Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/551510
27 SUMMER 2015 / CINEMONTAGE in their approaches and sensibilities; in what they're interested in exploring and trying to say. Time Out of Mind is a perfect example of this because basically the film asks, "Whose stories do we choose to tell? Whose voices do we choose to hear? Who do we see and whom do we ignore? And why?" CM: What did you take with you from the David Simon experience? What was the spoken methodology for cutting The Wire? AH: The most important lesson I learned with David came on the first episode I cut. Seith Mann directed it; he was fresh out of NYU, this young director they hired, as new to the show as I was. Seith composed this beautiful, low-angle, Dutch shot of two characters getting out of an Escalade. It was killer, like something out of a John Ford Western. And I used it, of course. When I screened my cut for David, I was really nervous because it was my first time sitting with him. We get to that scene and he says, "Stop. What is that?" I said, "That cool shot of the foot coming out of the Escalade?" He said, "Yeah, what is that? Why is that in there?" I said, "Because it's a cool shot, no?" He goes, "Yeah, it's a cool shot — but we don't do that. Let me tell you something: The Wire is about people being smaller than their circumstances, not bigger than them." That's one of the main tenets of that show and informed all of the choices. The Wire was almost reportage, that on-the-ground, straightforward narrative style, so you weren't supposed to do sweeping crane shots, low-angle things, or anything that would suggest self-conscious filmmaking. David had been a reporter for years and that's how he approached filmmaking. There were rules but they weren't arbitrary; they were organic to the material and themes of the show. It was a very rigorous approach. Years later, when I started directing for David on Treme, he pointed to the camera and said, "Alex, you know what that is? That's just a big pencil." f