by Nancy Jundi as originally published by CinemaEditor
Looking back, giving up television nearly ten years ago wasn’t a conscious choice. It was somewhere between waving goodbye to Cheers and saying hello to reality shows that sent me back to books and head first into the internet era. Most conversations flew right over my head as people went on about Ross and Rachael or how well Kelly Clarkson had sung the night before. It wasn’t until my weekly cocktail night with the girls had become overrun with Sex and the City quotes that I felt I was missing out on anything. By the time I finally agreed to see what all the fuss was about, the series had ended and a friend let me borrow all the seasons on DVD. My first reaction was “if I don’t like it you can’t be mad, I hate television” to which I got the prompt rebuttal “it’s not television, it’s HBO.” Low and behold, an addiction was born. I hadn’t even remembered that one of the last television shows I enjoyed watching came from HBO – Oz. So, for nearly a week straight, I sat visually chained to what I use to refer to as my idiot box. Roughly 46 hours later, I realized I should pick back up where I had left off with Oz. Last year I was made privy to Entourage and had to catch up on two seasons worth of Hollywood satire. Now, it’s Big Love that has me tuning in religiously – pun intended.
It’s been quite a journey for this juggernaut channel. Originally known only for its sporting events, comedy specials, and then an enormous catalogue of films, HBO entered the half hour sitcom ring with The Larry Sanders Show in 1992 and then the one hour drama arena with Oz in 1996. They haven’t looked back since. With enormous successes like The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, and Sex and the City, the thinking man’s channel only seems to build more momentum with each passing season. Sitting down with Leo Trombetta, one of the editors on Carnivale and this season of Big Love, and Steven Rasch, editor on Curb Your Enthusiasm and the first season of Entourage, I realized I wasn’t the only one with a tremendous amount of respect for their programming. As Rasch put it, “You can’t iron and watch at the same time; it’s smart television you need your brain for.” He’s right; actually, I’ve put a number of burns in my shirts because of HBO.
Both Trombetta and Rasch noted the trust HBO puts in their teams. Trombetta remarked “They had a lot of faith in me, which I appreciated. And, with twelve episodes instead of the usual twenty-two, you had the luxury of a relatively relaxed schedule. It felt more like working on a feature than a television series. You had the opportunity to try things.” That luxury was more of a necessity for Rasch who has spent 5 seasons on Curb, which is all improv. “We get an 8 page outline for 30 minutes. Each scene is a half a page and that’s what I work with. The footage gets logged and sometimes we order a transcript, but with that much dialogue it comes back about the size of a phone book and by the time we have it, we’ve pretty much chosen where the cuts are going to be. Sifting through all the footage, I finish about a scene a day. After cutting the whole show, I sit with Larry David and we work together on changes.” Rasch’s talent in that area proved useful during his work on Entourage where Jeremy Piven, who plays talent agent Ari Gold, relied heavily on his improv skills. Rasch noted that “Doug Ellin, along with the director, would go over what was to happen in a scene with Jeremy who would then deliver his big personality to make it work.” Rasch, who has edited a number of network shows including NBC’s Jesse, and ABC’s Spin City, Emily’s Reasons Why Not and the upcoming Big Day, appreciates the difference when receiving feedback. “You get fewer notes on where close ups should be and a bigger interest in creative cuts. HBO puts stock in the creative team’s vision.” Even with the relaxed schedule Trombetta remarked that HBO is still fast paced, “you only get about 4 days with the director. Then everything goes on to the producers and then the network. Time constraints mean they want your take on the material. I was allowed to take a lot of liberties on Carnivale. A scene may have been scripted one way, but sometimes my pass at the material would make the final cut instead.”
Knowing that both editors juggled such large and dynamic casts; I wondered how they each approached developing such commanding and individual performances inside an ensemble. Trombetta, who hopes to work on season two of Big Love, looked back on how much had changed since the pilot he worked on. “The challenge was combining the material originally shot for the pilot with the re-shoots. If you look at the pilot and then later episodes you can see how dramatically the interiors changed.” The pilot was actually filmed well over a year prior to it’s ever airing, before Ginnifer Goodwin became known for her role in Walk the Line. The rest of the ensemble had quite the background on them with Bill Paxton, Chloe Sevigny and, most exhilarating for Trombetta, Harry Dean Stanton. “What an amazing cast. There were weeks where I’d be getting Harry Dean Stanton rushes! Those are the moments you stop and think ‘I can’t believe I get to do this.’” With such a talented and veteran cast to work with, Trombetta focused his attentions on his writers and directors. “I’m never going to fight the director but I will say ‘here’s another way of looking at it’. Most directors want the editor to be more than just a pair of hands. It was comfortable atmosphere on Big Love. Mark (Olsen) and Will (Sheffer) couldn’t have been nicer and Bill Paxton would often have lunch with the editors. The editing rooms were next to the sound stage so, when you were going through the dailies, if you felt you needed a particular shot, you could go next door and talk to the director.” On the first season of Entourage, Rasch, who worked on the pilot, said “With every new show, the vibe is different. I tried to balance the 4 leads, but that mostly came in the script. At the time, they had a big music budget and a lot of focus went there as well. As an editor, you mostly just want 5 good takes.”
