By Patrick Z. McGavin
The Oscar-winning picture editor Claire Simpson (“Platoon”) was working on the television series “Raised by Wolves” (2020), with the director Ridley Scott when the work of an assistant editor on the show commanded some attention.
“It was a complete delight to discover Sam accidentally,” she said of Sam Restivo, the assistant in question. “I just knew he was brimming with talent and ready to break through.”
Simpson and Restivo, are now essential collaborators with the prolific Scott, quickly following up last year’s “Napoleon,” with their newest production, the epic “Gladiator II.” A sequel to Scott’s 2000 smash about ancient Roman gladiators, this one stars Paul Mescal, Pedro Pascal and Denzel Washington.
During a joint interview, the two editors talked about the art of collaboration and finding the human drama in a gory Roman spectacle.
CineMontage: There are two overlapping creative relationships, between yourselves, and the director Ridley Scott. How does that dynamic play out?
Claire Simpson: Trust is the essential component of any collaboration. Sam and I have worked on several films together with Ridley. We have earned his trust, particularly if we offer creative suggestions or alternative ways of shaping a scene. Ridley is incredibly prepared when he starts production but there are always unforeseen and surprising elements that add to the excitement of the filmmaking experience: an actor’s interpretation of the character, a line reading, the location or weather not cooperating. Filmmaking is an ever-evolving process and an editor has to be responsive to the shifting demands of narrative and character development. I’m always surprised when shooting crews see the finished film and comment that they didn’t believe a scene would work as well as it did because they remember all the technical problems and complications.
As editors we do not have that same memory. We are dealing with the language of images and so our focus is on story. When Ridley comes to the cutting room he wants to be surprised and relieved and enjoy the experience of viewing the film with fresh eyes. He is very open-minded and has great suggestions. He enjoys the creative environment that Sam and I foster.
Sam Restivo: The thing about the collaboration with someone like Ridley is that he’s always open, especially from the editors, to being surprised by our ideas. He’s one of the most prepared filmmakers ever. He hand draws all the storyboards for his movies. He also has this big plan going into making each film.
When Claire and I are working together, trying to put the movie together for the first time, he has a road map for what he wants. He also likes to see what our take on it is, just to surprise him and keep the material fresh. From the moment when it’s the three of us in the room, shaping the director’s cut, it’s just a fully open collaboration.
CineMontage: The movie feels like a companion piece or even sequel to “Napoleon,” in how you toggle between large scale battle set pieces against the interior political drama.
Claire Simpson: I think the essence of true drama is to follow the emotional core of the lead protagonists because if you don’t feel invested in their plight, then quite honestly, you lose interest in the story. Apart from the fact that there’s a lot of action, which is supposed to be exciting, if you can’t follow the emotional dynamic of the main characters, it’s kind of empty.
Sam Restivo: We’re trying to connect to the characters. We’re trying to lean into our own empathy as artists, as editors, and we’re trying to help the audience connect directly with the drama of what’s going on. A movie like “Gladiator II,” is going to have outrageously big action scenes. We need to be able to connect Lucius (Paul Mescal) from the first moment in his relationship with his wife to care about what he’s going through in that opening battle sequence.
CineMontage: Using the opening battle sequence as an example, what are you trying to achieve with cutting, rhythm, movement and spatial balance within the frame?
Claire Simpson: The whole design was to have a really exciting opening to draw you into the main protagonists of the film. Although the scene is very extravagant in its use of weaponry and the boats and the scenery, at its core it is still about two men, Acacius (Pedro Pascal) and obviously Lucius, (Paul Mescal), who are initially fighting each other as enemies, and at some point, have to discover the truth of their real identities. So it’s the introduction of these two characters, struggling with their own internal battles in a very exciting and dramatic fashion.
Sam Restivo: With the opening Numidian battle, Ridley is shooting with 12 cameras on absolutely everything. We have so many different options and so many different things we can go through, and so many different ways of people getting skewered by arrows. Like Claire said, we wanted this to be a battle about these two characters. The first assembly of this scene was about 20-plus minutes long, and it would never really work at that length.
We were always trying to be conscious of how the opening battle scene is meant to be thrilling, getting you excited for the movie, but it is not the movie itself. We didn’t want the audience to be fully exhausted 20 minutes into the movie. So I think we landed somewhere around 12 or 13 minutes, and that informed the pacing. We don’t need seven guys getting skewered by arrows. Why don’t we do three, the audience will get it, and move on.
