory of time.” Heady stuff!

But the scholars Herzog interviews are not “all in their heads.” Quite the opposite. Archaeologist Gilles Tosello, for instance, was a juggler before he began to study prehistoric art. Wulf Hein, also an archaeologist, is known for his reconstructions of Ice Age flutes and figurines. And Maurice Maurin, who knows as much about the Chauvet Cave as anyone, is a master perfumer.

In one of the documentary’s more visually arresting scenes, the director shows a laser genrated map of the site. But instead of being wowed by the spectacle, he questions its value. It reminds him of the Manhattan phone directory, the filmmaker says. “4,000,000 people listed. But do we do we know if they cry when they’re alone at night? Do they dream?”

Which brings us back to the title, Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Like all artists, viewers realize, these pre-historic painters were dreamers. We’ll never know precisely what was in their subconscious minds. But Herzog makes us wonder if they dreamed about what we might think of them, long after they left their mark.

In a memorable epilogue, the director suggests how people thousands of years from now might perceive us. Twenty miles from the Chauvet Cave, superheated water from a nuclear reactor is pumped into a nearby greenhouse where, now, there reside “radiocative albino crocodiles.” Herzog films and discusses these mutants with the same sense of awe he brings to the cave paintings. It’s as though he's visiting from the future, seeing the strange artifacts twenty-first century humans will have left behind to reveal who we truly were.

happythankyoumoreplease

2011-03-04T14:58:00.000-08:00

March 4, 2011

Josh Radnor’s happythankyoumoreplease, winner of the 2010 Sundance Audience Award, opens today in New York and Los Angeles, then goes wider on March 11th. Editing the film with Josh was a genuine pleasure, despite budget constraints often (and rightly) associated with independently financed productions. It was also a learning experience.

Of course, one learns while working on any motion picture, as each presents an array of unique circumstances. What I gleaned from cutting happythankyoumoreplease was that digital camera technology, used primarily to lower shooting costs, has aesthetic advantages, too. Before discussing them, though, l should say a word about the economic boon that comes from using gear like the Red Camera, Panavision’s Genesis and the Canon 5D.

Savings accrued from shooting digitally are staggering. Even with the best deals on film stock and lab processing, and hour of film costs around $3000. 60 minutes shot digitally is $25, less than 1% of that! The chief selling point for eschewing celluloid, then, is price.

And there are economic benefits of digital cinematography besides lower footage and lab costs. For instance, filmmakers using the latest cameras can shoot for an hour without reloading. A magazine of 35mm film, on the other hand, is empty after 10 minutes. Thus less time (and, therefore, money) are spent changing camera rolls when shooting electronically. What’s more, running out of film in mid-take -- a frustrating, costly and not infrequent occurrence when shooting analogue -- is unlikely when using digital cameras.

The abilitly to record for an hour before “rolling out” is precisely the financial advantage Josh turned into an aesthetic one while making happythankyoumoreplease. Ironically, this directing breakthrough was first presented to me as a descent into lunacy. Phoning from the film’s New York location, one of our producers exclaimed, with great consternation, “You’re gonna get a 40 minute take in tomorrow’s dailies! For a two minute scene!!”

But there was a method to Josh’s madness. He wasn’t just shooting compulsively. Rather, the director used long takes as a rehearsal process. He refined performances while the camera was rolling. As a veteran Broadway and television actor with an MFA in theatre, of course, Josh knew the value of rehearsing, and had to address the fact that low budget indies like happythankyoumoreplease don’t provide time for it.

He also wanted to restore the cut corner of rehearsals because of what he’d learned during his thoroughgoing study of filmmaking in the run-up to principal photography. In addition to picking the brains of seasoned crew members and grilling How I Met Your Mother director Pamela Freyman, Josh read extensively about cinema. One of the texts that inspired him was Sydney Lumet’s Making Movies, which begins with a memorable chapter on rehearsing for film. Perusing this material convinces the reader (who is somehow left craving fresh rye bread, danish and strong coffee) that the rehearsal period is indispensible.

So Josh Radnor incorporated rehearsing into each take, refining performances while the camera turned. Yet with sound and image being recorded non-stop, unrehearsed moments of brilliance were never lost. The work method was similar to that of jazz producers who, when making a record, roll tape even during warm-ups in order to capture any and all inspired playing.

Undoubtedly, this production strategy changed my editing modus operandi, because the concept of a “take” no longer applied. Working with film, a director and editor might agree that Malin Akerman’s “more please” monologue was best, say, in the third take of her close-up. Shooting with the Red Camera, though, Josh could have 10 or more readings of that monologue (and sections thereof) in the digital entity slated “Take 3.” So the old vocabulary ceased to apply.

Using digital editing technology, I placed “locators” (colored markers) in a visual timeline of the material indicating starts and stops -- takes within takes. Thus I could combine the fifth reading of the first part of a line in “take 6” with the third reading of the second part from “take 4” easily, mouse-clicking on well-labelled dots to move those sections into an assembly of the movie. (Both Avid and Final Cut Pro have locacator “tools.”)

In addition to facilitating construction of happythankyoumoreplease, this work method lightened the mood in our editing room: my speed-typing was so bad, it often gave Josh something to laugh about. Locators guiding us to “Close-Ips of Ammie” or “Folly Shots of Nississippi” kept the director amused -- always a good thing during the intense process of cutting a film.

OSCAR POSTMORTEM

2011-03-01T14:17:00.000-08:00

March 1, 2011

For political progressives, there were a few excellent moments during the Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday night. One was Charles Ferguson’s acceptance speech for Inside Job. Mr. Ferguson, director of the documentary about 2008’s financial meltdown, pointed out that not one banker whose illegal activities caused economic disaster has gone to jail. He was eloquent, and the producers and directors of the broadcast let him speak his mind to an approving crowd without interruption or incident.

Equally rousing were shoutouts to union crews by Inception’s cinematographer, Wally Pfister, and its sound mixer Gary Rizzo (speaking for himself and fellow mixers Lora Kirschberg and Ed Novick). Both reminded viewers that movies we love are made by union workers. Their remarks, I believe, showed support for Wisconson’s public sector employees and for organized labor in general.

Another high point for me, as a film editor, was Christian Bale’s acceptance speech for the Best Supporting Actor trophy. Immediately after acknowledging The Fighter’s director, David O. Russell, Mr. Bale thanked the movie’s cutter, Pamela Martin. This brilliant actor, whose portrayal of addict and boxer Dickie Ecklund is in a class by itself, knows that performances are constructed in post production from raw material elicited and delivered during production. And he comes by this knowledge through genuine committment to filmmaking. Check Mr. Bale’s resume on IMDB; he worked as an assistant editor on Terminator Salvation! For real!!

One more sweet moment for filmmakers was Steven Spielberg’s insightful and compassionate introduction of the Best Picture nominees. Mr. Spielberg reminded his audience that those who didn’t win that category’s Oscar would be in great company. Among past nominated films that failed to earn the gold statuette were Raging Bull, Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Philadelphia Inquirer critic and Flickgrrl blogger Carrie Ricky mentioned most of the above as highlights of the 83d annual Academy Awards in her February 28 post. (How do you solve a problem like the Oscars? | Philly | 02/28/2011 www.philly.com) She also identified a basic problem for those behind Oscar broadcasts: “to produce a three-hour awards pageant that engages the short attention spans of the twitterati while still entertaining people who actually like variety shows.””

Of course, reconciling the needs of two such disparate groups may prove impossible. Most of the twitterati (I love that word!) have never seen a variety show such as Live From the Hollywood Palace or Ed Sullivan. And those who, like me, enjoyed watching plate-spinners, ventriloquists, impressionists, stand-up comics and the Beatles, all on one stage in a single tv program, don’t tweet much.

A CLENCHED FIST ON EVERY LAPEL

2011-02-25T15:26:00.000-08:00

February 25, 2011

Sunday evening, February 27, hundreds of millions of movie fans will watch the 83d annual Academy Awards. These viewers may not be aware of a fact that merits particular attention this year, as Wisconsin’s public sector employees stand up for their rights: every presenter and almost every recipient on the Oscar broadcast belongs to a labor organization. Every musician in the pit, every camera operator, every cable puller -- everyone involved carries a union card!

The benefits of collective bargaining for workers in the film and television industries -- a category that includes actors, writers and directors as well as so-called technicians -- are obvious: We are more or less adequately compensated when we apply our rare skill sets, acquired and honed during years of apprenticeship and hard work, to make films from which investors may profit in perpetuity. The Motion Picture Industry Health Plan provides affordable health care to us and our families. When required to toil 16 hour days, we are paid premium rates for the sacrifice of our time and, on occasion, our health.

Less apparent, perhaps, but equally real are the advantages of organized labor for producers and studios. A union shop, as European businesspeople have known for decades, is a productive one. When workers receive fair pay, they’re motivated to do a good job. Equally important, decent remuneration encourages management to be efficient. When an hour on a movie set or sound mixing stage is costly, filmmakers’ precious minutes won’t be squandered as a result of poor production planning. In my personal experience, far more time and (therefore) money are wasted during the making of low-budget non-union movies than on studio features.

What’s happening in Wisconsin, where Governor Scott Walker disingenuously blames unions for budget shortfalls he created with ill-advised tax cuts for the rich -- indeed, where the governor is trying to bust unions altogether by making it illegal for public sector employees such as teachers, police and firefighters to bargain collectively -- is that workers are standing up for their rights. Democratic state senators are heroically resisting what Nobel laureate Paul Krugman views as a domestic application of “the shock doctrine,” a term coined by best-selling author Naomi Klein. Dr. Krugman describes the doctrine as follows: “right wing ideologues exploit(ing) crises to push through an agenda which has nothing to do with resolving those crises and everything to do with imposing their vision of a harsher, more unequal, less democratic society.” (Paul Krugman, “Shock Doctrine, U.S.A., NYTimes.com, February 24, 2011.)

Who in the industry wouldn’t be proud if Oscar broadcast participants showed solidarity with the working people of Wisconsin? Year in and year out, on the red carpet and onstgage at the Kodak theatre, we see AIDS ribbons on gowns and tuxedo lapels. On Sunday, why not the clenched fist symbol, which supporters of Wisconsin’s municipal employees have adopted in homage to the early 1980’s Polish shipyard workers movement?

Every time people watching the 83d annual Academy Awards laugh at a joke, they’ll remember it was written by a member of the Writers Guild of America... that every tune they enjoy is played by members of the American Federation of Musicians. And as we’re reminded of unions’ contribution to high quality film and television, we might also recall a Facebook post by the Democratic Party of Wisconsin:

"Only 5 states do not have collective bargaining for educators and have deemed it illegal. Those states and their ranking on ACT/SAT scores are as follows: South Carolina -50th/ North Carolina -49th/ Georgia -48th/ Texas -47th/ Virginia -44th. If you are wondering, Wisconsin is currently ranked #2."

Solidarity!

SHOW PHOTOS

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE WINNERS

2011-02-22T20:13:00.000-08:00

February 22, 2011

Post production honorary groups -- American Cinema Editors (ACE), the Cinema Audio Society (CAS) and Motion Picture Sound Editors (MPSE) -- held their annual awards dinners this past weekend. Eclipsed by the upcoming Oscars, these ceremonies deserve more industry-wide recongnition. Follow the links below to see who won:

American Cinema Editors Eddie Awards:
www.pronetworks.org/.../2011_american_cinema_editors_ace_eddie_award_ winners/

Cinema Audio Society Awards:
www.hollywoodreporter.com/.../true-grit-takes-top-cinema-159542

Motion Picture Sound Editors Golden Reel Awards: film-book.com/golden-reel-awards-2011-winners-inception- micmacs- country- strong/

Congratulations to all!

Personal weekend highlights included breaking bread with dear friend and music editor extraordinaire David Bondelevich, and participating in a Facebook exchange about whether my editing guru, the ever amazing Paul Hirsch, was “hard to work for.” Eddie Award winner (for an episode of "Modern Family") Jonathan Schwartz had said as much during his acceptance speech, while thanking Paul for being an inspiration. The verdict: Mr. Hirsch, editor of "Star Wars," "Ferris Beuller's Day Off," "Ray" and a long list of other deservedly iconic films, is a rigorous, demanding mentor and also as witty as can be.

It was also quite enjoyable to hear CAS Career Achievement honoree Jeff Wexler, at a "meet the winners" gathering, discuss unique work methods of directors for whom he’s recorded, including Hal Ashby and Cameron Crowe.

And, as always, it was a genuine pleasure to chat with the prodigiously talented and generous Tom Fleishman, CAS winner for Outstanding Achievement in Mixing for a TV Series ("Boardwalk Empire") and an old friend. Tom has mixed some of the most acclaimed motion pictures of the past 30 years, among them “Silence of the Lambs,” “Malcolm X” and “Goodfellas.” He’s currently working on a documentary that, even with his astonishing resume, must make him pinch himself to make sure he’s not just dreaming. I hope to interview Tom in this space when his work on that film, Martin Scorcese’s “Living in the Material World,” is completed.

HOLLYWOOD'S WHITEOUT: THE RE-CUT

2011-02-18T20:32:00.000-08:00

February 20, 2011

Two days ago I posted a version of this entry which began with 3 extraneous paragraphs. "I buried the lead," as Albert Brooks' character, Aaron Altman, said in "Broadcast News." So I've edited the piece to begin where it should. What follows, then, is "Whiteout, The Special Edition:"

In the Sunday, February 13th Arts and Leisure section of The New York Times, Manhola Dargis and A.O. Scott wrote about the paucity of roles for African-American actors in Hollywood movies this year (”Hollywood’s Whiteout Year: Few Blacks on Silver Screen”). The article upset Whoopi Goldberg, whose 1990 award (for “Ghost”) wasn’t mentioned alongside later wins by Denzell Washington, Halle Berry, Jamie Foxx, Forest Whitaker, Morgan Freeman, Jennifer Hudson and Mo’Nique. Ms. Goldberg (with whom I had the privilege of working on Herbert Ross’s “Boys on the Side”) accused Dargis and Scott of “sloppy journalism.”

Perhaps the real problem was a lack of clarity in their prose; I had to read the piece a couple of times before I fully grasped the authors' point, which is as follows: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has bestowed its awards annually for 83 years. In the first 73, only 7 black actors received Oscars (all of them, including Ms. Goldberg, unnamed by the writers). In the next nine years, another 7 (those mentioned above) won the coveted statuette -- a tremendous acceleration. But this year there was a marked deceleration. Hence the critics ask, “Are the coming Oscars an anomaly, or an unsettlling sign of the times?”

Clarification to the contrary notwithstanding, however, the piece by Dargis and Scott is hardly a paragon of rigorous reporting. For one thing, the authors fail to mention that Best Supporting Actress nominee Hailee Steinfeld (“True Grit”), according to Wickipedia, “has African-American ancestry on her mother’s side.” For another, like most newsroom movie pundits, they sacrifice cogent analysis for the sake of would-be cleverness. “So,” they ask at the end of their article, “is class the new race?” Such a glib question assumes the very best movies to be ephemeral and trendy -- the opposite of what their makers intend, indeed, the opposite of what their viewers experience. "Winter's Bone," "The Town" and "The Fighter" were not made because socioeconomic status is "in" this year.

But most eggregious is that the Times critics are blind to the issue of race in the film business as a whole. They write, “A few years (after ‘In the Heat of the Night’ and ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner’ together won 17 Oscars in 1967), ...African-Americans began to appear on screen and behind the camera to an unprecedented extent.” Behind the camera? Really?? Where had they all gone by the time I began to work in the industry in the late ‘70’s?

One of the reasons I started blogging is that I’d grown weary of film journalism which supposes that films are made solely by actors, screenwriters and directors. The rest of us -- cinematographers, gaffers, sound recordists, production and costume designers, editors, sound editors, mixers and countless other craftspeople involved in production -- remain invisible to many reviewers for newsweeklies or dailies. If we didn’t, Manhola Dargis and A.O. Scott couldn’t think there was ever a significant African American presence “behind the scenes.”

I won't beat around the bush: The film industry is overwhelmingly white -- to a degree unparalleled in other arts and professions. To be sure, my evidence for this claim is empirical, not statistical. At Motion Picture Editors Guild and American Cinema Editors gatherings, I simply don’t see more than a small handful of black colleagues. The same is true on studio lots and at independent post production facilities. Even the "urban films" on which I've worked have had mostly white crews.

