Behind the Seen

by Charles Koppelman

  Captain Teague brings rabbits to Ada for her to cook and eat. This scene was dropped, in part because it did not have continuity with the sequence of seasons.

  Now, at the end of March, the running time of the film is just under four hours. The amount of material cut out since the first assembly is approaching the 30 percent threshold—that borderline where Murch says further cutting can endanger “the patient.” So far, only two major scenes have been dropped entirely. Soon after Ada’s father dies, Captain Teague brings dead rabbits to Ada for her to cook and eat. Teague helps her with a few chores as he toys with her aggressively. She takes the rabbits but can’t bear to cook them, and buries them in the yard. In part the scene didn’t work because it was supposed to take place in winter yet it was shot when there was no snow. Also, the “tang” and double-entendre of Teague’s lines as written in the shooting script feel heavy: “Need a hand with that pump?” “If it don’t yield meat, or you don’t sit on it, or suck on it, it don’t have much value...and you’re sleeping all right?” Removing “the rabbits,” as the edit crew refers to the scene, would cut out two and a half minutes. Another complete scene featuring Teague near the end of the film was also cut. In it, the Captain and his Home Guard posse spend a night at Black Cove Farm while Ada is away, up on Cold Mountain with Inman. It may have said more than necessary about Teague’s sexual predilections when he lies down on Ada’s bed with her scarf draped over him.

  These cuts bring the film below four hours, so the next screening will be a significant first: the whole film can be seen from start to finish without a break, since it falls within FCP’s limits.

  Murch goes back to the beginning, looking for wholesale cuts. The first prospect is a scene between Inman and Swimmer, a Cherokee from Cold Mountain, that was designed to open the film. The two soldiers sit together behind the Confederate lines and Swimmer recites a Cherokee battle curse to Inman, in Cherokee. The novel has a more elaborate version of this scene, which takes place in Inman’s mind, as a flashback, just before he writes to Ada saying he’s decided to abandon the army and walk home to her. Minghella added this scene to the shooting script late in the game. It hadn’t been in the August 2001 screenplay that Murch read back home before production.

  April 1, 2003, Murch’s Journal

  Still wrestling with the curse at beginning. The problem is that the opening in Cherokee puts everyone’s brain to sleep, and so they don’t listen when he translates it.

  One of Anthony Minghella’s methods for taking his film’s temperature is to invite some peers from the filmmaking, literary, and theatre communities to the work-in-progress screenings being held every three weeks. Respect among them is mutual and thorough going, so Minghella expects to hear the truth, regardless of its implications. These trial showings, like any preview, can be bracing. But this is what helps Minghella and Murch confront the film’s opening. “It was just sailing over people’s heads,” Murch says later. “Even very bright filmmakers couldn’t get what was going on. There’s something about beginning a film in a foreign language without subtitles that says, ‘What people say in this film, isn’t important. It’s just syllables and sounds.’”

  The scene is cut.

  A week later Murch is midway through this same round of revisions when Minghella recommends another scene for removal: Ada and Ruby at Black Cove Farm talking as they fix each other’s hair. It’s an intimate tableau with moments that flash with humor. For the most part, however, this episode reveals class and cultural differences between the two women we know already.

  April 8, 2003, Murch’s Journal

  Lost the hairdo scene and are starting to group in bigger chunks—Veasey is continuous from discovery through end of Ferrygirl, and Ada-Ruby is continuous from “what’s this wood” through “He left you?”

  At times, pleasant surprises await filmmakers after they lift a scene and join together what remains: two scenes never designed to lie next to each other suddenly make a perfect fit, enhancing one another and the flow of the story. After Minghella and Murch take out the hairdo scene, two scenes remain that each work better in this new structure. The scene of Ada playing Inman’s song on the piano while Ruby listens now immediately precedes the sale of the piano for a flock of sheep. The intervening hairdo scene implied that it was Ruby’s idea to sell the piano, with Ada reluctant. Now it implicitly seems to be Ada’s idea, and playing Inman’s song was also her farewell to the piano the night before selling it. The scenes now do double duty; always a good thing to keep the audience from getting ahead of the story.

