Behind the Seen

by Charles Koppelman

  “Harry Caul is sophisticated technically but stunted emotionally,” Murch says, “and he used all of his sophisticated technical filters to uncover that one critical line of dialogue. But the significant distortion he didn’t remove was the one in his mind. He was falling in love with Ann (the Williams character) at a distance, and he so needed to believe she was a victim that he subconsciously placed the emphasis on kill rather than us. At the end, after the Duvall character is discovered to have been murdered in the hotel room, the mental distortion falls away and Harry hears the line the way it really must have been all along.”

  Another example of Murch’s active participation in constructing The Conversation was seizing an opportunity to add intrigue, and coincidentally help fill the hole created by unshot footage. Just past the halfway point in the film, after attending a surveillance trade show, Harry Caul invites his colleagues and acquaintances to come back to his loft office for an informal party. There’s drinking and continued confrontation between Harry and Bernie Moran, his rival, played by Allen Garfield. Moran’s assistant Meredith (Elizabeth MacRae) seems to be intent on seducing Harry. The tape of Ann and Mark’s Union Square conversation is still up on Harry’s tape recorder.

  “One of the things that emerged in the editing of the film was the idea of making Meredith steal the tapes,” Murch says. “In the film as it was shot, she stayed with Harry, slept with him in his office, and was gone when he woke up, having stolen some electronic diagrams that Moran had coveted. But I found if we could insinuate that she had stolen the tapes, then several lines of the story would come together—implying that her boss Moran was in cahoots with the Director’s assistant Martin Stett (Harrison Ford) to get the tapes which Harry was holding on to. But all of that was constructed in the editing. In the end we found we had to shoot just one extra shot—Harry’s hand on an empty reel—to tie it all together.”

  * * *

  How the Toilet Scene in The Conversation was Conceived

  From Walter Murch’s commentary on The Conversation DVD:

  “Francis got the story to the point where Harry was in a room in which a murder has ostensibly taken place. The room was perfectly clean, and Francis wanted the evidence of the murder to be present, yet hidden at the same time. When he gave me the script to read, he said, ‘If you can think of anything let me know.’ Well, I did.”

  “Well, I thought of this image of me as a preteen. I had gotten hold of some pornographic magazines and was reading them when I heard my parents coming home. I panicked and cut the magazines up and tried to flush them down the toilet. Well, of course the opposite happened, and the toilet blocked up and these pornographic magazines, fragments of them, kept gurgling out of the toilet when my father came to fix it. He was horrified but secretly amused, as parents are under those circumstances.”

  Murch suggested a version of this scene to Coppola, in which Harry Caul sees the toilet backing up with bloody evidence the murderers thought they had flushed away.

  “Francis shot the scene in a brilliant way, and I was able to cut from the first hint of blood to an unexpectedly low angle, at dead level with the toilet, where you don’t see anything yet. But the focus of attention is, ‘What was that in that toilet?’ Slowly, slowly the toilet begins to brim, then overflow with this horrible red liquid. As happened to me with my porn magazines, the thing the murderers most wanted to get rid of got stuck in the toilet and came back up to accuse them.”

  From The Conversation.

  * * *

  Something of Murch is in the Harry Caul character. They’re both fascinated by sound, recording equipment, and how audio can be manipulated and its meaning redefined. They don’t mind—maybe they prefer—working alone. Harry plays the saxophone, which seems to be his only form of relaxation. Walter considers editing a musical form—visual music. This superimposition of character and film editor became evident during the edit of The Conversation. One late night, on the edge of exhaustion and deep inside movie space, Murch was working on a scene in which Harry Caul stops his tape recorder. Murch couldn’t understand why his KEM editing machine didn’t also come to a stop on Harry’s command. Who was controlling whom? It’s an obvious question: did Coppola model Harry Caul on his freshman editor when he wrote the screenplay for The Conversation?

  The party scene in The Conversation. Murch reconstructed the end of the scene to imply that Meredith, played by Elizabeth MacRae, steals Harry Caul’s tapes.

  The experience of working so independently on The Conversation gave Murch the methods, approach, sensibilities, and confidence that would define his editing work for the next three decades. In Murch, directors like Coppola, Zinnemann, Minghella, and others know they’ll be working with a skilled film editor, no question. But more than that, they will be bringing a creative partner aboard: a co-pilot capable of flying the plane when the director needs to focus attention elsewhere; a flight engineer who can respond to mechanical problems with elegant solutions to keep the machine airborne; and a navigator finding added meaning and poetry that were never fully spelled out in the flight plan.

  Artwork for The Conversation poster.

  * * *

  Aggressive Collaboration

  From Walter Murch’s commentary on The Conversation DVD:

  “It was a wonderful challenge. I’d come up with new ideas in the course of that month, and then give Francis a call, and if he was available he’d come back and screen the film again, and there’d be many surprises because I’d simply gone ahead and done many things we didn’t talk about, like the transition of this scene into two different scenes at two different times; but Francis enjoyed that, he likes that kind of initiative and sort of aggressive kind of collaboration. I certainly enjoyed it, even though it was the first film I edited. I certainly felt it was a challenge on many, many different levels.”

