Editing: Dede Allen, Part Two of Two
Part 2 of a two-part interview with Dede Allen on learning drama, memorizing dailies, and the essence of violence in "Bonnie and Clyde"
"If anybody ever tells you they go in there smug and confident, they've forgotten what it is to be good."
January 1992: Interview by Laurie Pepper
Dede Allen's career is long and her credits are
weighty,
but she's as sincerely and volubly in love with the movies
as any
impassioned film school student. Mention a
picture she's seen, and she'll
compliment and/or criticize
each and every aspect that struck her. She demurs
at
nonspecific questions, saying that she can't
intellectualize about the
subject, but she'll en
thusiastically engage in detailed speculation about
why
a specific scene or actor or director worked or
didn't. And her asides (which
are many) are as
fascinating as her direct comments. Speaking of
violence in
film, she breaks off to praise Scott Glenn
for his work in "The Silence
of the Lambs," then veers
to his fine performance in an HBO series of
one-acters,
and from there goes on to discuss the dramatic structure
of the
stories in the series and to praise cable television
for supporting quality
projects with unusual themes or
formats - as television used to do in its
early days and
as movies rarely do.
Editing: You've cut
epics, drama, action, comedy. Is
there a type of picture you like best to work
on? What
are your special strengths as an editor?
Allen: I tend to
think, when I start a picture, "Gee, will
I do it justice? Will I really
know how to do it? Maybe
I'm not right for it." But I've learned that's
pretty much
bullshit. Whether it's a drama or an epic, what it needs
is
someone who's gonna dig in and tell the story
straight. Comedy is some of the
hardest stuff to cut-
if it's strictly comedy. But if it's rooted in drama,
something I like to do, then the humor comes with the
extremis of the
situation. I think there is a speed, a kind
of bubbling rhythm, that will go
with a little, personal
picture -like one I did with Paul Newman called'
'Harry
and Son." It was
full of little family scenes. I remember it took on a kind of
tripping-over-itself rhythm that was
funny and still serious. That does, I
guess, involve an editing style that I seem to have no difficulty finding.
And
I think that's a matter of training. In New York I
always try to get the young
people I'm working with
to go to the theater a lot. I was lucky. I studied
theater
and worked around it for periods when I was very
young - the Actor's
Lab. I worked sound, props, stage-managing, everything. That was invaluable training
in
terms of taste. I think it's very important for editors
to understand
where a scene is. What is this scene
about? What is the director trying to say
with this scene?
What am
I trying to say, and how am I going to say it?
I would advise a young editor
to take an acting course.
While you're trying to rack up those years as an
assistant, doing all the work that you think is only
mechanical, nurture
yourself by learning: read a lot,
see plays, take classes, see movies. And it
doesn't matter
if it's a theater or a movie or a documentary. Basically,
it
always has to play.
As
far as other strengths, I 'don't know. I guess
persistence. If something's not
quite working, you have
to be able to keep shaking it up and trying to figure
out how to make it work, until you get to it. Not just
settle for, "Oh,
yeah, this is fine."
Editing: In terms of
training, you told me you felt lucky
that you started out as a sound editor.
Allen: Well, I feel
that what sound gave me was a total
technical fluidity in dealing with picture
and sound
ultimately when I became a picture editor. When you
have that
experience, you can be very loose and free
with it, and you have no problem
about manipulating
it technically. You can take all the bits and pieces of
what
you have in the film and not be frightened about
how you're going to work it.
Editing: What tools do
you work with?
Allen: I use two
Moviolas and I use a flatbed to show
people film on. I like to edit on the
flatbed for sound
if I'm doing a narration or a music thing, but I find it
easier to manipulate the bits and pieces on the Moviola.
I use the second
Moviola really as reference for
performance. The other tool I love, that I got
when we
were on "Reds," was the Betamax system for recording
dailies.
That's done in a much more sophisticated way
now, and it has relieved me of
hours and hours of
memorizing to a projector, which is what I used to do.
Editing: Memorizing?
Allen: I memorize the
dailies so that I know every
performance, every nuance, and every take; it's
all there
in my head. I used to use a small projector for that. Now
I use a
flatbed. And if you have a film with a lot of
footage, like "Little Big
Man" (which had a great deal
of film and it was before there was any
chance of a video
situation), with dozens and dozens of scenes and four
cameras, all broken in sequence, somehow your brain
is like a computer. It will store
information. It's like a
memory bank, and when a problem arises, you're able
to say, "Hey, wasn't there ... ?" Or, "Isn't there ... ?"
The memorizing has a lot to do with my own confidence.
When I'm confident,
and I know a scene, I can suddenly
get an inspiration of how I want to play
it. I don't see
the whole scene, but I know what the characters are
going to
do.
I
still memorize, but now, with video, I'm totally free.
You
don't have to be afraid of trying things. I can take
the film apart and never
lose the dailies. I can always
have the original takes at my fingers.
Editing: What editors
do you consider your mentors?
Allen: Anthony Gibbs is one of my favorite editors. He was an editor who worked on the' 'angry young men" school of English pictures, which were made during the late fifties and early sixties. I learned a lot from watching all those films: "Look Back in Anger," "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner," "The L Shaped Room" (which was cut by Anthony Harvey). Those pictures had a lot of emotion and anger and intensity and they had a cutting style that was ahead of its time. That style went from England to New York and then came to California. I think it strongly influenced Hal Ashby. It came through a whole group of us who were impressed by it.
Allen: Anthony Gibbs is one of my favorite editors. He was an editor who worked on the' 'angry young men" school of English pictures, which were made during the late fifties and early sixties. I learned a lot from watching all those films: "Look Back in Anger," "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner," "The L Shaped Room" (which was cut by Anthony Harvey). Those pictures had a lot of emotion and anger and intensity and they had a cutting style that was ahead of its time. That style went from England to New York and then came to California. I think it strongly influenced Hal Ashby. It came through a whole group of us who were impressed by it.
Editing: You're an
editor of some renown. How does this recognition change things for you in terms
of giving
you the opportunity to pick and choose jobs? Are there
any negative
aspects?
Allen: As you make
more money, you really have less
to pick and choose. Sometimes there are
things I would
love to do but they just can't afford me, and if you cut
your
price now, that'll cause you trouble later on. And
if you get too much
recognition, everyone assumes
you're busy and that's not necessarily so.
Editing: Do you have
favorites among the films
you've worked on? What pictures did you most enjoy
viewing later?
Allen: Well, almost
all the pictures I've worked on I
liked. If I didn't like them I would have wasted a lot
of time. But I
saw' 'The Hustler" once in a theater in Athens, Ohio, at a film festival,
and I found it slow, which was interesting. Well, I was aware we had a long
picture. We didn't have time to cut it down. We had to
rush it out. And when
I go to pictures later, when I have
to speak somewhere, I always find it very
painful and
frightening. I'm afraid I won't like the picture or it'll
look
different or I won't remember it.
If
a scene doesn't work well while I'm cutting a film,
I cringe every time I get
to it. If something is
not right,
I become totally bored and distanced to that particular
scene and
if I can't solve it, then I have a picture that
has, as most films do, some
problems. I've had a few
where I never got bored. I've seen' 'Bonnie and
Clyde" quite a few times. I never got bored with any part of it.
Editing: "Bonnie
and Clyde," like many films you've
cut, had a lot of violence in it.
Allen: The violence
in that picture is intrinsically American. Arthur [Penn) was shook up by the
Kennedy assassination. He's saying that we are a very violent
nation. People
accused Arthur of being exploitive, and
it's possible that he was dramatically
a little exploitive,
but it was all grounded in the period, the characters,
and the desperation. But I think the meaningless macho
violence in a lot of
pictures today is the biggest bore
on earth.
Editing: I recently saw
"Die Hard" on video.
Allen: But that was a
beautifully done picture. Very
impressive. It's a true action ripper-mystery,
danger.
It shows the sort
of peril everybody can think of
themselves as being in -' 'Jesus, what if I got caught
in
this situation," sort of thing. "GoodFellas" was violent in a
stylish way, but it was human and personal and funny and the performances were
wonderful.