And Oscar history reflects my personal experience. Hugh A. Robertson, editor of “Midnight Cowboy” in 1969, remains the only African-American cutter ever to receive an Oscar nomination. There has been only one black cinematography nominee, Remi Adeferasin, director of photography on “Elizabeth” in 1999. Three African-American costume designers have been nominated in 83 years, as have two black sound mixers.

There should be statistical research on this subject. We might discover that what is perceived as the most liberal U.S. industry remains basically inaccessible to people of color. And we might, then, address the problem. What Manhola Dargis and A.O. Scott wrote about was “the tusk in the room.” This is the elephant.

THE FILMMAKER'S WORKWEEK

2011-02-15T16:23:00.000-08:00

February 15, 2011

On Oscar night more than one recipient will thank his or her family for being patient with the long work hours entailed in making a film. But glib references to the extraordinary amount of labor time it takes to create a movie can’t convey how shockingly arduous production schedules can be. Viewers outside the industry might think winners are grateful because their loved ones agreed to a late dinner a few times a week. Or because they put up with the occasional missed t-ball game or parent teacher conference. Not even close.

A typical day on-set can leave the filmmaker with barely enough time at home to unwind for a half hour, get a few hours of sleep and arise to do it all over again. Eliminating days (or even weeks) from production and post production schedules by lengthening the work day itself benefits film financiers, because doing so facilitates recouping their investment more quickly. It also enables them to cut overhead costs such as space and equipment rental, and even to cut down on union “fringes” (pension and health insurance contributions); the faster a picture is finished, the sooner bill-paying stops.

Looking at contractual “guarantees” sheds considerable light on the movie industry workweek. A minimum 12 hour day is typical in crew/management agreements. The upside for filmmakers is that we will be paid for 12 hours (as will our fringe benefits) even when we knock off after 10. But we usually don’t leave after a mere 10 hours. And given that, the advantage for producers is tremendous. When the crew is entitled to a 12 hour day, time and a half doesn’t kick until after the guaranteed employment period. So a typical film production week is at least 60 hours -- one and a half times the norm which was hard won after a century of labor struggles.

Fortunately, some moviemmakers don’t like extremely long work days. The Coen brothers and Woody Allen leave the cutting room at 6 pm or earlier and manage to get a lot done each week. The late Sally Menke, Quenten Tarantino’s editor, was famously family-oriented, knocking off in time for dinner with her husband and two children every evening; her amazing work attests to the viability of such a schedule. I found, with the Coens and with Paul Dinello on “Strangers With Candy,” I got more high quality work done in a 40 hour week than in a longer one.

This issue is framed far more dramatically in the documentary “Who Needs Sleep?,” directed by renowned cinematographer Haskell Wexler. He made the film when camera assistant Brent Hershman died after falling asleep at the wheel on his way home from a “typical” 17 hour day, and has used it to spearhead a “12 hours on/12hours off” movement in Hollywood. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of Mr. Wexler and others, production schedules have gotten worse of late.

Until a few years ago, moderately budgeted feature films were shot in 8 to 12 weeks. Now, a mere 30 days of principal photography is considered acceptable (as it was on “The Fighter”) and 20 day shoots are not unheard of. Such radical trimming of production schedules is accomplished by cutting corners (in ways audiences do feel!) and, at times, by lengthening the work day.

Ironically -- and necessarily -- filmmakers’ intense work periods are frequently followed by protracted stretches of unemployment. And despite the economic “hit,” not working is usually a welcome relief. Idle periods are used for recharging -- physically, emotionally, even professionally. I recently ran into one of last year's nominees for Best Editing -- a man who had spent all of 2009 working long 6 and 7 day weeks; in 2010 he stayed away from cutting altogether.

Some of us choose to travel while out of work. Others give ourselves concentrated doses of what we call “real life:” appointments with doctors, dentists, optometrists, accountants -- even marriage counsellors. We engage in deferred home maintenance, family projects, classes.

I use breaks from editing to read lengthy or difficult novels -- Infinite Jest, say, or Underworld. Re-viewing classic films helps me recharge. And going to the theatre -- a lifelong favorite pastime -- becomes possible when, between projects, I can actually make an 8 o’clock curtain. (I look forward to seeing Jane Fonda in “33 Variations” this week.)

The unemployment period is also a good time to write about life in the film industry. Sitting down last Friday with blogger Dennis Cozzallio to have our annual Oscar chat for his delightful site, “Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule” (http://sergioleoneifr.blogspot.com/2011/02/off-charts-another-conversation-with.html), I marvelled at his ability create new posts, parent and work a full time job. My next editing stint will definitely make me turn to guest wrtiters for “Filmmaker’s Diary” content.

HOW DID I GET HERE? (Part One of Many)

2011-02-11T21:02:00.000-08:00

February 11, 2011

Midway through writing my next post (about the odd rhythm of the film industry -- 60 to 80 hour work weeks, followed by protracted periods of rejuvination), I had an amazing experience. As a longtime fan of Roger Ebert’s, I’d emailed him a link to “filmmaker’s diary.” He enjoyed it, which was beyond flattering, and tweeted it. So... welcome to over a thousand new readers! And thank you, Roger, from the bottom of my heart.

I became aware of Mr.Ebert, a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, in the 1980’s when he wrote favorable pieces about a somewhat new phenomenon: independently financed feature films. Full-blown admiration came in the ‘90’s while watching “At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert.” The critics’ enthusiasm and their often heated discussions introduced my children, with whom I viewed the show, to the idea that motion pictures were worth talking about. Passionately.

The kids (and all viewers) looked forward to installments of “At the Movies” with the same excitement felt by lovers of cinematic art awaiting reviews during the “golden era” of film criticism in the 1970’s. At that time Andrew Sarris, Molly Haskell and Jonas Mekas wrote for “The Village Voice” on a weekly basis. Pauline Kael did so at “The New Yorker.” Paul Schrader penned brilliant critical pieces for the “L.A. Reader” and Roger Ebert did the same at “The Chicago Sun-Times.”

Such critics were advocates for unduly neglected directors and genres. Sarris encouraged readers to see the work of Hollywood auteurs like John Ford, Howard Hawks and Alfred Hitchcock in a new way. Mekas sang the praises of underground experimental filmmakers Maya Deren, Kenneth Anger, Stan Brackhage and others. Schrader inspired Angelinos (and later, the rest of us) to take film noir seriously. Kael championed films by Brian De Palma, Bernardo Bertolucci and Arthur Penn. And Ebert defended Penn’s “Bonnie and Clyde” along with Sam Peckinpah’s “The Wild Bunch” against moralizing philistines, drawing attention to the filmmaking genius behind both works.

The critcs engaged in dialogue with their readers -- challenging them, prodding them. Readers responded by thinking deeply about movies they saw at the dozens of revival cinemas and art houses in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. Some were moved so deeply by the profound and exciting discussions (and, of course, by the pictures themselves), they became filmmakers.

Which brings us back to the title of this post. Yes, reviewers who actually fought for films in which they believed inspired me and many likeminded buffs to want to make movies. Exposed as we were to the French New Wave, a movement in which a nation’s best critics became its best directors, we assumed the road between criticism and creativity would always be well-travelled. At some point, after the ‘70’s, reviewing became more a vehicle to inform consumers and less a platform to inspire artists. But Ebert remains, blessedly, a throwback to the “golden age.” The advent of filmmakers and scholars blogging about what they love, I hope, steers us in that direction as well.

THOUGHTS ON RECEIVING THE OSCAR BALLOT

2011-02-07T00:27:00.000-08:00

February 7, 2011

My Academy ballot arrived a few days ago. Reviewing the nominees, I responded the same way I do every year. First, I was both surprised and amused by the fact that I take voting so seriously. Then, I said “what the heck,” and began to consider each choice as though a great deal is actually at stake.

Ranking all manner of things is a mainstay of popular culture. In sports we have Most Valuable Players, Super Bowl Champs, Major League Champs, NBA Champs, Heavyweight Champs, Hall of Famers and more. There are Emmys in television, Grammys in music. And now we live in a world of Survivors, Idols, Top Chefs, even Best Moms and Dads. So it’s natural for members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to reward our highest achievers.