It’s obvious that joining the HBO family is no small honor. Not only have both men have worked on more than one project with them, but they have also gone on to cut features for directors they teamed with on their respective shows. Jeff Garlin of Curb premiered his freshman film, I WANT SOMEONE TO EAT ChEESE WITH, at the Tribeca Film Festival this past April. Rasch was brought on to cut the film, his first, and is looking forward to more feature work. “I enjoyed the use of more wide shots and letting the comedy play out. Jeff liked letting the dialogue run and not having a scene get too cutty.” Garlin filmed entirely in Chicago and sent dailies to Rasch in Los Angeles. “I got to do a full pass. The first cut was my take on the material unless I got notes along with the dailies. Then when Jeff came back we worked on it together.” Having been both Emmy and Eddie nominated Rasch offers “Being a part of Curb has changed my career.” However, making the jump from television to film can prove difficult and frustrating. Having such a strong and applauded history in television, he takes pride in being known as “The Curb guy,” but it can also serve as a deterrent to prospective feature projects. When musing over why there’s a stigma attached to making the transition, Rasch noted that there really isn’t need for such a bias. He says, “The difference between television and film is that films are longer. Editing is editing.”
Rasch began making his own 8mm films at age seventeen. “To finish them, I had to learn how to edit and I loved it.” Initially Rasch worked as a cameraman and a grip. He was working in Boston when he injured his back and could no longer do such physically demanding jobs as before. “A friend of mine was working at a post house and they needed assistant. I was hooked from then on.”
Trombetta, who began his career as a sound editor, is currently hard at work on the feature LITTLE CHILDREN with director Todd Field, of IN THE BEDROOM. They met while working together on Carnivale. “Todd and I work well together because we’re both obsessive about sound. We’d have one take which was visually perfect but which had some performance problems. Todd always took the time to create the perfect combination of the two for the most effective performance possible. That’s the great thing I learned as a sound editor. The picture and sound don’t necessarily have to come from the same take. Especially on a low budget picture, you can create an entire world with sound; imply things are happening outside the frame.” With the LITTLE CHILDREN sound and dialogue editors working right down the hall from Trombetta, I could see first hand the detail and “obsession” going into the sound on this picture, which, sight unseen, is already in the realm of Oscar talk.
When I asked Leo how he began as an editor we realized we both have Midwestern roots. I could relate to his feeling that Hollywood had always been for other people. Film was always something other people did. It just isn’t what anyone from our neighborhoods ever became a part of on any scale. You bought a ticket to see the movie, but you were never going to be one of the names that ended up on the screen. One of Trombetta’s heroes, Martin Scorsese, has often noted that growing up, he knew he would either be a priest or in film. Before he became an editor Leo worked for a printing press back in Pennsylvania. He said “One night, I was standing at the basin, pulling little bits of paper out of my hair, and I looked at myself in the mirror and said; ‘is this it? Is this what I’m going to be doing for the rest of my life?’ It was a union job that paid well but I knew there had to be more.” There was more. Leo saw TAXI DRIVER and then MEAN STREETS and it was Scorsese’s pictures that made him want to go to college and pursue film. While still working at the factory, Trombetta made a short film, BILLY, and sent it to Scorsese. “Years later, I got a call from Deborah Schindler, who was Martin Scorsese’s assistant at the time. She said that he’d watched my film and wanted to speak with me. I couldn’t believe it! All I could think was “He saw my name on the screen!” Leo went on to work at the Museum of Broadcasting in New York where Letty Aronson, Woody Allen’s sister was head of public relations. “I never wanted to bother her or impose. I didn’t want to be ‘that guy’. It wasn’t until after I had left that I finally asked her to lunch and told her that I really wanted to be an editor. She told me that all the work was done in two buildings, the Brill building on 49th & Broadway and Todd AO on 54th. From that point on I just haunted both places with my resume and wound up an assistant sound editor.”
Trombetta, an ACE member since 2001 has enjoyed being a part of such an organization. “Becoming a member felt like I had graduated. It was an accomplishment. Everyone is aware of cinematography, art direction, costume, but no one knows what goes on in an editing room. It’s nice to have things like the Eddies and interviews like this to bring attention to what we do.” Rasch would agree. “Very often you’re alone in that room. A.C.E. is a great way of meeting other editors.” During our conversation, Rasch had mentioned the “the point of good editing is such that you don’t notice it” and I realized that’s how it goes for these artists as well, they mostly go unnoticed. It’s a silent service provided in the background. You’d notice if it were bad, but the magic lies in its invisible beauty.
Having sat with these editors, getting to know them, their work and how HBO has affected their careers my admiration for the thinking mans channel has grown to new proportions. You can call me one of the ever faithful in their ability to recruit, harvest and maintain genius talent. Rasch and Trombetta exemplify how much wonderment can come from trusting a creative mind, and veering away from rigid standards and practices. Loving these shows isn’t as simple as appreciating the direction, performances or even the set design, anymore. Not for me, anyway. HBO has brought me back to getting a weekly fix of comedy and drama, but it is Rasch and Trombetta whose talents have solidified my appreciation of what television really can be.
