Let It Cook An Interview With Terry Williams And Danny Greene by Rachel Igel Terry Williams' picture editing credits include over a dozen feature films, among them The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming, Family Plot and Airport '75 and '77, and dozens of TV Terry Williams, editing "Raise the Titanic," 1980. movies, mini-series and pilots. Danny Greene's picture editing credits include the feature films M*A*S*H (for which he received an Academy Award nomination), Blazing Saddles (another Academy Award nomination, with John C. Howard), Rocky II, Myra Breckinridge and Who's Harry Crumb?, among many others. You won't see the names Terry Williams, Danny Greene or Richard C. Harris on the credits of the film Psycho. That's because assistant film editors, supervising sound editors and music editors did not receive screen credit in 1960. Only 33 people received screen credit on Psycho, including the actors and the film's director, Alfred Hitchcock. By contrast, 261 people received screen credit on The Silence of the Lambs, and 400 people received screen credit on Basic Instinct, both films in a genre similar to Psycho. Times have changed. Terry Williams came to assist George Tomasini on the recommendation of Russell Schoengarth, an editor he had been working with at Universal. The opportunity to work on Psycho brought Terry into the Hitchcock "family," a group of people whom Hitchcock came to know and like, and chose to work with over and over again. As with most Hitchcock films, the shooting of Psycho was meticulously planned. Saul Bass, a brilliant title designer who did the titles for Psycho, drew the storyboards for the shower sequence, and judging from them, the scene was shot very close to what was originally envisioned. We all We would have only half a reel to a reel of dailies. A reel and a half was a big day. know, however, that no scene is ever edited from a blueprint. Every editor examines the material he has and makes decisions based on what he feels will work best. The Psycho situation was no different. Back in those days, directors rarely came into the cutting room. Dailies were screened in a theater, and subsequent cuts of the picture were also screened. Notes were taken for changes and then made later on without the director present. Terry says there were very few changes made from George's original first cut. As Terry recalls, "Very little was changed. It wasn't one of those runnings where you go back and forth. Tomasini knew what Hitch liked and wanted. Things were storyboarded and plan-ned very carefully in the shooting. I don't mean to say "camera-cut," but it was usually obvious what needed to be done Danny Greene, editing "Outlaw Blues," 1976. editorially. We would have only half a reel to a reel of dailies. A reel and a half was a big day. I remember one day, I had about 6 pretty full reels. And when I'm syncing the dailies, George comes over and says, 'God, the old man got lost.' I said, 'What do you mean?' He says, 'Look at all that film you've got.' He meant that Hitch got lost and covered everything. Well, we got into the projection room and he really had covered everything. He made the error of having three people in a pair of two shots so that the middle person would jump screen. In other words, the character would be on the far right and you would cut, and he would jump left. We were running all these dailies and finally it's over and Hitch is totally silent. Then he says, 'Well, that's all self-explanatory, George.' And everybody just laughed out loud." Terry remembers a lot of setups in the shower sequence, but he says they were very short takes. "In almost any situation where you have a sequence with a whole lot of setups and takes, you abandon style and go for what the film will give you. And that's what George did." I asked Terry if George discussed the sequence with him. "Oh, he probably did, but I don't remember. Whoever thought Psycho-to tell you the truth, they thought this was just a filler. They didn't even want to give me a script. They were so secretive about everything." Terry insisted on ...you abandon style and go for what the film will give you. And that's what George did. reading a script because he had to select a large number of process plates for Janet Leigh's car shots, as well as background plates for the Bates house. This would be difficult without having any idea what the movie was about. Hitchcock relented. "I got the script and took notes on what I would need. And when I talked to Peggy [Peggy Robertson, Hitchcock's personal assistant] the next time I said, 'That's an absolutely marvelous script.' And she said, 'Oh, it's just a filler. It's not a biggy like North By Northwest.' Psycho went on to make more money than any black-and-white movie had made up until that time." Because Hitchcock didn't come into the cutting room, George and Terry worked alone. "I really doubt that many of those old time editors would have allowed a director to spend any protracted amount of time in a cutting room. As a matter of fact, it was hard to get a director to come up and look at a clip on a moviola." The only time Terry does recall Hitchcock coming to the cutting room was to show his wife Alma his synchronizer. Alma Hitchcock had been a negative cutter and editor in England. "He just thought it was fascinating," says Terry, "that we could take a magnetic tape that you couldn't see Psycho was made in an era when film was cut with scissors. any striations on, and run it through this machine and hear dialogue. Alma told us about a time that went back to the 20's in London when she was a negative cutter. The director would come up to negative cutting and then Alma and the director would do a majority of the cutting in the negative form. Certainly, things weren't as complex as they are now. But I guess it went on and on. No work print. No machines to help. Just hands pulling the negative. Alma was amazed at some of the 'high tech' things that we had." We can only imagine how amazed Alma would be today. Psycho was made in an era when film was cut with scissors. Nothing was spliced at the time the cut was made. The cuts were clipped