of New York, I believe I made an important contribution to the status of the film editor, principally in being the first to get a head credit for the film editor along with the other arts on the film. I wish you success on the book. You are certainly working with some of the best film editors I know.
I hope this is of some value to you.
All the best, Dede Allen
Kirk Baxter, ACE
Los Angeles, CA
Partial Credits: Gone Girl, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Social Network, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Killing Joe, Zodiac.
Back-to-back Academy Awards, shared with Angus Wall. What I found fascinating when I spoke with Kirk is how the term “editing” takes on additional depth and meaning and where sophisticated techniques are being used to manipulate image and sound. Kirk is on the leading edge of this transformation.
TO: Kirk, you are a two-time Academy Award recipient for best editing, which you shared with your co-editor, Angus Wall. How did you get started?
KB: I started in Sydney, Australia in commercial production. I was a runner for a company that had three cameramen, five directors, an editorial department, two stages, grips, gaffers—the whole nine yards. So, I spent a year assisting everyone, kind of like the dog’s body. I really found that I enjoyed editing the most.
TO: That’s a great start—to be exposed to every facet of the business.
KB: I was working with one of the best commercial editors there at the time, Mervyn Lloyd.
TO: Were you editing in video?
KB: No, that was still on Steenbecks. So, my first two years were assisting on film and then Avid sort of stormed the scene. I think it was a good and bad thing. When it was film, the editor was sort of clouded in mystery and no one quite knew what they were up to. You had to sit in the back seat and wait for it to be done. And it all got demystified with nonlinear. I found myself within two years working on what I think were the best commercials to offer in Australia. I decided that I was going to go to England. I got very lucky and English directors would bring me to New York and to Los Angeles when they did American campaigns.
TO: How long had you been out of Australia?
KB: I was in London for about six years working and then I hit New York and opened up my own company. So, when I did commercials in Los Angeles, I would work at Angus’s company. And Angus and I would do a back and forth so that when he came to New York he’d use my company.
TO: What finally got you to move from New York?
KB: My daughter was born and that was the moment where I decided that I was going to live in one city or the other. So, I joined with Angus. And Angus knew I had always wanted to do movies and there was a moment during Zodiac where David (Fincher) wanted to reshoot a bunch of scenes. Angus had to fine cut those scenes to make sure they were done. So, Angus needed a second pair of hands. I got off a plane from Australia and Angus said, ‘Great, you’re doing nothing right now. Come and help me.’ So I became a member of the (Editors’) Union.
TO: You started working on Zodiac as an assistant editor?
KB: No, as an additional editor. I wasn’t vetted by Fincher. I was vetted by Angus. So I met David on a Saturday while he was looking over my scenes. And he gave me feedback and I started executing, and it was that simple. And it was supposed to be a couple of weeks to help out and I think I was on it for three or fourth months and that was the baptism. And then David asked me to edit Benjamin Button.
TO: Did the commercial editorial background help you in features?
KB: I dunno. It’s taught patience. They have great filmmakers behind them; the coverage is extensive so your film ratio is through the roof just like feature filmmaking. And it really teaches you diligence in finding the absolute best of everything.
TO: How about movies that you saw coming into Australia?
KB: Oh, yeah. I remember sitting in the theatres. The biggest one I remember knocking me out was Seven—that whole title sequence.
TO: And then you wind up working with Fincher…
KB: Right, it ends up bizarrely being Angus who cut that. And it kind of floored me. I remember being knocked out by Pulp Fiction and by (The) Usual Suspects. I started to collect laserdiscs when I was 19. And then I got to understand the experience of Scorsese and Ridley (Scott).
TO: Do you feel each film is a natural challenge?
KB: Yeah. I’ve gotten so lucky with Fincher. David is an expert at what he does. With David, the amount of coverage is so extensive that you can always be wherever you want to be. So, the editing takes a lot longer. And not only that, but you also start digging into the audio performance extensively and within the frame.
TO: You’re taking audio from one take and putting it under another picture take and even more sophisticated things like…
KB: Splitting things up, retiming things, making sure that there is no continuity mistake. People often talk about continuity mistakes but due to the amount of takes and repetition, to get the very best of each thing, we can always correct it. It’s story-led and performance-led. And then technically, you can get really accurate.
TO: Are there other editors whose work you admire?
KB: I’ve tracked filmmakers and their careers but never really tracked their editors. Thelma (Schoonmaker) is the exception to that. When I started to edit at an early age, there were moments in every movie that she and Scorsese did that I found myself watching over and over and over. It was the things that were incredibly dynamic with how you got seven angles into three seconds. And that, I found, just so impressive and I found it even more impressive when I got to meet Thelma. And physically she looks like my Mom! (Both Laugh) And there is this endearing thing where you want to have dinner with her but she is so cutting edge and aggressive about how she constructs these things that’s just wonderful.
TO: Any particular examples?
KB: There’s this scene in After Hours and I spoke to Thelma personally about this. And they dropped a set of keys out of the top story of this window in New York and someone down at the bottom went to catch it. And there are six or seven shots in this sequence and I watched it so many times. So many times because it just looked incredible. The pool breaks in the Color of Money—I just watched those over and over. All the freeze frames in Goodfellas. I watched all of them over and over again before the trunk got shut. The splashing bucket of blood in Kundun that got thrown across the sand...
TO: That high angle shot…
KB: Oh, it was awesome.
TO: You really studied these. And, really you were sort of deconstructing them…
KB: Oh, what’s the name of the editor who won for The Bourne Identity?
TO:
