Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/462877
48 CINEMONTAGE / WINTER 2015 in the room." "We were concerned," Henke concedes. "Had we made one of the most evil men on the planet too likable? He is a horrible person, but in our movie, we wanted him to be the butt of jokes." The editors say they struck a balance in cutting the film, to make the Kim character "funny, but to also look like the bad guy he is," Henke says. It is, after all, just a comedy. Stressing that point, Baker, posting again on the I am the Union Facebook page Christmas Eve, encouraged fellow Guild members to "Go out and see The Interview in a theatre full of people. Laughter is contagious." "I encouraged people to see it in theatres because that's how we crafted the film," the editor offers, explaining that test screenings recorded the audience reaction, which was synched to the picture edit. "We used the laugh track so we could boost laughs and get a laugh roll going. And if people aren't laughing, we tighten the pace of it." Coincidentally, the 2004 film Team America: World Police, with a cast of puppets, mocked Kim Jong-il, the father of the current North Korean dictator, and included a song with the lyrics "we're gonna need a montage." And Baker and Henke definitely needed several cleverly edited montages to get The Interview down to a 112-minute running time. "The travel montage, the trip to China, was beautiful and fun to cut," says Henke. "That whole montage is a setup to a joke. TV producer Aaron Rappaport [Rogen] travels all that way for a two-minute meeting and speech" with the North Korean General Sook (Diana Bang). In all of Rogen's movies there is a party montage, which originally was a full day's worth of footage, according to Baker. The film's additional editor Michael Webber — Baker's assistant since Observe and Report in 2009 — had the idea to use every shot and angle in a Evan Henke. This grim chapter in Hollywood history ensued in December, when Sony Pictures Entertainment made the last-minute and unprecedented announcement to pull the film from theatrical release.