  * * *

  The Benefits (and Risk) of Reduction

  Major removals, or an accumulation of minor lifts, can disable a film. Murch uses a racing car analogy: “The goal is maximum power with minimum weight. In altering the car you must do nothing to harm its structure. So to drill out space in the wheels, for example, may reduce the weight by two ounces. And you keep doing that around the wheel and other wheels. Eventually, in the turbulence of the race, however, the wheel buckles and goes awry.”

  * * *

  A few days later, while going through the last reel of the film, Murch tries removing another major sequence, perhaps the largest so far: a series of scenes in which Inman finally arrives at Cold Mountain town, goes to Black Cove Farm, then walks back up the mountain looking for Ada and Ruby. It’s nearly three pages in the screenplay.

  April 11, 2003, Murch’s Journal

  We cut out the Inman detour through Cold Mountain and Black Cove farm. Now he simply comes across Ada as she is shooting turkeys. A saving of 4 minutes, which is significant at this stage of the film, but more specifically it cuts out a loop and the energy-draining feeling that comes with “I’ve been on a long walk.” As long as he (and we) have walked, and reached his (our) destination, he now has to resume walking and go back up the mountain, and the audience would be forgiven for thinking, so long into the story, “Isn’t this film ever going to be over?”

  Lifting the Inman sequence improves the final act’s pacing. The culminating Rocky Gorge encounter with Ada plays more powerfully and emotionally. Meanwhile, Murch can’t avoid a scientific analogy for the creative act he’s just performed.

  April 11, 2003, Murch’s Journal (continued)

  Organic molecule building is the folding of proteins into each other in particular and energy-efficient ways, facilitated by enzymes. The film editor is similarly a kind of enzyme, facilitating folding the giant molecule of the film into particular and energy-efficient patterns.

  The watchword for this second round of revisions has been large-scale removals, but Murch also continues to make subtle adjustments as they present themselves—the moving-target phenomenon. For example, something now feels out of order in the Rocky Gorge scene. Maybe Ada and Inman’s reunion is more in the clear now, and without Inman’s walkabout, the rough surface of this scene is better exposed for polishing.

  April 12, 2003, Murch’s Journal

  Working on Saturday recutting Ada and Inman meet. Changing the POV to include Inman as well, and Inman’s incredulity at seeing Ada—is that Ada? Something didn’t seem right, though, and I eventually figured out it was the placement of her shooting the gun, which now comes after the “Ada Monroe?” dialogue rather than at the beginning. It seems better because he is also put off by the sound of the gun and a great image following it of Ada the black spike with smoke swirling around her—definitely not the girl he left.

  A few days later Minghella and Murch agree that this new version is ready. The film is now 3 hours, 26 minutes: poised on the brink of the 30 percent barrier. In the two months since completing the first assembly, they have cut out 1 hour and 40 minutes. Coincidentally, this rate of cutting, which averages 13 minutes a week, is exactly the same rate at which Murch first assembled dailies as they became available during production.

  If the film editor seems fated, like Sisyphus, to keep repeating his or her work endlessly, well, there’s some truth to that. Each round of rev
isions leaves material in new arrangements, which in turn requires revision. And so it goes, for weeks and months. Get to the end and start over from the beginning. Murch describes this process as a requisite way for finding the film. “The first assembly, like all subsequent versions of the film, is a lens through which we can glimpse the film itself. And in its transubstantiation, it not only gives us a way of seeing, an approach, but the image in the lens eventually becomes that thing itself.” At its extreme, this formulation helps explain why many filmmakers (and other artists) can’t bear seeing their work once it’s finished. When the tinkering comes to an end and the work is no longer pliant in the creator’s hands, it might as well not exist anymore. The process is a reward. And it’s the incentive to keep showing up for work.

  Before plunging into the potentially treacherous “open-heart” territory below three-and-a-half hours, Murch and Minghella now decide to take stock by trying two completely new and different structures for the opening. It’s the only way to “see where the film leads us.” That non-linear digital film editing is non-destructive allows for this sort of playful, “Let’s see what it looks like” approach, and it takes only a couple of hours to execute.

  The first new structure lets the Battle of the Crater at Petersburg continue unabated with no interruptions. It runs from the opening frames until Inman’s buddy, Oakley, lies dying while Stobrod the fiddler plays a tune for him. Only then does Inman recall earlier days in Cold Mountain. The story flashes back to the chapel being built and Inman meeting Ada for the first time.

  Ada, definitely not the girl Inman left.

  A second trial opening uses a purely chronological approach: the film begins in Cold Mountain in 1861 with Ada’s arrival and remains there until Secession is announced and Inman goes off to battle. At that point we see the war itself, beginning at dawn when the Federals lay out barrels of gunpowder for the impending explosion.

  Neither restructuring attempt is very satisfying. Yet the doing of it, having new lenses through which to understand the film, reveals insights.

  April 29, 2003, Murch’s Journal

  Screened the beginning restructure and it seemed all right. A little flat-footed—too Merchant-Ivory and not enough spin. The problem the other way was that there was too much spin. How to find the middle ground.

  The two have a revelation: after Inman gets injured, he languishes as a character. It’s still early in the story, and Minghella and Murch decide it would be better if somehow Inman was up and walking back to Cold Mountain sooner. They had already removed the intervening scene of Teague coming to Ada’s with the rabbits. The expanded letter compressed other material in that area, showing Ada struggling after her father’s death. Now it’s a matter of stitching together the surviving scenes; the results inadvertently help advance Ruby’s arrival at Black Cove Farm.

  April 30, 2003, Murch’s Journal

  Tried new structure for after the letter: staying with Inman through to his going out the window, then go to Ada. Better, I think, because it gets Inman walking earlier, it separates his walking (big moment) from Ruby’s arrival (big moment), which were right on top of each other in the previous version. Shows the strong effect of the words “come back to me” on him, almost biblical healing. Puts a strong section of Inman where we need it, after a long time “away” from him, scenes where he is just a piece of suffering flotsam. We get that good superimposition of Inman running away with Bosie saying, “any man who deserts is a traitor.” Nice dissolve from well to tunnel of trees.

  It’s a good day at the Old Chapel for analysis and structure. The two second assistants achieve their own distinction in film wrangling: Walter and Dei conform the first reel (approximately 2,000 feet, or 22 minutes) of 35mm workprint on the edit bench. This is the initial step for having a projectable film version of Cold Mountain to screen in a theater for producers and eventually for preview audiences. It’s the first full-on test of a cut list, or film assembly list, that Sean Cullen generates using FCP and CinemaTools. The 300-odd film splices in this first of nine reels must match, frame for frame, the version of reel one Walter edited on Final Cut Pro. Murch and his assistants squeeze into the tiny room with the Steenbeck editing table to watch and listen. Dei puts the reel on a spindle, threads it up through the viewing prism and Murch sits down at the machine. He runs the film, with the sound coming from a ProTools sound file. It’s in sync. There is much to celebrate. The digital alchemy of getting 24-frame-per-second film footage into 30-frame-per-second video, then back out with 24-frame information for the assistants to use has succeeded. The workflow works. The assistants are now confident that they will be able to get the workprint prepared for its debut screening on time and accurately.

  On the other side of the equation, however, the sound situation remains unsettled, especially getting sound from Final Cut Pro into ProTools and back out again for the sound mixes. The sound editors have been working with Walter’s edited soundtracks as Sean exports them, so that part of the journey is accomplished. But it’s a roundabout route that uses another application called Titan. The question bothering Murch is how long the audio conversions will take once he locks the picture and then must turn right around to mix the sound. He will probably make changes to the picture at the last minute, just before beginning the mix. Might a lag in getting up-to-date sound files prepared in time delay the mix? That would mean not being ready in time for the first public screenings.

