John Bloom
London, England
Partial Credits: Charlie Wilson’s War, Closer, Wit, Notes on a Scandal, The First Wives Club, A Chorus Line, Under Fire, Gandhi, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Magic, The Lion in Winter, Funeral in Berlin, Georgy Girl.
Comedy, Drama, Suspense, Music… John moves effortlessly across genres but when he started he didn’t even know what editing was! The suspenseful assassination scene in Gandhi to the great comedic timing in The First Wives Club. There is an assuredness in his work that becomes evident from the very first cut.
TO: John, you are a three-time Academy Award nominated editor and you received your Oscar for Gandhi. You are a two-time ACE Eddie recipient. It’s a pleasure to speak with you.
JB: Thank you, Tom.
TO: How did you get your start in the film business?
JB: Oh, gosh. It was an incredible piece of luck. It was just before I had to do my two years Military Service in England. My mother asked my sister's (Claire Bloom) agent, Olive Harding, if she knew of a job to fill in my time before I got called up. Olive's best friend ran the Story Department at Pinewood Studios. So I went into the Story Department for a few weeks and got on well enough to be told that there would be a place for me there when I finished my two years away. My mother's request changed my life. We used to read books and scripts searching for something that might interest the resident Studio producers.
TO: That’s an important job to be just thrown into like that.
JB: When I did come back there were two others in the department. One, Ted Hughes, was to become the English Poet Laureate and the other was my mentor, Lukas Heller.
TO: Lukas Heller wrote many of the Robert Aldrich movies—The Dirty Dozen, The Flight Of The Phoenix.
JB: Yes and Whatever Happened To Baby Jane. We became good friends and after being in the story department for a year and a half, he said, ‘Did you ever think about going into the editing department?’ And I didn’t even know what editing was at that time.
TO: What a start! You edited Man In The Middle, which was directed by Guy Hamilton who went on to direct Goldfinger and other James Bond films. Music was by John Barry who scored many Bond films, and it starred Robert Mitchum.
JB: Yes, it was a biggish picture, originally called The Winston Affair.
TO: In 1965, you edited Georgy Girl, which became a big hit.
JB: I knew Otto Plaschkes, one of the producers, and I asked him if he would consider me as the editor of Georgy Girl. And that was a real watershed for me because the film was a tremendous success.
TO: And the song was a very big hit.
JB: I have a story about that. During post-production I had put a song sung by Barbra Streisand over the main credits. It was the title song from the stage musical Funny Girl.
TO: I didn’t know that.
JB: And it really did work like a charm. In fact, the producers tried to obtain the rights only to find that the price would be larger than the budget for the film. (Laughs) So they were forced to drop the idea and began a search for another song. Eventually I left the film for another project and they came up with the song people know and love. But the truth is that when I first heard it I really hated it. (Laughs) Funny Girl was such a sophisticated number and “Hey There Georgy Girl” was…
TO: More Pop?
JB: Yes. (Laughs) There you go. But the song went on to probably make more than the film itself! I was delighted in the end. The film was such a success.
TO: Georgy Girl, Funeral In Berlin, The Last Safari, and The Lion In Winter. You were doing a couple of movies a year.
JB: When I look back on my career, the truth is that there’s an extraordinary mix of things. Very, very good films or films in which one feels one has made tremendous input to make something that was poor into something that was presentable. I think there are films for which I was highly credited, and which were not very complicated or difficult in terms of editing.
TO: Are there films that you think should be revisited?
JB: Who’ll Stop The Rain in the late 1970’s for director Karel Reisz and a young Nick Nolte. He’s amazingly wonderful in that film. The subject matter was how the aftermath of the Vietnam War affected peoples’ judgment and it was extremely black. But it was a marvelous film. It was a remarkable and tough film, but it was lost without a trace.
TO: You worked with Richard Attenborough on three very different films—Magic, Gandhi, and A Chorus Line.
JB: With Richard, I felt such a true kindred spirit because here was a man of the theatre and an actor. And he had such a wonderful feeling for actors and performances. And I expect what I’ve prided myself on over the years, if I have anything to offer, is my judgment and feeling for performance. There is a consistency with Richard in that sense—of attention to everything that goes into the making of a performance. We just saw eye to eye in what we did. Chorus Line was a marvelous experience for me. I never dreamt that I would work on what would be termed a Hollywood musical.
TO: With Gandhi, did you feel the pressure of the public figure?
JB: No, I don’t think one thinks of that. We just think of it as a film. The other thing about Gandhi is that I actually tried to talk my way out of doing it! (Laughs)
TO: You’re kidding.
JB: No. I was already doing The French Lieutenant’s Woman at the time and the two films were going to overlap and I just didn’t see how it was going to be possible. At the time, Richard was having to make the film under studio-type conditions. By that I mean he was feeling he had to get a big Hollywood star to play Gandhi. I remember that when we finished Magic, Tony Hopkins was asked to play Gandhi.
TO: Was there a lot of material?
JB: Yes, there was a lot of footage, but you have to remember that we shot for almost six months. There was a lot, but it was spread out. It wasn’t like getting 15,000 feet a day with ten cameras. It was much more controlled.
TO: Did you have any idea the film was going to be so well received and so well awarded?
JB: No. Absolutely not. I did think we had a very, very good film. I suppose at that time I wondered if anyone was going to be interested in it. Would the western world in the mid-80’s be interested in it? I was absolutely amazed at the attention that it started to get. I think it was the first time that the studio publicity machine used words like “A World Event” and it really did get people going.
TO: Where were you when you heard you received your nomination?
JB: I was in Los Angeles working on the film Under Fire.
TO: Did you feel like you had a good chance?
JB:
