Two Heads Are Better Than One
An Interview with Editors Mike Hill & Dan Hanley
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Editors Mike Hill and Dan Hanley have co-edited many films for director Ron Howard, winning the Academy Award for editing 'Apollo 13'. They talked to the Newsletter just after finishing 'Ransom'. |
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Mike Hill: We both started as apprentices at Paramount. I started in '73, Dan in '74. We were in film shipping, the TV division.
Dan Hanley: My dad, John Hanley, worked at Paramount. As a kid I used to visit him at the studio every chance I could. I would hang around the sets of 'Star Trek', 'Mission Impossible' and 'Bonanza'. I was really excited when I got the job in film shipping. When I moved up to assistant I hooked up with this guy who was truly a mentor to me, Bob Kern. When I met Bob he was working on three-camera shows. He brought me over from shipping. I think Mike had been working over there with him...
Mike: I worked with Bob a couple of times, shipping sent me over to his editing room to help out. I learned how to sync dailies. I was fortunate there was a guy named Herb Dow, he was the assistant on 'Mannix' at the time, and he told me I better learn how to assist if I wanted to get out of shipping. He taught me a lot. And then they put me on different shows. Eventually Dan worked full-time with Bob. I worked with different editors. I left the studio for a while and worked on 'Bound for Glory', the Hal Ashby movie. They had called Paul Haggar looking for somebody, and he recommended me. He said, I'm not firing you, I'm just giving you. It wasn't even a Paramount show, he was just helping out.
Dan: I was assisting Bob on 'Laverne and Shirley', and he didn't have a problem with assistants cutting. The first day in there, he said, "You'll cut the last scene" and I said, "I don't know how, I barely know how to assist." He said, "Well fine, you can go back to shipping." And I said, "No, no, no, I'll cut it." So I started cutting this little one minute tag after the last commercial break.
We did three of Ron's movies of the week, and that's how I made the connection with Ron [Howard]. Bob was really nice about pointing out to Ron what scenes I'd cut. He was great. I worked for him about seven years and he was really a mentor, because I would show him scenes and he would critique them and kind of talk me through. So, before any of the scenes I cut were shown, I'd already had a chance to go back through them, so I looked pretty darn good most of the time.
Mike: Bob was going to be the editor on Ron's 'Night Shift' and Dan and I were going to assist him. We knew we'd be cutting a lot, too. I didn't know Ron, I just got it because Dan recommended me. A couple of months before it started, Bob had a stroke. Ron decided to move us up and have us edit the movie. Bob was going to be there. I had edited some TV movies in part - I was with an editor named Greg Prange. I'd had a couple of mentors, Herb Dow and then Greg Prange. I assisted him first and then he let me cut on all these movies of the week. So when 'Night Shift' came along I did have some experience editing, probably about as much as Dan. We were really eager and, of course, we were young.
Dan: It was pretty unbelievable. I think I was 27 at the time, Ron was maybe 28, and Michael 30. And the studio was just going, like, wait a minute, what are these guys doing?
Mike: They really didn't want us to do it, but I guess Ron just insisted.
Dan: Yeah, it was great the way he went to bat for us. His selling point to the studio was that he would have Bob on along as supervisor. Bob, having had a stroke, couldn't work long hours but he would come in and we would show him the scenes.
Mike: The interesting thing was, he couldn't talk. So he would write notes to us. We'd call him in and say, look at this on the Moviola, and he'd write a note if he wanted to say something, or he'd just shake his head or he'd point or do something.
Dan: Bob retired after that because it was pretty frustrating. He wasn't that old, he was into his 50's
Dan: I give Mike all the tough scenes and I take the good ones. [Laughter]
Mike: We both would joke about that. But just from day one, scenes start coming in and you say, Okay I'll take that one or, I want that one. We're in different rooms, we're cutting scenes that we pick. And then as the show goes on you just take whatever comes in, and then it starts piling up, you're just trying to keep up. Once the reels are built, then we just take whatever reel. You know, some reels might have more of my stuff or more of his stuff, and you might take a reel and do changes on it if you have a lot of your own material in it. But a lot of times you just take whatever comes up.
Dan: I like that.
