[This is the second part in a two-part interview with film editor Ronald Sanders who most recently work with David Cronenberg on Eastern Promises. Read yesterday's first portion here.]
AA: Because you only screen rushes with Cronenberg once a week, does that mean the footage is given to you and you start cutting completely without direction?
RS: He’ll tell me things he likes, things he doesn’t, sometimes I’ll see something watching the rushes that I didn’t realize. Generally speaking, the first time I just cut it any way that I want. If there’s something he hasn’t told me he prefers, I’m confident enough with him that I’ll just cut it my way. It’s very easy to change later.
AA: Is your initial drive just performance?
RS: You can’t do it as schematically. It would be nice if you could. These days, now that we’re working digitally, the tapes come in the morning from the transfer house. As it digitizes I’ll just watch it. That’s our screening. We digitize it roll by roll and just watch it as it’s going in. We sit and discuss it, Tad (Tad Seaborn, first assistant editor) and my other assistant, Sandra. That’s our screening. What we look for there is some sort of spark – something between Viggo (Mortensen) and Vincent (Cassel) perhaps. Anything you see in a scene that really leaps out at you, some spark, some neat thing they do, some reading, anything. I file it away in my mind, I don’t even make notes anymore. Usually by the time a film is finished I can recall just about all the coverage for any scene… but that’s years of practice, it’s not magic. So, we find that spark and then sort of try to build the scene around it. I try to find other things that connect with it. Or I may change my mind totally when it comes to it. But I just try to have some idea of what it’s trying to do and what sparked me when I first watched it. I look for that thing that gave me an idea of how I might want the scene to go – a specific bit of action, a line reading, a little look, anything really. It just gives me a spark to start the scene. Sometimes when I look at a scene there’s no spark at all. I just look and say, “Oh no.” Performances might be flat or they might be fine but it doesn’t talk to me. The best thing to do then is just start. Cut one shot to another shot. Eventually something will start happening. You just can’t dither. The more I think about it, the worse it gets. I try not to think about it, I just try to react to it. You only get to watch it the first time once. So I consciously try not to think about how I’m going to start a scene. I don’t ask, “do I want to start on a close up because the last scene ended on something else?” The way I try to do it is to purely react to the material, rather than to plan something. I just try to do it this way because it works better for me if I don’t think.
AA: But what happens when you have so much coverage, so many takes for each shot, and so many possibilities for each scene? Where do you even begin?
RS: Sometimes you have to mull over the footage. If it’s just not working for you, you have to keep on going back to the scene and re-cutting it and looking at the footage. But what I try to do is the zen approach to editing. I just try to let it unfold. I know it’s sort of a wanker thing to say but that’s what I do. It doesn’t work all the time by any means, but sometimes it does. It’s become my method, such as it is. I don’t look at the script’s marked pages, and say “they’ve covered it like this.” I just don’t do that. If I lose something, I look at the paperwork but I don’t generally deal with anything except the material. All the paperwork is there and my assistants use it to keep track of everything and make sure everything is there. The only way I can work the way I do is if everything else is done properly, so I can just ignore everything except the material. My assistants do all the other stuff, which means they have to be good. I’ve worked with Tad for ten years now. He probably should have left to cut his own stuff a couple of years ago, he’s certainly good enough. Usually if my assistants want to cut the movie, they can cut the movie. They can cut a whole version of it themselves if they want. Tad always does that actually. He’s probably cut a version of every movie he’s worked on with me.
AA: Will you look at the scenes he cuts?
RS: Sure, especially if I’m having trouble. Or even sometimes, if we get a lot of stuff, I just say to Tad “you do this and this, and I’ll do these.” Just so we can keep up. And he’s worked with me long enough so that when he cuts them, they’re near enough to what I would have done anyway. If I ask him to cut something, he’ll cut it like I would. If I don’t ask him to cut it and he’s doing it for his own amusement, he’ll cut it in a way that’s completely different than the way he thinks I would cut it. Sometimes you find something. I don’t mind using something he’s cut. If he’s found something that I didn’t, or I like it better, I’ll just use it, shamelessly, and with my name on it.
We both laugh. Then speaking directly into the mic, Sanders affirms,“His name is Tad Seaborn by the way, and he’s a very good editor.”
Self Portrait: Many would love to be in the shoes of Ronald Sanders…
AA: How have you chosen the assistants you work with?
RS: Well, everyone wants to work with me. I’m not being arrogant saying that. Half the editors in Toronto have worked with me. Susan Shipton was my assistant, Susan Maggi was my assistant. I’ve been doing this for a long time. But people have to be smart, above all. When I started working with Tad he didn’t have any experience at all, but he was really smart. The first thing I worked with him on was this film centre short, and it was the first time either of us had worked on an AVID. But he just stayed with me because he was good. He recently went off to cut a film on his own, but he’s the best assistant in Toronto – he’s the guy. A woman named Sandy Pereira has worked with us on a couple of movies. She’ll probably take over from Tad now. She’s very good too. They’ve got to be people that we can get along with – that will be fun. If we don’t have fun then we’re doing it wrong. You’ve got to be having a good time. You really do… you give up too much to do this, not to have fun doing it. Of course, you have to take the work seriously, but you don’t have to take yourself seriously. There’s a big difference. After a while you look at a project and either there are people on it that you know you’re not going to work with, or you have a bad feeling about it, or you don’t know anybody that’s working on it. You just turn it down. I’ve turned down a lot of stuff. I've turned down three things in the last week.
AA: That’s what I was going to ask you about, because I know you’ve cut two films for Anais Granofsky and done other stuff for other directors. So how do you decide who you’re going to work with?
