SPECIAL AWARDS SECTION
The Oscar Penultimatum
On the Eve of the Awards Ceremony, Editing Nominees Offer Insight into Their Work
by Laura Almo photo by Gregory Schwartz
 Jay Cassidy., left, Alan Heim, Christopher Rouse, Dylan Tichenor and David Diliberto |
In the excitement leading up to the 80th Academy Awards, the American Cinema Editors (ACE) held the 8th Annual Invisible Art Visible Artists panel discussion with the Oscar-nominated editors at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, moderated by ACE president Alan Heim, A.C.E. The lively discussion offered illuminating insight into the art of editing from the likes of editors Jay Cassidy, A.C.E. (Into the Wild), Christopher Rouse, A.C.E. (The Bourne Ultimatum), Dylan Tichenor, A.C.E. (There Will Be Blood) and, representing “Roderick Jaynes”––the nom de montage for filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen––associate producer David Diliberto (No Country for Old Men). French editor Juliette Welfling (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) was unable to attend.
Following are some of the exchanges.
Alan Heim: Talk about how you got started in the business.
Christopher Rouse: I’d been making Super-8 films since I was about ten years old. There was just nothing else I ever wanted to do. My father, who was a writer/director, said, “I’ll get you your first gig and what you do after that is your own business.” On my first job, I was running coffee and doughnuts and immediately I gravitated to the cutting room. I was fortunate enough to end up with a gentleman named Bud Isaacs––a very gifted editor––and he graciously took me with him as an apprentice. And I worked for Hal Ashby for three years.
Jay Cassidy: My first introduction to the film industry was the 1972 George McGovern campaign; I worked for a company in Washington, DC that was doing the political advertising. So at age 21, I was editing these commercials for a losing campaign. My beginning was in documentaries, and a little bit in political advertising. I went to AFI and somewhere in the late ‘80s, I met Sean Penn and have worked on all the films he has directed since.
Dylan Tichenor: My father made 16mm films with his brothers so I grew up being around [filmmaking]. I went to film school for one year at NYU and that didn’t really work out. After a year, I just started working. I hooked up with Jim Jarmusch’s producer and some people in John Sayles’ office. I also worked in Robert Altman’s office, and his producer at the time noticed that one of the things on my résumé was synching 16mm dailies. She called me and asked if I wanted to be the apprentice editor for a movie in California. I said yes. The movie was The Player with Altman and editor Geraldine Perroni. That was the beginning of about five years that I spent with Altman and Perroni.
David Diliberto: I was the associate producer on No Country for Old Men. I started in editing as an apprentice editor on The Hudsucker Proxy and have worked on all of Joel and Ethan Coen’s movies since then.
AH: What past editing experience most helped you edit this Oscar-nominated film?
CR: Hopefully, it’s everything I’ve brought to the film––because of everything I’ve worked on. I think that we’re all informed by our body of work. There’s a collective experience that you have, and when you walk into a piece, hopefully you get in tune with the story and characters and you start making informed choices.
DT: As everybody says, you bring your body of work. You learn so much on each movie. I’ve worked with a lot of different, very talented, people––and that’s been a great experience. On There Will Be Blood, [I was helped by] the two previous movies, The Assassination of Jesse James and Brokeback Mountain. I learned a lot on both of them.
JC: One thing that is unique to working with Sean––and I think I discovered it early on––is that he trusts whatever the moment is. He trusts the actors and he trusts me when we’re working. That trust has extended now over many films. It’s a tremendous freedom in the way you do the work. You absolutely don’t worry about doing anything stupid or terrible; you just do it because there is this implicit trust.
AH: How do you bring your own personal life to bear when you’re editing the movie?
JC: As filmmakers, we were first obligated to the McCandless family. Chris McCandless’ sister Carine was very involved in the script stage and writing the voiceover. The personal obligation for anybody working on this film was to a higher call than just making the film play or making the cuts work, because you’re carrying on the legacy of Chris. You want to preserve a certain integrity, and that’s what motivated me to work on this film.
