A few years ago Mrs Peas read through the first 3 books of GOT. She loved the first one, thought the second was Ok and hated the third. I never got past the horrible, unimaginative, pedestrian names in the first chapter (another commonality with Lucas; Mon Calamari for a being that looks like a sea creature? Really, George?!?). I was willing to give them a shot based on her review. I was encouraged at first when she finished the first book in tears, but when she explained it to me, I was like, “So he just stole the ending of The Grapes of Wrath?”
Those editors aren’t doing the same job. It’s George RR Martin’s job to create pacing. It’s Glenn Greenwald’s job to maintain continuity. But a film directors job is to ensure that there’s enough raw material to create a story. It’s the editors job to take those hundreds of hours of footage and create a two hour story… It’s not just a matter of cutting out extraneous material. It’s about taking what was shot and creating dramatic tension.
Yes, a lot of this is preplanned in the script, and yes, there are films which cleverly splice together long uninterrupted bits of footage (Rope, Russian Ark), but normally a film editor is called upon to be far more creative than an editor at a newspaper.
Her edits saved George Lucas from his worst tendencies, and transformed the film from a schlocky gloss on Joseph Campbell…
Perhaps schlocky gloss on schlock? Especially around the time of SW, ‘Hollywood’ celebrities and related personages were flocking to Campbell-theory-based retreats and workshops à la ‘Scientology’, although at the time anthropologists, academic specialists in folklore, and those in other related disciplines (ex: language) were highly critical of his interpretations of, and conclusions drawn from, myths. If I were to draw only one conclusion from all the professional criticism, it would be that Campbell was a hack who got it wrong and still managed to pull a fast one on laypeople.
Anyway, I wonder if Marcia deserves even greater thanks.
12 years ago I finished my last large edit (a 2hr doc). 40 hours of source footage, ended up with 18 segments… some fun & light, others heavy AF.
The toll it took on me was crazy. I wasn’t sleeping well, smoked wayyy too much weed, procrastinated, edited for 10 hours at a time. It was hard both physically and mentally. But the end product was really good.
Never liked editing but it came with the job. For some folks editing is second nature, they make it look easy. Director can story-board all they want, but editing either gives you a magnificent cake or a lump of shit. Respect.
George should be SO glad his wife salvaged that movie, she saved it.
And it highlights a large number of his amending edits to SW, which were… animations. Those “cute” CGI cutaways where we see an exotic animal that suddenly eats a smaller animal. Or, right before the Cantina scene, we see CGI jawas getting tossed around by an unmanageable CGI “horse” creature.
“An editor learns to think about movement and flow. So an editor’s really special skills involve responding to the material that is on screen, and shaping its movement. This is not what andyone else on the crew does. They generate the movement, They decorate it, they dress it, but what the editor does is respond to the movement. And that’s a unique way of thinking.”
Most of Martin Scorcesses films have been edited by Thelma Schoonmaker. If the essence of film editing was correcting mistakes, and saving films, why collaborate with someone who doesn’t make so many mistakes, and puts out films that don’t need “saving?”
When asked how it was that such a nice lady could edit Scorsese’s violent gangster pictures, Thelma replied with a smile: “Ah, but they aren’t violent until I’ve edited them.”
She’s received three Oscars for best editing, (Raging Bull, Aviator, The Departed).
The Aviator is 170 minutes long. It didn’t feel like a 170 minute film when I saw it in the theater. It felt much more sprightly Part of this can be chalked up to Schoonmaker. If she was merely a literary editor, tasked with removing “bloat”, or restraining the “bad” impulses of the auteur, it probably would be a very different film. Luckily, she wasn’t and her skills as a “film editor” made for a brilliant film.
So very with you on Stephenson. The only book of his I’ve read is Cryptonomicon, and there was so much “Oh dear. Just stop now, and move on please. Nobody is reading this to be tutored (badly) on system administration.”
I finished it, because I usually finish books. But I’ve never even considered reading one of his books again.
The video itself is excellent. The hook of the summary, that Star Wars “would have been trash if not for Marcia Lucas’s editing,” is grossly reductive.
Marcia Lucas is undoubtedly due great credit for reshaping Star Wars into a quite watchable, absorbing work of cinematic storytelling that resonated with audiences across the world. That said, and as the video clarifies, THREE editors – Mrs. Lucas, Paul Hirsch and Richard Chew, cut the film, and when we see how huge a structural overhaul the film got after its first assembly, additional personnel only makes sense. A single editor might have intuited to streamline the first act, restructure the Death Star/Tatooine back-and-forth and to double the tension of the climax by putting the rebel base in the Death Star’s crosshairs, but I can’t be sure.
Marcia Lucas mainly edited the Death Star battle, reportedly for two and a half months. I don’t doubt she had input on the film overall, but implying she and she alone snared Star Wars from the jaws of mediocrity hardly seems like an appropriate sum-up for this story.
I missed out on seeing Walter Murch speak in town once years ago, then met him and his wife in a shoe store that day! Really easy to talk to. Paid my respects. When he asked me what software they were using in my program, I said FCPX. He promptly went back to trying on his shoes.
Ah, JP. Mr “men have to toughen up”, who wound up being treated for an addiction to anti-anxiety medication. I know plenty of recovering addicts who are excellent people. My point here is that J Peterson’s advice was simple, clear, and even he himself couldn’t follow it.