I met with Mick in his edit suite in London’s Soho where he was cutting a film directed by Mike Newell, whom he first worked with on ‘Dancing with a Stranger’. Mick has also worked with Stephen Frears many times, starting with ‘Walter’ and ‘My Beautiful Laundrette’ up to the recent ‘Dirty Pretty Things’.
I was born in Rochester in Kent, and brought up from the age of four in Sevenoaks, where my parents still live. I was educated there and my father was at that time and still is a wonderful furniture designer and maker. At that time he ran a small furniture manufacturing business. As soon as we were old enough my mum pitched in as well, rolled up her sleeves and did a lot of the business side. I’m the youngest of three – an elder sister and an elder brother neither of whom have had anything to do with film-making.
Mick Audsley in his edit suite (© Lightwork, Courtesy of Mick Audsley)
There’s one strand near all this which is that my grandmother on my father’s side was a notable photographer – having a shed down the garden and making plates and doing all that stuff. She did a lot of interesting photographic work, as my father has done also – he’s always been very interested in photography. So we used to convert the bathroom into a darkroom and process stills. Very early on I can remember looking at these things coming up in the orange light, thinking this is wonderful – this is magic!
My aunt on my father’s side is a painter – so visual arts and craft work was very strong on my father’s side of the family. I never went near a piece of wood because he’s so damn good at it! So I sort of fell into the artsy side of things very early on, because I wasn’t academic at school either in primary or secondary school, and realised that I could hide behind being an arts student. I drew a lot from early on and was interested in music. My father is also a very good amateur flute player. So there were musical interests and visual arts interests in the house.
I veered towards animation originally. At school I thought oh, that sounds interesting and I started doing flick books. Then I realised how labour intensive it was.
RC:Was that based on seeing Disney films?
MA:Yeah, I think I must have seen Disney films but I was more interested in those weird European short films – more painterly things – do you remember George Dunning1 and people like that? I saw a Norman Mclaren2 film very early on.
RC:Are we talking about during your adolescence?
MA:From about the age of twelve to fifteen, sixteen.
RC:Was any of that encouraged at school?
MA:Very much so – in fact I had a wonderful arts education at Sevenoaks. Three people in particular who were very key figures: the music teacher, my art teacher and my English teacher.
We did film-making and photography at school. We did little projects like there’d be a jazz concert – lets make a projected image to go behind one of the pieces and we were able to use 16mm cameras and do that. It wasn’t formal – it had a sort of crossover with painting – you know that era – this was late 1960s obviously – moving slides and visual things like that – also re-photographing stills and a certain amount of drawn animation.
About that time the school had a relationship with the Paris Pullman cinema. I think there was a student whose father was running it. They asked us sixth formers to make posters for the films that were on. So we would get to rent the films which were shown at a film society. The one that really had a huge impact on me, which was where I suddenly thought, oh, cinema is a lot more than Hollywood was ‘Vivre sa Vie’.3 So I got completely intoxicated with Godard, and fell in love with Anna Karina, and once you hopped on to Godard you found yourself in Truffaut and either the cast would take you there or the people who shot the films. I would come up to London to go to either the Paris Pullman or the Everyman in Hampstead.
RC:Was that a solitary activity or did you have friends who you came with?
MA:No pretty much – I had a few mates but generally I used to come up on own, and that was encouraged, and I thought I want to be near film-making. I was also introduced to a gentleman called Peter Arnold,4 who again was the father of a fellow student. They lived nearby in Sevenoaks and he had produced ‘Morgan, a Suitable Case for Treatment’.5 I went to see him to say I don’t know what I want to do but I’m interested in getting into film-making proper. He arranged for me to visit animators up here in Soho, which was an eye-opening experience because I realised how labour intensive it was. Those were the days of cell animation, and I just didn’t see myself entering into a world drawing chocolate wrappers undoing and all that stuff, which was generally the bulk of the work that people did to keep alive. Feature animation films seemed unattainable.
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So I then had this love affair with Godard films and the French cinema and also the Czech films – Menzel, Forman and all those guys – ‘The Fireman’s Ball’,6 ‘Closely Observed Trains’,7 and the Japanese films, Kurosawa. Due to this connection with the Paris Pullman and of course the Academy in Oxford Street we were encouraged to do that, but Peter Arnold said if you want to make a good living don’t go into the film business. Which thankfully spurred me on, but I didn’t quite know how to go about it.
It came about that our School at that time had such an advanced progressive art department that I was able to be a sixth former and do A levels, Art, English and so on, but also do what was really a foundation course at Art School. So I went from school, straight on to a diploma at Hornsey which at that time was regarded as being the cool place to go for graphics which was the department I went into. I thought I ought to keep my other draughtsmanship skills alive in case the film thing goes down the toilet. Ironically one of the people who helped me most was a drawing teacher who was absolutely crazy about cinema and he would encourage us to see films and have discussion groups.
So I went up that road thinking I want to get near movie making proper and I started to let go of the animation, although I made a three-minute animation to apply for the Royal College of Art Film School. When I got there I had an inclination that I wanted to do something in the cutting room but I never achieved that at that school, which was very frustrating.
The best education I got there was from fellow students: Michael White, Peter Harvey, all those people. As I was interested in music and had musical activities as a hobby, and was involved in making records at that time, I just got lumped into the sound department and would go out on shoots recording. By the time I got to thinking I’ve got to earn a living now, having gone through the film school, I started to do sound recording jobs. The Union situation was so strong then, I could only work on BFI (British Film Institute) films, Arts Council drama films those sorts of things. I sort of fell in with Mamoun8 at the BFI. We would do these little ‘pilots’, two- or three-minute films which people were doing who were applying for Production Board grants. I would shoot sound on those and I started to cut sound to dubb them. It was a great place to step out from because Kevin Brownlow was there making ‘Winstanley’,9 and Charles Rees, and Andrew Mollo and I remember Bruce Beresford was there at some stage. Peter Smith was there making films. They in a way became much more of an education for me after leaving the Royal College of Art Film School, or maybe I was just more focussed.10
It was a lovely time because people would invite you in and you would look at a scene. People were very sharing – Bill Douglas too of course. I remember watching ‘My Childhood’11 in a little back room and it was quite the most powerful film I had ever seen. I felt like a nail had just been driven through my forehead.
