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Q1 2020

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66 C I N E M O N T A G E J U M P S wanted it to feel very real, and I think it does. My favorite story I like to tell about it is the ending when she makes a phone call to her mother and father and leaves the voicemail. The script said she leaves the voice- mail and walks off, and it's a beautiful ending. What if we just do that thing w h e re w e f l a s h b a c k to h e r d r i v i n g with the mom, and fortunately we shot the same B-roll from the exact same ca m e ra r i g s o yo u co u l d c ro ss c u t i t perfectly. It created this moment where [Saoirse Ronan] was really connected to her mother [Laurie Metcalf ] in a really beautiful visual, lyrical way that for me really changed the ending and made it shine. Q How do you reconcile the desire to be artistic and creative and also serve the vision of the director? I think you always have to push it to the limit, push the boundaries of what you think the movie is trying to say. It's true that a movie does tell you what it wants to be. You can't necessarily impose things on it. You have to explore and try things and the movie is going to tell you whether it's working or not. The same with the director. You have to explore things and try things and hopefully you will both start to see what the movie is supposed to be. Q Were you and Greta influenced by other films? For this one, we looked at the Edward Yang movie, "Yi Yi" (2000), because we were trying to shoot this one mostly in wide [shots] and take our time with it, more of a [Yasujiro] Ozu sensibility, and Edward Yang is a great example of that. We looked at [Roman Polanski's] "The Tenant" (1976) because it is set in this kind of semi-horror, pre-war building. It's kind of freaky, and there is a lot of looking out windows and seeing weird things, which is totally "The Tenant." That movie is insane. Polanski has been an influence on this well. "Little Women" feels like a foreign film. We reference other movies, for sure. Q Did you studiously look to avoid comparisons with the earlier versions, especially the George Cukor film (1932) with Katharine Hepburn? Not at all. We had to know them as well. The 1994 version directed by Gillian Armstrong, [producer] Amy Pascal did that version as well. We are very much aware of the previous versions, and the movie plays with that. Anyone who knows the novel is going to be excited when they see it. It plays with the conven- tions, much like "Lady Bird." Q Did you want the pace and rhythm to reflect a mid-19th century sensibility? I'd say the opposite. We wanted to make it feel modern and fresh, even though it is obviously set in the 1860s. One way we did that was it is told non-lin- ear, not in a broken or fragmented way. It is two stories being told in a forward progression over time, cutting back and forth between the two. It is when they are adults and when they are little girls. It's something we want people to be prepared for because that is the whole point of the movie, the way it is told in two storylines that progress forward through time and they intersect, which is something in the script is so beau- tiful and I think we have made it work really well. Greta knew it so well that she was the only person who could have told it this way. It's a way that everyone who is familiar with it in some way are going to really respond to it. Q What are the particular challenges of working in period? In this movie in particular, there are so many huge ballroom scenes that are incredibly complicated to shoot and to cut. That was a huge challenge. I remem- ber talking to the colorist one day while I was doing dailies. He said, "How's it going?", and I said, "I have to cut another ballroom scene." When else do you get to say that? I have another huge ballroom scene set in Paris to cut. It's like "The Age of Innocence" (1993), it really is. Then you have horses and carriages and you have to fix the power lines in the background. That was crazy. We go through every season many times. We only shot from October through Decem- ber, so we had to add snow, we had to make leaves green or orange, stuff like that. It was a lot more visual effects than you'd expect for that kind of thing, period fixes and time fixes. Q What pushes you in your art to really excel as you have? I think it's just the best job you could ever have. I always say I'd be doing this anyway if I didn't have a job, just maybe not as good of material. I'd just be cutting whatever I could be cutting. I like having crazy, big canvases like "Little Women," to cut. Every time I do it, I am excited by it. The job never gets old. Then you have so many parts. It is not just thinking about the way it's shot, the emotion of the performances. You also have the sound and the music. There's always these different phases that are super-interesting as well. Q How have your own ideas or theo- ries about editing evolved? I t i s t h e s a m e a s i t i s w i t h e v e r y director, constantly looking at the mate- rial and trying to figure out what could make it better, whether it's additional photography or cutting it differently or moving it somewhere else. It's like you are co-writers. ■ Patrick Z. McGavin is a Chicago-based freelance writer. City of 'Women' CONTINUED FROM PAGE 56

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