I
hate cruel violence, pictures that exploit children, women. I absolutely hated
"Blue Velvet" when I first
saw it. Now I understand David Lynch's
style a little better, but at the time, I thought it totally demeaned women;
the Isabella Rossellini character was embarrassing, and I was embarrassed for
her as an
actress. "Last Exit to Brooklyn" showed violence toward
women, but in this case, the character was sympathetic. I thought Jennifer
Jason Leigh was just
sensational (I was extremely impressed by the
theatricality of that picture; it wasn't a movie, it was
a stage play).
There's
another kind of violence, the violence of the
mind, you know, which can be
marvelous if it's well
done. "Dead Ringers," for instance, was much
more
violent than I would like a film to be, but Jeremy Irons
was so
wonderful and so believable. That was by far
one of the top performances I've
seen in years,
incredibly intricate. "The Silence of the Lambs" had
real violence in it as well, but basically it was a
fascinating story of mind
manipulation. All the
performances were fantastic, but I can't even imagine
how bad that picture could have been if it had been
directed by someone who
is less of a humanist than
Jonathan Demme. He's not a mean-spirited person,
and
that's a mean-spirited story.
Editing: Do you handle
violent scenes in a special way?
Allen: No. Violence is part suspense, part action. And I find action so much easier to cut than complicated
Allen: No. Violence is part suspense, part action. And I find action so much easier to cut than complicated
human
relation scenes - where you have to know a lot
more, you have to be better
than a craftsman. Those
are the scenes that will stick with you.
In
"Bonnie and
Clyde," the scene with the two brothers trying to
communicate. I remember very, very well the day I cut
it and how I cut it.
Buck and Clyde haven't gotten together in a while and they're doing all that
awkward "good ol’ boy" stuff, and that, of course, was before anybody
knew Hackman, and it was such a joy to cut because it was so full of exciting,
wonderful moments.
Editing: What do you consider the greatest rewards to you from your career at this stage?
Editing: What do you consider the greatest rewards to you from your career at this stage?
Allen: The rewards
are what the work gives you in terms of your excitement about living. And if
you do
something well, and you're appreciated, you are a fulfilled person,
obviously.
The
downside is that I've
worked so much, so steadily.
I
think my children would have a lot of opinions as to
what a full-time working
parent in our kind of
industry
is. I think kids not only need to be constantly parented
when
they're little. They need it especially when
they're teenagers, and that's
something I don't think
I quite foresaw. It's hard to keep a marriage, a life
going
when you're working the kind of hours that editors do.
So you have to
be lucky enough to have hooked up with
someone
special who understands it or is complemented
by it. And your children have to just take it as it comes, because you're their
parents, right?
I
guess the greatest reward is the
feeling, when you're working, of being part of a unit, a group. Actors on a
stage,
on a set, have that kind of bonding. In the cutting
room you have an even
longer range bonding. If it's a
bad experience, it can be a torturous bonding.
If it's a
good experience, it's very rewarding, very enriching.
It just
thrills me when people I have worked with have
the same kind of excitement
about their work that I
feel. It's basically what we all pass on to each
other,
and I got it from the people who had it before me - in
other words,
the people who encouraged me in the way,
say, Bob Wise did, or Carl Lerner,
Arthur Penn. That's
the kind of experience one doesn't always have. I've
been
very, very lucky.
Editing: What
challenges are left? What inspires and renews you?
Allen: The
opportunity to do another film that can be, again, a whole life experience. The
thrill of making it work. Hoping it will work. Because if anybody ever tells you
they go in there smug and confident, they've
forgotten what it is to be good.
I don't think anyone
can go in without a certain amount of fear. Am I going
to be able to pull it off?
Editing: How do you
overcome that fear?
Allen:
Usually by starting (laughs). You have a bad experience. And you wonder,
"Have I so changed?"
Then you do it again, and you realize that you
haven't
changed. It was just a bad experience. And most
experiences are good.
Relationships within the picture
are difficult at times, but it usually turns
out in the end
that you're really not fighting about each other. You're
just
working toward the best.