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THE COLOR PURPLE www.postmagazine.com 29 POST NOV/DEC 2023 The Color Purple Editor Jon Poll details his workflow & breaks down his favorite scenes BY MARC LOFTUS E ditor Jon Poll's career spans well over 30 years, with recent credits that include Bombshell, Meet the Fockers, Father of the Bride and The Greatest Showman, but it was a long interview with director Blitz Bazawule that ultimately landed him the role of cutting The Color Purple. "I think I had the longest interview I've ever (had)," the editor recalls. "I was in the middle of cutting Father of the Bride. I kind of figured it'd be a half hour or an hour, and it was more like two-and-a-half hours! It was just kind of amazing…I think we just really hit it oˆ." Poll recalled reading "The Color Purple," and see- ing the 1985 film. What he took away from it was the intense trauma that Celie faced. "Blitz's take, that he first pitched me, was, 'We're not shying away from that trauma. We're head- ing right into [it].' Ultimately, this movie is about overcoming the trauma, and Celie finding resilience and strength through two friends she makes in the movie — Sophia and Shug. You can see how her life wouldn't have been the same without (them)." On their second meeting, Bazawule presented Poll with detailed storyboards that included the director's own drawings, as well as footage of the musical's dance rehearsals. "It was like I watched the movie," Poll recalls. "One of the things [Blitz] said he did was, he wrote down every time I laughed…I will say we had a fair amount of laughs in this film, which may surprise people. There are laughs where tension is relieved and the audience has a chance to kind of take a breath, because sometimes you're holding your breath, wondering what's going to happen next? "This is obviously not a comedy," Poll clarifies. "We are obviously not cutting it for jokes in any way, shape or form. But, for me, some of the best movies, you find yourself laughing in unusual moments." The film was shot in Georgia, and Poll worked out of Company 3's Atlanta studio, cutting on an Avid system for close to seven months. He then finished cutting the film at Warner Bros. in Los Angeles. "One thing that I never expected is that Blitz came by so often — at least once a week, and often more than that," Poll recalls of his time at Company 3. Historically, Poll says he likes to have a version of the film edited every week in order to show the director, as was the case when working with Jay Roach on many past projects. But Bazawule worked diˆerently. Instead, he'd come to the edit suite and watch cuts with Poll. "(It) says a lot about how connected his ap- proach is," says Poll of Bazawule. "He put in a ton of time." While it's easy to be taken by The Color Purple's intense and complex musical sequences, Poll points to two dramatic scenes that stand out from his perspective as an editor. In one of the earliest sequences that was shot and cut, Mister (Coleman Domingo) is playing his banjo while riding on a horse near the shore. His serenade captures the attention of a young Nettie (Halle Bailey), who is taken by his performance, but then realizes he's using his talents to quickly sway her with a marriage proposal. The director was planning on covering the scene in wide shots, but was open to Poll's edit, which incorporated more close ups than anticipated. "He watched it once. He watched it again. He watched a third time," Poll says of Bazawule. "And I said, 'Look, it's easy for me to re-cut this in a diˆerent way.' And he was like, 'No, I see what you're doing now. Let's not change it for now. I can see how being in the tighter shots and cutting a little more gave me more of the game going on between (them) that I might not have gotten.' That was a big moment at looking at the first cut." Another scene he calls attention to takes place much later in the film, where all of the story's main characters assemble for a dinner. Celie is very ner- vous, as she know that this is when Mister will be told that's she's leaving him to travel with Shug Avery. "My favorite scene in the movie is the dinner scene, at the turn into the third (act)," Poll states. "We have all eight main characters sitting around the table together, and that's without a question the scene I probably made the most passes on." The challenge, according to Poll, was showing all of the performances and reactions to the conver- sation as it escalates. "Celie knows that Shug is going to reveal that they're leaving after this," Poll explains. "It feels like the movie — at its strongest — without any music…. That, for me, is the most special and really the most diŸcult." Bazawule directing the film's dinner scene, which Poll cites as an editorial highlight. Editor Jon Poll