Mike: It's beneficial, I think, to dive into the other guy's scene. You see something that he didn't see, and you can bounce things around.
Dan: Yeah and you're not bringing the same baggage along, you come at it with a fresh perspective. Sometimes it's just a lot of give and take, I think, that makes it work and there's never any kind of head butting. It just kind of falls in place naturally, and I don't know why.
Mike: What else is great about it to me, is that you have somebody there to help you out if you've got a really tough scene. You know, it's one of those big ones that takes days and days to cut and you've got hours of footage and it's good to have somebody else to bounce ideas off of, or to have come look at something. You can have assistants, too, but it's nice to have another editor who you know really well and you can trust.
Dan: Yes, Mike beat me to that. I was going to say that's definitely about being able to go in to somebody whose opinion I respect and say, What do you think? It's fine, move on, it's great, you're getting hung up on something. Or, hey what about this?
Mike: Yeah, and I think Ron is the main reason that it's worked -- or one of the main reasons -- because he likes it so much, he likes having a lot of people who can be involved. You know, he thinks two heads are better than one, and as long as he's got two guys that he trusts then he's definitely going to go with that. So it's just been a matter of course with him to have both of us on all of his films.
Dan: Also Ron usually has a pretty clear vision of what he wants, he's pretty straight forward from point A to the final point. I mean there's a lot of scenes that he just -- they work, he likes them, and it's not like, Okay I'm going to tear them apart just to tear them apart. Which has been some of the questioning element with the electronic editing. I think it depends on the director. Ron didn't really all of a sudden start tearing scenes apart.
Mike: If a scene works he doesn't mess with it. That's always highly appreciated.
Dan: And I think it also makes it easier to keep your objectivity. If you've got ninety versions you're cutting, you're just throwing everything against the wall until something looks good.
Mike: Working with Ron we were always on location somewhere, and then usually we would end up, as of I think the mid 80's, back in Connecticut where Ron had moved. We'd go back there to finish up. So my wife and I just didn't feel like we needed to live in L.A., and we didn't want to. Then, when we were in Omaha visiting my mother, we saw a house we liked and thought, "Hey let's try Omaha." We just did an experiment, and we've been in the same house ever since, it's been eight years now. And it's been hard, you know. When my daughter was little she could come with me, they always came with me wherever we went. But since she's gotten into grade school I've been pretty much on the road without them. They come visit whenever they can.
Now my wife's hope is I cut at home on the Avid, because these D.E.S. guys who set us up on the Avid were telling us how you can cut anywhere you want, cut in your home, hook up a video feed. I would love it if it happened. What I'm thinking is it could work during shooting, and Ron's open to it. I'd have to go back for when the shooting is done and the director's there. I would have to go wherever they'd want me to go. But I think it's worth pursuing.
Dan: I've got a really understanding wife, she's independent, but she doesn't like when I'm away. Working in town we've kind of come to the realization that you're almost away as much if not more, and it's almost more difficult because then you're torn. It's like, you've got to stay late for dailies. -- gee, you're going to miss the school play. If you're out of town then it's just like...
Mike: That's why my wife wants the Avid in the basement.
Dan: I know it's tough family-wise, but to me it really is like a double-edged sword because when you're away on location the family's not there, they're doing their own thing anyway, and if I have to work late it's not like, shoot, I have to work late. I just do it. You're not torn between two worlds.
Mike: I'm trying to take more time off now. My daughter's in school and everything, I just need to be home more so I'm thinking about taking the whole year off -- this whole next year -- unless something great comes along. As I'm getting older I just want to be -- I want to slow down. And I think I'm in a really advantageous position, I can kind of go with Ron and if he slows down I can slow down.
Dan: It's pretty interesting when you think about how long we've been going, fourteen, fifteen years? And somehow we're just, I don't think we ever sat down and analyzed it and said, Well this is what makes it work, it just kind of lays itself out without a lot of discussion or analyzing.
Mike: Yeah, it's just we're comfortable and...
Dan: Yeah, personalities work.
Mike: Egos don't get in the way and, you know, it's fun.
Reprinted from
The Motion Picture Editors Guild Newsletter
Vol. 18, No. 1 - Jan/Feb 1997
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