  * * *

  * * *

  From: Walter Murch

  Date: 6/8/02

  To: Anthony Minghella

  Dear Ant:

  Have received and am reading the new CM - wonderful work! - and will finish it today, have a timing for you hopefully Monday - Tuesday. I like the longer opening in CM before we go to war. Have an idea about that transition, but will wait to think more about it until I finish.

  Have a great time location scouting!

  And congratulations again on the new version!!

  Love,

  Walter

  * * *

  The screenplay of Cold Mountain.

  Now, 30 years and 27 films later, Murch is preparing for another plunge into the bracing waters of a high-budget, high-profile, studio-backed motion picture: Cold Mountain. For this he needs to reread the screenplay, write up his notes for director Anthony Minghella, and perform a ritual “script timing.” This involves reading the screenplay to himself in “film time,” measuring each scene’s duration with a stopwatch as it plays in his head. He’ll do this exercise three separate times to see if the film “runs” consistently. If it does, fine; he’s found the bedrock of the film’s tempo and length. If the timings do not agree, that may indicate a fault line running under the film’s surface—a fissure that could cause rumblings later in the editing. This is certainly not the last window of opportunity to raise concerns with a director about structure, tone, and comprehensibility. Walter and Anthony will sit with these issues every day, like family at the dinner table, throughout the filmmaking process. But this is the only chance for Murch to share his thoughts and worries about story and character before the tornado of production moves in and sucks up most of the oxygen. And since they still exist only on paper, for the moment these issues remain theoretical problems, snugly confined to the upstairs office in Murch’s barn.

  Cold Mountain has a story structure that is the antithesis of the one in The Conversation. Instead of being locked into a single protagonist’s point of view, the award-winning, best-selling novel by Charles Frazier uses a parallel, multiple point-of-view construction. Inman (played
by Jude Law), is a Confederate soldier injured in the Battle of Petersburg who deserts from the army and travels as an outlaw for many months over hundreds of miles to return to the woman he loves, Ada Monroe (Nicole Kidman). Ada is an aristocratic minister’s spinster daughter who waits for Inman in Cold Mountain, North Carolina. There she struggles against Home Guard vigilantes, hard winters, and her own inadequacies to hold onto her farm, Black Cove, after her father has died. Inman and Ada have had a brief taste of romance before secession leads to war and forces them apart, but the film tells of their respective travails separately. Only at the end are they reunited.

  June 9, 2002, Murch’s Journal

  Eight Miles. Last three up the hill and then another mile on ridge trail south, and back. Lovely weather, the triptych smell of pine, eucalyptus, and bay laurel in hot sun, three braids intertwined. Town lovely and mysterious 1000 feet below. Why mysterious?

  I went for a swim in the channel—cold—but not crampingly so. I told myself that this is the ritual baptism, allowing me to be reborn from K-19 onto Cold Mountain. I went in three times, each time a little longer, and by the end of the third, floating out to sea, I could not feel the cold. In fact, it felt in some metaphysical way warm. Lovely day, blue sky, warm inland wind, the town putting on its finest for me, who is about to leave it.

  Among Murch’s many working methods is “The Memo”: a set of notes, usually six to eight pages long, that he gives a director before principal photography begins. Sometimes, as Murch describes it, The Memo is the first and last thing he does on a film. A few directors have changed their minds about having Murch edit their film, once they read the extent of his critique and grasped how intimately involved he would be in the project. Either way, these first notes serve Murch well.

  * * *

  From: Walter Murch

  Date: 6/10/02 2:06 AM

  To: Anthony Minghella

  Dear Ant:

  Congratulations on the new draft—a couple of tear-stinging moments for me, even though this is the third read.

  I am going to be timing it tomorrow and Tuesday, if I can keep the rest of my life at bay and find that lovely stopwatch.

  Structurally, of course, lots (50+) transitions back and forth in space and time. Presents its own challenge, as we know from EP [The English Patient], which had 40 transitions. But it will be wonderful.

  However, how to articulate the moment when back and forth in time becomes back and forth in space? It is a little confusing to track it now, if I put on my audience hat.

  When Inman nods to Mrs. Morgan (page 26), a clock starts ticking faster, faster, and the sooner he gets out on the road the better.

  Once Veasey and Ruby enter the film, it rockets along.

  I have put so many check marks (good!) on almost every page from 35-100 it is stunning. Lines and moments that any film would be happy to have a half dozen of, here there are scores and scores.

  I wonder, that the interlude with Sara, and the fact (debatable, but still...) that Inman and Sara sleep together, undercuts his meeting with and sleeping with Ada. The two scenes are in such close proximity. And then the fight with the Northerners, and Inman’s actions to save Sara and her baby, are similar in tone to his actions against Teague and Co. to save Ada and Ruby. There is a kind of musical reiteration, thinking of it symphonically, that may undercut the most important moments, which are those with Ada and the shootout with Teague & co. Perhaps I am missing something...

  Is there a way to hint at the ambiguity of Inman’s death, the way the book did? If we know he is dead, then the coda feels more... coda-like, and a little too sweet, somehow.

