By Peter Tonguette
Interview books with filmmakers constitute a full-fledged literary subgenre, but among all of the one-on-one conversations that have been commemorated in print — Francois Truffaut’s with Alfred Hitchcock, Peter Bogdanovich’s with Orson Welles, Joseph McBride’s with Howard Hawks — arguably one book stands apart from the rest: Bogdanovich’s “Who the Devil Made It,” an encyclopedia-sized compendium of the filmmaker-scholar’s conversations with 16 of his heroes, mentors, and peers. The book distinguishes itself not only through its range of interviewees — chronologically speaking, from pioneering figure Allan Dwan to modern master Sidney Lumet — but for the empirical advice proffered. Yes, Bogdanovich asks about themes and meanings, but he also invites his subjects to expound, at length, on the day-to-day challenges of the job.
Picture editor [and sometime CineMontage contributor] Steve Hullfish, ACE has accomplished something similar in the world of postproduction with his two-part book series, the latest of which, “Art of the Cut: Conversations with Film and TV Editors, Volume II,” has just been published. (The first volume came out in 2017.) Like Bogdanovich, Hullfish cast a wide net — the editors interviewed here include veterans of the New Hollywood movement, such as Walter Murch, ACE and major talents from younger generations, including Nathan Orloff — and like Bogdanovich, he asked his interviewees about real-world subjects. As such, the book is an ideal reference work for professional editors who might pull it off their shelf looking for guidance, insight, or even moral support about a particular issue in their own work.
“The value of being able to hear the opinions of so many great editors — whose advice and approach sometimes conflicted — meant that the reader could choose what was useful and valuable for them and could interrogate methods that might seem odd, but could prove useful and even career-changing,” Hullfish writes, explaining the concept behind the original book, in the preface to the present volume.
Yet Hullfish bests Bogdanovich in one crucial way: While “Who the Devil Made It” accorded each of its 16 interviewees a chapter of their own, “Art of the Cut” takes a thematic approach: Each topic under consideration is discussed by multiple interviewees. Spread over four broad sections (“Preparation”; “Creative — Micro-Level Editing Decisions”; “Creative — Macro-Level Editing Decisions”; and “Social,” about, among other things, interfacing with directors and other creative partners) are 26 grouped-by-theme chapters, each containing innumerable sections focusing on even more granular issues. For example, Chapter 8, “Pace and Rhythm,” includes sections on how the footage shot for a movie can dictate its eventual pace (“Pace will change according to the emotions of what’s happening,” says Michael Kahn, ACE), the development of tension and suspense (“The enjoyment comes from the slow build-up of tension and the quick ‘unexpected’ release,” says Petro Scala, ACE), and the various means by which pace can be refined in postproduction (“Tightening dialogue by pre-lapping the cuts helps because when there’s a difference in the sound cut and the picture cut, it keeps your brain entertained somehow,” says Ivan Victor, ACE).
Hullfish does not include an index, but “Art of the Cut” is so well-structured, with each subject properly called out in chapter titles and subheadings, that one is scarcely needed. The book is a testament both to the author’s gift for identifying the subjects that would be of greatest interest to the postproduction professionals who represent its primary (but not exclusive) audience, and for soliciting engaging, perceptive comments from the multitude of editors with whom he has spoken.
The volume kicks off with a fine foreword by Academy Award-winning director Ron Howard, who attests to his conviction that a movie is not truly a movie “until it has been edited” by highlighting his own significant cutting-room collaborators. Howard commenced his directorial career with the nifty Roger Corman-produced action-comedy “Grand Theft Auto” (1977), whose editor, future director Joe Dante, is credited with much of the film’s by-the-seat-of-its-pants charm. “[Dante] thought outside of the box and taught me a lot about shaping action sequences and stunts,” writes Howard, who proceeds to praise his long-time cutting-room colleagues Dan Hanley, ACE and Mike Hill, ACE — responsible for editing such films as “Far and Away” (1992), “Apollo 13” (1995), and “A Beautiful Mind” (2001) — as “remarkable talents [who] developed an extraordinary working relationship from which audiences, the producing studios, and yours truly benefitted.” Howard also has praise for the editors with whom he has worked in more recent years, James Wilcox, ACE and Paul Crowder, ACE. The director’s appreciative words set the right tone for a book in which editors are given the floor to explain how and why they do what they do.
From there, the reader is free to jump in — anywhere. “This book doesn’t have to be read linearly,” Hullfish writes. “Dive straight into any chapter that captures your imagination.” Although Hullfish provides a kind of sequential framework — talk about assembling a scene is discussed before the talk about receiving notes about a completed picture — it is entirely accurate to say that “Art of the Cut” can be consumed in any manner, or order, the reader chooses.
Sometimes Hullfish will frame a topic as a question. In the chapter “Watching Dailies,” under the subheading “Is Watching Dailies a Skill?” four editors are given a chance to opine. Says Steven Cohen, ACE: “The process of watching is a process of creativity. It’s going into your consciousness or unconscious. You’re absorbing something.” Paul Harb, ACE puts it plainly: “Watching dailies is a skill.” Dana E. Glauberman, ACE agrees: “You have to be able to identify great performances and react to moments.” Adds Harb: “And you need to be able to see things that you’re going to take out of context. You’ll identify looks that were done for a different reason, and in the process of learning the story and working with your edit, you remember things from dailies.” Martin Bernfeld lists five questions he always asks himself while sitting with dailies, including what the character wants in the scene and what has preceded it emotionally, and he looks for “small nuances” to furnish the answers.
