by Nancy Jundi as originally published by CinemaEditor Magazine
In Hollywoodland, Allen Coulter’s feature directorial debut, he revisits the legend and mystery surrounding television’s original Superman, George Reeves. With remarkable performances, beautiful period recreations, and an immaculate score, , it’s easy to forget the silent master of story-telling, editing. The seamless stories of Louis Simo (played by Adrien Brody) and George Reeves (played by Ben Affleck) intertwined to convey all the possibilities of this longstanding debate. There was mastery behind balancing the theories of Reeves’ death and presenting his life up to that point. Hollywoodland‘s editor, Michael Berenbaum, A.C.E., illuminates how the filmmakers managed to recreate that life and all of the challenges they faced in bringing this story to the masses.
WHAT APPROACH DO YOU TAKE WITH A NEW PROJECT?
To some degree the project dictates the approach. The script is the guide to what the story is you’re trying to tell. I discuss with the director what tone the project will have and any specific transitions or sequences that require special attention. But other than that, when the dailies come in they’re my guide. I view them and determine the best way to put them together to tell the story. Obviously throughout the process things change and you can go back to the dailies. Sometimes what didn’t work originally such as mistakes, flubbed lines, and missed blocking turn out to be the things that save you when you’re trying to condense scenes. Also it’s up to the director if he or she wants to sit with me as I make changes or give me notes and come back when they’re done. I tend to work faster when I’m by myself, but I can get an instant answer as to whether or not the director likes what I’ve done when they’re sitting with me.
WHAT WAS THE WORKING RELATIONSHIP LIKE BETWEEN YOU AND ALLEN? WAS HE IN THE ROOM WITH YOU FOR MOST OF THE PROCESS?
I had worked with Allen before. We met many years ago working on a children’s television show. Then we crossed paths again on Sex and the City. We started working like most films. I would put the film together while he was shooting. I went to Toronto for a few days during filming with a DVD of the scenes I had cut up to that point. We sat down during a break and watched them together. He gave me a few notes but was mostly happy with what he saw. He decided that he really didn’t want to see any more scenes cut until he could watch the whole movie after he had finished shooting. As a television director that’s how it usually works and that’s what he was used to. We had worked that way before and he trusted me to put the first cut together. After they finished shooting in LA, Allen came into the cutting room and we watched my editor’s cut. Then we went to work on his directors cut. He came in everyday and we worked to fine tune performances and to find ways to tighten the film, which originally ran over two and a half hours. Allen is a very sweet guy and I had a great experience working with him.
THE STORY DEVELOPMENT BETWEEN THEORIES ON GEORGE’S DEATH WAS A VERY DELICATE BALANCE. WAS IT STRUCTURED COMPLETELY BEFOREHAND OR DID YOU COME TO THE CHOICES AS THE PROJECT WENT ON?
The three theories were completely scripted and were based on a great deal of research, not only on the part of the screenwriters, but consultants were brought on during pre-production. Attention to detail and authenticity was very important to Allen. What did become an issue was within the world of the film, whose theories were they. Of course they had to be the theories of Adrian Brody’s character, Louis Simo. He was investigating the death of George Reeves. We had to find ways to make sure this was clear.
WHAT WERE SOME OF THE CHALLENGES IN DOING FLASHBACKS?
The challenge wasn’t actually editing the flashback sequences, or as we called them, the reconstructions. What was the bigger challenge was how they were perceived.
WHAT KIND OF REACTIONS CAME FROM THE STUDIO AND/OR AUDIENCES DURING SCREENINGS?
The studio felt strongly that the audience was confused as to whether we were in the past or the present. They didn’t think the audience was getting that the reconstructions were Louis Simo’s theories on what could have happened as he investigated the case. Allen and I felt that if Ben Affleck was on the screen we were in the past and if Adrian Brody was on the screen we were in the present. We had to find a way to accomplish what the studio wanted without compromising Allen’s vision of the movie. Ultimately, where shots of Adrian didn’t originally exist before the reconstructions, they were added to make it clearer that they were his thoughts.
MUSIC SERVED AS A FANTASTC ADDITIONAL CHARACTER IN THIS MOVIE. HOW DO YOU THINK THAT HELPED IN EDITING THE SEQUENCES TOGETHER?
Music was very important to the film. Allen played music on the set to create the mood for the actors and it was a good guide to me as well. We used a lot of what he played on the set as temp score. What was even more important was the use of source music to help place the film in its historical period. We spent a lot of time finding the right feel for the different years the film follows. In 1959, when George died, this was the beginning of rock and roll. This was Louis Simo’s world. We considered this “present time” as the beginning of a more cluttered world. Televisions were playing everywhere; radios were starting to play rock music. People started dressing more casually. This contrasted George’s world of big bands, tuxedos and the studio system before television. It was a more quiet and glamorous era. We spent a lot of time finding authentic pieces for each scene that required music. Our “present” music was not the rock of Happy Days or Grease. We had to find a different type of rock and roll. Our music supervisor, Dan Lieberstein, supplied us with just about every song from the fifties and we went through them to find what fit and what didn’t. There was a song we loved for the scene where Louis Simo tells his girlfriend about his father. We were torn when we discovered that the song was actually from 1961. We wanted to be authentic but couldn’t find a song we liked as much for the scene. It all became moot because we ended up not being able to get the rights for that particular song. “The Girl Can’t Help It” by Little Richard became the song that was playing during all of the reconstructions. Every time George goes up to his bedroom for the last time, this is playing in his house.