We do so even though we know that, as Cervantes wrote, “comparisons are odious.” (Or as Dogberry says in Shakespeare’s "Much Ado About Nothing,” "comparisons are odorous.”) So why do we do it? Because the Academy Awards, for voting members, are less about picking craftspeople and movies we believe are better than all others and more about promoting awareness of cinema and filmcraft. It’s good for us and good for film appreciation in general when, one evening a year, a billion viewers think about the fact that the motion pictures they love are written, directed, performed, lit, photographed, designed, edited, scored and made with actors in costumes and make-up. That there are documentaries (feature length and short), and shorts (animated and live action). That movies are made all over the world in all languages. And that we care about their quality.

To convince Academy members that their films are award-worthy, distributors take out “for your consideration” ads in industry trade papers (Daily Variety and the Hollywood Reporter, among others), send out dvd “screeners” to the membership and schedule promotional exhibition of the pictures (often accompanied by stimulating Q&A sessions with filmmakers) in plush screening rooms. Also, Academy (or guild) card holders are admitted free to neighborhood moviehouses showing movies in contention for the Oscar. Presumably, then, voters are aware of all the pictures and filmmakers eligible for the industry’s highest honor.

Of course, the system is imperfect. When my ballot arrived, I realized I hadn’t seen all of the contenders. Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu’s “Biutiful,” for example, had flown under my radar. LD Entertainment, the film’s distributor, used its limited resources to campaign solely on behalf of lead actor Javier Bardem. Since members of the Academy’s editors branch only nominate Best Picture and Best Editing, we didn’t receive “screeners” of this deeply affecting picture. And that’s too bad.

Javier Bardem’s portrayal of an overburdened mid-level criminal is, indeed, brilliant. And as I’ve pointed out in earlier posts, great performances are carefully constructed from excellent raw material during post production. Thus cutter Steve Mirrione, A.C.E., whose credits include “Oceans Eleven,” “Babel” and “Traffic” (and with whom I served on an A.C.E. panel last week while still unaware of his work on “Biutiful”) should have gotten an Oscar nomination. So, too, should the film itself, along with Maricel Alvarez, who gives what could be a career-making performance.

To be sure, larger studios try to allocate their Oscar campaign resources as frugally as small indies do. Consequently they don’t inundate members outside the writers branch with scripts, nor do they send score and and song cds to non-music branch voters during the nominating process. Such promotional materials reach the full membership only after AMPAS’ final ballots are announced.

Yesterday, I received David Seidler’s screenplay for “The King’s Speech.” Reading it, I immediately noted something that all filmmakers know: while a film of lasting power cannot be made from a poor text, the script is never brought to the screen without, literally, hundreds of changes. A film is so different from its screenplay -- there are so many re-writes during pre-production and principal photography, as well as deletions, changes in structure and additional shooting during "post" -- that it’s hard to tell what version of a writer's work members actually peruse.

The published text of a stage play matches what its opening night audience sees after a period of rehearsals and previews, during which there is much editing and rethinking. This may be the case, as well, with published screenplays. Academy members, however, judge a hybrid of a film’s original shooting draft and its final cut. With “The King’s Speech” voters received an incarnation that contains only scenes which are in the theatrical release.

But when a film is as good as director Tom Hooper’s story of the stammering Prince of York, I guarantee you, there were countless dialogue deletions as well as cuts of whole scenes. While assembling a movie, a director and editor must be sensitive to ways in which brilliant actors express with a gesture what a page of words might only approximate. They must be aware of how quickly viewers comprehend a point of plot or character without all the scripted talk. We test movies in screenings for friends and strangers. And we always learn the same thing: if we didn’t make cuts -- even in motion pictures made from superior texts -- audiences would become worn out rather quickly.

What’s more, even in the case of the David Seidler screenplay sent to Academy members -- all its scenes still in the film, all in scripted order -- there is still a world of difference between what’s on the page and what’s on the screen. Right atop page 1, the title card is not the one in the movie. The BBC News Reader’s theatrical preparation for his broadcast is largely absent from the text. So, of course, are the wide angle lenses which show Bertie’s horribly distorted world (a bold choice by Mr. Hooper and cinematographer Danny Cohen)! There’s no horse whinny exacerbating the awkwardness of 100,000 hushed listeners at Empire Stadium in Seidler’s script; that was likely the idea of Mr. Hooper, editor Tariq Anwar or the picture’s sound designer.

It’s fair to ask, if the finished film diverges so much from the original (or adapted) screenplay, how can voters choose “the best?” The answer, really, is that whatever a viewer feels is the Best Picture was made from the best script. A text that inspires the director, cast and crew to make the most moving, lasting film is, itself, superlative. Writing that gives the director and editor raw material from which they shape the best movie is the best writing. Yes, with that standard, a voter really needn’t look at scripts studios send to Academy members for consideration. True. But the good screenplays are so much fun to read.

A Blue Ribbon Panel

2011-01-31T20:04:00.000-08:00

January 31, 2011

Every year on the last Sunday in Janauary I wake up at an ungodly hour to eat bagels and drink coffee with colleagues before hunkering down and watching films to which we will award the Eddie, trophy of the American Cinema Editors. Like SAG, the DGA and other motion picture craft organizations, A.C.E. (the editing honorary society) has an annual black tie awards dinner. Weeks before that event and after the full membership has voted for best edited features, blue ribbon panels determine the best television movie, best feature-length documentary and other such honors. Panelists watch nominees together, then cast secret ballots. Yesterday, as I do annually, I donned my ribbon for the documentary group.

Because I rarely edit “docs,” being on that panel gives me a chance to sit back and appreciate a skill set somewhat different from the one used by editors of dramatic fiction films. It also enables me, usually, to see some excellent motion pictures that have had, at best, limited runs in a very small number of theatres.

Docucumentary cutters don’t work with scripted material. Consequently, they structure or even “write” their movies during post production to a far greater extend than their counterparts in the fiction feature world. But that very fact -- that non-fiction editors select and shape 90 minute films from hundreds of hours of unscripted material -- speaks volumes about the nature of their work. While it may be true that documentaries are a “window onto the world,” a window -- because of its frame, its thickness, its tint and any number of other factors -- mediates the reality seen through it.

Historian Arthur Schlesinger wrote eloquently about such mediation in a television review published in1964 and reprinted in Lewis Jacobs’ anthology, The Documentary Tradition. “...(T)he line between the documentary and the feature film is tenuous indeed,” he stated. “Both are artifices; both are contrivances. Both are created by editing and selection. Both, wittingly or not, embody a viewpoint. The fact that one eschews and the other employs professional actors becomes in the end an economic detail. And the relation of any film to reality depends, not on the amateur standing of its elements, but on the artistic vision of those who must put the elements together.”

This year’s nominees for the Best Documentary Eddie each displayed varying degrees of artifice and contrivance. All three entailed massive amounts of selection. And all three are radically different from one another.

“Exit Through the Gift Shop” is a delightful film by Banksy, edited by Thom Fulford and Chris King. It highlights Banksy’s own street art, along with the work of Mr. Brainwash (Thierry Guetta) and Shepherd Fairey, among others. Like Orson Welles’ “F for Fake,” the movie intentionally makes viewers question whether or not what they’re watching is “real.” Did Thierry Guetta really shoot thousands of hours of film without cataloguing (or even labeling) the cassettes? Did he really sell photo-shopped photocopied Warhol knockoffs for hefty five figure sums? If so, somewhere Andy is smiling... or talking to lawyers. (And some great cinema verite artist is capturing all of it.)

Charles Ferguson’s “Inside Job,” edited by Chad Beck and Adam Bolt, selects material in the way a gifted attorney might when bulding a case for the prosecution. The result is a searing indictment of bankers (and their enablers) whose machinations created the worldwide financial meltdown from which we continue to reel. Some of Ferguson’s interviews are reminiscent of Frederick Wiseman’s work: subjects smugly talk to camera about matters “too complex” for mere non-millionaires to comprehend. Lobbyists, Columbia and Harvard faculty and administraters, and Goldman-Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein all bury themselves with their own comments, so out of touch are they with normal standards of ethical behavior.