RS: It depends when David is going to shoot again. Sometimes I have to wait. If I’ve just done a good-sized picture and I’ve got a good-sized picture coming up, I’ll do something that there isn’t any money for, like Anais’ pictures. After I worked with her once I really liked her. She’s good fun and her scripts are really interesting. So why not do them? You know, it’s hard for me to get a job in this town. I could be out of work for a year and not be able to get a job in Toronto, it’s as simple as that. I turn some things down, but it’s very British or Canadian that once you have some sort of profile all people want to do is chop you down. So some people think I’ve gotten too big for my boots and they’re not going to hire me, or they don’t phone me because they think I’m too expensive. Both of which piss me off. If you don’t want to work with me that’s cool, that’s the way it is. But if they don’t call me because they think I’m too expensive, that really pisses me off, because if they have an interesting script, maybe I would do it. They don’t know if they don’t ask.
AA: I’m curious about the creative process when you make a film. I did an internship for a big company in LA last summer, and had a chance to see how the producers mangle a film based on their perception of its potential profitability. It seems that you and Cronenberg have much more control here than you would there.
RS: That’s what preview screenings are for. So nobody has to take any responsibility for how the movie goes. They look at the numbers and say, “well it was soft, here, here, and here. Here’s what the audience says we should do.” But then, no executives have to take a decision which might reflect badly on them. They just look at the preview numbers. We did a preview for this movie. A full preview with the preview company and the book and everything in West Nyack, New York. We went to Focus Features the next morning in New York and they didn’t even have the book yet from the preview people. We discussed two or three things that they thought could be improved, and they basically said, “well, go back and finish it.” That was it, we didn’t even see the numbers. They said, “finish it, we like it, we’re bullish on this movie.” So we did, we finished the mix two or three weeks ago, phoned Focus and said, “When are you coming up to look at the mix,” and they said, “uuh, we’re not looking at it. Finish it, get the prints, and we’ll see you at the festival.” And that’s basically what it was. I mean they do Ang Lee’s movies, they did Lust, Caution. They do movies they think they’re going to like, and then they just let the filmmakers work. It’s because they’re essentially filmmakers and they’re unlike any executives I’ve ever worked with. We go out for dinner and have a good time. They don’t even wear suits. They’re just a lot of fun. They’re smart New York filmmakers. They obviously have to answer in some way to Universal but you know Eastern Promises had a $25 million budget. That’s nothing in Los Angeles.
AA: I was going to ask about preview screenings because I’m sure they can be very important if you’re not forced into making a changes based on numbers.
RS: Exactly, they can be important by what you think you get from the audience, which can be quite different from what the book says. We had a preview of A History of Violence in Los Angeles. The audience was yelling and screaming and talking to the screen, but the numbers were mediocre. We went in to the studio the next morning and were told “this was obviously an unsuccessful test.” I felt like saying, well, you were there, what did you think the audience was doing.” It was one of the best reviewed pictures of the year. Personally, I’d be perfectly happy if every movie I worked on from now was made by Focus and shot in England. It would be my preference. I just like the way they work in London. It’s sort of like the way we work in Canada and the actors are brilliant. There’s an enormous pool of very good actors there. You can populate your movie with great actors right down to one line.
AA: What do you feel about the fact that a lot of cinematographers, editors, and other great creative forces, get brushed aside with the auteur theory. I’m sure you’re grateful to have met and worked with Cronenberg to the extent that you have, but in general, how do you feel about the way these things play out?
RS: It’s the nature of the beast. The stronger and more well-known a director is, the less credit anyone else is going to get for the work. I’d love to get more credit. I get some credit. Peter (Peter Suschitzky, the cinematographer) gets more credit than I do, but the cinematographer usually does because it’s a more glamorous and upfront position. He’s a great DOP though. But the mantra I learned years ago, when it used to bother me to recut something that I really liked, is “this is not my movie, this is not my movie.” Because it’s not.
AA: But don’t you almost feel like it is, because there’s so much of yourself in there?
RS: Oh, for sure. It gets completely personal, especially the first cut. By the time the director first gets to see it, I’ve been living with it in the cutting room for three or four months. It feels totally mine. But, it’s not. You just have to realize that. A good director will leave you something of yourself in there. But I have a theory and it’s almost always been true. There’re always two or three little things that I love in the movie. They don’t have to be important. They can be totally unimportant, like something somebody does in a shot, or the way two shots go together, or I’ve done a little thing or a little joke, or a little something that I get pleasure from every time. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything within the greater structure of the film. But the point is, the director always finds those things and changes them. It happens every time. Without knowing they’re there, they instinctively go for them. Ask other editors when you’re talking to them, I’m sure they’ve experienced this.
Sanders pauses again to look at his watch. He has an appointment at two, and I know our time is running out. I’m loving every minute of the conversation but I keep telling myself that all good things must come to an end.
I don’t mind at all, I like talking about it. I feel like a bit of a wanker talking about everything because you get into stuff that is difficult to talk about and you have to assume certain things, and you have to appear like you know more about what you’re talking about than you do. The truth is, none of this enters when we’re cutting. We go in and sit and we talk about this and we talk about that and we say, “Well, we should look at this scene again,” and “What else have you got for this line,” and “Maybe we could loop that.” You know it’s nuts and bolts. You look at it and see how it’s working but we don’t talk about this kind of stuff. We just do the mechanics. But we’re talking about it right now and it’s great. David’s very articulate, he can talk about a movie with interviewers for days and days and days. He’s the smartest, most articulate person that I’ve met, which is a little bit intimidating. But I do my best and try to stand up to him.
I stop to take in what Ron’s saying. I realize how modest he’s being… of course, he’s not giving himself enough credit. So I say, “Well, he must think highly enough of you to have worked with you for so long…”
“Apparently, because he keeps asking me back… so far so good.”
