Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1456671
30 C I N E M O N T A G E F E A T U R E has been adapted for the screen from the original 1957 Broadway show, with book by Arthur Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and concept, direction, and choreography by Jerome Robbins. During their work on "Ready Player One," Spielberg "mentioned he's been wanting to do ['West Side Story'] for a long time," Kahn said. "He's always loved the story and the score. So we did it and unfor- tunately, COVID came in." That meant setting aside the work for more than a year while Broshar received big news of her own: she was pregnant. By the time they returned, she was a new mother. "It was so strange to go from spending every single day with this movie to all of a sudden, 'Okay, you're not coming into work tomorrow,' and 'we'll see about the follow- ing week,' and then 'we'll see about the next month,'" she explained. The editors worked together remotely during the final mix and the final submis- sion of the film. "It was a very emotional process to a very emotional movie," Broshar said. "When you're watching a film, it's almost like you're sitting in a theater, but you're transformed to these emotional places, so depending on what scene we're working on or you're watching, you're really lifted up for some time if you're low. But either way, there's so much depth of feeling." While Spielberg has often depended on Kahn to edit some of the most emotionally difficult scenes of his movies over the last 40 years—such as those in the Academy Award-winning "Schindler's List" (1993)— both editing mentor and mentee alike found the legendary director's youthful exuberance to be contagious as they cut "West Side Story." The word they used over and over again to describe the experience was "joyful." As the iconic Bernstein score flowed through the editing room day after day, he even found himself tapping away on top of the desk and singing along with the music. "I use this phrase all the time: you don't work from knowledge, you work from feeling," Kahn said. "A lot of [editing] is intuitive." He also credits his longtime collabora- tion with Spielberg to his ability to listen. "I'm a listener. I don't say much," Kahn added. "We just listen to what's happening around us: the music, listening to the pic- ture, mainly listening to Steven Spielberg because he has good insights into every- FRAMED: Kahn (with Spielberg in 1981) says in editing, "you work from feeling." P H OT O : G E T T Y I M AG E S