By A.J. Catoline
Tuning into HBO’s “The White Lotus” is like checking into a luxury resort where every fruity cocktail is served up with a chaser of dread.
The series about the weird goings-on at a fictional luxury hotel chain etches sharp social commentary into stories about affluent vacationers in exotic locales (Hawaii, Sicily, and most recently, Thailand). The creeping drama and sometimes wince-worthy comedy keep audiences captivated as they wait for something terrible to happen by the final episode. This is a tribute to the mind of creator Mike White who collaborates with his editor John M. Valerio, ACE in untraditional ways.
Valerio is hired during pre-production, long before he gets into the cutting room located somewhere near White’s home on the lush island of Kauai. It’s a rare workflow for an editor to be so trusted by his director that he’s not just welcome on set but also asked to direct second unit shoots (yes, he’s also a card-carrying member of the DGA). This allows Valerio to become intimately familiar with the footage, a key factor in his successful work that has won him an Emmy and ACE Eddie for picture editing.
CineMontage sat down with Valerio to explore how he and White craft and pace the show’s emotional highs and chilling undercurrents in the editing room.
CineMontage: How has the show evolved over three seasons?
John M. Valerio: I think it evolves every season, with every new location, new characters, stories, and themes. Overall, the show has expanded in its scope and scale: starting as a six-episode limited series set in one location for Season 1, it evolved by Season 3 into an eight-episode drama series shot in multiple cities, islands, and various venues, with a storyline connected to past seasons. The stories and characters have gotten darker: from an accidental death in Season 1, to a murder plot in Season 2, to revenge murder, family suicide fantasies, and incest in Season 3.
CineMontage: How do you take on additional roles in production, beyond being an editor?
Valerio: I arrived in Thailand for prep before we started shooting because I was directing second unit and wanted to get a feel for the locations. I tried to find anything interesting that might inspire some stylistic or thematic transitions that could add to the vibe of the season. Our location B-roll is always a priority because the White Lotus location is an important character that greatly influences the arcs and journeys of the other characters.
I also like being on set to feel the instant reaction to what’s being shot — hearing the cheers, the laughter, seeing the high fives, or sometimes feeling the frustration. I get the real-time download of what Mike is thinking and feeling. Later in the cutting room, when I’m watching the dailies, it’s a fun and interesting exercise to recall that initial feeling from set and compare it to the feeling I get viewing the footage with fresh eyes. Sometimes it helps inform my choices.
CineMontage: How does Mike White collaborate with you as a second unit director?
Valerio: Mike is an amazing collaborator. He trusts me, and it’s a real honor and privilege to have earned that trust. For the B-roll, Mike discusses the specific things he knows he wants. For other shots, he lets me fly free to grab whatever I think we’ll need, or whatever inspires me. During prep, we discussed our use of waves in previous seasons, and this season we decided no more waves! We talked about leaning into more shots of the jungle: monkeys, animals, shots of the monks. There are some wave transitions this season — we couldn’t help it — but not nearly as many. Maybe next season there will be none.
I might be in my hotel room cutting, and I’ll get a text from Mike: “Can you come down to set?” And he’ll ask me to shoot a simple pick-up that he just got an idea for, while he and the main unit move on to the next scene.
For example, in Episode 6, Saxon Ratliff (Patrick Schwarzenegger) is talking to Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) and Chloe (Charlotte Le Bon). They’re confronting him about the night before, when he had a sexual encounter with his brother. Mike thought it would be great to see Saxon reacting to the conversation, really upset as he’s walking away from the scene, and also to see him walking through the resort long after the scene, still upset and pondering. So I went with the second unit to film Patrick walking through the resort.
CineMontage: Do you have a cutting room set up on location in Thailand?
Valerio: Because we were constantly moving around between locations, I traveled with a laptop and an external monitor and cut in my hotel room the whole time. I’d get the dailies from the set on an encrypted drive, load them myself, and then my assistant Zoe Bower, who was in LA, would jump onto my laptop there and organize and prep my scene bins. I’d go through them, cut for an hour or two, then go out and shoot for a few hours, then come back to cut for another hour or two, and so on. Often, I was gone the entire day shooting because I was out on a boat or somewhere more remote. Yeah, that was fun.
CineMontage: There is a shocking sequence featuring a blender that is very well edited. How did that come about?
Valerio: That’s another example of Mike asking me to pickup some specific second unit shots of Timothy (Jason Isaacs) making the poisonous piña coladas. It was a lot of fun to shoot those things and use them to build tension as we see Timothy confront the reality of going through with the family euthanasia. I think it was always a fantasy, his imagining of it, before this. And now he’s really doing it, so we wanted to make it more of an extended moment.
Pong-pong fruits and trees are real. They are all over the resort, and the locals tell you not to eat them because they will kill you. In a shot from an earlier episode, we focus on Timothy as he walks out of frame, and we hold on the empty frame for a couple of beats so we see all the pong-pong fruits laying on the ground. A little clue there early on.
CineMontage: There is a memorable funny moment in the series after Belinda checks her bank balance online, and you cut to a monkey screaming. What gave you that idea?
Valerio: I was going through all our monkey B-roll and came across that shot of the monkey opening its mouth like it was screaming. We had shot Belinda screaming when she sees her bank account, and I knew this would be followed by a transition sequence. I thought, what a cool, organic, and elegant way to get into that transition.