So all of were fantastically helpful because I found them speaking a language I could understand and it was in an area of cinema that I could completely relate to. I’d had no real interest in American cinema. I really only got interested in American cinema that came out of the late 1960s – that sort of hey day – all Dede’s (Allen) stuff – ‘Bonnie and Clyde’, ‘ The Last Detail’,12 when suddenly it had gone back to the independents.
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It was by a fluke at the BFI Production Board that Peter Harvey and I were asked to shoot a pilot for a version of ‘King Lear’. We went off to Wales and shot a test. It was really a filmed piece of theatre. We got back and Peter phoned me a few days later and said there’s nobody to cut this thing together why don’t you have a go. It was something I was really interested in and had been unable to do at Film School, because people wouldn’t trust you. I almost got a student film to cut but the girl that was directing it walked in after I had done all the preparation work and said I’d like to do it myself! I felt there was nobody there to educate you and help ease you into that. It was like you’ve got to go into a cutting room and deliver a film – pull it off from scratch.
So the time I’d spent sound editing I’d managed to learn enough from Charles (Rees) and watching Kevin (Brownlow) who was always so gracious and enthusiastic and vocal, and just a wonderful source of energy and passion as was Mamoun (Hassan). I was desperate for a week’s wages so I accepted and the minute I started I thought ah, this is what I want to do. Anyway I did that and the director never knew I’d never cut a frame in my life – I got through it – it passed and they got the whole film. The conditions were that we did the same trick and that I would cut it.
Once I started editing Charles Rees taught me a lot about the visual side of it. Ways of looking at things, because he’s got such a heightened particular personal view of cinema. You could either go with Charles or you could react against it. Then I was being shown cuts of films that were being made and people were so much more generous than they are now. So you could get involved in editorial debates which slowly I started to feel that I had a voice to participate in, which I had absolutely not had before.
I worked on a lot of things, which were extremely mediocre, but it was around then that I thought I really want to edit so I taught myself how to use the Moviola. I got hold of some old 35mm commercials and I just chopped them up to learn how to use the machine, because everyone was so terrified of Moviolas, they were always available. So I taught myself to use the gear, and I thought I’d better teach myself about structural issues. I bought everything I could find about screenplay writing, because I was looking at films I’d done thinking they are put together well in one way but it doesn’t work in another.
The contact I had with Bill (Douglas), even prior to getting involved in making any of his films – because he was so passionate about a visual, non-dialogue orientated storytelling and an editorial purity – language of sizes, progressions of rhythms – I got very interested in that through him. It was ringing a lot of bells in my head.
I did another little film for the Arts Council – they were the only things I could do because I wasn’t legitimate. They were those funny days when you would be working in a cutting room and people would jump into trim bins to hide because they’d say the ACTT (Union) guys are coming round.
I did sound recording jobs to get work, and horrible pop-promos, films about biscuits and a whole series of news reports for Italian Television. Where this rather wonderful man called Paternostra would stand in Parliament Square and say ‘here I am in Liverpool’, because he couldn’t be bothered to get on the train to report some story up north. They offered me a permanent job doing news stuff that came in at mid-day and you had to work the reversal film all afternoon. Then a guy would rip it off the Steenbeck at five o’clock take it to Broadcasting House where it would be beamed to Rome and it would be on the news, on RAI by the time you got home. It was actually wonderful because it really loosened you up and you couldn’t be precious about it. All the time I was waiting to do proper cinema films.
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I think it helped through all these to know that was where I wanted to go. Mike Ellis13 who was also a mentor gave me very good advice which was don’t go up the wrong ladder – work at a lower level in the area you want to be. If you want to work in movies stay there, don’t go into TV, and I think Mike was right. The BFI was my springboard in that respect because at least I was dealing with people who wanted to make films, and there was this lovely discussional, open atmosphere.
Then I had that wonderful day at Beaconsfield with Sandy Mackendrick14 when I asked him to look at Terence Davies’ film. There was that wonderful remark which you must have heard. He had seen Terry’s film ‘Madonna and Child’,15 which was the one I did. Somebody said ‘Oh, that’s the gay one’ and Sandy said, ‘It isn’t at the moment’, because it was a very heavy lugubrious film.
I had one of the most illuminating days ever in film-making for me, sitting in that little corner cutting room in Beaconsfield with the blinds down because the film was so dark. Sandy broke down the story and analysed it, and talked about the writing and the shapes of that particular film, and the intentions. He said something which I’d never heard anybody say which was ‘this issue which you are trying to compensate for is a writing issue, do not even attempt to go there – this is an editorial issue which you can address if you have these sorts of pieces’.
This was like a light coming on in my head to differentiate and to have somebody whose overview of a film was so analytical but was also so astute. It was absolutely wonderful. In fact I think I spent two days with him and by coincidence later on through Stephen (Frears) we used to go and visit Sandy in California. He saw several cuts of films we had done. Staggeringly, Gladys his wife said how wonderful it was that we came. I just thought it was the most privileged position to be able to sit and have an hour over a drink and talk to this man. So often you have people responding to work in progress and being unable to talk in a certain language. Maybe it’s cynicism on my part but I find more and more that people are unable to express the real issues of what’s going on with films when they are in their evolutionary stages. To meet somebody of that calibre who understood it inside out and could guide you was absolutely wonderful. There have been only two or three people like that: Sandy was one and the lovely Dede (Allen) as well. There are not many people who can talk about film in that analytical way and constructively and without bringing all their interests which are not the same as ours as film-makers.
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I can’t quite remember the order of things but it was through sound recording that I became involved with ‘My Way Home’,16 because again I needed a job so I went off to Egypt. Through sound recording there and Bill’s difficulties in finishing the film I ended up taking that over. That really was the first complete feature film that I edited. That was a springboard to several other things. First Richard Woolley’s ‘Brothers and Sisters’17 and then Chris Petit’s ‘Unsuitable Job for a Woman’18 which was through Michael Relph19 who very kindly helped get me onboard because I had helped out with Bill’s situation.
