Selected Takes: Film Editors on Editing

It's imposing my choice over yours, having the arrogance to say this is better than that. It's being a critic. It's an art form you're interpreting. I'm imposing my taste. It's a matter of choices and keeping it straight in your head. It's like having an enormous picture puzzle-1,000 pieces will make it look perfect but they give you 100,000. It's going through all of the pieces, to try to get the best parts. That's what editing is.

If a director expresses likes and dislikes about various takes while screening rushes, that helps, but no editor really likes it if they get too specific and say, "Cut from here to here at such and such a point." That's the sign of an inexperienced director. The director should pick the editor's brain by giving the editor a free hand to do a first cut. You can always change it, but it's very possible that the editor can come up with a better version than the director actually had foreseen in his mind.

Young editors will make matches on a small movement, you can't do that. You've got to make it when somebody does a broad movement. They can have a wig on and you won't know it. In Victor Victoria there was a scene where Julie Andrews has dinner with Jim Garner. She puts a cigar in her mouth and he lights it. Then we cut because she's going to cough and we wanted to be in a close-up for that. In one cut she had the cigar in her fingers and in the other cut she had it in her mouth. It was a had cut and I never saw it because of other movement in the scene. One day one of the sound fellows came to me and said, "Would it worry you if she had the cigar in her mouth now?" He was being very careful because he didn't want me to get upset with him. I said, "It would worry me to death." He said, "That's what you got." I ran to the cutting room and I couldn't believe my eyes, Blake and I never saw it. It's the secret of movement. You have to learn to recognize when you try a cheat and you get knocked out of your own seat, that it's not going to work and you can't get away with it-but you'd be surprised how much you can get away with.