Hullfish doesn’t stop with such general remarks, however. He interrogates the interviewees about the best methods for watching dailies, which prompts reflections by, among others, Hank Corwin, ACE (“I take copious notes when I’m screening”) and Mark Yoshikawa, ACE. (“My assistant makes a KEM roll of every take into a single sequence. Then, as I watch, I use a lot of locators [in digital editing, virtual markers for tagging specific time locations] in real time. This records my first impression, which I find vitally important. I’ve gotten away from taking handwritten notes.”) On the other hand, Orloff considers viewing dailies to be “a waste of emotional energy.” “One of the reasons I got frustrated when I would watch all of the dailies religiously was that I didn’t know what I needed yet,” Orloff explains, noting that he does watch the material but does so at his own pace. “I would find these great performances, these special moments, that I got really attached to and I would realize, ‘Actually, this is not useful.’” Mark Goldblatt, ACE makes use of the script supervisor’s notes to avail himself of information about what happened on set and why certain takes were selected, while Steven Rosenbloom, ACE allows himself to be carried away by what he sees. “When you find the thing that makes the scene sing, then you have it.” Carol Littleton, ACE misses the social aspect of watching dailies alongside filmmaking colleagues. “It enabled us to evaluate and refine the filmmaking process day-to-day,” she says. “Dailies were a moment of reflection.”
Every subject is given an equally thorough treatment. In constructing a scene, Pamela Martin, ACE starts by using the angle she liked best according to her notes, and she doesn’t leave it until she finds she wants to look at something else. “If I’m cutting conversation and I really want to see that person’s reaction, that’s when I’ll cut,” says Martin, adding that her assemblies are put together without any thought of what’s being said in a scene. “In a weird way, I don’t want to be distracted by the sound of the dialogue at that earliest stage,” she says. “I deliberately make myself ‘deaf’ in order to concentrate on body language and facial expressions.” Michael Berenbaum, ACE echoes Martin’s sentiment about staying on a shot until it becomes necessary to cut. “If there are sections where the actors are just on fire, I tend to just let ’em go,” Berenbaum says. “You don’t want to cut away.”
Other chapters scrutinize when and how to deploy coverage (“I try to use each set-up correctly and I try not to overuse set-ups,” says Kirk Baxter, ACE), wide shots (“There’s a lot of scope to ‘Yellowstone,’ so you wanna honor the scope,” says Chad Galster, ACE), close-ups (“You really want to use it sparingly,” says Kevin Tent, ACE), and reaction shots (“As soon as you ‘get’ the idea of what the first person is saying, you will look at the other person to gauge their reaction,” Murch says). A chapter on transitions between scenes deals with such highly specific considerations as pre-lap and post-lap audio and dissolves, but also includes a wonderfully “big picture” observation by Glauberman: “When you’re trying to sell comedy, you don’t necessarily want to end the scene on a pause. You want to put a comma on and just keep going.”
Do you want to hear the editors talk about flashbacks? Hullfish asked about them. Says Michelle Tesoro, ACE, “I’m a big fan of cutting them in and cutting them out, and it’ll work if the emotion matches on both sides of the cut.” How about continuity? Hullfish asked about that, too. Murch sees it as far less important than emotion, story, and rhythm, while Brent White, ACE quotes the immortal words of Dede Allen, ACE: “Matching is for sissies.” Hullfish also explores first-act problems, abbreviating whole scenes into montage sequences, and even considers how best to refer to an editor’s cut. Galster calls it a script cut, Tom Eagles, ACE, a compile, and Michael Taylor, ACE prefers assembly — “because that way we can say it’s just a version of the film.” Paul Rogers, ACE undoubtedly speaks for many when he discusses scenes that play beautifully but don’t have a final home in the movie. “There are lots of moments where you’re thinking, ‘This moment is so good, but it doesn’t service the film.’”
Hullfish prompts the editors to talk about the various routes to a career in postproduction, from working as an assistant editor to earning credits on low-budget productions to making the leap from unscripted TV or commercials, and broaches the all-important editor-director relationship. “I’m not around to edit a movie to make it feel like a Jeffrey Ford movie,” says Jeffrey Ford, ACE. “I’m around to make it feel like the director’s movie.” Murch, a longtime collaborator of major directorial talents ranging from Francis Ford Coppola to Philip Kaufman, sees his role as being akin to a priest in a confessional. “[Editors] see the problems and they see people who are tired and disgruntled and euphoric, and discretion is very important to what we do.” Tactfully, Hullfish even addresses how editors handle notes. “Sometimes you get a note, and it’s better to just understand the problem than it is to do the note, because the solution may not be correct, but identify where they are falling out of the experience, and then explore that,” says Simon Smith, ACE. As comments like these demonstrate, these editors are smart, talented, and, perhaps most important, battle-tested.
The book’s expert organization extends to the inclusion of pull quotes (excerpts from an interview placed in large typeface) and even boxes to define certain terminology, including circled take (a filmmaker’s take of preference), MOS (material photographed without sound), and oner (a scene that unfolds in a single shot). While the professional editors who read this book will, of course, be familiar with such terms, Hullfish is to be applauded for defining them for the film students or even amateur film enthusiasts who will undoubtedly glean as much as the pros from this essential volume. ■
“Art of the Cut: Conversations with Film and TV Editors, Volume II”
By Steve Hullfish, ACE
Foreword by Ron Howard
337 pages, Focal Press, $49.99, 2025
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