RC:Thinking back to those early experiences are you conscious how you developed as an editor and in your relationship with directors?
MA:Absolutely, particularly the whole Bill, Mamoun and Kevin, ethos of film language. In a way I still feel I hear their voices in the back of my head: the repetition of sizes, how to forward stories visually. I think that was an enormous grounding to do with the relationships of how you help make a film with somebody or sit in a room and thrash it out. I really don’t know what the rules are for that, because I never worked as an assistant to other editors, certainly not on feature films. I did a bit of assisting to get by with the wonderful Jonathan Gili20 when he was cutting BBC documentaries, but we just used to sit in the cutting room and talk about movies and music, and then realise we’d better throw something together!
I didn’t know how that hierarchy worked. In fact it was very embarrassing on ‘An Unsuitable Job for a Woman’ which was the first time I’d had a proper crew, because I’d previously done all the work myself. I had two assistants and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do and what they were meant to do. So when I offered to sync up a roll of rushes on the second day of shooting they thought I was mad and they gave me a very hard time about it, because I was much younger than them. I was miserable because they really made me feel inexperienced and I did a lot of sitting in the toilet weeping. Until they made one very big mistake and then everything flipped over, but I learnt a lot from them as well. They were very surly and from the ‘proper’ film business. I’d just come from the backwoods of the BFI which was considered very lowly, so it was a very tough time.
RC:Interesting that your early experience almost reflects the way editors will have to develop now – without being real assistants.
MA:Of course, with the whole digital thing.
RC:In retrospect would you have liked to have worked for a couple of special editors?
MA:I think it was a huge help that I didn’t because I was arrogant enough to walk in and say I know how to do this, which you can do when you are twenty-five, with absolute blind ignorance and then swim your way out of it. Whereas if I’d watched other people and the pressures they are put under, diplomatically and politically in the vortex of making films I think I probably would have felt I don’t know how to do that.
RC:I suppose being around minds like Kevin Brownlow and Charles Rees and Mamoun Hassan was an ample substitute in a way, because you could have a dialogue, certainly about how to put something together.
MA:The wonderful thing was that it had no connection to commercial film-making at all. There was never an incentive to make money from the movies. It was just about cinema proper. It soon dawned on me that I wasn’t going to be able to live in that world for very long because it’s just not possible. No, I think they were absolutely an enormous influence because it was an open plan set-up there in Lower Marsh21 and they would be tearing their hair out and wanting to share it. Saying, ‘I can’t see my way out of this can you have a look at it, what’s wrong’. I think that was a terrific privilege because it’s not easy to do that now. I haven’t experienced that since.
RC:Also I suppose it was a privilege to work in an environment where, okay there wasn’t much money, but almost all of it was on the screen. It wasn’t that other kind of industrial infrastructure.
MA:We did make conscious decisions to live in such a way to get by with low overheads so you could wait to get another film. I mean I did driving taxis and the whole thing. They were all very supportive and it was good fun but it was hard and not sustainable indefinitely.
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RC:So was the Chris Petit film a breakthrough?
MA:It was a huge breakthrough and again one of those incredible flukes – when that film finished my dubbing editor Rodney Holland went to a Christmas party and bumped into Stephen Frears who was looking for a new editor and Rodney said he’d like to meet you for a job. I didn’t know Stephen personally but I’d seen ‘Gumshoe’22 and all his TV films. So we met up and I had a very amusing interview for ‘Walter’,23 which ended up being the first FilmFour for Channel Four. I remember walking out on to Oxford Street after we’d finished the film and seeing a poster which said ‘Handicapped film – shock horror – opens Channel Four’ or something! It was a wonderful film.
RC:When you started with Stephen Frears, did you feel you were changing gear?
MA:I was terrified from our brief interview, because I admired his work so much. I was very frightened and nervous and lacking in confidence, but I think because I’d had a grounding and we had a lot in common, with Bill and the whole BFI thing, I remember that’s what we talked about when we met. I talked about ways of doing things. The one thing I’ll never forget he said, ‘Well, in the end it either works or it doesn’t’. Anyway it was beautifully shot and I have to say the work had all been done for me. Chris Menges24 and Stephen had shot it beautifully. It wasn’t incredibly montagey at all. I benefited from all the work they had done in the design of it, and it was very, very emotional material – the wonderful Ian Mackellan25 and genuinely handicapped patients who were integrated.
RC:I vaguely remember that each scene was very moving but sometimes the structural difficulty was moving from scene to scene.
MA:Getting from a to b yeah, I don’t think I really got, I didn’t understand that and also in terms of working with somebody new – having to work out what my position was and what’s okay to say. Still, to this day, I’m not sure how much Stephen enjoys being in the cutting room or not – he’s busy not being in it quite a lot of the time, but we would talk all the time. We would talk on the phone at the end of every day’s shooting and we immediately had a very good rap in that way. Or he made me feel very free with the film that I could participate and do what I wanted with it. There was no sense of this is mine. He was extremely generous and always has been about letting you muck about and have a go.
I developed an ease of talking with Stephen because of his generosity and willingness to hear what you have to say so it allowed him to trust me and to be a pair of eyes and respond to the material. So with ‘The Hit’26 because it was a road movie and there was no real base, I was just in London looking at the rushes at the laboratory at five in the morning and we’d speak on the phone before he went shooting about the previous days work. They were relying on me how each scene was reading. So we developed a very efficient loop about the film as it was being shot. It was a lovely film with John Hurt.
RC:Very sharp, very brittle, harsh – again another change of style.
