Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1339678
58 C I N E M O N T A G E C O V E R S T O R Y Cleaning up: Glenn Close in "Hillbilly Elegy." P H O T O : N E T F L I X For example, when Bev threatens to kill young J.D., he runs inside this woman's house as his mother is chasing him. The woman doesn't know what the hell is going on and she tells Bev to keep out, saying "I have dogs, they bite!" We cut to this shot of two silent Corgis, and that moment is one of the biggest laughs in the movie. This was a great opportunity to pivot from drama to comedy and back to drama. After screenings I adjusted the timing on the cut to the dogs to get a longer laugh. I also took note of every laugh intended or not to help inform the cutting room of how the audience was responding. What was it like working with com- poser Hans Zimmer on the music? Hans Zimmer and David Flemming are really great collaborative storytell- ers. Hans asked me "Who did the temp music?" He said it was "frustratingly good." We really hit it off after that. We all were culturally sensitive and respectful to the region and wanted to avoid musical stereotypes, especially banjo. "Deliver- ance" to this day triggers a bad reaction from the Appalachian community. In Papaw's funeral scene, the score is more of a Celtic/Scottish vibe that speaks to the people who had immigrated to the region. When Bev is in the street with her attempted suicide, we really worked hard to not over-score the scene and opted to mix in sound design. Hans felt the music could be more weird to further highlight Bev's pain and grief. There was a lot of trial and error with spotting and scoring. Often times we didn't know what worked until we heard it. And that's when we knew it was working beautifully. When we were remote mixing during the pandemic, it was really challenging to not all be on the stage together, but we were all on the same page. Netflix sent us all the same headphones, so we all were listening to it the same way. Hans didn't need to wear headphones because he was listening to it on the speakers at his home studio. You brought in two new Assistant Editors on this project, Ulysses Guidot- ti, and Nolan Jennings. How did you work with your assistants? I co u l d n' t b r i n g my l o n gt i m e a s- sistant, Auggie Rexach, to New York because you have to hire local to get the tax incentives. I had known Nolan from a show called "Gone" that we worked on in L.A. together. We got along well and I un- derstood his temperament and thought he'd be a good fit to the team. I got great recommendations from other editors about Ulysses. He became my lead and Nolan became the second. Ulysses kept us extremely organized handling temp visual effects and Nolan did a great job, from organizing dailies to sound work and design. Both of these guys are editors, really good story tellers and communicators, and that helped tremendously. Throughout the movie, if you listen carefully, there are a lot of local Ohio radio commercials that are actually the voices of Nolan and our post-production assistant Hillary Carrigan. I needed a time stamp when J.D. was heading home to check on Bev, so I asked Nolan and Hillary to create a morning radio show he would listen to on his drive. And they came back with the "Trish and Scott Morning Show" that turned out to be fantastic. When it came time to record loop group, we auditioned other voices for Ron. During the playback he leaned over to me — well, we were on Zoom so he digitally "leaned over" — and he says, "James, what happened with Nolan and Hillary? Was it not useable?" I said "No,