CR: The bottom line is that The Bourne Ultimatum is a genre piece and it’s character-driven. There’s less of me bringing something of my personality to it, as opposed to United 93, where there was a huge emotional investment. With something like Bourne, it’s getting inside the character’s head and seeing things from his point of view. It’s less of me and my experience.
AH: How do the Coen Brothers work together in the editing room?
DD: The most fascinating thing about watching the Coens work is when they’re screening the dailies. There’s no cutting that happens during shooting at all, so they re-screen the dailies starting with scene one going through the whole movie. And they cut them in order. They’ll sit there making their notes on their respective pads and then they’ll just start cutting––with no discussion between them until it’s actually unfolding on the computer. I know they’re brothers and that they’ve worked together for 25 years, but they’re so on the same page that nothing needs to be said in the initial assembly.
AH: What struck me when I saw There Will Be Blood was the opening, when nobody’s talking. There were moments when you had sound effects and then a sound that could have been music. Things gradually melded into each other. How did that come about?
DT: We did a lot of sound effects in the cutting room to lay the template. I love sound and it’s an integral part of films. When you don’t have dialogue or a very purposeful score, sound provides a great opportunity to be able to play with emotion and tension.
The scene is about the relationship between the father and the boy. A lot of years have passed and not much seemed to have changed, but things have changed on both sides in big ways. This is a successful sequence and the music is a huge part of it.
AH: We have an unusual opportunity today because Juliette Welfling, the editor of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly cannot be here. It’s a remarkable film, visually stunning and beautifully edited. I would like each editor to comment on it.
DT: I love the film and she did a terrific job. It was very nice to see such a European sensibility compared with what feels like pretty American films from all of us. I loved the moments where he’s seeing their legs and skirts, and then it cuts to his eye, which means so many things. It reminds me of that [Kuleshov Effect] experiment [on juxtaposition] that was done in the 1920s, with the bowl of soup and the passive face. Technically, I was seeing the same wide-eyed look, but I was being told so much more.
JC: Just as Dylan was mentioning, because the language and grammar of the film is established so clearly, you see the shot of the legs and you know what it means to him and that’s just brilliant.
CR: I was absolutely staggered when I saw the film. As Jay said, I think in any film you try to set up what the rules of the game are early on, and so much of that front-loading informed the piece and gave a sense of longing and loss. I thought Juliette made extraordinarily bold, brave, unexpected choices in both the use of images and music––particularly where music cues started and where they went out again.
DD: When I first saw the movie, I was struck by the structure. Not showing the stroke until the end of the movie was extremely powerful and made the ending even more heartbreaking than it would have been otherwise.
Question from audience: What was the most challenging scene to edit in your film, and why?
JC: On this film, that’s a simple answer because when Sean did the script, he did it as a straight linear story. Chris McCandless leaves Atlanta and he ends up in the bus in Alaska. So there was no one scene. Sean just said, ’‘I’m going to make the movie linearly, and when we get into the cutting room, we’ll figure out what the structure is.” The challenge of this movie was to figure out how and if these two stories [Chris traveling across the United States and Chris in Alaska] could be intercut in a way that would move the story forward. We cut the film together linearly and then we looked at it and didn’t like it.
We liked parts, but we didn’t like the movie. Then we started the shuffling process, and that was so clearly the challenge in this movie. You tell me if it succeeded.
Question from audience: What colleagues, if any, do you invite into the editing room for feedback?
CR: When I finish a sequence, the first person I show it to is my first assistant, Mark Fitzgerald. He’s brilliant, has a great editorial instinct and is an excellent editor in his own right. He’s a great barometer, telling me if something is working or not. But I also really like to have a cutting room where everybody––and that means anyone who’s working with me down to the post-PA––is actively involved in thinking about the piece. They’re always invited to come in and talk to me about stuff.
Question from audience: What’s your process like watching dailies?
DT: The most important part of my job, I think, is watching dailies. And in this day and age, you have to fight harder and harder to do it. It’s incredibly important to have that first impression because, when you watch dailies in real time, that’s when you get a feeling for the piece and generate ideas. It’s laborious for sure––and I take detailed notes. I need to remember everything that I thought––that’s the only way to get back to the scene.
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