MA:Beautifully written by Peter Prince.27 I remember being frightened most of the time making that film because Jeremy Thomas walked in and said as the producer, remember I’ve been an editor for a long time as well. I thought oh God, I’m going to be cooked here, but we had a lovely time. I thoroughly enjoyed that film. Those films were all made in about twenty, twenty-one weeks top to bottom which now seems amazing but in a way editorially that’s a quick turn over. They were such fun to do because, you were in and out of them pretty quickly and so it felt very fresh and lively. We made them for ourselves – we didn’t preview them. We’d show them to friends but it very much felt like we were given this toy to play with. I don’t know whether Stephen would corroborate this. Very supportive producers, Margaret Matheson,28 Jeremy Thomas,29 all those people we adored, still do, and they created a wonderful nest for you to work in full of trust, and I loved every minute of it.
RC:Having done everything on the BFI stuff, did you then carry on doing picture and sound editing?
MA:No I had to drop sound editing pretty quickly.
RC:But did you develop a way of offering a template for how the sound should be to compliment the picture?
MA:I did feel very strongly about it and often I found it a difficult stage for me because I’d often think oh, I wouldn’t have done that, so I still find that quite tough. I think in terms of sound right from the word go. Of course the digital technology allows you to cut immediately with multi-track.
In those days of one bit of film and the cutting copy and the music banging in and out and the overlaps not there – I think in a way that grounding, which you had as well – seeing films naked like that without any of the frills and atmospheres and things which smooth them out forced you to confront the real bones of the editorial process. I still prefer to see films as stripped down as I possibly can, because if it plays like that it’s only going to get better. You can’t hide behind bits of music and so on.
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RC:So going back to the progression – after ‘The Hit’ it was the first time with Mike Newell.
MA:Yes, ‘Dance with a Stranger’.30 Stephen introduced me to Mike and we hopped straight on to that after a few weeks – it was a wonderful film. It just seemed a privilege at the time: the pleasure of a Shelagh Delaney31 script. I remember Miranda Richardson’s first day’s rushes so well – my jaw dropped – I just couldn’t believe where this woman had come from! Richard Hartley32 did a wonderful score for that. I found it such an upsetting film I haven’t been able to watch it since – strong stuff, but again a very happy experience.
RC:Is working with Mike in any way a contrast with Stephen?
MA:Everybody has their different methods. I think it’s difficult because I’ve made fifteen or sixteen films for Stephen now over twenty years the short hand that that allows you because we know each other so well and the trust. You can streamline the process.
RC:My memory of having you both teach at Beaconsfield around this time was the sense that you both had a very good lack of respect for the material, that, as Truffaut said, you have to be prepared to violate the film.
MA:I think that’s true and again I remember that being perpetrated by Stephen, but I remember very early on when he looked at the first cut of ‘Walter’ saying, ‘well, you’ve been far to respectful to the actors’. I remember it because I used to have Ian Mackellan sitting in my cutting room because my room was warm, it had a little electric fire. It was a pretty dodgy place and he used to come and sit, and because I was relatively inexperienced I used to feel the weight of this giant of the stage and screen behind me.
Until at one point I said to Ian, who is the most delightful man, ‘look erm, I’m feeling a little uncomfortable’ and he said, ‘no, no don’t be intimidated by me but do tell me what’s going on in your head, while you do this’. So I said this is what I’m thinking I’m making this choice because of that. I remember also being impressed by the fact that he got pleasure from seeing what to me – somebody of his calibre – he’d look at it and say ‘Ghosh, I really look as if I’ve been asleep!’ when he was waking up in bed. I thought, he still worries about that stuff, this is Ian Mackellan for Christ’s sake!
I then said, ‘well the process of cutting a film is in a way ripping it apart’. Stephen would often say don’t worry about which take you put in, just pick the first one – they’re all good, and in a way they were. I was thinking all these choices, and he’d say we’ll worry about that later, because he has a remarkable memory of what he’s shot, not by looking at it, because he seldom looks at the rushes. He doesn’t work in that traditional way at all, he wants somebody to respond and see if they are picking up what he intended it to have, which is the sort of technique, which we developed over these years. I think he would agree with that. That’s why we talk every day – how are you getting on with that – we’ve got a very tight loop, beat by beat. If I was worried about something I’d say that’s not reading quite right and he’d say no I understand, I’m ahead of you. His understanding or memory of what he’s shot and what it’s going to do is so acute that he didn’t need to look at the rushes. He’d say this is what I was trying to get and if you follow-up the takes you will see it going that way. Editorially one of the biggest things you have to help you in the lonely part of assembling a film is trying to work out why they’ve done another take. I sit here constantly puzzling over what that process is and what might have been said and why.
I think that lack of respect for the material in order to move it around and let the film’s montage start to speak and let it be inflected is really what its all about, and of course it’s a plastic medium which now, with digital, is even more so. You can always go back, so for example this scene I’ve got now – three hours of material for a five-page scene – huge amount of cover but very consistent performances. The agony of choice is huge except once you know the story you want to tell and the progression of ideas and the climate that the scene exists in when you start the first frame of that scene, which gets easier as the film gets built. I now just say I will do something – so I’ve got something to respond to. I’ll come back tomorrow and usually I’m horrified at how bad it is, and how it doesn’t seem to express things, which I felt when I saw the rushes, but I’ve started and I just have to wade my way through it. After these twenty years I think it should get easier but it doesn’t, because you feel this enormous responsibility of realising this thing and you don’t want to look foolish. It is your perception and response to things which people are hiring you for, because loads of us can cut the films together but it’s what you choose and the way you choose to see it.
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RC:Are you still very nervous when you start a new movie?
MA:I am actually. I feel sort of apprehensive because I don’t know how to make that film. I’ve only ever made the last one and I think somebody’s going to find out I’m a fake. I genuinely think that. I sit in front of the rushes and none of it seems to be how I imagined it would be. I do as much work as I can on the screenplay beforehand, and I’ve been lucky enough to always have friends to talk with and that’s a terrific help, because it means I can mug-up the issues early on. You think do I want to live with this thing for six months or a year or more of my life, which is a big question everyday. Seeing the writing develop or being able to say I’m worried about this – to be a part of that conversation is an enormous help.
