I like Slumdog Millionaire, Into the Wild, Babel, and Traffic in terms of how they were put together.
TO: Because of the sequencing?
RC: Yes. They had nonlinear structures which we talked about earlier. I talked to Jay Cassidy who edited Into the Wild, and he said originally it was a linear story. It wasn’t until much later in post-production that they decided to start with the end of the story. I thought about how much it sounded like what I had experienced with Walter on The Conversation and how you have to manipulate these things and see how they work.
TO: What else?
RC: Babel and Traffic were both edited by Stephen Mirrione and I admire his work. Slumdog Millionaire has a clever story structure alternating the character’s past with the present time. I liked 127 Hours a lot. When you realize the confined time period and location, how can you present that story and the development of that character and still tell a story full of tension? I thought it was brilliant to be able to do that.
TO: What editors come to mind?
RC: Walter Murch has worked with Fred Zinnemann, Anthony Mingella, Francis Coppola. Walter is so special that he’s able to bring his uniqueness to the works of these different directors. I think the same of Anne Coates—being able to work with everyone from David Lean to Wolfgang Petersen to Stephen Soderbergh. Alan Heim because his career goes back some 30 years, to the work he did with Bob Fosse, such as Lenny and All That Jazz… Today there’s a new guy on the block whose work I like. Hank Corwin.
TO: Yeah. You know, Hank’s name doesn’t come up as often as it should, I think. He’s really talented.
RC: Right. He isn’t as well-known as some other editors, but his work is so unusual. I worked with him on The New World. His style is so unique because of how he sees things. Even though Natural Born Killers doesn’t have the story impact of some of the other films we’ve been talking about, but the stylistic pizazz—Wow.
TO: Speaking of style, what did you think of J.F.K.?
RC: It’s right up there. It’s one of those experiences where you look at it as an editor and think, ‘How is that even possible?’ The editors that work with David Fincher…
TO: Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall.
RC: They’ve come on like gangbusters. The late Sally Menke and Quentin Tarantino.
TO: Waiting to Exhale did really well.
RC: Yeah, it did box office because the book was so popular. Forest had a difficult job. He had to babysit a diva —Whitney Houston—who was hard on the crew. Once she got out of the trailer she was fine with cast members. Forest’s job was to balance a huge megastar with an accomplished actress —Angela Bassett—who comes with formal training from the Yale School of Drama.
TO: What have you learned along the way?
RC: Not to take anything for granted. At the beginning of my career the critical response to the movies I edited was pretty good. I made the mistake of thinking ‘Oh, everything I work on is going to be great’ and I was too young to appreciate how difficult it was to get to that level. There are people who work for decades in this industry and try to achieve that level of recognition and here I was, this young guy who basically was not schooled but acting on instinct.
TO: What is it about your profession that you like the most?
RC: I get to work with such creative minds and visionary spirits. I’m just amazed that I get to be in the same room and exchange ideas with smart people. Arguing with Milos Forman. Listening to Marcia Lucas or George Lucas talk about their theory of cutting.
TO: And each film is a new experience.
RC: A new experience and the goals are different for the story and the film. This is why I value having worked with so many different directors. I get so many different views on life and I love that aspect of my career. I get paid to do this, so I feel ‘How much better can this be to get paid to do what I love?’ And I feel very, very lucky
Jim Clark
London, England
Partial Credits: Happy-Go-Lucky, Vera Drake, Kiss Kiss (Bang Bang), The World Is Not Enough, The Jackal, This Boy's Life, The Mission, The Killing Fields, Marathon Man, Charade, The Innocents.
It was difficult for Jim to speak on the phone and easier to respond via email. Relive the suspense of The Jackal, Marathon Man, the sheer delight of Charade. In Jim’s words, “You have to invest a lot of your soul in the work.”
TO: Jim, you are an Academy Award and BAFTA recipient for Best Editing for your work on The Killing Fields. Are there films that you edited that did not get the attention they deserved?
JC: Day Of The Locust is a film that was buried due to commercial failure and has a lot of visual riches within it.
TO: You edited The World Is Not Enough. Is there a different form of pressure you feel when you are editing a film that has a significant legacy—such as the James Bond films?
JC: The James Bond films are made within the confines of an ever-developing formula born of enormous financial success. One always feels a pressure with any film but with Bond there were so many precedents to adhere to.
TO: Did you ever feel that there were scenes that you had so much difficulty with that you had to leave them until the time was right for you to work on them?
JC: I've always tried to deal with difficult scenes as they come up but sometimes one is overwhelmed and the pressure you refer to in your previous question is a constant factor in putting a finished movie together. There were several scenes in This Boy's Life where I was constantly banging on to the director that they needed attention and it was he who put off dealing with them. In some instances scenes have to be reshot which, of course, is very expensive. We had to do this on The Mission and, in my opinion, never quite succeeded.
TO: Was editing The Killing Fields emotionally difficult for you or are you able to develop a distance between the material and yourself?
JC: Editing any movie is emotionally draining. You have to invest a lot of your soul in the work. The main problem with The Killing Fields was making the storyline coherent and in the early stages of shooting, getting enough coverage for the scenes. Of course on that film I also had to overcome a prejudice the director had against me as I was cutting in London while they were shooting on the other side of the world and David Puttnam had instructed me to say what I thought of the rushes coming back. It wasn’t until I went out there and met with Roland Joffe that he began seeing me as a collaborator rather than a threat.
TO: Who are some of the film editors you admire and why?
JC: Artie Schmidt, Michael Kahn, and Sam O'Steen. Each film is its own world and though I admire the work of many editors, we all have our failures and successes. We can only function if we’re given good material to work with.
TO: What advice would you give someone who wanted to be an editor?
JC:
