The Rhythm of Images: In Praise of Editing

Lately I've had editing on the brain. Perhaps I've always had it. My first real job was as a teenage intern editor for a diocese newspaper, where I learned how egotistical bad writers could be with regard to their words. Not that good writers are wont of ego, but most good writing rarely comes to the page in its original form. There is much tinkering behind the scenes. At a young age I became interested in the rhythm of words, in how the "right" or "wrong" word can make a difference in the construction of a sentence, a paragraph, an entire piece. Even now, I'm wondering if "egotistical" is the best possible word for what I'm describing, if "possessive" or another term wouldn't be better. Re-read my posts and you may see many subtle changes from one moment to the next (such as the addition of this sentence). I'm never satisfied.

It's probably only natural that I've been an admirer of film editing for a long time too. I'm not an expert on the technical aspects of the subject. I'm less confident in talking about editing movies as I am editing prose, but I know what I like. As with writing, I think the best film editing is invisible, the kind of thing that you appreciate only after the fact. All good movies have a rhythm to their images both at the micro-level (the cutting within a scene) and the macro-level (how all the scenes are arranged together). Debra Winger's infamous grievance that her 1986 comedy Legal Eagles looked like it had been edited "with a chainsaw" may have been a little extreme, but it was an honest aesthetic reaction to the intricacies of a technique that more actors would do well to appreciate.

Last week I wrote about how Jonathan Demme's Swing Shift (1984) was damaged by Goldie Hawn-approved re-shoots and re-edits, and that Hawn's tampering may have harmed her own performance more than anything else. Steve Vineberg's original expose on the subject, which I encourage everyone to read in full, is the definitive word on how the structure of scenes matters in a movie. ("Demme's cut is the same length [as the studio cut] but seems to move twice as fast," Vineberg writes. "His editing gives it a flying density.") For an analysis of building structure within an individual scene, I recommend Steven Santos's recent essay on Hitchcock's The Wrong Man. Santos, a professional freelance editor, also had some perceptive thoughts in response to a quote attributed to film critic Steven Boone (scroll down to the comments), where the latter blames the reduction of movie editing to "newsmagazine pastiche" as primarily responsible for the latest Decline Of Cinema. I save the full reading to yourselves, but the short of it is that Santos, half in agreement, nonetheless takes a broader view of the problems regularly coming out of a production that even the best editors can't fix. (To which the always overexcitable Boone has taken a break from ranting about Christopher Nolan's fascistic tendencies* to post a rebuttal.)

(*Nolan's no fascist, but I acknowledge the editing in his Batman movies is dismayingly bad.)

It's here that I want to commend a film editor who should be a legend but isn't. At the age of 84, the Surrey, England-born Anne V. Coates has been editing movies for over 50 years and is still applying her craft: her last credit was The Golden Compass (2007); her next, Crowley, starring Harrison Ford, Brendan Fraser and Keri Russell, is due out next year. Coates has edited an impressive range of films from a variety of genres: the historical drama Becket (1964); the classical mystery Murder on the Orient Express (1974); David Lynch's The Elephant Man (1980); the Bill Murray comedy What About Bob? (1991); the Clint Eastwood thriller In the Line of Fire (1993). She's been involved in some bad movies too -- Striptease (1996), Congo (1995), Raw Deal (1986) -- but nobody blames her for their ineptitude. Coates is the kind of editor who makes bad movies more tolerable and good movies even better. She has proven herself open to innovation and has helped to shape many memorable performances. I'm not a fan of Adrian Lyne's Unfaithful (2002), but it's a safe bet that the editing of that film -- particularly the sequence that cross-cuts Diane Lane on a subway train with the stirrings of her affair with another man -- helped Lane earn an Oscar nomination.

 If bad editing is inevitably recognized (as Debra Winger demonstrated), good editing often goes unnoticed. Let's compare two movies that Coates cut, a pair of films that couldn't be more different and demonstrate her versatility and command.

"David Lean always used to say, "Have the courage of your conviction, tell the story your way. I'll respect what you did, although in certain instances I may want things another way." He would hold these shots of the desert, and I'd say, "David, you can't hold them that long." However, he said, "Wait until the music's on, wait until the whole rhythm is together." And he was right." -- An interview with Anne V. Coates (by Walter Murch)

1. Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Prior to David Lean's ravishing epic, Coates had dabbled mainly in B-movies like Forbidden Cargo (1954) and Don't Bother to Knock (1961). A lengthy biopic about an enigmatic war hero, then, was one hell of a change of pace. Her first and only Oscar win (out of five nominations to date), the 216-minute Lawrence (228-minute director's cut) is the kind of time-consumer that makes people wonder, "What exactly did they cut?"

The editing in Lawrence of Arabia has remarkable ebb and flow, a mix of longueurs punctuated by sudden jump cuts. One of my favorite examples comes late, following the massacre of the Turkish soldiers, when Lean and Coates abruptly transition from a closeup of Arthur Kennedy's camera bulb (seemingly an influence on Scorsese) to a rider on horseback bearing news of the conquest of Damascus. The most famous example comes early. A younger Lawrence in Cairo, newly assigned to "assess the situation" in the Arab desert, shows Claude Rains's diplomat his perverse trick with a burning match. "It's going to be fun, Dryden," Lawrence says. "It has been noted," Dryden replies, "that you have a funny sense of fun." With that, Coates cuts from Peter O'Toole blowing out the match --

-- to the sun rising in the desert.

 The conjoining of these two images establishes early on everything the viewer needs to know: the main character's eccentricity, masochism, and inherent unknowability, and how these will be simultaneously formed and broken by a pitiless environment. Throughout the movie, Coates's editing emphasizes the conflict between Lawrence's impatience for glory -- through jump-cuts -- and the patience needed to survive in the desert -- through long passages depicting characters moving vertically or horizontally (such as Omar Sharif's memorable entrance) from one end of the screen to the other. Lean was right about how the rhythm comes together; the whole of the picture is beautifully, organically conceived.

"I like having a little edge with the director -- you know, discussions and arguments. I think that's what editors are partly there for, like a sounding board....I knew that Steven did things in a fairly far-out way. So I said to him, "Stretch me." -- An interview with Anne V. Coates (by Walter Murch)

2. Out of Sight (1998). Steven Soderbergh's hugely entertaining adaptation of one of Elmore Leonard's patented comic thrillers achieves its effects largely through Coates's amazingly nimble editing. (This is also one of her five Best Editing nominations.) Whereas previous efforts to translate Leonard were mostly grinding affairs, Out of Sight moves briskly back and forth through time, always keeping the audience aware of where we are in the story. Part of this accomplishment comes from smart visual cues, like the color of the various prison garbs worn by Foley (George Clooney) and his buddies in different parts of the narrative. (Orange for present day, yellow for the past.) Coates and Soderbergh use other techniques (among my favorites being the dissolve from Jennifer Lopez's injured, bed-ridden Karen Sisco to Don Cheadle's sadistic Snoopy Miller strutting down a prison hallway like he owns the joint) and motifs (like close-ups of the repeated snapping of Foley's cigarette lighter) that transition, by turns gradually and suddenly, from one scene to the next.

Coates's deft cutting also makes Out of Sight more than just an amusing crime caper. At its heart is a love story between a Federal Marshal and a bank robber, between one character chasing the other from Miami to Detroit until both pause for a "time-out" in a hotel restaurant. Foley and Sisco discuss the improbability of their relationship, and Coates and Soderbergh cross-cut their conversation at the restaurant --

-- with a wordless montage of the pair in a hotel room going to bed together.

 Soderbergh has always employed a distinct emotional shorthand that, for its admirable refusal to lapse into sentimentality, frequently comes across as cold. But Coates (aided by Soderbergh's mini-freeze-frames) brings out the heat in this sequence. Not only does her editing smooth out the rough edges of the story (implausibilities that would likely be more jarring in another movie), it heightens what Steve Vineberg called "the mood of romantic expectation." Lopez and Clooney have never been better than they are in Out of Sight, and while the director, screenwriter, source material, and the actors' own abilities deserve plenty of the credit, watch the film again and pay attention to how the rhythm of the images enhances their more appealing qualities. How it makes them something in short supply these days: movie stars.

Desperately Seeking Swing Shift

To: Goldie Hawn

From: Your pal Craig

Re: Swing Shift: The Director's Cut

Dear Goldie,

How's it hanging?

As a devout reader of this blog, you will forgive me if I draw you out of anonymity for what should be a special occasion. You may not remember that this year marks the 25th anniversary of Swing Shift, the WWII-era dramedy directed by Jonathan Demme and starring Goldie Hawn. (That's you!) If so it's understandable: Swing Shift was a big disappointment, both in terms of box-office and artistic merit. Such a promising subject, too: the contribution to the war effort by American women, and the changes in the social fabric that resulted. Yet the finished product -- which I dimly recall seeing initially several years back, and dimly recall seeing again only two weeks ago -- is a schizoid amalgam of Demme's original vision and post-production tampering. (That's you.) Some good things came out of the experience: a Best Supporting Actress nomination for Christine Lahti; the origins of your impressively long-term relationship with Kurt Russell. But your movie is in danger of being forgotten entirely. Perhaps it's time for another reminder that an unreleased version still exists.

In 1990, Sight & Sound published a piece by Steve Vineberg titled "Swing Shift: A Tale of Hollywood," later included in his book on 1980s cinema, No Surprises, Please. I've razzed Vineberg in the not-too-distant past for his Paulette parroting, but I also must give credit where credit is due: his Swing Shift expose is a phenomenally-written, essential comparison between your version of the film and a bootleg VHS copy of Demme's original cut, viewed by Vineberg among others over the years. (If you or anyone else reading this knows where I can get my hands on a decent copy, please let me know.) Vineberg's piece is available online, albeit with a white-script on black-background design that's painful to read. As it remains the most persuasive and fascinating account of "how the building of a character - that is, the overall editing of her scenes - can completely alter the way an actor comes across," I'm going to excerpt some of the essential text (edited in places for momentum) here.

"Demme began shooting Swing Shift in the first half of 1983. Citizens Band (also known as Handle With Care) and Melvin and Howard had established his distinctly flaky, loose-limbed style, but this new project was the biggest of his young career. It starred one of Hollywood's most bankable performers, Goldie Hawn - who also takes a strong hand in the production of her own movies - and featured Kurt Russell and Ed Harris. A big-budget period piece, Swing Shift would begin the day before Pearl Harbor, end just after V-J Day, and focus on the introduction of a women's work force during the war; the action would take place in and around the MacBride airplane plant in Los Angeles.

"The large, promising cast Demme assembled included Christine Lahti, Fred Ward, Holly Hunter....and a few of his friends....If you'd seen Demme's previous work, and you saw how graceful a touch he had with actors, the thought of what he could do with a sensational cast like this one was enought to make you salivate. And Warners, viewing the film as a prestige picture and a potential blockbuster, planned to put it out at Christmas. It finally opened in May (1984), after a half-hearted, glossy publicity campaign that smacked of desperation. Demme renounced it, the press generally panned it and audiences failed to come out for it."

The main character, Kay (that's you), has a fairly straightforward though compelling arc. A sweet if sheltered woman who loves her husband Jack (Harris) but is also highly dependent on him, Kay, during her years at the airplane plant, learns a trade, befriends a free-spirited lounge singer named Hazel (Lahti), falls in love with a male co-worker, Lucky (Russell), and in sum becomes a different person by the time her husband returns home. As Vineberg puts it, "The movie's title doesn't just identify the hours Kay and her friends work at MacBride (four to midnight). It also tells us what happens to her during the war: her values shift, swinging her into a more profound (and more adult) understanding of the world."

Sounds great, doesn't it? But you couldn't leave well enough alone, Goldie. By all accounts, during pre-release screenings, you (and the studio) got nervous at Demme's politics, which reportedly takes a critical view of how women were exploited for manual labor and then abruptly dismissed once the war ended (not exactly Reagan Era material), and took umbrage at his characteristically inclusive ensemble approach. (Your producing partner complained that you came across as a "blonde extra" rather than the star.) Most of all, you panicked at the implications of Kay's infidelity, that your fan-base might reject your portrayal of such a character. So you removed or re-jiggered some of the original scenes and added new ones.

