Bobbie and Alan at EditFest NY

I just moderated my third panel for EditFest, and although this had only one panelist, it was enough for a feast, because that panelist was the very gifted and gracious Alan Heim. Alan chose to discuss and show clips from Star 80, director Bob Fosse’s final film, which was an unconventional decision. The film was vilified by the critics and audiences found the disturbing and sexually violent subject matter to be difficult viewing. Alan said, “I believe had it not been so well made, maybe it would have been unwatchable.” Fosse had this to say about the film: “The passion I had when I made it is no longer there, but I know it’s technically the best movie I’ve done. I felt completely in control of this story.”

Fosse was known as a brave visionary, which can be also said about Alan. On the first of over forty films Alan edited, he got a taste for taking risks. The director was Sidney Lumet, who came from live television and was known for shooting very few takes.  Out of necessity, Lumet showed Alan what you could get away with, how you could take chances, which got his juices going.

When Alan met Fosse in 1972 he said, “I discovered in Fosse a really kindred spirit. The whole freedom of editing that I got from Bob fits into my whole psyche.” Their first venture together was Liza with a Z which was a one hour live concert, filmed with nine cameras, “A tremendously complex film and the main camera broke in the middle of the first act, so we had no master shots and we started fiddling around with the film to cover that. And we sort of never stopped fiddling.”

The next film they did together was Lenny, about comic Lenny Bruce, “one of the best scripts I’d ever read.” But when Alan started cutting it together, Dustin Hoffman’s performance, “was kind of weak.” Alan suggested to Fosse “that we intercut it more than it had been intercut in the script, his performances with his life. So suddenly I was really making juxtapositions that told very strong stories. I always felt working with Bob was a little bit like working on a silent film. The dialogue wasn’t really all that important, you just kept moving.”

Then Fosse went on to write and direct All that Jazz (for which Alan won an Oscar) and he used the techniques they used in Lenny. “It had as much interconnectedness as Lenny ended up having”, which was followed by Fosse writing and directing Star 80, “a tremendously complex movie.” So not only was Lenny made in the cutting room, but it created a kind of template for the next two films.

All three films have more than an intertwined structure in common. They’re all based on true stories and on some level deal with Svengali situations: the man behind the woman. They also deal with the dark side of showbiz and the human condition. And – as Alan said – they have, “at the end, a dead body.”

Star 80 was based on a Village Voice article about the killing of Dorothy Stratten, who was discovered at a Dairy Queen in Vancouver by a small-time hustler named Paul Snider, who became romantically involved with her and persuaded her to pose for nude photos. She ended up in Los Angeles as a Playmate of the Year and an actress and was eventually killed by Paul, “out of jealousy and a kind of a madness…So when we made it we felt the audience would know the story and we had a certain freedom to mess around with time. The other thing was that Bob loved to mess around with time. Ralph Burns [the composer] who worked with Bob a lot, said, ‘There’s real time and there’s flashbacks and there’s flash forwards – and then there’s Fosse time.’… It shows what you can do if you are willing to trust the audience, give the audience as little information as you can in a way, let them discover things, and then move on, and try and weave it together.”

We ran the first five minutes of the film, which showed the dense embroidery used to tell the story. Dorothy’s voice-over interview about her life as a Playmate is cheerful and innocent, as we hear the clicking of the tape recorder and see a montage of photos of her posing for Playboy. Then we see a nighttime shot of swirling traffic lights and ominous music, along with a bloodied and agonized Paul in front of a blowup of one of those Playmate photos, a snippet of the murder scene. There is no real suspense, because right away we know what is going to happen – and that this narrative is doing something very different.

Certain elements here will recur throughout the movie as a way to fracture and punctuate time. The bloodied Paul at the murder scene, the documentary-like on interviews with Dorothy, the clicking of the tape recorder and the camera shutter, the montage of photos showing her early life and Playboy shoots. (Fosse had used recurring motifs in All That Jazz, such as showing the main character repeatedly popping pills, smoking, using eye drops and antacids, then looking in the mirror: ‘It’s showtime, folks!’)

