Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/370852
29 SEP-OCT 14 / CINEMONTAGE out by how much it was off so you could adjust the film. It was on California Split [1974] with George Segal and Elliott Gould. We had used car lots, bars and racetracks; it was an education. So I do have a really good ear, but because Abel talks over everything, I can only go so far before Neil takes it. In the sex scene with the two brunettes in Welcome to New York, if you listen carefully, Abel is still in there a little bit. It drove me nuts. NB: You have to strategically cover it with something else — like a chair bump. The advantage I had was that I was given access to the set, so I could get some wild lines and any extra sound that caught my ear. Every day I would watch the dailies then go back in and try and get what we missed. I also have the top restoration tools so I can get away with a lot. In one shot in particular, the conversation in the townhouse, Jacqueline Bisset kept hitting and covering her lavalier mic, and the boom had terrible pick-up, so we got down to the final mix and were still struggling with it. Abel actually had a great idea; Gérard Depardieu was right by a chair and he stepped back during a shot, so Abel said, "Why doesn't he just bump into the chair?" So we had a little extra line coverage with the chair squeak. Whatever it takes, just make it work. AR: We don't believe in ADR. It never feels right. NB: It's artificial, and a lot of Abel's style is in the moment, trying to capture it. AR: So no overdone Foley, either. The subject matter lends itself to this kind of approach. We dubbed Bad Lieutenant [1992] in four days on the crappiest mixing board you ever saw. We have to go for the immediacy of whatever's on film. That's always been our signature. The closest we ever came to a studio film per se was Body Snatchers [1993]. That's a very slick film and the only one we ever made like that. CM: What sort of cutting services that vision? AR: I try to do everything as adroitly and elegantly as possible. I could cut it funky, but by cutting it as elegantly as possible, it ups the level of what we are doing because you have this very funky film, but in a way it's all kind of smooth. I don't cut unless it's necessary. CM: Each location in Welcome to New York has a different quality to the sound. How do you accomplish that, Neil? NB: In the prison scenes, I added in a lot of sound, which I got by going around with the guards. I actually had access to prisoners. So a lot of it is fabricated but based on reality. I try to find something hidden in those vérité moments, where there's always some kind of sound in the room that most people would consider a negative sound. It might be a hum or tone, like that buzz going on in the jail scene. I lay in other tones, sounds and groans to bring it out more, giving it a bit of a surreal quality. I also take a lot of things away. Even when in the documentary style — in particular when they were interviewing the maid he assaulted — I like to build up sound and then pull it all away almost like a zoom. I saw that as a great opportunity. I didn't even get the full effect of it until I went to a screening a few weeks ago and it pulled me in an unexpected way. There was more attention and focus on her emotion. I look for those opportunities when there is already something there to enhance. In Abel's films, it seems there's always a good back and forth between these moments that are to me variously cinematic — like driving across the bridge, when I can think of the sound more cinematically — and then those vérité moments. The more reality-based moments bring the cinematic moments further forward. This contrast is what I'm interested in. CM: There's not much of a score in this film. NB: During the first film we did together, Abel said, "Everything is music. The city is music. We can make those horns sound like trumpets. That's what you should be looking for, those moments." And that's what we always try and find and then add to. Sometimes it's there already. Sometimes it's, "That car horn, slow it down. Throw some reverb on there, let's stretch it and make it into something else." I had made a lot of abstract, layered sound, collage-type music, and I understood that anything could be turned into music from working with Richard Foreman's experimental company, the Ontological-Hysteric Theater,