together and put on a shelf. Later, the assistant would hot splice a reel together in the splicing room. A frame would be lost between each cut. "If the editor decided the cut didn't work and wanted to put it back," says Terry, "you made the hot splice, then took looping ink and painted the frame out. You made a black frame. It wasn't like slapping a scene together with clear tape. Editors would scissor cut the film, put it on a rack, and let it cook for awhile. In other words, don't splice it. Then when you run it later, your intentions will show on the screen." Terry thinks the flexibility we have with film today is wonderful. But he cautions that with the digital systems it is possible to lose sight of your original plan. "I would venture a guess that if The combination of Hitchcock's direction, Tomasini's cutting and Bernard Herrmann's music made it just great. People developed a psychosis about taking showers. you take almost any film that's won an editing Oscar, and put it on a Kem or Moviola, you are going to find a ton of mismatches that a new editor would work his butt off to eliminate, but forget about the dramatic content of the sequence. Well, that cooking time on the rack does away with that. You've forgotten the problems you had putting it together. A cut on a little movement will cover up all kinds of things." After all is said and done, the only thing that matters is what's up there on the screen. Terry sums up the success of Psycho. "The thing that stands out in my memory is when we had the cast and crew run. Now, here are a bunch of adult filmmakers of different varieties and their wives sitting in a projection room. And when Arbogast (Martin Balsam) goes up to the old lady's room and she comes out and she-well, there were people standing up and screaming. I mean, these are people that had worked on the film. They probably read the script or at least knew the story. But it just blew everybody's minds. The combination of Hitchcock's direction, Tomasini's cutting and Bernard Herrmann's music made it just great. People developed a psychosis about taking showers." Danny Greene started out as an apprentice at MGM, after getting out of U.S.C. in 1952. He later got a job as a splicer at Revue, which was a subsidiary of MCA. He worked his way up to The only problem we had was the stabbing sound in the shower. assistant, then started to cut sound effects on several series. Things were moving very fast, and in no time he was head of the sound effects department. Because the sound editors at Universal were very busy at the time, Danny was asked if he could supervise Psycho. Danny recalls, "I said, 'Sure, it would be fun to do a feature.' Tomasini was a lovely man. I only met him a couple of times. He was always in a suit. We all wore suits then, suits and ties. It was much more formal. So I assigned two fellows to it and I stayed on top of it pretty much." The first time Danny saw Psycho was in a screening room. George and Terry were there, as were composer Bernard Herrmann, Stan Wilson (head of the Universal music department) and the two sound editors working with Danny. Richard Harris was the music editor, one of the first independent music editors in town. (Richard died in 1995). Although there was no temp music or effects in the film at the time, Danny says the shower sequence worked brilliantly. Hitchcock did not attend the screening. "I think he had so much faith in George, he didn't feel he needed to be there. The old timers worked that way. They wouldn't come in and drive you crazy." Hitchcock was, however, on the dubbing stage. Danny remembers him being very quiet and gentlemanly. "He knew what he wanted. He was very precise, with a dry wit, and in a dark suit and tie Danny Greene today. every time. The only problem we had was the stabbing sound in the shower."Danny was not used to recording new sound effects for shows. He had a selection of library sounds and used those for the sound of the stabbing. "The feature division would rerecord sound effects to the action," says Danny, "but we didn't. There was a guy there named Jack Foley, who was an older fellow even back then, and he developed that system which they still call foley to this day. But we didn't use that. We used our library. We had standard thugs and whacks and socks. It had all been transferred from optical film, so it was a little scratchy. Well, Hitchcock didn't like any of the socks. We had two or three choices and he said, 'No, no.' And I was getting kind of embarrassed and uptight about the whole thing. I started to feel like I'd failed. "So I asked him to break for dinner and thought, okay, I'll get right down to it. I went to the market down the street and bought the biggest roast I could find. I got a knife from the prop shop, which was ironically the one that was in the picture, and I just recorded stabs. Stabs from the gristle side, stabs from the meat side-something I had never done before. And the sound of that was just vicious. Slicing flesh. It was horrible. "So Hitchcock came back. We had cut those things in so fast, because there must have been ten or whatever it was, and he just smiled and said, 'Oh, yes. That's lovely.' He just got off on it." Hitchcock leveled the stabs to what he wanted, but the mixers played them by themselves first during the rehearsal, and Danny says they were terrible. "They would just freeze your blood, and ...he just smiled and said, "Oh yes. That's lovely." then when that music cue hit-I would get chills down my spine every time we ran it." The roast, however, did not go to waste. "After we finished dubbing that reel I took the meat home and told my wife what had happened. I was married then. She made a pot roast that we ate for the next couple of days. We had friends over. Pot roast with potatoes, carrots and onions. It was delicious. Tenderized I must say, from all the stabs."   Rachel Igel is the editor of the Guild Directory   Reprinted from The Motion Picture Editors Guild Directory of Members 1996 -1997   Guild Home | Directory Home | Magazine Home | Top of Page   Copyright © 2000, All Rights Reserved by The Motion Picture Editors Guild, IATSE Local 700