So people who I’ve worked with more regularly have been kind enough to let me in on that process before we make the film. As was the case with ‘Dirty Pretty Things’33 or ‘My Beautiful Laundrette’34 we talked a lot about issues when this thing was so raw and disorganised and wonderful. How time scales needed to be rationalised because they were going to stop you enjoying the flow of the story, for instance. On the other hand something like ‘Dangerous Liaisons’35 was just a perfect script by the time I read it and we never touched it. The film was that – we made one tiny change at the end after a preview – moved one scene – but what Christopher Hampton36 had written was what it was.
RC:In keeping that process going through the cut of not being respectful or being willing to rip it apart is it in the working relationship that when one of you thinks we have done our best with that sequence the other might say I don’t know …
MA:… I think there’s a bit more to come. Yeah, I think that just happens. I’m absolutely reliant on screening these things. I’m reliant on screening rushes. I sit there in that blur overwhelmed by the volume of stuff because I find, Roger, after thirty minutes I can’t take in the detail.
RC:In those screenings do you take notes?
MA:Never take notes. The traditional thing of people whispering in your ear in the dark ‘I’d like you to use that and that’ has never happened to me – ever. It’s happened in as much that if there is one take that is definitely the one, but because you’re dealing with fragments the whole issue of the good take doesn’t exist. I do get feelings about things and I try to memorise. I can remember angles very easily. Memorising the performances takes longer and I get feelings about what I’ve left out. I know when I’ve cut something I haven’t expressed this idea and I know its there so where is it. That’s what I mean about this thing of having to commit to a cut for the first time and look at it and say is this the film, is this going to fit in when its all in place?
I think if people trust you to make a fool of yourself which is what I’m very grateful for to all these guys to let me do – to say I’ve had a go I don’t know but we will discover it. Then when I screen the film I start having strong feelings about it, but I have to see the film in the cinema and I have to have a memory of the rushes. If I haven’t I’m at sea. I do get apprehensive, I constantly feel when I’m assembling a film that I’m in a mess, I’m not doing it right, until you see the whole film.
Sometimes you think that is the film. ‘The Snapper’37 was a bit like that, it was so beautifully written and done and Stephen had realised it so brilliantly. It was just complete and balanced. This wonderful occasion when literally a day or two days after we’d shot the film in Ireland, I banged the last bits in because I’d managed to keep up. I said go out and get a bottle of champagne and we sat with our feet up on the Steenbeck and laughed our way through the film. I thought its fine and it didn’t really change – that was it.
Others you spend months trying to configure what it is you haven’t got right. I think that trust of I don’t know, I’m not sure but this is what I feel, and the ability to listen and filter the enormous weight of criticism and dialogue that comes at you which at best can be helpful and at worst thoroughly confusing and demoralising. Listening to other people’s opinions is a skill in its own right.
I’ve always wanted the cutting room to be like a safe haven during shooting. The place where you can say look it was a complete mess, everything went wrong today, all the usual film-making problems, but that we are in it together and those failings are what the cutting room’s about. As well as the failings I’m going to have of not seeing things because your perception of the film changes.
RC:When you say you must see it in the cinema does that mean you take it to a big screen as frequently as you can?
MA:Yeah, we do. I mean now with the digital thing you have to plan the conforming, but they are sort of blocked out, but its that experience of sitting there that I’m entirely reliant on to do the next bout of work. Or it fuels what I call bedroom ceiling editing, which is when I’m lying in bed thinking why does the film collapse in the middle, all that sort of thing.
RC:So have you always had the luck or the privilege of having a print that you can conform, because some people are so frustrated at having to watch a play out from the Avid which you can’t judge on the big screen?
MA:Yes, we have. It’s something we insist on and I’m working with that age group who are used to seeing film during editing. I don’t know how else you can judge it. When we have all these previews and someone like Dede will come along and debrief afterwards as a supervising editor, and she’ll say I thought it was getting a bit sticky here and you say I felt that too, what can we do about it? She’s lived through the experience in the cinema, and its to do with sitting in the dark for two hours trying to read what five hundred people are going through as the thing unravels, but I don’t know how else to do it. I think I was taught that by Bill, definitely Stephen and Mamoun – its an old fashioned school.
We all had trouble reading the film off tele’s, because we were so used to Moviolas, and whinged about that for a while. There was a lot of moaning about looking at tele’s saying I’ve got to see the actual stuff.
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RC:Having said an hour ago that in those early days you didn’t really engage with Hollywood cinema, where do you think that most of the cinema that you have been party to making fits?
MA:I don’t know. I’ve always thought of them, even the American ones, as being European films.
RC:Interestingly Stephen said to me, after the cast and crew screening of ‘Dirty Pretty Things’, ‘I think I’ve made a European film’. For him to say that now after so many films, implying that he’s not done that before, seems rather strange.
MA:It’s funny because I think they are European films. ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ is an odd one because it is a film made in Europe with people speaking American for French, or Scottish if you are one of the lower mortals in the hierarchy that the film presents, but I suppose that was an American film. Although to me it reads like a European film although it’s got American stars. Aren’t we talking about films that assume a level of intelligence and sophistication and ideas that are largely to do with character, rather than more mundane storytelling and lesser issues perhaps. Isn’t it to do with the density of the material and the issues of humanity that they represent?
In a way we tried to make an American film with ‘Accidental Hero’.38 I loved the screenplay but I feel that maybe it didn’t do well, because some people took against a star like Dustin Hoffman. Looking under the bonnet of the way media represents events and our desire to have personalities in the media, and newspapers and TV is something America couldn’t laugh at or take a satirical view of and that in my view was why the film didn’t do well. To me it has a European core to it.
I guess ‘Dirty Pretty Things’ is naturally European because its based here and is about people trying to get to America or trying to climb up the ladder of the social scale or get legitimacy. It’s a bit too soon on that one.
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RC:We must go back to your last experience with Bill Douglas on ‘Comrades’.39 How was that?
