NEWS
Intercut to the Quick
McKay Keeps the Audience Guessing
by Adam Wisniewski
 Editor Craig McKay gave a keynote address at NAB New York. Photo by John Clifford |
The editor took the center stage again at the 2006 NAB New York show, as Guild member and Academy Award nominee Craig McKay, ACE, delivered one of the conference’s two keynote addresses. Last year, NAB recruited top editors in television and film production––including New Yorker Thelma Schoonmaker, ACE, as well as Chris Willman, ACE, and Tim Squyres, ACE––to discuss their high-profile projects. For 2006, the post-oriented NAB stayed local, reflecting McKay’s long history in the city.
Since cutting Melvin and Howard (1980) for director Jonathan Demme, McKay has edited nearly every one of his features. He also acts as a story consultant for documentaries and occasionally directs his own projects. Growing up in New York, McKay got his start in the business at the lowest rung of the ladder, progressing from a messenger to apprentice to assistant editor before moving into feature films.
Early in his presentation, the Oscar-nominated editor for Reds (with Dede Allen) and The Silence of the Lambs revealed his motto in the editing room: “Never let the audience get ahead of the story.” To illustrate this statement, he offered a clip from The Silence of the Lambs in which two scenes are intercut. The kil-ler, Buffalo Bill, has a confrontation with the hostage in his basement, while FBI agent Jack Crawford’s strike team prepares to storm a suburban house. By syncing certain events and sound ef-fects between the two scenes, the audience ex-pects Bill to be captured. The twist is that just as the FBI bursts into an empty house, Bill opens the door to reveal Jodie Foster’s agent Clarice Starling standing alone at the right house without backup, creating the tension that builds toward the film’s climax.
McKay explained that his gut instinct told him the intercutting of the two storylines would make for a better scene, but he was initially in the editing room without Demme, so his first cut showed each segment linearly. During an initial screening of the footage, however, Demme leaned over to whisper to McKay, “Why didn’t you make these parallel?” So, he returned to edit the scene as he had originally envisioned it.
Another clip was an emotional scene from Demme’s Philadelphia (1993) between Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington. Hanks gives an impassioned monologue while translating an aria from La Mamma Morta, and the audience sees Washington’s homophobic lawyer develop a true sense of empathy for his client.
The film itself took 13 months to edit, McKay explained, and this scene was particularly troubling because it made for a long break from the narrative with surreal camerawork, lighting and art direction that were, to some extent, out of sync with the rest of the film. Ultimately, Demme and McKay agreed that the characters wouldn’t feel complete without the scene, and it made the final cut. Although Philadelphia earned Hanks the first of two consecutive Best Actor Oscars, many American critics were lukewarm to the film. However, Roger Ebert singled out the scene in particular in his review, noting that it was an original way to convey a common film occurrence: the change of heart.
Throughout his career, McKay has sought out projects outside the studio system, he said, claiming, “Smaller films make up for the staleness of many studio films.” He has acted as a creative advisor to the Sundance Institute, and he just cut Carriers (2007), the latest feature from 2006 Sundance Jury Prize winner Alex Pastor.
In the editing room, McKay works with three assistants, and insists that they see his cuts in progress, because he feels that the ease of use of the digital workstation has reduced the teaching aspect of his job. About 10 years ago, the editor switched to an Avid to cut James Mangold’s Cop Land (1997). He doesn’t miss the days of the Moviola though, as he recounted his two years spent on the editing of Warren Beatty’s Reds (1981) with a staff of 64 and millions of feet of film. He added that, in his estimate, nonlinear editing technology has allowed a film to go from shoot to print in the space of six to seven months, versus 10 or 11 months.
He is also convinced that high definition will ultimately become the acquisition method of choice in Hollywood. “We just have to get higher resolution than [current] HD to replace film,” he explained. “That’s why these types of conferences are important––so that we can see what new technology is out there. Because it is going to change our profession.”
The other keynote speaker, commercial editor and Association of Independent Creative Editors Award winner Chris Franklin, began his career as a sound designer before moving into film editing.
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