Davis Guggenheim’s “Waiting for Superman,” on the other hand, is unabashed propaganda, attacking teachers unions and presenting charter schools as an educational panacea. When Guggenheim isn’t busy selling Nikes or Minute Maid orange juice via “product placement,” he tries to sell the idea that the American Federation of Teachers wants job security for its members so that bad educators can continue to pick up unearned paychecks. In his world, a great teacher in a right wing, fundamentallist school district would never be fired for teaching evolution, climate science or a balanced view of history. No. Guarantees of tenure are only for slothful enemies of learning.

What a world! I guess it’s the same one in which a 2009 Center for Research on Educational Outcomes (CREDO)/ Stanford University study of charter schools doesn’t exist. In that work, researchers discovered that 46% of charter schools showed no academic gains over traditional public schools, while 37% were actually outperformed by the public schools. There’s not a word about CREDO’s findings in “Waiting for Superman.”

As the propaganda piece dragged on, I began to think of it as “Waiting for Bizarro Superman.” I’m glad that, while recognizing the merit of “Exit Through the Gift Shop” and “Inside Job,” the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences rightly ignored Davis Guggenheim’s union-bashing screed.

Bizarro to the contrary notwithstanding, the American Cinema Editors get together was a great success. A.C.E.’s Executive Director Jenni McCormick is, among other things, a perfect event planner. And I enjoyed every second of chit chat with colleagues, including Steve Rivkin, Maysie Hoy and Anita Brandt Burgoyne.

On a sad note, however, I learned when I got home that film composer John Barry had died at the age of 77. Mr. Barry will be missed. His James Bond theme is as integral to the character as the “shaken, not stirred” martini. His scores for “Born Free,” “The Lion in Winter,” “Midnight Cowboy,” “Out of Africa,” “Dances With Wolves” and “Body Heat” (to name a few) forever changed the landscape of motion picture soundtracks and will continue to inspire and entertain. Deepest condolences to John Barry’s family and friends.

A FEW RANDOM THOUGHTS

2011-01-26T20:41:00.000-08:00

January 26, 2011

Yesterday morning, after this year’s Oscar candidates were announced, Dennis Bartel of KUSC in L.A. played selections from the five pictures nominated for Best Original Score. Broadcasting on 91.5 fm from the University of Southern California, KUSC is a cherished gift to the airwaves and the internet. It’s not just that the station’s talented and knowledgable djs play the best classical recordings available. They also play movie soundtracks on a regular basis. Listening to Mr. Bartel, Alan Chapman, Kimberlea Daggy, Rich Capparela and the legendary, inimitable Jim Svejda (among others), one regularly hears scores by the likes of John Williams, the entire Newman family (Lionell, Alfred, Randy, Thomas and David), Danny Elfman, Bernard Herrmann, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Max Steiner and many others. What’s more, the station often plays non-movie music from these great composers. Korngold’s violin concerto, Williams’ harp concerto and Herrmann’s cantata, “Moby Dick” (dedicated to Charles Ives), are among many pieces I’ve discovered while listening to KUSC. Find them, wherever you are, at KUSC.org. But beware: Tuning in may be addictive.

Later on January 26, 2011

While listening to an excerpt from Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor’s score for “The Socail Network,” I had an epiphany related to an earlier post on this site. Like so much else in David Fincher’s film, the score is inspired by Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane.” Famously, composer Bernard Herrmann used a 3-note motif throughout “Kane.” Ross and Reznor, too, grounded “The Social Network’s” music in a 3-note ostinato ( a musical phrase repeated over and over throughout the composition). Just a coincidence? Maybe.

Still later on January 26, 2011.

Condolences to the family of Stanley Frazen, former president of the A.C.E. and the Motion Picture Editor’s Guild, who died on January 23 at the age of 91. Looking at a list of Mr. Frazen’s editing credits it’s hard to find one that isn’t a landmark in television history. Among the shows he helped shape were: “The Burns and Allen Show,” “The Jack Benny Show,” “My Favorite Martian,” “The Monkees,” “Get Smart,” “The Beverly Hillbillies,” “Colombo” and “Charlie’s Angels.” Wow!!

Two of Stanley Franzen’s children, Nancy and Robert, are themselves film editors. I got to know Robert a little when we were “neighbors” last summer at the Post Group. It somehow seems fitting to me that the son of an editor of “The Monkees” wound up, decades later, doing a brilliant job cutting Charlie Kaufman’s ‘”Synechdoche, New York.” Again, Rob, my thoughts and warm wishes are with you and the rest of your family.

Oscar Nominations

2011-01-25T19:27:00.000-08:00

January 25, 2011

Congratulations to the Academy Award nominees announced early this morning! For only the second time in the Academy’s history, ten films are eligible for a Best Picture Oscar. The number of nominations in that category was doubled last year because network executives and Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences governors believed that AMPAS members -- filmmakers -- had previously recognized excellence in films the movie-going public didn’t embrace. Their feeling was that a larger group of people would watch the awards telecast if they had seen more of the pictures singled out by voters. The more nominees, the higher the ratings.

That’s not wrong, of course. And each of the ten films named this morning is, indeed, excellent and Oscar-worthy. But as an Academy member, I must point out that a chasm between our organization’s recognition of greatness and box office revenues has nothing to do with voters’ elitism, effeteness or aesthetic snobbery. Most of us are very catholic in our love of movies.

No. The widening gulf between recognition by critics and award-givers, on one hand, and popularity, on the other, is a result of radical changes in film distribution and exhibition. To succeed, a new release must perform exceedingly well at the box office in its opening weekend. If it does so, it may remain in first run theatres for over a month. A two month run is more or less unheard of.

But such was not always the case. I remember discovering “The French Connection,” winner of five Academy Awards in 1972 (including Best Picture), six months into its run! “Bonnie and Clyde,” another Best Picture winner, was rescued by Pauline Kael’s rave review after floundering at the box office for weeks. Subsequently, it ran for months on end. The winner of 1971’s Best Documentary Feature statue, “The Sorrow and The Pity,” played at New York’s Paris Theatre for years. The run was so long, many of Gotham’s baby boomer movie buffs think it’s still playing there.

Extended exhibition of films, I know, is as likely to re-enter popular culture as manual typewriters or rotary phones. So, too, with adaptation of best selling novels as a mainstay of Hollywood production: it’s not coming back any time soon.

But it certainly was a mainstay. Starting before “Gone With the Wind” in 1939 and reaching a pinnacle in the seventies with “Love Story,” “The Godfather,” “The Exorcist” and “Jaws,” studios made movies for a literate public. The most widely attended pictures began with literary sources that appealed to Academy members and the public at the same time. It’s hard to believe, in this era of countless sequels and comic book-driven filmmaking, that novels by Peter Benchley and Mario Puzo (if not Margaret Mitchell) were seeds of the blockbuster as we know it. Literary origin and popularity weren’t mutually exclusive.

Nonetheless, to reiterate, all ten of this year’s Best Picture nominees are deserving, to be sure. It’s just ironic that excellence in filmmaking craft continues to be recognized with only five nominees per category. Of course, the already protracted Oscar broadcast would seem endless if presenters had to recite twice the number of names they’re called upon to read now.

That said, however, I wanted to hear quite a few names in this morning’s announcement that I didn't. Mila Kunis, “you wuz robbed!” Andy Garcia, if anyone had seen “City Island,” you’d have gotten much deserved official kudos. And as for my erstwhile colleague, Coen brothers’ cutter and alter ego Roderick Jaynes, how can excellent performances or the film overall be recognized without a best editing nomination?

One of an editor’s primary tasks is performance construction. Each angle of each scene is shot multiple times; there can be a dozen or more “takes” of every shot. Editors, working side by side with directors, piece the best of them together seamlessly to create unified and moving performances by each actor. And we can be obsessive, struggling to get even a mere word from one take into the final cut (if the utterance is extraordinary). Thelma Schoonemaker and Martin Scorcese will work to get a syllable they like into the picture.

A few years ago, a generous and sensitive director called a colleague of mine on the day nominations were announced. One of her picture’s performances had received a best acting nod, but there was no Academy acknowledgement of superior film editing. “That nomination was actually yours,” said the director.