CineMontage: How do you divide your responsibilities? Are there parts you work on individually and then come together?
Claire Simpson: We always watch the dailies together and discuss them, and then we divide them up. It’s quite arbitrary, actually. It’s whoever’s available to do what. Once we’ve got an assembly of the scenes, then we come together and we discuss them again and work on them together.
Sam Restivo: On some of these sequences that are multiple day sequences, like big battles, if one person is dealing with that the other person is usually revising the early cuts that we have already done.
Ridley is in contact with us every day. He sees us once, maybe twice a week. In addition to the raw dailies, he would love to see cuts that we’ve already done. So we are working at a very quick pace, being up to camera and having really well-assembled scenes early on, even during production.
CineMontage: You’re always together in the same production location?
Claire Simpson: I live in Italy, and Sam’s in Los Angeles, but we always travel to wherever they are shooting. It’s very important for us to be where the shooting crew are, because it’s good for us to have access to the set and to the personnel on the crew.
It makes everything much more efficient for us in terms of receiving material, being able to discuss things with the cinematographer and also the visual effects people. We were very lucky on this particular production. We had the composer and the sound people working at a very early stage.
CineMontage: It’s the Iago-like character of Denzel Washington who’s shaping the power dynamic. How did you want to reveal that dramatic evolution?
Claire Simpson: Denzel Washington, is such a skillful and experienced actor, even if he’s playing somebody who’s quite nasty, he has the ability to make them likable. He’s the archetypal bad guy you can’t resist. You’re very much drawn to him as a character.
You don’t quite know how, but sooner or later, he’s going to meet his comeuppance. There are a lot of balancing acts to maneuver within the story. The scales are constantly tipping. Through the first half of the film, the character of Acacius appears to be Lucius’ enemy but then, on Acacius’ death, Marcrinus slowly reveals himself to be the arch manipulator.
CineMontage: Given what a cultural touchstone the first film is, did you want to acknowledge that or somehow try to subvert that in the editing?
Sam Restivo: Obviously we’re both huge fans of the first movie. I saw the film the day it came out at the Cinerama Dome, and it blew me away. It means so much to so many people for a lot of different reasons, Russell Crowe’s performance, or the music and Ridley’s direction. We knew we’d need to lean some way into the first movie, but the point was to make it stand on its own two feet. Lucius is a very different character than Maximus (Crowe), and has a very different journey.
Ridley was aware that there would be some elements of the first movie that we would touch back on, including the flashbacks. We were really strongly trying to make it be its own thing. We knew that we were going to start the movie with a familiar music cue from the first movie, a specific moment where we wanted to to call back to the first film and then just let it breathe otherwise and be its own thing.
CineMontage: Claire, rom the start of your career with Oliver Stone, you showed a willingness to take on very charged, complex material. How do you decide what projects you want to do?
Claire Simpson: That’s a difficult question. I enjoy working on complicated political dramas. I grew up in an atmosphere where discussing politics endlessly around the kitchen table was compulsory and if you hadn’t read at least six newspapers a day, you were really lagging behind the discussion. I’ve always been fascinated by politics and I’ve been drawn to films which told stories about the human condition and what draws people into awful conflict.
CineMontage: Sam, how did you make the leap from being an assistant to now being a central part of this team with Ridley Scott and Claire?
Sam Restivo: My career’s been a long time coming. I’ve spent many years being an assistant, from being a post production assistant to a coordinator to an assistant editor for many years. The way I tried to make my career happen was doing assistant jobs on big movies. My first job was a post PA on Michael Mann’s “Collateral” (2004). I tried to learn the creative side by working on independent films. I cut a bunch of independent films for zero money and zero assistance.
I was hoping that at some point these two things would converge, and I’d have the ability to do the creative work on larger movies. It wasn’t until I worked on “The Greatest Showman” (2017), where I finally started getting opportunities to cut scenes. I mastered the assistant side of things well enough that I showed I could do that and the creative side. I had learned from all of these master editors. By the time I finally got to start working with Claire, it was just fortuitous.
Patrick Z. McGavin is a Chicago-based writer and cultural journalist. He writes on film at https://patrickzmcgavin.substack.com/.
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