The next scene is a flashback to Paul at the beginning of the story, lifting weights and posing in front of the mirror, which tells you virtually everything you need to know about him – the slippery slope he’s on, his lack of self-awareness, the hollowness of his talking to himself in the mirror, his ultimate disappointment in himself. (There were always mirrors in Fosse’s movies, as well.) As we watched the montage of Paul working out, we got to experience Alan’s magical way of cutting to music, which eludes explanation, but has been partially described as being: not on the beat or off the beat but around the beat. We also then see Paul as a sleazy entrepreneur, staging a wet T shirt contest. Fosse was a dancer – originally in the world of burlesque – which somewhat explains the mirrors and his fascination with the sleazy aspects of show business.

Part of the reason why Star 80 drew such harsh response was because the audience wanted to hate Paul Snider, but Fosse was really targeting show business and how it can destroy people. As Alan said, “He felt there’s a lot of treachery in show business and a lot of people who would put a half a scissor in your back, an editor’s term, we used to use scissors.”

Paul Snider is also more complicated than a cardboard villain. Fosse actually said to Eric Roberts, the actor who played him, that the character is really Fosse himself, if he hadn’t become successful. Alan said, “I had never worked on a performance where the actor was so prepared.” He never went out of character during the whole shoot. “It was scary.” And Alan captured his intensity in the editing, “all the way through.”

What’s most striking about this opening sequence is that the transitions are so beautifully realized. Before he became a director Fosse had not only been a dancer but a great choreographer, and there was a kind of choreography, a movement of images within the frame and from shot to shot, that was truly inspired. Alan also talked about making “Fosse cuts” where the angles don’t match, where the cuts are sharp and take you to a completely different place. This works, though, only if you have the finesse to pull it off. “When you edit a film, transitions are always difficult,” says Alan, and Fosse’s must have presented a particular and inspiring challenge.

“In that [opening] scene, the camera was moving and the cuts came at certain points, the still shots in the middle of moving cameras – but it was an enormous amount of emotion, and I think when you’re editing a film, the trick is to keep the audience interested as long as you can, and then just make the decision to move on to the next…The editor has to find the right place to push the audience into the next scene and that’s the hard part about working on a film, you just can’t expect to follow the script.”

The next clip we showed was an hour and 14 minutes into the movie, and it was after Dorothy had begun an affair with the director she was working with. Alan mentioned another recurring Fosse moment: of a radio, followed by a kind of horizontal move across revealing the actor’s eyes. In this case the focus is on Dorothy’s eyes, who’s in a sort of trance, and in the background is the director who is gently pushing her to leave Paul. He may be nicer than Paul, but again a man is manipulating her. Paul sensed that there was an affair going on and in the next scene hires a private detective who confirms his fears. Then he buys a gun. “The clicks and the shutter that we’ve heard all along throughout the picture are now echoed by the shotgun, that click of loading the gun. So everything was tied in.” You see how they also echoed the structure of this scene  – Paul cocking the gun, putting it in his closet – with what’s coming up.

The last clip we ran was the scene leading up to the rape and eventual murder, which takes place in the apartment Paul and Dorothy actually lived in and where the murder took place. Again there the backdrop of the blown-up Playmate photo, we see Paul desperately trying to hold on to Dorothy and she stays just long enough – because of a mixture of pity and loyalty – for him to rape her, kill her and then himself. “We shot that at the very end because the actors didn’t want to do it, the producer and I would try to get Bob to back off a little bit on the blood and some of the sexuality of it. He did what he wanted to do. Later, he said he probably should have backed off on the blood a bit, I don’t know if it would have been better or not.” At a special screening for Star 80 people left just before the bloody rape scene. This also happened during the heart operation in All that Jazz.  Fosse’s comment: “Well, I guess we reached them.”

