Читать книгу The Making of a Motion Picture Editor - Thomas A. Ohanian - Страница 16

Partial Credits: Music, War and Love, The Way, The Runaways, Bobby, The New World, I Am Sam, Shanghai Noon, Hope Floats, That Thing You Do!, Waiting to Exhale, Singles, Men Don’t Leave, Clean and Sober, Real Genius, Risky Business, My Favorite Year, Goin’ South, Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Conversation, The Redwoods (Documentary Short).

Richard has had an amazing career and is still at the top of his game. The first feature? The Conversation, working alongside Walter Murch. Then Cuckoo’s Nest. Then Star Wars. All back to back! Each decade has brought memorable films and timeless work from this soft-spoken and talented editor.

TO: Richard, you are an Academy Award and two-time BAFTA recipient for Best Editing. You received your Academy Award for Star Wars and your BAFTA Awards for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Conversation. What led you to editing?

RC: I really enjoyed shooting documentaries, interacting with those subjects and travelling and seeing places as a cameraman. I shot a documentary called The Redwoods, which won an Academy Award for Best Documentary short back in 1967.

TO: I didn’t know that.

RC: When I got into the editing room with Trevor Greenwood, who was the director, he showed me what he was doing with the images. And the images took on a different meaning in editing than when I was on location shooting. You can talk about it. You can read about it. Then when you’re doing it, you become intoxicated with the power of it.

TO: You’ve edited many different genres. Do you have a favorite?

RC: I would probably favor comedy because you have to be so much more adept at timing. Comedy has its own subtleties and timing. My new interest is a style of narrative and I think it’s nonlinear versus linear storytelling.

TO: Can you explain?

RC: Well, the moviegoer has been conditioned to see stories in a linear fashion.

TO: Beginning, middle, and end.

RC: Right. Something happens to our protagonist and there’s a conflict and this is what he does in response to it. And then the villain does this, the protagonist does that, and there’s a resolution and an ending. In the last 10 to 15 years, we’ve seen the growth of much more sophisticated storytelling. You take these events that seemingly are not associated with each other at the beginning of the film and you begin to interweave them in a way that makes sense to you at the end of the picture—like Babel.

TO: Great example. In the past, audiences could understand flashbacks and then flash- forwards, but it took some conditioning.

RC: It’s much more demanding of the viewer.

TO: 1973 to 1977. The Conversation, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and Star Wars.

RC: I was in the Bay Area when Francis Coppola, Milos Forman, and George Lucas were in the prime of their careers. What sticks in my mind is how much I learned from each of those films and those directors. I was pretty naïve about the power of editing.

TO: Can you give some examples?

RC: I had the good fortune to work with Walter Murch on The Conversation. I began to put together the first cut because e Walter was unavailable. After I put the film together in the order that it was scripted, Walter showed me, with the encouragement of Coppola, how to restructure the scenes and create scenes from fragments of other scenes. And we worked on that film for almost a year and a half.

TO: What do you think when you see the film today?

RC: What I learned when I see it now is the flexibility—the plasticity—of structure and how editing can accomplish that. On Cuckoo’s Nest, Milos Forman is a director who is a really good editor. And I learned how to use reaction shots. How to use the characters that did not have dialogue and incorporate them into a scene. On the ward, most of the dialogue was from the McMurphy character—Jack Nichols on—and Nurse Ratched. Milos taught me where to put the reaction shots of the other patients —Billy Bibbit, Cheswick, Harding— these other people who then contributed to the atmosphere of Nurse Ratched’s dominance of the ward.

TO: The reaction shots are so perfectly placed throughout that film.

RC: Yeah. And I thought it was wonderful—you’re advancing the story and the characters by the use of these wordless moments. Milos shot all these other characters with two cameras. If the main camera was on Jack Nicholson, then a second camera would be on Brad Dourif, who played Billy Bibbit, as an example.

TO: Real Genius is like that as well—characters react without saying anything and it is very funny.

RC: Right. On Star Wars, what I learned was the power of cross-cutting. When I was putting together the first cut, especially the opening third of the movie when the Storm Troopers invade Princess Leia’s spacecraft, the script had them as extended scenes. In working with my co-editor Marcia Lucas, I learned the power of cross-cutting from her. We broke up those extended scenes into sections that were ten to twelve seconds long. And then we would intercut them as parallel action. So, that was a new device for me to learn how to use. When I think back, not only did I have the chance of working with really good directors, but also with really good editors. Whether it was Walter Murch or Paul Hirsch or Marcia Lucas or Lynzee Klingman. It was a wonderful way for me to start my feature career.

TO: With Star Wars, were you surprised at winning?

RC: Yes. Some of the other nominees that year were Michael Kahn and Walter Murch. These guys are kinda superstar editors. It’s really a tribute to George Lucas, his imagination, his unique vision.

TO: Bobby is a great film. It didn’t get the attention it deserved.