There still seems to be a sense, even among film afficionados who parrot the truism that “films are made in the cutting room,” that an editor’s job is to delete gaffes. Directors and editors know that our job is to refine and elevate the story we’re telling... to tell it in the best possible way. In order to accomplish that goal, we mine hundreds of hours of film for gold -- outstanding moments of performance, camera work... moments of true movie magic -- and we do whatever it takes to work them into the film gracefully. So I can only assume that, had there been 10 best editing nominations, the editors of best picture nominees, “The Kids are Alright,” “Winter’s Bone, “Inception,” “Toy Story” and “True Grit” would have been named along with the equally deserving editors of “The Fighter,” “The Social Network,” “The King’s Speech,” “127 Hours” and “The Black Swan.”

Citizen Zuckerberg

2011-01-20T18:30:00.000-08:00

Last November, after three decades in feature film editing, I had the great pleasure of lecturing cinema students at my alma mater, Cornell University. Addressing under-graduates, I emphasized one basic idea: Good movies are made by men and women who know and love their art form’s great works. The best filmmakers have repeatedly watched the best pictures ever made; they’ve devoured and completely absorbed them.

I explained that my contribution as editor of Joel and Ethan Coen’s “Raising Arizona,” for instance, was enhanced by my dozens of viewings of screwball comedies such as “His Girl Friday” and “The Lady Eve.” My endless, impassioned study of Mike Nichols’ “The Graduate” and other movies about anti-heroes enabled me, while editing Terry Zwygoff’s “Ghost World,” to make the film’s prickly protagonists palatable.

The point -- that excellent filmmakers have great films in their DNA -- might have been made, as well, by analyzing Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher’s “The Social Network.” For its riveting story about the creator of Facebook is nothing less than a brilliant re-working of Orson Welles 1940 masterpiece, “Citizen Kane.”

Charles Foster Kane (fashioned by its writer/director after the real-life William Randolph Hearst) and Mark Zuckerberg (fashioned by Sorkin and Fincher after the real-life... well, Mark Zuckerberg) are both deeply flawed protagonists. So, as storytellers, Welles and his contemporary counterparts had the same problem: to keep viewers entertained and engaged by a repulsive central character. And all three dealt with that conundrum in, essentially, the same way.

The films’ narratives unfold through the testimony of people whose lives were affected by their anti-heroes. In “Kane,” a reporter seeking material for a newsreel obituary tracks down and interviews key players in the life of the newspaper baron. In “The Social Network,” depositions in a lawsuit against Mr. Zuckerberg form the movie’s portrait of him. And both pictures dramatize the words of interviewees (under oath or not) with flashbacks.

Thus Welles’s most revered work and Sorkin & Fincher’s contemporary classic are really about their supporting players. The 1940 film recounts how Jed Leland, Susan Alexander, Mr. Bernstein and Mr.Thatcher are dazzled and transformed by Charles Foster Kane. Millionaire Kane may be a ruthless, egomaniacal sociopath, but he infuses so much vibrancy into the otherwise dull lives of those he exploits that his selfishness has a rosy tint. Set against the fecklessness and malevolence of characters like Thatcher and rival candidate Jim Gettis, moreover, Kane’s megalomania seems almost attractive. And despite his wealth and power, he always appears to be storming the fortress.

Like Kane, the driven Zuckerberg brightens existence for the very people of whom he takes advantage. Eduardo Severin, Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, all of Facebook’s users and, yes, even the Winklevoss twins and their hapless sidekick, Divya Narenda, are better for having been exploited by him. Also like Kane, Zuckerberg seems highly attractive when compared to the mundane and villainous characters he comes across . Lawyers and university officials depicted in Sorkin and Fincher’s film are paradigms of mediocrity. Napster creator Sean Parker, lacking Zuckerberg’s tragic and romantic motivations, is simply a narcissistic prick. And Laurence Summers personifies “the banality of evil.” By contrast, Zuckerberg achieves his goal of soaring above the contemptible establishment while providing a highly valued service, authority be damned!

Readers delight in reading Kane’s newspapers. Frat boys and coeds crave their Facebook connections. And those in the orbit of the Hearst-like and the Zuckerberg-like characters all bask in the warmth of their radiance.

But above all, “Citizen Kane” and “The Social Network” share their makers’ relentless adherence to the “truth of fiction.” They are fictionalized accounts of public citizens. Orson Welles created his protagonist’s childhood and death out of whole cloth (William Randolph Hearst was very much alive in 1940) in order to tell the best story he could.

Sorkin and Fincher, in their movie, seem to compress the separate Winklevoss and Severin lawsuits into one. Such compression, as with Paul Schrader and Martin Scorcese’s merging of two real-life characters into one Joey LaMotta in “Raging Bull,” is simply a mainstay of good storytelling.

What’s more, just as Welles made up Rosebud (young Charlie’s sled), Aaron Sorkin invented Erica Albright, the woman who dumps Zuckerberg for being an incorrigibly status-seeking cad -- “an asshole” -- and refuses to forgive his pathological behavior. Presumably the desire to “get girl back” motivates Sorkin/Fincher’s protagonist to overachieve. But the real Zuckerberg is still in a relationship with the woman who was his girlfriend before he founded Facebook. And, in reality, he wouldn’t have flaunted his business ambitions to woo a lover who’d rejected him for overachieving.

So Sorkin and Fincher, again, stay close to the “Citizen Kane” model by creating a fictitious and dubious motivation for their character’s behavior. Erica, like Rosebud, is a “McGuffin,” not an explanation. If Kane’s deathbed invocation of his childhood plaything means anything, I think, it’s that when confronted by mortality, one is as likely to recall a small pleasure as he is an astounding achievement. Surely Welles wasn’t saying that the loss of a sled explains building an opera house for an untalented singer, or fomenting an illegal war of imperial conquest.

Fincher and Sorkin’s adaptation of Welles’s model, to be sure, was a choice from among several established approaches to presenting a flawed central character. In “The Graduate,” Benjamin Braddock is as cold, disordered and dispicable as Zuckerberg. But Buck Henry and Mike Nichols tell the young man’s story from his own point of view. Ben’s crass parents and their horrifying friends are seen through the young man’s snorkling goggles, their sounds drowned out by his own anxious, affectless breathing. Thus the audience becomes the anti-hero, seeing the world as he does. They can’t judge Benjamin harshly because they are Benjamin. A brilliant strategy -- just not Sorkin’s and Fincher’s.

Yet another style used to make pernicious protagonists likeable is to show them objectively, in cinematic third person rather than from other characters’ points of view, with a few admirable traits that make them compare favorably with even more odious personae. This was Francis Coppola’s approach in “The Godfather.” That film’s Don Corleone is a fiercely loyal family man with a strict code of business ethics. His eldest son, Sonny; the drug dealer, Solozzo; police captain McClusky; disloyal son-in-law, Carlo -- everyone else lacks the Don’s redeeming qualities.

Of course, Coppola, given to operatic and classical storytelling, infused the Don’s flaws with tragedy. Vito Corleone must resort to violence in order to provide for and protect his family. Tragically, and to varying degrees, he, his sons and his daughter become victims of the same kinds of violence used as a matter of course in the family business.

So... Sorkin and Fincher might have used Coppola’s approach or the one employed by Buck Henry and Mike Nichols. But they went to the Wellesian well instead. It makes sense. Their lead character, Mark Zuckerberg, like Charles Foster Kane, was based on an iconic public figure -- a titan in the field of communication -- and “Citizen Kane” told that story perfectly. True, David Fincher cast a non-heroic actor, as had Mike Nichols. Coppola and Welles cast larger-than-life actors in their lead roles. A social network, I guess, is more anti-heroic than a newspaper empire.

But to return to my original point, the makers of “The Social Network” were able create a film that is, arguably, a contemporary masterpiece, because they have lived and breathed great films that told similar kinds of stories. Did they consciously emulate “Citizen Kane?” Maybe, maybe not. But they certainly learned profound filmmaking lessons from watching it over and over again.

Just as novelists have to be well-read and musicians need to know music, movie makers must maintain a high degree of film literacy. Jonathan Franzen devoured Tolstoy novels before writing Freedom, while Keith Richards’ Life and Bob Dylan’s Chronicles each show their authors’ encyclopedic knowledge of the blues. A close look at “The Social Network” makes it clear that the motion picture canon is an integral part of Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher’s narrative genius.