Alan’s depth of feeling for Fosse is obvious, his admiration for this remarkable artist who embraced his own vision, told stories the way he wanted to tell them.

Alan said, “I was incredibly fortunate, to work with the material of, what I regard a genius, really. He made so few movies and I was able to take advantage of that, just working with a guy like that with material like that. You don’t get it too often. “

Fosse wanted those he worked with to “dig deep into ourselves. He made you work hard, and what was so nice about working with him was he always acknowledged it.”

I mentioned that Fosse had called him a “collaborator.”

“To be called a collaborator by a guy who I think is such a brilliant filmmaker was absolutely wonderful. And also he had occasionally referred to me as his conscience and I like to think as an editor that’s what I do. Sometimes you have to just shake somebody up and say ‘You know, it’s not working. You might love it, but it’s not working. And of course it’s not enough to say that, you have to have a solution, too.”

Well, I imagine Fosse felt it was pretty wonderful, too, having Alan as a collaborator – and a conscience.

I think the parallels between Sam and Dede Allen (who died on April 18th) speak a great deal about their remarkable talent. They were born the same year. Dede started out as a messenger at Columbia, not getting her break until she was 34 (“Odds Against Tomorrow.”) Sam worked in the print shop at Warners and didn’t get to be an editor until he was 38 (“Youngblood Hawke”).
The movies where they each made their biggest mark were released the same year – 1967 – Dede’s “Bonnie And Clyde” and Sam’s “The Graduate”.  And neither one was nominated for an Oscar, which The L.A. Times called “a spleen busting travesty.”

Although they were both thought of as trail blazers and helped elevate the film editor to an artist’s stature, they had this to say about their work:
Dede: “A good cut is when you do not see it unless you want to…Some people cannot judge editing unless it is flashy and flashy editing is the easiest thing to do.”
Sam: “When people notice editing, it’s probably bad. You’re trying to tell a story. It’s not about somebody showing off… I prefer not to be seen in my films”

They made their mark because had the guts to trust their instincts and take chances, but most of all they knew how to work their invisible art – and tell a story so very well.

Write On! interviews me about my passions – writing and film editing – and how they led me to the creation of “The Invisible Cut.”

Read more

A Tale of Two Editors: Carol Littleton and Tim Squyres.

In January and February I hosted two events, each one honoring a remarkable film editor.

The first was with Carol Littleton, put on by UCLA Film and Television Archive at the Billy Wilder Theater. In our discussion we projected frame grabs of the actual cuts from “Body Heat,” recreating the analysis of her work from my book, The Invisible Cut: How Editors Make Movie Magic. A screening of that movie was followed by a Q & A with the audience. About a month later I staged a similar event with Tim Squyres at 92Y Tribeca, where he ran footage showing specific cuts, we deconstructed his work and screened “Gosford Park.”

My reason for doing this was to show and tell how an editor works, giving the audience a depth of understanding and appreciation for this final storyteller in the moviemaking process.

What I didn’t expect was the striking study in contrasts: of these two movies, their directors – and most of the all the editors.

First, the two movies and their directors:

“Body Heat,” made in 1981, is both a parody and tribute to the film noir genre. Writer and first-time director Lawrence Kasdan was very particular about staying true to the arch, noirish dialog, and he made it clear to his actors, in rehearsal, that this was not to be tampered with. The plotting was also very complex and the dénouement and had to be delicately adhered to. He also was careful in creating a balance between explicit and implicit sexuality, and because of that was absolutely set on hiring a female editor.

“Gosford Park,” made in 2001, takes place at an English country estate in 1932 and was directed by the iconoclastic director Robert Altman. His intention was to upend convention. He didn’t really care that much about the Agatha Christie-type murder plot; he was more interested in examining behavior among the English upper and servant classes. He also liked to improvise from the screenplay in rehearsal so that the actors could discover ‘the truth’ in the scene. What intrigued him in his films were ‘the errors.’