HOW DID THE HISTORICAL DEMANDS AFFECT THE PICTURE? FOR EXAMPLE, HAVING TO RE-SHOOT T AND EDIT THE OPENING CREDITS OF THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN MUST HAVE BEEN SUCH A PROJECT OF ITS OWN.
As I said before, Allen wanted to make every effort to be true to the time period. “Queen for the Day” for example was a popular television show at the time. We hear it playing in the background at one character’s home. We did a lot of research to see what people were watching and listening to during those years. Recreating the opening of the Superman show and putting Ben Affleck into From Here to Eternity was actually a lot of fun. Of course Mister X, our visual effects people did most of the work. We weren’t allowed to use the original TV opening so we had to recreate every shot ourselves. This was all planned out and shot during the shoot. What was tricky was that the length of the original opening sequence was about 55 seconds. We were only given permission to use about 20 seconds. We had to whittle down the sequence and still give the impression that it was whole. We also had to rerecord the voice and an abridged version of the opening Superman theme.
HOLLYWOODLAND CAME OUT AGAINST THE BLACK DAHLIA, ANOTHER ONE OF HOLLYWOOD’S MOST MYSTERIOUS CASES. WAS THERE ANY CONCERN OVER SIMILARITY OR AUDIENCES COMPARING THE TWO?
I had just had the pleasure of working with Vilmos Zsigmond on a movie and he told me he was going to Bulgaria to shoot The Black Dahlia with Brian DePalma. Other than that we were completely unaware of the other movie while we were working. We certainly didn’t know the two films were going to be released within a week of each other. Hollywoodland was completed in the spring of 2006 and the decision as to when to release it was totally in the hands of the studio. Before the films came out, I had seen on the Internet the fierce debate about which film was going to be better. It was interesting to read but while we were working on it the comparisons never occurred to us.
YOU MENTIONED CROSSING PATHS WITH ALLEN ON SEX AND THE CITY. BETWEEN THAT AND CUTTING THE DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES PILOT, YOU’RE RATHER VERSED IN WORKING ON POP CULTURE PHENOMENONS.
When I started on both Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives they weren’t pop culture phenomenon. Sex was one of the original shows on HBO but it was a year between when we did the pilot and when it went into production for the first season. They tested the pilot with audiences to see if they liked it. The same with Desperate Housewives. Although it was a very good script by Marc Cherry and they had a great director, Charles MacDougall, whom I worked with on Sex, there was no guarantee that it would even be picked up. We had an inkling when the preview audience test scores were the highest of any Touchstone show up to that point. No one knew it would be such a huge hit right out of the gate. Sex and the City’s status grew over the years. At first they couldn’t get designers to donate clothes. A few years in, everyone wanted to be part of its success.
OTHER EDITORS FROM AN HBO BACKGROUND HAVE MENTIONED THAT THEY FELT MORE LIKE THEY WERE CUTTING A FEATURE RATHER THAN A TELEVISION SHOW. WAS THAT THE SAME FEELING FOR YOU?
Absolutely. Cutting an hour show or even a half hour for HBO is more like cutting a feature. This is mostly because there are no commercials. The show must flow continuously and have a pace that keeps the audience interested. On network shows the final pass after working with the director and the producers and dealing with network notes ultimately becomes about getting the show to the correct time. Making sure the acts are balanced, time-wise, and that the shows are, to the second, what the network has allocated. Although the HBO shows did have maximum times, there was much more room to play when it came to how long the shows were.
IS TV SOMETHING YOU WOULD LIKE TO RETURN TO?
Right now I’m concentrating on feature work. Although if a great TV project came along I would certainly consider it. TV has been very good to me. It provided me with steady work for a lot of years. I got to work with great people, many different directors, and the opportunity to gain a great deal of experience working on different types of projects. It enabled me to play in different styles, solve a lot of problems and learn to work extremely quickly. It was all positive. But I got into this industry for my love of movies and I’d like to work on as many as possible right now.
HOW DID YOU GET YOUR START IN EDITING?
I was always fascinated with movies. I was bored one day when I was a kid around ten or eleven and asked my dad what I should do. He said go make a movie. So I took his 8mm camera and recruited my friend Stephan Weinraub and we bought some film and made our first film, a cowboy shootout. We didn’t know anything about editing except that the shot had to change after a specific action took place. We just instinctually took turns filming each other. I would shoot at him and then I would take the camera and film him shooting at me. In-camera editing was my first learning ground. I then used to study books like The Super 8 Handbook and saved my money to buy a sound Super 8 camera that I used throughout high school and still have.
I went to NYU to study filmmaking and had two internships that put me on the path that I’m still on today. The first was working at Kaufman Astoria Studios while they were filming the Cotton Club. I was interning for the studio but used to hang out with the extras and dancers on the set and got to watch Coppola work. There was a lot of tension between the film people and the studio people while the shooting was going on. One day I was told not to go to the set anymore and just stay in the office and file papers. That was my last day. I very quickly found another internship in an editing room for the film Alphabet City by Amos Poe. I enjoyed the work and found that the editing staff appreciated my dedication to do whatever assignment was given to me quickly and efficiently. It seemed that other students who had come their way thought it was their place to help with the creative decision-making. Of course this attitude didn’t fly and the fact that I was doing the apprentice work got me noticed. We were working in the Brill Building where most features in New York were being edited at the time. Coincidentally The Cotton Club was one of the films working there. I dropped off my measly resume and was hired as apprentice sound editor. The thought being that since I had been on the set that would be an advantage. It wasn’t but it got me my first paying job so there were no complaints.
