Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/914212
64 CINEMONTAGE / Q4 2017 Leslie Shatz, who solved this cinematic conundrum for director Todd Haynes' Wonderstruck, which opened in late October through Amazon Studios after premiering at the Cannes Film Festival in May. An adaptation of the 2011 novel by Brian Selznick, who also wrote the screenplay, the dreamy film hops between two eras of New York City. Each period presented its own aesthetic demands, filtered through the additional prism of its young, hearing-impaired main characters' sonic experiences. Rose (Millicent Simmonds), a deaf girl, runs away from her home in New Jersey to find her actress mother in New York in 1927, while Ben (Oakes Fegley) leaves his aunt in rural Minnesota to locate his father in New York in 1977, after losing his hearing. Both children encounter a spectrum of the city — from its heyday in the 1920s to its nadir in the 1970s — and wind up at the Museum of Natural History. There, each finds a salvation in family and friendship. Gonçalves and Shatz have both worked frequently with Haynes. Shatz first served as a re-recording mixer with the director on Far From Heaven (2002), while Gonçalves co-edited (with Camilla Toniolo) Haynes' HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce (2011), on which he also collaborated with Shatz for the first time. CineMontage interviewed the editors in early October. CineMontage: You both have had multiple collaborations with Todd Haynes. How has the process evolved? Affonso Gonçalves: Todd's is a specific process that I've never had with any director before. While he was shooting Wonderstruck, I was cutting in New York. He doesn't watch any of the footage while he's shooting. Once he's done, he goes away for two Affonso Gonçalves.