"In Demme's cut, we see Kay's feelings for her husband most clearly the night before he leaves, when she touches his face tenderly as he sleeps. She dedicates herself to keeping Jack's presence alive by writing to him, cherishing mementos of him, talking about him constantly - which, of course, is also her protection against the stirrings Lucky arouses in her. Lucky asks her out shortly after they've met, but she protests gently that she's married; the next time we see him approach her, she staves him off: "You've been asking me out every week for the last three months and I keep having to turn you down." At the jamboree, a stranger (Dick Miller) asks her to dance; when she automatically brings up the subject of Jack, he gets turned off and fades away. Lonely and blue, she listens to Lucky play trumpet on the bandstand and boldly approaches him on the pier afterwards, complimenting his performance.

He drives her home on his motorcycle, takes her inside ("I think I just heard you ask me in," he says, picking up on what she's too scared to say), and what follows is as candid and deeply felt a love scene as you'll find in any movie of the last decade. When Lucky begins to make love to her, she cries, frightened of her confusion about what she feels and what she thinks is right. She wakes up in the middle of the night to find him lying nude beside her, his arm across her chest; automatically, she pulls the blanket across him, as if someone were peeking in. It's a delicately funny gesture. The next night, they go out to a restaurant, and when she spots a neighbour across the room she runs into the street. He follows, but she begs him to leave her alone. "I'm married," she pleads. "Don't you understand? Don't you get it?"

Vineberg contrasts this with Hawn's version:

"We don't see Kay in bed with Jack, so her strong sexual need for him is not as firmly established. When Lucky approaches her at work, she says, "You've been asking me out every week for the last five months' (you can actually see Hawn mouth "three" while her post-dubbed voice says "five") - presumably so we'll applaud her lengthier period of celibacy. Kay's freak-out at the restaurant occurs before she sleeps with Lucky, so it looks like an outburst of terrified chastity rather than post-coital terror.

In the new order of scenes, Kay's approach to Lucky on the pier appears more innocent; maybe she's trying to make up for her outburst outside the restaurant. When he drives her home, he has to come inside, because it's begun to rain and he's getting soaked. The scene that follows is a dopey retread from dozens of screwball comedies: his clothes drying, he putters around in one of her dressing-gowns while he serves her one of his special omelettes. They end up in bed, but next morning they have a silly, unconvincing quarrel; she kicks him out; he comes back. Hawn strives hard to reduce the relationship between Lucky and Kay to something superficial and farcical. We're supposed to think she's making a mistake, but it's all right, because she'll go back to Jack in the end."

There is much, much more, Goldie -- my favorite revelation being how a pointed moment in Demme's version, where the women are manipulated to "work harder" following an announcement of the casualties at Guadalcanal, was tinkered to come across as inspirational in yours. I concur with Vineberg that it's easy to see what you were up to: "On some level, Hawn seems to have understood Swing Shift as a protofeminist look at women on the work force in wartime," he writes. "But feminism to her means Private Benjamin: women proving they can be as good as men and twice as cute. (It doesn't mean, for example, sexual independence.)

"Demme asked her to play a woman who sleeps with two men and likes it, a woman who isn't always glamorous....but is always real. And she did it. But then she got scared and threw the performance away, reverting to something she must have thought would keep her fans happy. In the attempt, Hawn managed to turn her character into nonsense - you keep wondering why Kay can't seem to make up her mind about anything. The irony is that Hawn didn't just slash Demme's canvases, but her own as well. Her performance in the unreleased version of Swing Shift is easily the finest work of her career."

Not yet having seen Demme's cut, I can't vouch for that statement, nor for the opinion that his version "is extraordinary - one of the best movies made by an American in the 80s." But I think that we should be given the opportunity to decide for ourselves. It's a safe bet that you're nearing the end of your career, Goldie. Your IMDb page shows nothing currently in production, and the number of good films to your credit are -- let's face it -- few and far between. You still may not think much of Demme's version, and of course you are entitled to your opinion (though, as your old pal Burt Reynolds once demonstrated with his disparaging remarks about Boogie Nights, actors often aren't the best evaluators of their own work). But I firmly believe it's in your best interest to let it see the light of day. Wouldn't a DVD release of a Director's Cut be a golden opportunity to get your name back out there? If the movie -- and you -- are as good as Vineberg and many others claim, wouldn't it be lovely to be remembered for it?

Don't take my word for it. Ask Kurt. He seems like a level-headed fellow. Listen.

Respectfully,

Craig