by Norman Hollyn

Every scene in every film requires different tactics in its editing, and each has its own history. This is the first in a series of articles in which I sit down with editors and look at a scene

Andrew Mondshein

they’ve cut: the aesthetics, the process and the politics that took the scene from script to final product. My hope is that by examining individual scenes in detail, we will gain some insight into how the editorial process works — a view not from the infamous cutting room floor, but an overview from the cutting room ceiling.

Our first editor is Andrew Mondshein, discussing the new Miramax film The Shipping News, which he cut for director Lasse Hallström. The two had previously collaborated on Once Around, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and Chocolat. Two years ago he was nominated for an Academy Award for editing The Sixth Sense for M. Night Shyamalan.

The Shipping News is the story of an emotionally beaten man, Quoyle (Kevin Spacey). When his philandering wife Petal (Cate Blanchett) dies after her car crashes into a river, Quoyle moves to his ancestral home in Newfoundland with his aunt (Judi Dench) and a cynical young daughter.

Andy and I examined a scene that occurs about thirty minutes into the film, after the family has arrived in Newfoundland. Quoyle’s aunt and his daughter, Bunny, have just driven him to his first day of work as a reporter at the local newspaper, The Gammy Bird. Quoyle is worried about his new job as he walks in the front door for a scene in which we will meet the newsroom staff: the editor, Tert Card (Pete Postlethwaite) and two writers, Nutbeem (Rhys Ifans) and Billy Pretty (Gordon Pinsent).

Norman Hollyn: On the surface, this looks like a fairly simple scene.

Andrew Mondshein: That’s true. It’s a typical example of the fact that so much of the time, what we editors do is not ultimately visible. It’s about what was taken out, what was left in

It’s our job to paint a picture of a character one beat at a time. Line by line, beat by beat, you go through scenes. When it feels right, it becomes invisible, and it seems obvious. It’s as if that’s the way it was meant to be.

and what was manipulated to the nth degree. You’re right — on the surface, this is a fairly straightforward scene. But in its original incarnation, it had a few problems.

In shooting or editorial?

The potential problems in this instance were more script and performance-related. Editorially, the challenge was to recognize and then solve them.

On a scene like this, what sort of discussion would you have had prior to receiving dailies?

Lasse and I tended not to spend a lot of time on scene-by-scene discussions because we had already had more general discussions during the script development stage. One of the challenges in this story is that Quoyle is a fairly slow-witted, passive protagonist. You’re almost trying to gauge how deep the sonar goes inside that head.

That’s why this is such a great scene to talk about — it’s the entrance into a new world, from the point of view of an inner-directed character.

Exactly. This scene is also an introductory and expositional scene, which can easily have an obligatory feel to it. Audiences tend to zone out when names and people are being introduced, and keeping that kind of material interesting is a problem that every film has at a certain point. This is a film with many characters, each with their own story. And it’s not plot-driven, so you don’t have the constant tug of “Who is the murderer?” The minute things start to get boring, your audience will tune out.

Before the start of this scene, there’s a prelap of a banging sound, played over the last shot of Judi Dench in the previous scene in the car.

And over the first shot of Quoyle in the scene. The style of the film is somewhat impressionistic. We have dreams and flashbacks, even visions. Using the prelap of Nutbeem banging on the shortwave radio fits within our style.

At first you don’t know what the sound is.

Yes, we’re also looking to add a bit of mystery to help propel the film; two shots later we see Nutbeem’s hand smashing the top of a short-wave radio. Mystery can be a compelling storytelling element. I think it’s important, certainly helpful, to define a certain stylistic range in the first ten or fifteen minutes of a film.

Did you know ahead of time that this impressionistic style was something that you were going to be doing?

We discussed it quite a bit during the script development stage. E. Annie Proulx’s original novel wasn’t a linear tale of character development, let alone plot development. Lasse believed if we straightened it out too much, we’d unravel the tapestry that made this story unique.

So we end the scene in the car with the shortwave banging sounds, and then we’re looking at Quoyle in close-up as he walks in. After the shot of the hand banging the shortwave, we go back to Quoyle, but this time in wide shot.

You have this passive protagonist, but you need to know, on a subjective level, what your character is experiencing, feeling and thinking. I’ve had a number of passive protagonists in films I’ve worked on, and I find that the more you bounce things through them, the more you involve your audience emotionally. You sometimes need to go further than you would with normal characters.

Yet in this scene, there are no close-ups at all. You never get tighter than chest shots. And there are only about eight to ten pieces of coverage.

That’s true. This was a choice in part because of the physicality of Quoyle and our desire to see his awkwardness in a new environment. Also, I’m bit of a traditionalist when it comes to close-ups. I really believe that you can use up the effectiveness of close-ups in film if you use them too much.

Were there tighter shots that you didn’t use?

There was one, but it was intended for a section that we eliminated. Anyway, we now go to a brief introduction to Nutbeem.

And right away, back into the wide shot for the entrance by Card. You used a take in which Card stumbles on a line about how Nutbeem gets his stories from the radio. He says, “The goddamn…” then pauses for a second and finishes the sentence, “…shortwave.”

Well, we didn’t love that, but ultimately it was something that we accepted in the scene. It was clearly the best take in the best size. We really wanted to have the three of them incorporated in the same shot at that moment. Also, I was able to adjust the sound to some degree to make it slightly better.

So, Nutbeem talks about how Card is always rewriting his stuff.