  Relationship between Ada and Inman:

  More tension, and more class distinction. Make it more IMPOSSIBLE, UNTHINKABLE for these two to get together, so that when it does, it is the more rewarding. What she goes through on Black Cove Farm causes her to grow in stature, and understand and love Inman. The early scenes are all pretty easy now, except for Inman’s taciturn nature. Everyone (Sally, Monroe) is kind of nudging them together. And Ada is very willing. Make her less so, more complex, and paradoxically less self-aware: a dose more Scarlett O’Hara, not as completely accepting of Cold Mountain’s charms and people.

  All of this is present, latent, in the structure now, but I am suggesting finding a way to draw the bow a bit further back at the beginning so the arrow has more force.

  =========

  Excuses, as always, for the lack of “perhaps” and “maybe” and “it seems to me” which are hovering invisibly around every phrase of these comments.

  It is and will be a fantastic film.

  Love,

  Walter

  * * *

  Minghella, who is having production meetings and scouting filming locations in North Carolina, answers Murch two hours later:

  * * *

  From: Anthony Minghella

  Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2002 07:16:24 EDT

  To: Walter Murch

  brilliant brilliant notes, and I’m intrigued by each of them. I don’t know how to address them all, but I am already contemplating new moments and improvements. I’m particularly keen to make the return of Inman to Ada sing more. And I understand what you mean about Ada and Sara. It’s one of the things which prompted me to cast Natalie, who is so young, and finally not a real threat to Ada, but but but. I also know what you mean about Ada and the absence of thistle between her and Inman. I know I can make it better. I know that the budget battles, continuing today with a big meeting on our one rest day of the technical survey (on which I’m also scouting) means that my brain is more occupied by numbers, by cuts, by the indifference to content, than it is with issues of content.

  Nicole Kidman as Ada Monroe in Cold Mountain.

  Jude Law as W.P. Inman in Cold Mountain.

  I am so happy to get your mind patrolling this material. Keep scratching away. I’m thrilled that you see what we have here; I’m thrilled that you’ll push me to make it better. Did you look at the storyboards? They’re already simplifying and simplifying, and I’m very conscious of the sequence in terms of length, but I’d love your scouring of their implications and their narrative transparencies.

  off to battle myself

  ant

  * * *

  According to time-honored Hollywood tradition, film school graduates who want to become movie executives break into the system by taking a job in a studio mail room. In fact, many entertainment industry agents-to-be still begin their climb to the top by wheeling mail carts through the decorous halls of such big talent agencies as Creative Artists Agency (CAA), William Morris, and International Creative Management (ICM). Similarly, Walter Murch’s first paying film job was nowhere near an editing room or film set, though it did involve legendary Hollywood director George Cukor (Dinner at Eight, The Philadelphia Story, My Fair Lady).

  When they were all students at USC, Murch’s friends George Lucas and Matthew Robbins saw a bulletin board posting for a temporary job over winter break. It turned out that George Cukor needed people to help wrap and deliver his annual bounty of Christmas gifts. Lucas quit after one day, so Robbins recruited Walter as his replacement. In Cukor’s attic they found a pyramid of gifts—at least 250 of them—for the director’s closest friends, actors, actresses, and film business cronies. Robbins and Murch soon became expert in wrapping techniques, as well as navigating their way around Beverly Hills, Brentwood, and Bel-Air. They tootled around in Robbins’s VW van, ringing doorbells, with Walter going up to imposing front doors and announcing to the butler or maid, “A gift from Mr. Cukor.” Occasionally Cukor would appear at the door of his attic to monitor progress. Murch still remembers Cukor’s advice (borrowed from Benjamin Disraeli): “Never complain. Never explain.” It became a saying the film student would retain and rely on: work hard, get the job done, and don’t bother explaining why something didn’t get finished. No one cares about excuses.

  (Walter later figured out that Cukor was using the holiday seasons to recruit Ch
ristmas helpers for his own extra-curricular entertainment: “the elves in the attic,” as Walter calls them. “That year he struck out. But he was very good-natured about it.”)

  After leaving USC in 1967, Murch first went to work in the film business—for real this time—at Encyclopedia Britannica Educational Films (replacing Robbins, who was moving on to something else), and he soon got his chance to edit picture. Later he went to Dove Films, a commercial production company run by two cinematographers, Haskell Wexler and Cal Bernstein. At both places, Murch was working with the Moviola editing machine.

  Forty years earlier, before the invention of the Moviola, the edit room was a quiet place outfitted simply with a set of rewinds, scissors, and editor’s intuition. Stitching together a film was analogous to sewing, and many editors in those days were women. After seeing new footage projected once, editors went over the film with a magnifying glass, choosing where to make cuts based on their recollection from that one screening. Their only rule of thumb: a length of film held from the tip of the nose to the end of an outstretched hand would run for about three seconds. Strips of film were put together with paper clips and sent off to another room to be hot-spliced together with acetone film cement. After this new assembly was screened for the director and producer, the editing process continued, with adjustments made as necessary until the final version was approved.