MA:I was very fond of Bill and he had taught me an enormous amount and I owed him a great deal, as difficult and volatile and exciting and terrifying as he was to be with. I loved the whole ‘Comrades’ concept and what we were trying to achieve and this huge tapestry of the film. At the time I felt very sorry that he didn’t want to cut the film and compress it and condense it more. In a way he’d written himself into a corner with very, very intricate ellipses in the film which all needed to be seeded and paid off, and yet just the scale of the piece meant that it needed cutting down. He became quite reticent and unwilling to do that and it was my job to support him although in my heart at the time I felt I would love to have a go with more freedom to make a more concise film and one that moved a bit quicker. I felt that it would have become more accessible. There were also some things that hadn’t come off and they needed in my view to come out, and he would have had to give up some of the elliptical elements that he felt bound them into the movie.
RC:My memory is that the first half is more successful than the second.
MA:Yeah, it has one of the best openings of any film I know. The first five minutes are absolutely staggering. If somebody asked me now to do another cut of the film to make it more accessible to a wider audience I’d love to do it. I suppose you’d feel that Bill isn’t here to argue his side of the case – it would feel like a sacrilegious thing.
RC:There is a process isn’t there in the diplomacy between editor and director where trying to go further than they want to go, however strong the relationship and the trust between you, there really is no way. At a certain point, however you broach the idea of changes, their antennae are already – even before you open your mouth – they know you are going to suggest – and whatever strategy you try they will resist.
MA:I think I have been lucky in ending up working with people who have very much not been like that and have been very open and very free. Stephen for example or perhaps Mike the same, although working with Terry Gilliam on ‘Twelve Monkeys’40 was an absolute joy too. Although everyone made me feel that he was going to be terribly protective he gave me wonderful freedom and was supportive and flexible.
RC:I remember you saying how good that experience was.
MA:It was. I adored the script. It was a huge editorial challenge that film and I just had a great time making it. It was very hard work. Terry was so stimulating and supportive of what you were trying to do and the problems we had. It was a happy experience. I’ve had a sheltered life really!
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RC:Now I know, because you’ve told me, that a couple of more recent experiences have not been the greatest. Without libelling anybody are there things you can say about what an editor needs to do to achieve good work or how you cope with serious problems?
MA:In the case of ‘The Avengers’41 it was a unique set of experiences. Things were going off the rails in that case within three or four weeks of the start of shooting. Not only in my mind and also with my friends who were other HOD’s, Stuart Craig and Roger Pratt (designer and cinematographer, respectively). When you put up your hands and say look I think we are getting into very deep water here, when a film is coming at you in little bits all out of order with special effects, and the reply is we’re happy, what can you say? You carry on and stay as supportive as you can.
RC:Did it read okay on the page?
MA:Yeah, but they didn’t shoot what was on the page, and there were fundamental story issues which weren’t addressed as they went along. Daily I would look and see what was on the page and it didn’t match what they came home with. It was a more formal relationship with those guys and there was a culture gap but we absolutely waved the flag.
It was Dede (Allen) who saved me from throwing myself off Hungerford Bridge. At one stage in total despair after we’d had the worst previews ever, I went to Dede and said, ‘I don’t think I can finish this film’. I remember her wagging her finger like this and saying, ‘It’s not done to leave’, and because I respect her entirely I never entertained the idea again. She said ‘you’ll get through’ and I did.
RC:Changing the subject – we haven’t talked about ‘The Grifters’.42
MA:‘Grifters’ was heavenly really. A really intimate group of people – cast and crew. Martin Scorsese as executive producer – a bit like Sandy Mackendrick – there are so few people who can talk about film with that level of understanding. He used to see cuts for which I have never been more nervous in my life. Thelma43 was involved as well and was incredibly supportive. One day Stephen suggested we go through the reels with them in the cutting room, which I thought would be fantastic. We got to about reel three and Marty said, ‘Look I’m making another film next door, I’m only going to be imposing all my rhythms and stuff that I’ve got going there on you – what you’re doing is great – just carry on’. We never did get to the end of the film.
RC:Interesting thing to say – ‘imposing my rhythms’.
MA:Yeah, well he was making ‘Goodfellas’ at the time and sort of snapping his fingers. He said your rhythms are yours they’re fine. We had some issues with the placement of Elmer Bernstein’s music and we jiggled around with it a bit, but by and large it was a very smooth birth. I just remember the excitement of standing in the studio in Dublin and hearing Elmer’s fantastic score for the first time. It was just wonderful – a big brass section playing. It’s often used as a ‘temp’ for other people’s films and I relive that moment – it was very, very exciting.
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RC:Going back to discovering cinema – how have your taste and enthusiasms evolved since?
MA:I feel that the thing of being taken by a film happens less and less. That is a sorrow because you think why am I a plumber always looking for a leak – why can’t I just sit back and go with it and accept. When a film is great the pleasure you have in seeing it is immense. Plus the fact of knowing that all films are such hard earned items to make. Bad films are as hard to make as good ones as they say. You can appreciate all these incredible skills but feel disappointed that perhaps the germs of the ideas are dull or uninteresting. I only judge films by whether I have been taken out of myself.
You have this memory of films that had an enormous impact on you earlier in life, Bergman or those touching warm funny and sad Czech films or Kurosawa, and you end up wanting to look out for something that will hit you in that way or elevate you.
Talking about being nervous on a film I do frequently sit in the cutting room thinking I am not qualified to do this. These are very expensive movie stars and I am making very radical decisions about what they’ve given us, which often people don’t go back on once you commit and I really haven’t had any formal training in this at all.
I didn’t watch somebody else – I didn’t stand and watch somebody make a whole film – I got it in bits and pieces. So I sit here and do think I’m a fake – somebody is going to find out soon. I don’t know how I’m qualified to do this, even now, but in the end you just try and make a film for yourself. I literally sit there and say would I want to see this in a film, does this represent the person well. You can only go so far to accommodate others. I have made performance changes and been close to tears watching the film veer off in another direction and think that’s fine but it’s not the film I thought we were going to make.
I think a quality that is absolutely necessary to do this job as I understand it, from the perspective I’ve had, is to listen to other people. Take it onboard, mull it over, chew it over, digest it, and try and filter it and in the end what is true to you will stick. Don’t take it at face value and learn to interpret what they are really saying. They often talk, as I call it, with forked tongue and they will be saying do this, do that, but they are actually trying to tell you that there is a problem. Don’t listen to what their solution is because you will probably have a better idea because you have built the thing shot by shot, frame by frame from the very first day and bolted the damn thing together! I want to hear about problems not solutions.
One of Stephens many directions to me, having seen the first cut of ‘The Hit’ was, well you’ve made the film about Willy Parker now I want you to make the film about Mr Braddock! I thought oh right, okay, I was looking at the oppressed not the oppressor, and of course that’s what we did. One needs to have those sorts of perspectives planted in your mind, but you can only make those judgements if you’ve got well constructed and strong material, shot in a way that allows you to make such choices and editorially swing the balance this way or that. If you work with someone a lot then that’s going to happen much, much quicker and earlier on in the process.
RC:Do you think you have a natural sense of rhythm?
MA:I hope so after all these films! It’s such a weird commodity in films. In some ways I can look at something and say that’s not been done rhythmically and yet in relation to film it’s quite an abstract idea to get your head round. If somebody says to me that’s not rhythmical I’d probably understand in my terms but I’m not sure I know in their terms. It’s a strange word attached to editing. I can look at my own work and say I haven’t got the rhythm of the scene right, but I’m not sure I can vocalise exactly with that scene what it is that makes that happen.
Yet seeing student editors some of them you can look at something and it’s beautifully realised and seems effortless. Other times you know you are never going to get them to cut in a certain way, because that sense of rhythm is not inherently there. All I know for myself is that when a film is working and is rhythmically correct to me I can watch it and be detached. It is telling me what I need to know and nothing is jarring or if it is jarring it is doing so in a way I’ve designed.
To judge this I find myself constantly going back literally to half-way through previous scenes before I run into the next one because I’m so concerned about the shift of ideas or the accumulated knowledge thing. To a ludicrous extent now that I think God I’m probably spending hours every day running the same thing, but I’m trying to get my bearings on where I am to make a decision which I can’t see in the isolated climate of the scene itself.
What is interesting now is that because of the digital technology you’ve got the chance to actually, let’s use the word, ‘rhythm’ something and sophisticate it very early on, because you’ve got the time to do it. Before I’d have to construct a scene and it would take me all day, now I can do that in half-a-day and I’ve got the rest of the day to integrate it into the film or make adjustments or try alternative takes or another version. It works very differently. Before you were just grateful if you got something that big (gestures with his hands at a 1000-feet roll of 35mm film) at the end of the day that you felt remotely happy with and then the process of ‘rhythming’ it would come later. Now people seem to demand things, which are much more sophisticated earlier. I don’t show stuff unless I think it is rhythmically pretty sophisticated, because I feel embarrassed.
Even a first cut I think should be a very articulated version of what was shot in relation to the script. Then when you start reinventing the film for cinematic reasons rather than literary, you’ve got a record of it as written. I feel that the assembly process is so misquoted in film-making jargon. Literally today on the end of the shoot of this film I got a phone call from the DoP saying ha ha, I guess you are going to start work now! The assembly process to me is the most crucial stage of making the film, of building it and responding and hopefully being able to guide and shape alterations into the shooting. It’s the biggest jump the film makes because I think generally people find rushes very difficult to watch and don’t really understand the editorial process. They don’t know what to look for. It’s a very sophisticated job. People get sent tapes and I have conversations where I know they haven’t seen the material. There’s a lot of grey areas in the process of rushes, but the whole thing of calling a cut an assembly or an editors cut or a first cut is something I would so like to clear up publicly so the terminology used when dealing with us guys in the cutting room was clearer.
‘Oh, just do a rough cut of that scene’ what does that mean? I’m going to do a version of that scene which I think is the best thing since sliced bread until I know better. It’s not going to be rough its going to be sophisticated. What may be rough is the writing or lots of other things, but it’s not going to be a rough cut. I prefer to do it by numbers. There’s a first cut, which is like a draft – and generally this is verbatim: ‘exterior house cut to interior’ – okay there it is. Boring, we’ll get rid of that next time round. The first cut is going to present the material as designed in its first incarnation in the director’s head. He may well want to cut a whole lot out but he feels he has to shoot it and then we’ll dump it later.
RC:One of the things I found very early on when I was dealing with performances which were pretty good in a movie was that if I followed the rhythm of the performances it usually felt alright. I then remember getting a film where the actual style and rhythm of the performances of the two leads was so different that it was a real bugger. Especially inter-cutting and going from wide shot to closeup, it would be a totally different emphasis and weight. I suddenly realised that editing is more than following or respecting or supporting the rhythm of the performances – you have to intervene.
MA:I think it is also true that good directors understand and control that instinctively. For instance you know that a brief hesitation can kill you and you don’t want to put a cut in. So the cranking of those rhythms in the directors job is so crucial to the way the film then gets cut. So I need one simple statement here or one gesture – I don’t need five and I don’t need it to last thirty seconds I need it to be ‘click’ like that. Having somebody that understands that and is presenting the opportunities to allow you to either get at that or even better not get at it is great. Where you do have to intervene on a big scale I always feel guilty. I don’t want to have to cut there because I’m interfering but I need the next line to be there and not there, and it could be literally a foot later and it’s weird. That’s maybe what we were talking about earlier; that is an understanding of instinctive rhythm or the rhythm of the way humans’ interact, and how quick it can go. The shock you always have is how fast people pick up information. The perception of visual information is hugely sophisticated. I sit there in a preview thinking is this going fast enough? They’re soaking this up pretty fast and its going a bit slowly for me.
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RC:Finally, the transition to digital – how was it for you?
MA:I was very ready for it. I found it very gruelling hanging film up in bins and the terrible ‘bench neck’ as I used to call it. It was frightening. I didn’t ever see myself as sitting operating a computer, because that wasn’t my idea of what film editors did. But the minute I started I thought, oh this is absolutely fantastic; the speed at which you could manipulate images. You could almost make things as quickly as you could think them, whereas before your thinking was always way ahead of the time it took you physically. The feeling that what people were asking you to do was not undoing hours and hours of work, which could be terribly upsetting to pull something apart, which we physically used to do as you know. It makes you much more versatile, flexible and conversational. Investigating ideas just feels much safer because you haven’t got to rip something to bits and you can make comparisons. So I found it absolutely liberating in every way.