Now we get to the problems. Part of the magic of Proulx’s book is the way she uses language to show us the internal world of the quirky characters and to paint a beautifully desolate environment. The challenge for us, of course, is to translate these elements into cinematic terms. I’m of a mind that great liberties should be taken when translating literary material. Certainly, cinema is a more visually visceral experience. Quoyle’s history is a dark tale, indeed. Lasse, Oliver Stapleton (the director of photography) and David Gropman (our production designer) had to translate all of that into something visual.

I felt that you get close to that feeling in this scene because of how wide the shots are. You continually cut back to Kevin Spacey in this spare place. The wideness of the shots puts him inside this somber set design and photography.

It’s our job to paint a picture of a character one beat at a time. The problem, though, was that the nature of the Gammy Bird crowd had something of the broad comic quality of The Front Page. And, at first blush, when we first constructed the scene, some things were blatantly in that vein.

In performance?

A combination of writing and performance. People assume that wonderful actors like these can do anything. But the truth is, they can’t. Even the best actors have difficulty portraying some scripted lines, no matter how well they read on the page. It’s one of our jobs to help arbitrate that, along with the director. We actually cut out a couple of lines at the beginning when Nutbeem tries to explain why he’s smashing this shortwave. At thirty minutes into a movie, the audience has certain expectations for new plot developments. In this scene, we’ve just started another series of introductions, and the film seemed to grind to a halt and do an about-face in both tone and rhythm, all at a point where normally we’re starting to take off into new areas.

So, you eliminated some material?

In the original cut, right after Card says he changed the article, “only to save you from charges of plagiarism,” Nutbeem pulls out a story that he’s written and reads it. The way Card’s butchered the rewrite was hilarious — on the page. On screen, it wasn’t so funny. The script description is simply, “Quoyle is bewildered.” Well, we found that that was the reaction we would get from an audience! The attempt to translate this directly from the book to the screen did not work for us, so we deleted that portion of the scene.

Were you also dealing with time issues as well?

Absolutely. Aren’t we always? On a film with a story that doesn’t have a strong narrative spine, there are always going to be issues of pacing. Even more importantly, the change in tone to the Front Page comedy swung the pendulum further than Lasse wanted to at this point.

At what stage in the editing process were these lifts made?

Early, during the second or third cut.

Now Billy Pretty enters.

One of the results of this is that Pretty doesn’t say anything in the scene, and Quoyle doesn’t speak to him, either.

These are the loose ends that you’re left with, when you start to cut down a scene like this. You have to deal with them in other ways. I used a take of Nutbeem where he introduces Pretty more quietly, so the fact that in this cut Quoyle doesn’t go over and shake Pretty’s hand is acceptable. Also, on one take, Pretty’s zipper accidentally worked. That, of course, is the one that’s in the movie. This sequence was the one in which we had our one close-up, as Kevin told Pretty how much he admired his work.

Quoyle’s line, “I’m a fan,” motivated Card to send Quoyle to his desk. But the line was deleted.

Right. Now, as originally constructed, we had a nice shot from Quoyle’s POV of his empty desk in a state of disrepair, with boxes all around it. Ultimately, we chose to reconstruct the scene so that you didn’t see the desk clearly until he goes over to sit down. In this way, the audience gets to experience the moment of seeing the desk at the same time as Quoyle. He utters practically his first words, “Is there a computer?” Then we drop back to the wide shot and see the full desk and its environment. We had one take where Kevin practically falls out of his chair, but we chose another that went to the precipice but didn’t go over. The first was more of that Front Page broad humor, and it didn’t work for us.

Now, Quoyle gets his first assignment Card tells him, “You lead a charmed life.” There’s been a car accident that Quoyle has to cover. We hold on Quoyle’s face for the reaction. If this scene is about his character, then this shot is the clearest expression of that.

Precisely. We have taken him in, starting in that medium shot, as he enters this new environment. We’ve introduced the other characters briefly, taking the approach that pieces of expositional information about the characters are better handed out piecemeal along the way. Then we have this final shot of Quoyle’s panicked look — he’s helpless and certainly not prepared for whatever is about to come.

Is he reacting this way because he’s worried about his first assignment or because of the history of car accidents in his past?

Hopefully it includes both. Quoyle is a really, really tough part for an actor, and it’s fun to watch how Kevin pulls it off.

How do you make sure that it’s conveyed?

Part of it is the size and the angle of the shot. But it’s also a moment that depends on things we’ve established before. If we’ve properly set it up in previous scenes, you feel that reaction here.

How do you determine the length of this reaction? Because you could have conceivably held on this twice as long.

I don’t know how to put it into words — it’s rhythm. When it feels right, it becomes invisible, and it seems obvious. It’s as if that’s the way it was meant to be. [Laughs] Of course, that’s until the next pass, when you have to take out ten minutes, and then suddenly it’s just too damn long, and you hear, “What the hell were you holding on that shot for, anyway? We got it already!”

It makes the transition to the close-up of the water in the next scene particularly meaningful. Putting one shot after another is what editing is all about. There’s a strong impact to transitions.

Good transitions can create emotions, for sure. Also, water is a strong visual metaphor in the film, part of its characters’ flashbacks and dreams.

It’s very tough balancing the emotions in this sort of scene.

Line by line, beat by beat, you go through scenes, and you really have to be incredibly demanding and rigorous and brutal with the material. As I said at the beginning, so much of the time what we editors do is invisible. You sweat over every choice. Each piece of material has to earn its way into your movie. In the end, nothing got into this scene that didn’t fit the characters, the style and the storyline.