  Film assistants Dei Reynolds, left, and Walter Murch, right, at the Old Chapel.

  * * *

  To: Ramy Katrib

  From: Sean Cullen

  Date: May 6, 2003

  Any word on... exporting OMFs or the like? I have heard nothing from Apple and we will need to export sequences in the next week or two. Pressure is building over here.

  * * *

  But an even higher tide is rising just over the horizon.

  Since arriving in London from the film sets in Romania at the end of 2002, Minghella and Murch have been left to their own devices, editing on the equivalent of a desert island—screening, thinking, editing, and thinking again. They are free to try things without having to be accountable. Difficult and intense as it’s been to get Cold Mountain reshaped into 3 hours and 20 minutes, these two and a half months in the Old Chapel have been a lush life. The pair’s creative sanctuary is about to be invaded.

  May 7, 2003, Murch’s Journal

  Ready to show the film to Sydney [Pollack] this afternoon. Put the narration and Ada snow back in the film, followed by Stobrod and Pangle leaving footprints. Keep the “catastrophe”—Sara cut.

  I feel as if the wind is at my back today. Thank you.

  Tim [Bricknell, Minghella’s assistant] comes in looking sheepish: Harvey [Weinstein] is in town and wants to see as much as he can.

  It’s not as if Minghella and Murch forgot they’re making a major studio motion picture. Having creative freedom in seclusion is just what the film needed at this stage. Smart producers know when to let filmmakers do their work uninterrupted. Like kids left home alone to play, they know Mom and Dad are coming back. But it’s still a shock when the door opens and there they are.

  It’s right on schedule for Weinstein and Sydney Pollack, Minghella’s Mirage producing partner, to go up to the editing room to see the work-in-progress. The producers have obligations to make sure the enterprise stays on budget, on schedule, and arrives in theaters being the film they wanted to make. Minghella and Murch have done two pictures with Weinstein, so he’s not a stranger. Pollack is himself a fellow filmmaker, and Minghella has co-produced two award-winning films with him (Iris and The Quiet American). Nevertheless, Minghella and Murch are still figuring out Cold Mountain themselves. They may not be “skinless,” as Murch described Minghella at preview screenings, but their flesh is tender as the director and editor make space in the editing room for new onlooker/participants.

  May 8, 2003, Murch’s Journal

  Screening for HW: ok but not great. It
ended well, but he dozed off briefly in the first hour. Felt that the opening structure was wrong and that the film really begins with Ruby’s entrance. When will we not hear that comment? Probably never. As it was on K-19: the film really begins when the reactor melts down.

  Why did Ant ask Harvey how short the film should be? Couldn’t he guess? Was it a real question? He prefaced it with “make things difficult for me”—and he did, saying 2.30, which is fifty minutes less than currently.

  Harvey wanted to cut out the Rebecca meeting in Veaseytown: “you’ve got your production value, just get in and get out.”

  By this point in his career Murch is used to getting comments, or notes, from producers. It comes with the territory of being a film editor. He’s philosophical about it: “I transcribe the notes without prejudice. If they said it, I put it down, make of it what we will. Sometimes there are great ideas in there. Sometimes even a bad note is productive, because it makes you think, what caused them to say that? It’s like referred pain: ‘Doc, my elbow hurts.’ And the doctor says, ‘The problem in your elbow is a pinched nerve in your shoulder.’ So it frequently happens that third parties can see things we can’t. They’re freer in a sense, but at the same time they also don’t know the code as well as we do. So you have to listen carefully to what people say. You can’t take everything on board. But you have to be willing to give every question the benefit of the doubt. One person’s comment might shed light on the other’s.”