Adventures in film editing
Academy Award Winner
Jim Clark
with John H. Myers
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-0-9845-1294-2
Copyright © 2011 by Jim Clark & John H. Myers. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the publisher or copyright holder.
FOREWORD
I’VE BEEN A FILM EDITOR for more years than I care to remember. I’ve also tried my hand at directing and writing but it’s in the cutting room that I’ve made my most substantial contributions to the films I’ve worked on. This book won’t teach you much about film editing. I’m not certain you can learn such skills from a book. Editing film is really a combination of instinct and experience with a lot of experimentation thrown in.
On a movie, once all the actors and crew have left the payroll, everything is left in the hands of the director and the editor. Together they prune and trim and try things out and are, ultimately, the last people to work on a picture. If the relationship between them has been fruitful, the director will usually continue to work with the same editor on subsequent films as a kind of mental shorthand develops between them. There is also something of the confessional about an editing suite. Editors always hear the gossip about everyone. Indeed, if I were a less discreet person, this book could be a huge tabloid sensation but, sadly, should that be your inclination, it is not.
I don’t really have a definite style. Each project brings with it a new set of challenges that must be met. Over the years I’ve learned to provide the director with as much choice as I can from the material I’m given, but so much does depend on that material. If you’re handed a boring load of old tosh, it’s rather difficult to weave it into a masterpiece, but often a fine film can be carved out of confusing footage. Having begun my career on the shop floor of Ealing Studios, my development has been slow and steady. I was able to work under and with some marvelous characters who have helped shape me into the editor I’ve become.
This book contains material about films you may never have heard of. The flops are given space along with the hits simply because their progress to the movie graveyard is memorable.
Film editors, as a rule, don’t get too close to the stars, but you will find Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, Dustin Hoffman, Vincent Price, Robert De Niro, Glenn Close, Bill Cosby, Ralph Fiennes, Leonardo DiCaprio, and many others featuring in the stories I tell. There’s no doubting the closeness between an editor and a director. In this regard I’ve worked closely with a great number of fine directors including John Schlesinger, Stanley Donen, Jack Clayton, Michael Caton-Jones, Roland Joffé, Michael Apted, and Mike Leigh. Another important player in the making of a movie is a strong producer and, again, I’ve had the good fortune to work with some of the best. David Puttnam, Robert Evans, Jerome Hellman, Joseph Janni, Art Linson, and Scott Rudin are just a few.
As long as I’m dropping names I might as well throw in some of the composers I’ve worked closely with: Henry Mancini, Elmer Bernstein, John Barry, Denis King, and Rachel Portman.
Most good film editors remain unknown to the public. This in no way diminishes the role they play in the success or failure of the finished product. We remember Alfred Hitchcock but not George Tomasini. We know Howard Hawks but not Christian Nyby and on it goes. In the film credits we are featured way down along with carpenters, but some of us have risen above our station.
Sometimes the editor finds himself in a dilemma about a major complaint. Do you voice it or merely keep quiet and cut the footage you’ve been given? It can make matters very awkward. I’m happy to say that I have never fallen out with a director by being outspoken, though these pages might destroy that happy state. What follows is not always kind, but it is truthful. Apologies to all who get slagged.
I should also mention here and now that I owe a very large debt to my wife and family. I have not always treated them well but they have continued to stick by me as the film industry has claimed my loyalty. Without them my life would have been a sad and dull affair and the following pages may attest that they have been wonderful, so it is to my family that this book is dedicated.
Thanks also are due to my film editing assistants over the years: Bryan Oates, Artie Schmidt, Gavin Buckley, Nick Moore, Simon Cozens, among others. I’m also indebted to writer Ken Levison for dredging up his memories of our collaborations and to Johnny Myers for helping me make this book a bit more readable than it might otherwise have been.
So turn the pages if you will and learn something of a life lived on the cutting room floor.
Jim Clark
London 2011
INTRODUCTION
VERY FEW FILM EDITORS OF Jim Clark’s stature and renown have written the story of their working lives. Editors are, in a way, the unsung heroes and heroines of filmmaking, a fact that makes The Dream Repairman both a timely and remarkable book. Here, we have rare and firsthand testimony from the cutting room and, the editor’s voice is always one to heed.
I first met Jim Clark in the early 1980s, over a quarter of a century ago, through his wife Laurence Méry-Clark, who was the editor of the first film I wrote, Good and Bad at Games (1983). After Laurence introduced us, the Boyds and the Clarks began to see each other socially from time to time. It turned out we had mutual acquaintances. Frederic Raphael and John Schlesinger, for example. Thus our friendship fortuitously began.
My professional association with Jim started a little later when my third film, Stars and Bars (1988), was produced at Columbia Pictures when David Puttnam was head of the studio. Jim had moved to Los Angeles with Puttnam to be a senior executive at Columbia, and I remember having lunch with Jim and Laurence at their rented house in Los Angeles while I was on a trip out there. I think Jim was gently shepherding Stars and Bars through Columbia though it was eventually released after David Puttnam’s tenure and when the Los Angeles period of Jim’s life was also over.
Our friendship continued back in London but we worked together again on the film of my first novel A Good Man in Africa (1994), with Jim editing, and with me as the writer/co-producer. Bruce Beresford was director but Bruce had to leave us early during post-production to shoot another film he had committed to and, consequently, Jim and I were thrust together to see the film through some of its post-production phases. I remember a particularly fraught afternoon in a Wembley sound studio supervising the recording of the score, Jim and I tentatively taking turns giving the composer our somewhat critical notes.
All this is by way of a preamble to explain why, when I eventually came to direct my first film, The Trench (1999), there was only one editor I could possibly choose as far as I was concerned. I asked Jim and, luckily for me, he said yes, with one caveat: He would have to leave almost