Listening to THE FIGHTER

2011-01-18T16:37:00.000-08:00

Los Angeles, CA. January 9, 2011.

Friday night I attended a reception for the makers of “The Fighter,” followed by a screening, at the home of John and Nancy Ross. Their beautiful abode, just off Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles, has a breathtaking view of the city. It also has something other canyon houses with great views don’t: a state of the art motion picture dubbing stage. That’s where the film’s sound was mixed. And it proved to be a perfect place to experience fully the sonic delights in David O. Russell’s story of welterweight Mickey Ward and his crack addict brother, Dickie Eckland. What a way to hear a movie!

Reception guests included Oscar winning editor Alan Heim, editor/ producer Mary Sweeny, post production supervisor Bruce Markoe and “Fighter” sound designer Odin Benitez. After fine dining and chatting with these esteemed colleagues, I made my way to the impressive sound stage. In opening remarks, Mr. Russell thanked the Rosses, the audio crew and picture editor Pam Martin, and spoke about how, following the example of Frank Capra, he personally directed background and even off screen performances.

Mark Wahlberg, noting the room’s wide, plush chairs, joked that he didn’t want anyone to get comfortable enough to snooze through the picture. He added that great care and thousands of judgements went into making “The Fighter.” Less care and a few bad choices, he suggested, might have resulted in a movie that put everyone to sleep, comfortable or not.

Talking about the manifold decisions entailed in making a film played like gangbusters to this crowd. Script, casting, photographic, design, costume, hair, make-up, location, editing and, of course, sound choices are, after all, the group’s raison d’etre. A simple look at the mixing console in front of us, with its hundred plus faders and thousands of knobs, was a reminder of how much work and planning, unbeknownst to most viewers, goes into the soundtrack of any motion picture.

“The Fighter” announces its audio signature of “pre-lapping” before its first image even appears on screen. Over black, we hear Dickie’s flat New England stacatto. Then we see him -- gaunt, full of nervous tics. We hear an interviewer but he’s “off mic,” and that sound quality brings us right into the room -- not into a movie with its artifice of putting all dialogue on mic. We hear sparse background traffic and local, seasonal birds. And these subtle choices by Mr. Benitez, Mr. Russell and Ms. Martin tell us all about the size and feel of Lowell, Mass., home of Dickie Eckland and Mickey Ward.

Soon -- again over black -- there’s a scraping sound, rich in metaphor. Scraping by. In and out of scrapes. Scrape. Scrape. The image of Mickey’s rake appears, dragged over torn up Lowell pavement. The welterweight is at work on a road-paving crew. But the abrasive sound of his tool is soon upstaged by Dickie’s fists, annoyingly darting in and out of frame. As a fighter, Dickie’s so “squirrely, you don’t even know (he’s) there.” But as a brother to Mickey, he’s more irritating than harshly raked gravel; you can’t forget he’s there.

Dickie bellows that he’s “the pride of Lowell,” and a song bursts onto the soundtrack -- one of many pieces in “The Fighter” known in film editing as “scorce.” The term refers to a song -- which might come from a source such as a radio or juke box -- used as motion picture underscore. Dickie’s crackhead mania, Lowell’s fever over having an HBO documentary crew on its streets and Mickey’s lusty optimism are all conveyed sonically as the cue blends with dialogue, background chatter, hard sound effects, bird and traffic backgrounds -- literally dozens of tracks subtley woven together to create a unified whole.

After the screening, I discussed what we’d just heard with sound designer Odin Benitez, who was still excited as can be about a film he’s seen over a hundred times! Mr. Russell’s ability to “think outside the box” and his high level of comfort with lulls in the soundtrack remained impressive to him as ever. Without quiet moments, Mr. Benitez pointed out, the “busier” scenes -- Mickey’s bouts and Dickie’s arrest -- wouldn’t have packed the roundhouse punch they do.

It was delightful to listen to the sound designer enthuse about using Led Zeppelin’s “Good Times, Bad Times” in “The Fighter.” The classic song plays as “scorce” when Dickie’s fundraising scheme (posing as a police officer to shake down a john) is foiled by real cops and he and Mickey are brutally beaten. In John Ross and Myron Nettinga’s mix, ear-piercing police sirens and Jimmy Paige’s shreiking guitar riffs become indistinguishable, signalling a shattering of the characters’ dreams. And the soundtrack’s emotional impact is overwhelming, a sonic equivalent of Edward Munch’s “The Scream.”

This powerful final mix of dozens of music channels, dozens of dialogue channnels and hundreds of sound effects channels is the product of weeks of hard work by many talented people. On the road to the finished product, Odin Benitez said, “The Fighter” had three “temp dubs,” or temporary mixes. These mini-mixes, completed in a few days time, are a tool filmmakers use for test screenings. They help create a track that -- with rudiments of music, sound effects and “cleaned up” dialogue -- becomes an audio facsimile of a finished film, enabling test audiences to feel like they’re responding to a movie they’ve bought tickets to see.

But temp dubs are also rehearsals for the final soundtrack. In Mr. Benitez’s case, they provided an opportunity to preview “design elements” for the director and to learn how Mr. Russell wanted Lowell, Mass. to sound. The mini-mixes also enabled the designer to see how closely he could match the director’s sonic model, “Raging Bull,” without making “The Fighter” sound dated.

As motion picture budgets shrink, the temp dub has, unfortunately, become a “corner” some independent film producers think they can cut. But they can’t. Not if they want to create films that, like “The Fighter,” will be remembered for generations to come. As everyone at Friday night’s screening learned, the film’s carefully constructed, dynamic and brilliant soundtrack is a key to its huge, lasting emotional wallop. And brilliance doesn’t come from cutting corners.

What's a Post-Production Exec?/Being Steven Spielberg

2011-01-18T16:34:00.000-08:00

Los Angeles, CA. January 6, 2011.

Marty Cohen, an old friend, has resigned as head of post-production at Paramount. The truth is, I don’t think Marty ever liked the job. He took it after running post at Dreamworks (and Amblin, its predecessor), simply because Steven Spielberg asked him to. Amblin and Dreamworks were boutiques, built around one great filmmaker (Mr. Spielberg.) Paramount is a large corporate entity inside a mega-conglomorate. And Marty’s always been more of a boutique kind of guy.

His departure brings back a fond memory of the Amblin days. But before sharing it, I should explain what a studio post production head does, since no one outside the movie business would know. In fact, aside from those who work in post-production itself -- the period from the end principal photography on a film through the striking of prints that will be shipped to shopping mall cinemas -- most people in the film industry are unaware of the position.

Marty’s job was to oversee the studio’s post supervisors. The supervisors are responsible for budgeting, making deals on and scheduling every aspect of the editing, sound editing, sound mixing, visual effects, color correction and titles of the company’s movies. They’re the ones who approve overtime for any of the dozens of editors, assistant editors,visual effects technicians and sound editors whose names you see in end title sequences. Consulting with the post v.p., they have to schedule test screenings in a way that accounts for the filmmakers’ needs and the time commitments of busy studio executives.

In addition to monitoring and guiding the work of supervisors, Marty’s former job and that of his colleagues at the other studios, entails being a laison between filmmakers and heads of the studios. It is often the post executive’s difficult task to present an estimate of overages that getting a film into theatres on its release date will entail. Even more stressful, the work often requires saying “no” to extremely demanding producers and directors.

But, to be sure, the job has its lighter aspects. One of these is simply getting to know a lot of editors and sound editors (and their strengths and weaknesses). That part, dining and chatting with cutters, brings me back to my fond recollection.

Marty, in a way, was the Tom Hagen of post supervisors: like the Godfather’s cosigliere, he had “a special practice with only one cllient.” Nonetheless, he managed to keep up with editors. He and I met when I edited “Swing Kids,” a film that Spielberg producing partner Frank Marshall executive produced in 1992. About a year later, we planned a catch-up lunch at Joseph’s Cafe on Yucca and Ivar in Hollywood, which, at the time, didn’t accept credit cards. [The most hardcore fans of Billy Wilder’s “Sunset Boulevard” will recognize that intersection of Yucca and Ivar as the location of Joe Gillis (William Holden)’s apartment.]