RC: It was a remarkable experience. Another one that has endured is the sequence in Risky Business where Tom Cruise and Rebecca DeMornay make love on the train. And I think that people react to the sensuality of it. It’s very mesmerizing and seductive.

TO: Are there films that you edited that people should revisit?

RC: One is Men Don’t Leave. It was a really insightful take on depression and how a single mom goes about raising two boys in a strange city. Jessica Lange plays the mother seeking romance and she’s not able to control how her sons are growing up outside of her home. The audiences never warmed up to it.

TO: Why do you think the audience response wasn’t there for Bobby?

RC: I think, in retrospect, that maybe audiences thought it was too didactic or too overtly political. I’m not sure about this but maybe it hurt the picture that the whole closing credits dwelled on the Kennedy family. That wasn’t the original impulse behind the film as written by Emilio Estevez. It was because of Harvey Weinstein’s adopting the picture as one of his own. And he did exert some pressure, requiring us to cut the movie in order to include more of Bobby Kennedy. To the point where the whole closing credits are all photo stills of the Kennedy family.

TO: Right.

RC: So I don’t know if that was a turn off for people who may have liked the story if it were more self-contained and not as a tribute to the Kennedy family. I don’t know, but that’s just a guess.

TO: Joel Cox told me that he thought it is a beautifully edited movie.

RC: Really?

TO: Yes.

RC: That’s very kind of him. Joel’s a terrific editor himself. I would add I Am Sa m. I think Sean Penn is so good in it. And Dakota Fanning —she was six years old when she acted in that. I think she was just astounding.

TO: How about films that you like to watch?

RC: Well, I was in law school at the time that I saw the picture that led me to want to work in film: Nothing but a Man.

TO: Okay, one second. I don’t know it. Let me look it up. Okay, I see it—1964.

RC: Right. It was made by these two guys who had gone to Harvard, and starred Ivan Dixon and Abbey Lincoln. The story takes place in the South and her character’s father is a pastor who opposed her seeing this blue-collar worker played by Dixon. Their courtship, the opposition by the father, the white co-workers and customers of the place where Dixon works all add up to a layered story. Before I saw this, movies were entertainment in my mind, not thought-provoking. This was the first time where I became aware of an American film that seemed relevant for the times.

TO: And had a social aspect to it…

RC: Yeah. I hadn’t seen To Kill a Mockingbird yet. And the sound effects and music track added such rawness to each of the scenes. It really opened my mind to thoughts of ‘Hey, this is really great. What if I could learn to do that? Can people do this for a living?’

TO: It’s great that you can trace it back to a single film and an experience like that.

RC: I am forever grateful to Michael Roemer and Robert M. Young, the filmmakers. It wasn’t overtly political, but by showing the hardships of two African-Americans who were just trying to pursue a normal life against certain societal odds made the film implicitly political. I like to mention that film because it led me to the career I have. Robert Young gave me a lot of guidance at the beginning.

TO: You made the transition to editing electronic nonlinear…

RC: I wasn’t raised with computers but learning to work with them wasn’t difficult for me. The first film I edited on computer was Waiting to Exhale. And it was a really good match because I found the digital equivalent to what I was used to doing on film.

TO: That’s why when we created it we used those very similar film concepts.

RC: Well, you succeeded with me, buddy. (Both Laugh)

TO: It was all timing.

RC: Digital editing has created the misconception that it would speed things up. Whether it’s Pietro Scalia, Paul Hirsch, Lynzee Klingman—it’s a creative task and you don’t create faster because you have a computer in front of you. That’s why directors shoot so much—because they want options. All of a sudden, the editor now has 15 takes per angle — instead of three—and so our task becomes more time consuming.

TO: Are there films that stand out where you were particularly challenged?

RC: The Conversation for sure, because it was such an editorial puzzle. Credit has to be given to Walter Murch for solving that. I was just too inexperienced. But the one that I was more intimately involved with and that took much longer is Bobby. As I mentioned, after it was shot, there were issues that Emilio and I had to solve. And when Harvey Weinstein picked it up for distribution, he had some ideas, which led to reediting portions of the picture. Now, none of those ideas were bad, but they were different from what was intended in the script.

TO: So, you had to go and do things that you hadn’t planned on?

RC: Yes. They were to introduce the character of Bobby Kennedy earlier. The original script didn’t have Bobby enter the picture physically until the last act when he enters the hotel and Anthony Hopkins greets him. Once Harvey Weinstein got involved, he thought—probably correctly— that the name Bobby Kennedy wouldn’t mean anything or have an attraction to audiences in 2006 unless we introduced him earlier and interspersed him through the picture. So, to create the prologue and to set the time frame was challenging.

TO: You were in California at the time that Kennedy was campaigning and when he was assassinated. It must have been emotional for you to see the recreation.

RC: I marched with the anti -war movement in the ‘60’s and it meant a lot to be offered the chance to work on Bobby. It was very meaningful for me to revisit that time and it was emotional. After he is shot, the picture ends with a voice-over of the speech that he gave a day after Martin Luther King was assassinated.

TO: It’s an incredible speech—it really is. I looked it up and it’s the one that he gave in Cleveland. It’s the “On the Mindless Menace of Violence” speech.

RC: The power of ending the film with that speech led us to change how we presented the political remarks Bobby made in Ambassador Hotel ballroom before he stepped into the kitchen where he was shot. Emilio wanted to use those remarks because it’s the last documentary footage we have of him. But those remarks were overtly political, and it would have diminished the powerful speech that we use at the very end. I had to convince Emilio to use what Bobby was saying in the ballroom only as a voiceover supporting images of the Vietnam War and street protests. We didn’t want to take away from the final speech. That was something we had to discover as a solution along the way.

TO: Anything else that comes to mind?

RC: On Risky Business, I used second unit footage to show a lot of trains passing each other in rapid succession. Then at the end there was a train giving off a spark that was to symbolize a sexual climax. I showed it to Paul Brickman and that inspired him to reconceive the sequence. Eventually he returned to the location in Chicago and shot a new scene to precede what I had shown him. By step printing to slow down the action and that, combined with the music that we picked, gave us the feeling we wanted. From the Tangerine Dream music and the step printing of the footage and how it fades to black, we created the whole feeling we were after.

TO: What films and editors do you admires?

RC: Apocalypse Now, The Godfather I and II, Raging Bull. In more recent times, City of God—just the use of the parallel characters and how they were introduced. I like Slumdog Millionaire, Into the Wild, Babel, and Traffic in terms of how they were put together.

TO: Because of the sequencing?

RC: Yes. They had nonlinear structures which we talked about earlier. I talked to Jay Cassidy who edited Into the Wild, and he said originally it was a linear story. It wasn’t until much later in post-production that they decided to start with the end of the story. I thought about how much it sounded like what I had experienced with Walter on The Conversation and how you have to manipulate these things and see how they work.

TO: What else?

RC: Babel and Traffic were both edited by Stephen Mirrione and I admire his work. Slumdog Millionaire has a clever story structure alternating the character’s past with the present time. I liked 127 Hours a lot. When you realize the confined time period and location, how can you present that story and the development of that character and still tell a story full of tension? I thought it was brilliant to be able to do that.

TO: What editors come to mind?

RC: Walter Murch has worked with Fred Zinnemann, Anthony Mingella, Francis Coppola. Walter is so special that he’s able to bring his uniqueness to the works of these different directors. I think the same of Anne Coates—being able to work with everyone from David Lean to Wolfgang Petersen to Stephen Soderbergh. Alan Heim because his career goes back some 30 years, to the work he did with Bob Fosse, such as Lenny and All That Jazz… Today there’s a new guy on the block whose work I like. Hank Corwin.

TO: Yeah. You know, Hank’s name doesn’t come up as often as it should, I think. He’s really talented.

RC: Right. He isn’t as well-known as some other editors, but his work is so unusual. I worked with him on The New World. His style is so unique because of how he sees things. Even though Natural Born Killers doesn’t have the story impact of some of the other films we’ve been talking about, but the stylistic pizazz—Wow.

TO: Speaking of style, what did you think of J.F.K.?

RC: It’s right up there. It’s one of those experiences where you look at it as an editor and think, ‘How is that even possible?’ The editors that work with David Fincher…

TO: Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall.

RC: They’ve come on like gangbusters. The late Sally Menke and Quentin Tarantino.

TO: Waiting to Exhale did really well.

RC: Yeah, it did box office because the book was so popular. Forest had a difficult job. He had to babysit a diva —Whitney Houston—who was hard on the crew. Once she got out of the trailer she was fine with cast members. Forest’s job was to balance a huge megastar with an accomplished actress —Angela Bassett—who comes with formal training from the Yale School of Drama.

TO: What have you learned along the way?

RC: Not to take anything for granted. At the beginning of my career the critical response to the movies I edited was pretty good. I made the mistake of thinking ‘Oh, everything I work on is going to be great’ and I was too young to appreciate how difficult it was to get to that level. There are people who work for decades in this industry and try to achieve that level of recognition and here I was, this young guy who basically was not schooled but acting on instinct.

TO: What is it about your profession that you like the most?

RC: I get to work with such creative minds and visionary spirits. I’m just amazed that I get to be in the same room and exchange ideas with smart people. Arguing with Milos Forman. Listening to Marcia Lucas or George Lucas talk about their theory of cutting.

TO: And each film is a new experience.

RC: A new experience and the goals are different for the story and the film. This is why I value having worked with so many different directors. I get so many different views on life and I love that aspect of my career. I get paid to do this, so I feel ‘How much better can this be to get paid to do what I love?’ And I feel very, very lucky