Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1061972
36 CINEMONTAGE / Q4 2018 explains. "Our first conversations were about making it cinematic." According to the editor, the screenplay by Daniel Stiepleman touches on Ginsburg's many struggles being a female lawyer in a male-dominated arena from her first days in law school, which meant that much had to be condensed. "When Ruth interviews for a job after graduating law school, she goes from door to door and is turned down 12 times," says Tesoro. "We had to condense that into one scene, in which she states that fact." Noting that although On the Basis of Sex is a period piece, it still also feels modern, according to the editor. "Yes, we're talking about a real person's life, but we also wanted it to feel like today," she adds. "It's important for her to communicate to a younger generation about not taking your rights for granted." Tesoro found Leder to be a dynamic director. "Mimi found a way to put her voice into it," Tesoro says, explaining that she and Leder would have conversations during the shoot about the scenes, with the director describing how she shot each scene. "A good example is the scene where [Ginsberg's husband] Marty Ginsburg [Armie Hammer] discusses Swedish tax law at a party, and then he's looking for Ruth. The way the scene is written, it starts out from Marty's point of view; for all intents and purposes, it's Marty's scene. Mimi covered that, but she also had all these shots from the points of view of Ruth, who wasn't with the men's or women's circles at the party. Mimi and I talked about how we'd rather play that scene from Ruth's perspective, which is what we did." The biggest challenge in cutting On the Basis of Sex was that, as a legal story, it required a lot of background information. "Mimi and I were aware during the shoot that we didn't want it to be too expositional," Tesoro offers. "You don't want people to feel like they're being told, but that they're discovering it in the moment. When Mimi got more from the performances than was in the script, we were able to scrape out some of the exposition. "One tricky scene was when Ruth meets plaintiff Charles Moritz [Chris Mulkey] for the first time in Denver," she continues. "There is a scene with his mother doing the crossword puzzle. It was a great device, making you feel like you're in a real moment, and you had something going on that was parallel with the exposition. Mimi and Daniel did a lot of work to keep a kind of personal touch and accessibility to the material." Tesoro confides that a few scenes resonated with her and Leder as women. "What's interesting about this movie is that it's completely from a female perspective," she says. "In one scene, the lawyer/partner Greene [Tom Irwin], who is interviewing Ginsburg for a job, looks down at her boobs, and she looks up — and there's this moment. The producer wasn't sure the moment was landing at first but trusted our sensibility about it. Then we showed it in previews, and it really landed. I love that about the film; we need more of those scenes." Another sequence of which the editor is particularly proud is the ending, Portrait of Ruth Bader Ginsberg as a Cornell Senior. Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States On the Basis of Sex. Focus Features CONTINUED ON PAGE 38