I’d like to give a shoutout to our second unit DP, Pithai Smithsuth, who shot all the monkey B-roll. For a commercial he’d shot in Thailand, Pithai showed me video of these tribes of monkeys charging through the streets. They’re like gang members, and they have turf wars as they go around stealing from people’s homes. It’s wild!
Pithai had experience shooting these monkeys in their natural environment. He knew where they lived, where to find them, and how to shoot them. We went to a place in Phuket called Monkey Hill. There are monkeys everywhere, and they’re used to all the tourists hiking around, so they’re not afraid. You can go right up to them. Pithai knew how to give them treats and where to place the treats so we could get them to move and run where we needed them to. It was a dream to be in Thailand and have the kind of access and trust that Mike White gave me to just “go for it” and shoot whatever I needed. What a fantastic gift for an editor.
CineMontage: When the shoot wraps, how do you transition back to working indoors in a cutting room?
Valerio: It’s nice to get settled back in a proper cutting room where I can focus my attention on the cuts without being whipsawed by second unit shooting. And we have the amazing fortune of posting on Kauai, Hawaii, near Mike’s home.
Mike is one of the smartest editors I’ve worked with. He’s so good at shaping and bringing out the best in performances. He knows exactly what little things to chip away and how to restructure a scene or an entire episode to make it as engaging as possible.
We always watch the first cut together. It’s nerve-wracking for me to show him that cut because I’m aware of the expectations. I want him to love it. Like Lochlan Ratliff, “I’m a pleaser!” I’m thrilled when I can present a first cut that he’s happy with.
He’ll give me his first impressions right away, in the room. Then he goes away and studies it more on his own and comes back with notes the next day. Sometimes he’s excited and thinks it’s all working great, and we only need some trims. Other times, a character’s storyline might not be landing the way it should, or the structure isn’t working, and we need to figure that out. Many scenes within the show are modular in this ensemble of characters, so we’ll move the pieces around to maximize the momentum.
CineMontage: What was left on the cutting room floor?
Valerio: Oh my, there was a lot this season. Most episodes were at least 90 minutes long, and we cut them down to about 60 minutes. The finale originally lasted about two hours and was cut down to 90 minutes. Every episode had some significant cuts.
CineMontage: How do you collaborate with the rest of your editing team?
Valerio: Our entire editorial team was terrific, and everyone contributed so much. Scott Turner, whom I’ve known for a long time, was our other editor. He’d been a post-production coordinator and then an assistant editor of mine on “Banshee.” While I was in Thailand, he was back in LA cutting dailies for his episodes. We talked a lot as he kept a wish list of pickup shots and B-roll he thought we needed. He had so many great ideas, and I can’t say enough about his excellent work. It was a great collaboration.
Scott and I shared editor credit on the finale. After I had a full assembly, Scott took one portion of it and worked with Mike while I took the other. Scott took complete ownership of his episodes. He was very generous to share credit on Episode 6 with his assistant editor, Kyle Traynor, who cut many scenes. Kyle had already been an editor on HBO’s “Industry” and Amazon’s “Utopia,” but because he loves and respects Scott so much and was a big fan of “Lotus,” he agreed to step in as Scott’s assistant.
Mentorship is important. My assistant editor, Zoe, is terrific, motivated, and wants to be an editor. I always say to her, “You have access to these dailies, cut as much as you want. Practice cutting as much as you can and we’ll go over it.” When she had time, she would take it upon herself to cut scenes and then show them to me. She cut enough on one of the episodes to earn an additional editor credit.
CineMontage: How does music bring the show to life? You’re using Thai music?
Valerio: We always try to use the local music to help make our locations fully realized characters as much as possible. This season, we used all Thai style elements and needle drops. [Note: The original meaning of ”needle drop,” which is to use a popular song or other well-known music, was to place a phonograph needle on a vinyl record.] In the premiere, we featured one of Thailand’s all-time greatest hits, “Made in Thailand,” by Carabao, one of its greatest bands.
Also featured in the premiere is a Thai cover of Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man.” Our associate producer, “Bird” Pinitsanpirom, sent me an Instagram post made by a young Thai man who was watching the show in Thailand. He started crying when he heard the song because his deceased father had recorded it so long ago, and the young man thought it had been forgotten. It surprised him so much and made him glad to hear it in our show.
I think music is the most powerful art form. It can transport you to another time and evoke memories and emotions you’ll re-live. I love adding music and editing music in my cuts. It’s such a critical part of my process. My dad started me on the violin when I was four, so music has been a big part of my life and continues to be a big part of what I do.
CineMontage: The sound in “The White Lotus” makes you feel like you’re in the jungle. How did you mix the show?
Valerio: For our playback mixes in Kauai, our sound team set up a remote room with 5.1 surround. We worked live with our talented team, supervising sound editor Kathryn Madsen and re-recording mixers Christian Minkler and Ryan Collins, who were on the dubbing stage in Burbank.
The sounds of the jungle are authentic and were mostly recorded on location — the birds, cicadas, monkeys, and all the atmosphere. We tried to use these sounds as an organic score — for example, raising the sound of cicadas to match a rising level of anxiety when Timothy is talking to his lawyer on the phone, realizing that his whole world is falling apart. My assistant Zoe deserves a lot of credit for the very thorough, detailed, and polished sound work she did on our Avid temp mixes, which were crucial to the final mix.
Now that I’m home, looking back at all the months I was in Thailand and then many more doing post in Kauai — it totaled more than a year — it feels like it wasn’t real, that it was all a dream.
