In the “O Tempora! O Mores!” category:
For all of the anarchic energy of his films, [Luis] Bunuel led an orderly life and made his movies the same way. ”He gave me the scripts like a child turning in his homework, as if he were afraid of what I was going to say,” [producer Serge] Silberman said. ”He would only shoot exactly what was in the script. He was absolutely prepared. With me he made everything in about 48 days. It took him one week to edit. And when the first cut was done, the picture was finished.”—“AT THE MOVIES: Discreet Charm of Bunuel,” Dave Kehr, The New York TImes, May 19 2000
The films that each took a week to edit were The Diary of a Chambermaid (1964), The Milky Way (1969), The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), The Phantom of Liberty (1974) and ‘That Obscure Object of Desire (1977). Staggering masterpieces all.
[Donna Gigliotti] has also been working with [Stephen] Daldry, who with editor Claire Simpson is 20 weeks into editing and finishing the movie. “Let’s get on with it,” Gigliotti says. “It’s a piece of cake. I’ve been in tougher straits than this.”—“Rudin Abandons The Reader,” Anne Thompson, Thompson on Hollywood, October 9 2008
By this measure, some might argue, The Reader should be twenty times better than any of the above-cited Bunuel films. Think that’s gonna happen?
I think that illustrates that talent and inspiration don’t occur simply though unlimited resources and oodles of time.
On the subject of Daldry, I thought I’d link to a remix of The Hours as a rave from Adam and Joe!
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=4FqJNQ2-K9g
I’ve worked in post-production and I would wager that it would take a week of constant viewing just to get through all the dailies shot for a contemporary film. 20 weeks of post-production is not actually a lot of time to shape footage shot over several months, I’ve certainly worked on films in post-production lasting much longer than that. While Bunuel, Ford and Hitchcock are great examples of filmmakers that shot in a specific style that lends itself to specific editing there are many great contemporary filmmakers who rely heavily on a pro-longed post-production process: Malick, Fincher and Wong spring to mind but I’m sure there are countless more. I don’t think anyone would argue against giving those filmmakers plenty of time to achieve their vision or feel like they are somehow less pure because they don’t know the exact order of their images while they are shooting them.
Good point, Jason. Exactly the sort of argument I was hoping to spark here. Although I still don’t think “The Reader” is gonna outdo any Bunuel…
Well, I hate to throw around terms like “vision”, but speaking as somebody who has actually made feature-length films on pretty much no money, and then had to edit them, it’s been immensely helpful to have a fully realized idea of what you want before you go in. Really, the key thing I learned from those experiences was make a damn choice, and unless that choice doesn’t work, just stick with it.
Of course, Bunuel didn’t have Harvey Weinstein or Scott Rudin, two men who are, ah, more hands-on that I would imagine Mr. Silberman was. I feel bad for Stephen Daldry, but at least if “The Reader” is awful we’ll know it’s not his fault.
Glenn, I don’t expect Daldry to ever match Bunuel with his films but that has more to do with Bunuel being a genius than with Daldry’s post-production schedule.
Dan, I can’t argue with techniques that work for you. However, I do think there are many filmmakers that have a less than perfectly realized idea of what they are looking to do with a film until they get into post-production. Citing more specific examples: David Lynch turning his discarded TV pilot into MULHOLLAND DRIVE or Woody Allen’s technique of scheduling a break in the shooting schedule to work with an editor and see what is working and what is not working, which famously allowed for ANNIE HALL. I don’t personally think Daldry is on the level of those filmmakers but I would rather see the film he wanted to make than the film that the producers took away because of financial concerns.
Jason, I’m not saying be totally inflexible, just that you should really go in with a good idea of where you want to be and at least one idea of how to get there.
Gibson stated he shot 300 hours of footage for APOCALYPTO. That’s 10 hours a day, seven days a week, for a full month, just to watch everything once. BABEL was 240 hours; same thing with Sundays off. Followed by months sifting through it all to find the movie that’s in there somewhere. Insanity. Ford shot 90,000 feet on HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY–about 16 1/2 hours. (Yeah, I know, he was a genius, too, but still…)
I.A.L. Diamond said it best: “Films should be edited in the typewriter.”
How about that THIRD version of “The New World,” Glenn? Is it getting any better? How many more years do you think Malick will work on that edit?
I haven’t the heart to look at it yet. Seems to have impressed the film’s claque, though.