Now, the two editors:

Carol Littleton was originally going to be a professional musician and is very much in tune with the musicality of language in a movie. She was particularly keyed in to the hyper-stylized and seductive dialog in “Body Heat.”  Carol also said she hears music in the rhythm and movement of the imagery when she cuts; and although it is hard to describe something as visual and instinctual as editing, there is something distinctly musical about her work. As is true of all editors, she also has the discipline of a musician. And even though she has for many years edited on a computer, she still approaches the footage very much the same way she did when she was cutting film, which is to do one version of the entire first cut. She may try many variations in certain parts of the movie, but she will always keep that original version as her basis. Her female sensibility had a particular impact on “Body Heat;” she showed that the evocative power of one’s imagination is sexier than a lot of graphic nudity. She was also able to internalize the emotions of the femme fatale for the women in the audience, which is unusual for film noir. There was a problem when they were shooting the turning-point scene we ran and deconstructed from that movie. Much of the original footage was unusable and as a result Carol had to intercut three points of view, two of which were re-shoots. In fact, the tension that Carol created using eye contact and dynamic movement actually made the scene what it was, a powerful erotic high point of the movie. But that is, after all, an elemental to the editor’s job, making the most out of the compromises that inevitably happen during the shooting of a movie.

Carol and I looking at frame grabs of her cuts from “Body Heat”

Tim Squyres comes from a family of scientists and was going to be an astronomer himself. And in a sense his background informs his work. He has the sensibility of an artist but also has a uniquely meticulous, methodical way of approaching the almost unlimited possibilities that are presented to an editor. He will cut several preliminary versions before he even starts to cut the version that he will show to the director: first a version all in close-ups, then one all in medium shots, etc, basically a version for each angle. He will not rest until he exercises all the possibilities. But when he first ran some of the initial dailies of “Gosford Park” he thought he was going lose his mind. In fact the talk on the set was ‘What’s the editor going to do with this?’ And that’s because, with only 55 days to shoot 59 actors – many in group scenes – Altman knew he couldn’t cover the scenes in a traditional manner. Instead he usually had two cameras dolly or pan among the actors, always moving whether they were motivated or not – and no two takes were ever the same. So Tim adjusted his method, still creating several versions, but in this case using sections of footage rather than angles. As a result he often had to make mismatched pieces fit together, and he showed us some of the ways he used sleight of hand to keep the audience from noticing. We also saw that – because he made himself cut all those versions – he was able to unearth many gems, those surprising, happy accidents that take place on an Altman set.

Tim and I looking at footage of his cuts from “Gosford Park”

And in both of the movies, the directors were smart enough to leave the editors alone when they put the movie in a first cut and overall had a give-and-take working relationship that, at its best, resembles a good marriage. In Carol’s case, her work on “Body Heat” was the beginning of a 29-year friendship and working relationship with Lawrence Kasdan. And Robert Altman called Tim’s work on “Gosford Park” ‘flawless.’ Can’t get much better than that.

Last but not least I want to mention the two editors’ similarities, since it unravels some of the mystery behind their successes. They’re both passionate about what they do, which was so evident at these events when they explained their process before the screening; and then – after viewing those glorious 35mm prints years in front of a very receptive audience – were energized enough to field Q &A’s late into the night. What was also apparent is that they both have a certain calm, wisdom, and sense of humor necessary to negotiate a world that can be full of insecurities and political minefields. They are grounded by confidence; but they’re also humble in their quest to honor the director’s vision and have the clear-eyed knowledge that what matters most is making the movie the best it can possibly be.

In discussion with Carol at the Billy Wilder Theater

Talking to Tim at 92 Y Tribeca

Editors Guild covered my recent interview with Tim Squyres. You can read the complete article here.

Sam O'Steen and Mike Nichols

Click here to listen to the podcast.

You can read the article here.