Marty was due back from London (where he’d been on a mission for Amblin) the day before we were to dine. But flight delays caused him to arrive at LAX a mere few hours before our scheduled meal. Somehow, he made it right on time. In order too do so, however, he’d had to forego exchanging his British pounds for dollars. So I picked up the tab. For Steven Spielberg’s head of post production! We had a good laugh.

It turned out, though, that Marty took it seriously. Within minutes of my return home, a runner from Amblin was at my door with cash to reimburse me for the lunch. In Hollywood, where image is everything, Steven Spielberg picks up the tab. Always.

Ironically, about ten years after that incident, I had another “only in Hollywood” experience with Mr. Spielberg and dining out. I’d decided to sport a beard, which grew in kind of salt-and-pepper. My dress style at the time was L.A. casual: jeans, white tennis shoes, baseball cap. I wore wire framed glasses. Underneath the cap, the glasses and the beard, I had what my grandmother used to call a yiddishe punim (a Jewish face). And at my stature, I wasn’t getting signed by the Lakers any time soon.

So I began to get exceptionally good treatment in cafes and restaurants. Suspecting what was up, I started to tip really well. Way above the norm. After all, I didn’t want Mr. Spielberg -- for whom I’d been mistaken -- to get an unearned reputation as a tightwad.

One Sunday night my wife and I went to a lovely eatery, called Cynthia’s on Third. The place was quite empty; there were lots of vacant tables. But Cynthia sat us right next another couple... J-Lo and Ben Affleck! Our meal was great, if a bit pricey for a film editor and a speech therapist -- the more so because of my exhorbitant tip.

I went home and shaved.

Of course, the above has nothing to do with Marty Cohen or post production. Except that it’s hard for most editors to think about Marty without thinking of his long-standing professional relationship with Steven Spielberg. He was, after all, Mr. Spielberg’s post supervisor on every film the director made in the past two decades. That’s an incredible track record in a crucial job about which the general public and most people in the film industry know next to nothing. We editors, I'm sure, all wish Marty the best of luck in his post-Paramount period!

Award Eligibility

2011-01-18T13:57:00.000-08:00

Los Angeles, CA. December 29, 2010.

Los Angeles has emptied out for the holidays, as it does every year. There are more Angelinos from the film industry in Hawaii right now than there are in town. So it’s fun to be here. Traffic -- on the roads, in restaurants and at movie theatres -- is almost non-existent. I’ve been watching movies the studios are pushing for awards free of charge, at home with dvd “screeners” they’ve sent, or using my Academy and Guild cards at commercial cinemas and plush screening rooms.

And I talk about films with friends and colleagues non-stop, via email, text, Facebook and phone. A big topic of conversation, today, is last week’s announcement that Carter Burwell’s music for the Coen brothers’ “True Grit” is ineligible for an Oscar. Because the composer based his work on Protestant hymns, notably “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms,” it’ cannot be considered for the best original l score award. But this isn’t the first time Mr. Burwell derived his compositions for the Coens from existing themes. I worked with the brilliant composer on “Raising Arizona” and “Miller’s Crossing,” the underscores of which shed light on the current flap.

Perhaps as early as the screenwriting stage, Joel and Ethan Coen heard the score of “Raising Arizona” in their heads. It would be a variation on Pete Seeger’s “Goofin’ Off Suite,” itself a banjo and yodeling arrangement of the “Ode to Joy” from Beethven’s Ninth. Mr. Burwell delivered what the filmmakers had imagined and then some. Yes, and then some. Not only was the warbling Alpine rather than the Appalachian or folksy Americana flavor we expected, the score for much of the movie had nothing to do with Pete Seeger or Beethoven at all . Mr. Burwell’s biker theme, his Snopes theme and his underscore for Hi’s fight with Gale Snopes were completely original.

Like “Raising Arizona,” “Miller’s Crossing” had a soundtrack the Coen Brothers imagined before the film was shot. They heard, in their heads, variations on “Danny Boy” -- Hibernian music for their Irish-American characters’ Tom and Leo -- transformed into a movie score. And their composer delivered that, but with brilliant orchestrations that enhanced the emotional experience of the movie without leading viewers to hum the actual song.

What’s remarkable to my colleagues and me is that most motion picture scoundtracks entail adaptation. And members of the Academy’s music branch know this. When directors with whom I work turn their films over to a composer for scoring, it’s normal to include a “temp” track. Playing music from other movies as accompaniment for scenes in their rough cuts, directors and editors learn what works and what doesn’t, and and use what they’ve learned to guide the composer toward the final soundtrack. Often composers’ music editors participate in the process, offering pieces of music from their employers earlier work that might be appropriate to the current project.

Some underscore writers resist using the “temp” track as a starting point. A few even refuse to listen to it. But many, especially when they know their directors' tastes well, embrace it fully. The amazing David Newman, when I worked with him on Herbert Ross’s “Boys on the Side,” actually encouraged Mr. Ross to license a piece of temporary music which seemed to work perfectly in a dialogue scene between Whoopi Goldberg and Mary Louise Parker.

Ironically, when I edited with the Coen Brothers, they didn’t use “temp” underscore. I don’t think they do now. Carter Burwell’s work is based on extensive dialogue about what will be most effective, not actual music. Thus even his “adaptations” are completely original.

And this is highly unusual. Every other director with whom I’ve worked, from Woody Allen on “Manahattan” (1979) to Josh Radnor on “Happythankyoumoreplease” (2011), has attached temporary music to his rough cut. I will never forget how surprised (and I suspect chagrined) Zubin Mehta was to learn he was expected to conduct “Rhapsody in Blue” for Mr. Allen’s “Mannhattan” soundtrack at the austere tempo of the Leonard Bernstein recording the director had chosen as “temp.”

Something that keeps coming up in my discussions of Mr. Burwell’s ineligibility for Oscar consideration for “True Grit” is the Academy music branch’s last-minute decision, in 1973, to disqualify Nino Rota’s music for “The Godfather.” Part of Mr. Rota’s underscore, appparently, was a variation on a theme from an 1958 Italian movie. Here, as well, there is irony. Two years later, Mr. Rota received an Academy Award for Best Original Score for “The Godfather Part II,” which used the same theme.

My colleagues and musician friends also point out that “variations on themes” are an esteemed mainstay of classical music. Bartok’s string quartets, felt by many to be the greatest compositions ever written in that genre, were inspired by Hungarian, Slovakian and Romanian folk music. Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” was, in part, based on Russian folk melodies. Brahms wrote the highly acclaimed “Variations on a Theme of Paganini.” And on and on and on.

Also, Academy nay-sayers argue, oodles of film scores are “inspired” by other works. The great Bernard Herrmann paid obvious homage, in his Hitchcock scores, to Beethoven, Stravinsky and others. Many fans of Bill Conti’s theme for the “Rocky” films feel it owes its spirit to Aaron Copeland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man.” And to my ear, Nino Rota’s “Godfather Part II” music owes as much to Tomaso Albinoni’s “Adagio for Strings in G Minor” as it does to any earlier motion picture soundtrack.

At any rate, even editors who are out of town for the holidays have spent a good part of the day talking movie talk, as usual. It’s been said that if there are two film editors in a room (or on line), there will be three opinions.

After the weekend, Los Angeles will once again be filled with filmmakers. But January is always a slow month for work. So we’ll continue to attend screenings and argue (good-naturedly) about the upcoming awards, and we’ll start to look for work, hoping there’ll be more of it to go around than there was in 2010.

I think it would be fun to run a newspaper!

2011-01-18T13:44:00.000-08:00

   A few weeks ago one of my oldest friends began blogging for The New York Times as a "scientist at work." What she's written so far has been engaging for scientists and lay people alike. While reading her blogs, it occurred to me that doing the same kind of thing from inside the film industry might entertain and inform movie buffs and filmmakers in a similar fashion.

   Here, I'll be sharing reflections on work experiences, screenings, colleagues' milestones, motion picture news and so on. From time to time, I'll invite fellow filmmakers to contribute as well. The earliest posts you'll see were composed over the past couple of weeks; from here on, journal entries appear as soon as they're written.

   A common theme will be how much those of use who make movies love watching them -- especially the great ones. Hence, the title of this piece, "I think it would be fun to run a newspaper!" That's what Charles Foster Kane tells his former conservator, Mr. Thatcher, when deciding how to invest his fortune. Indeed, I think it will be fun to keep an online diary.