RC:But do you have techniques for rather than doing another version having thinking time?
MA:I still follow the same routines. The only thing that’s different is that if you’ve come to work without an idea in your head of what is the first beat of the scene to start you can sort of get away with it, because you can follow a route and think I’ve done it wrong, I’m going to have to go back and start again. Whereas before on the way to work on the bus I would sit there thinking I’ve got to work out where I’m going to start this scene, because by the time you’ve made all those selections and bound them together half the day had gone. Then you think I’ve made a mistake, hell, I’ve got to undo it all. Having come up through the discipline of film I think I have been very lucky to have been part of both of those worlds. I still think of it as film right down to cutting out little men and putting then at the bottom of the computer screen to imagine that that’s the cinema – these are all little people watching.
1. George Dunning (1920–79) – Canadian animator who directed ‘Yellow Submarine’ (1968) and is credited with ‘saving’ the polyvision sequences of Abel Gance’s ‘Napoléon’ (1926).
2. Norman Mclaren (1914–87) – Scottish experimental film-maker and animator – ‘Neighbours’ (1952). Did most of his important work at the Canadian Film Board.
3. Vivre sa Vie-Film en Douze Tableau – Jean-Luc Godard, with Anna Karina, 1962.
4. Peter Arnold – The producer credit on ‘Morgan …’ is Leon Clore.
5. Morgan, a Suitable Case for Treatment – Directed by Karel Reisz, with David Warner, 1966.
6. The Fireman’s Ball – Milos Forman, 1967.
7. Closely Observed Trains – Jiri Menzel, 1966.
8. Mamoun Hassan – Originally an editor who became an important figure at the BFI and later at the NFFC for his passionate championing of new talent. Intelligent analyser of films and film-making.
9. Winstanley – Kevin Brownlow with Andrew Mollo, 1975.
10. The British Film Institute Production Board – Late lamented source of support for independent film-making in Britain, which, in the 1970s encouraged a number of special talents. Apart from Kevin Brownlow, champion of silent film classics, Charles Rees is an editor and passionate cineaste with a particular obsession for Robert Bresson, Andrew Mollo is a production designer who is a specialist in military history, Peter Smith became a director (‘No Surrender’, 1985). Bruce Beresford is an Australian director who ran the Board between 1966 and 1971.
11. My Childhood (1972) – First part of the trilogy by Bill Douglas (1937–91), a remarkable talent.
12. Dede Allen – For some of us the greatest editor ever. Born in 1925 and still cutting; ‘The Final Cut’ (2004). Bonnie and Clyde (1967) was her first major success.
13. Mike Ellis – See interview in this book.
14. Alexander (Sandy) Mackendrick (1912–93) – Scottish director. First film ‘Whisky Galore’ (1949), and after several other splendid Ealing Comedies made his seminal film, ‘Sweet Smell of Success’ (1957) starring Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis. Inspirational teacher at California Institute for the Arts also at National Film School in Britain. It was a privilege to be his colleague.
15. Terence Davies – Director, made Madonna and Child in 1980 whilst at National Film School. Most recent success, ‘House of Mirth’ (2000).
16. My Way Home – Bill Douglas, 1978. Final part of his autobiographical trilogy.
17. Brothers and Sisters – Richard Woolley, who subsequently became a film teacher, 1980.
18. Unsuitable Job for a Woman – Chris Petit, 1982.
19. Michael Relph – Producer, born 1915, Dorset. Enthusiastic and loyal supporter of young talent.
20. Jonathan Gili – Documentary film-maker whose brilliant work concentrates on ‘real stories about real people’. Originally an editor.
21. Lower Marsh – Then the location of the British Film Institute production facilities, south of London’s Waterloo Bridge.
22. Gumshoe – Stephen Frears cinema debut film with Albert Finney, 1971. Script by Neville Smith.
23. Walter – Stephen Frears, 1982.
24. Chris Menges – Eminent cinematographer – Oscars for ‘The Mission’ (1987) and ‘The Killing Fields’ (1985). Has also directed.
25. Ian Mackellan – Superb actor, stage and screen, both TV and cinema – most recently ‘The Lord of the Rings’.
26. The Hit – Stephen Frears, 1984.
27. Peter Prince – Writer. Later adapted ‘Waterland’ (1992) for the screen.
28. Margaret Matheson – Highly regarded producer for TV and cinema.
29. Jeremy Thomas – Courageous producer, including many films by Nicolas Roeg and Bernardo Bertolucci. Former editor.
30. Dance with a Stranger – Mike Newell, 1985. The Ruth Ellis story – riveting performance by Miranda Richardson.
31. Shelagh Delaney – Writer including ‘A Taste of Honey’ (1961).
32. Richard Hartley – Composer, film and TV.
33. Dirty Pretty Things – Stephen Frears, with Audrey Tatou, 2002.
34. My Beautiful Laundrette – Stephen Frears, with Daniel Day-Lewis, 1985.
35. Dangerous Liaisons – Stephen Frears, with Glenn Close, John Malkovich and Michelle Pfeifer, 1988.
36. Christopher Hampton – Writer for stage and screen. Also director, e.g. ‘Carrington’ (1995).
37. The Snapper – Stephen Frears. Based on the Roddy Doyle novel, 1993.
38. Accidental Hero – Stephen Frears, 1992.
39. Comrades – Bill Douglas – his final film; the story of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, 1987.
40. Twelve Monkeys – Terry Gilliam, 1995. Futuristic nightmare film inspired by Chris Marker’s ‘La Jetée’ (1962).
41. The Avengers – Jeremiah S. Chechik, based on British TV series, 1998.
42. The Grifters – Stephen Frears, with Anjelica Huston, 1990.
43. Thelma Schoonmaker – Self-effacing but brilliant editor for Martin Scorsese on a regular basis since ‘Raging Bull’ (1980). Was wife of the late, great Michael Powell.