Every Film Is A Puzzle Really, From

There Are Two Kinds Of Filmmaking: Hitchcock's (the Film Is Complete In The Director's Mind) And Coppola's (which Thrives On Process). For Hitchcock, Any Variation From The Complete Internal Idea Is Seen As A Defect. The Perfection Already Exists. Coppola's Approach Is To Harvest The Random Elements That The Process Throws Up, Things That Were Not In His Mind When He Began.

The Conversation' Was The First Film I Edited On A Flatbed Machine - A Kem Editing Machine. I've Been Using Final Cut Or The Avid For 12 Years Now, So I Was Interested In Looking At This Film And Seeing If I Could Tell If It Had Been Edited The Old Way.

Every Film Is Hard Work, And A Few Lucky People Do Get Oscars For What They Do, And It's Recognition For All That Hard Work On A Certain Level. If You Didn't Do The Hard Work, You Wouldn't Be Standing There. On The Other Hand, People Do A Lot Of Hard Work And Don't Get Oscars, So It's A Mixture Of Glory And Injustice At The Same Time.

This Applies To Many Film Jobs, Not Just Editing: Half The Job Is Doing The Job, And The Other Half Is Finding Ways To Get Along With People And Tuning Yourself In To The Delicacy Of The Situation.

Looking At A First Assembly Is Kind Of Like Looking At An Overgrown Garden. You Can't Just Wade In With A Weed Whacker; You Don't Yet Know Where The Stems Of The Flowers Are.