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Plus, they had to do it while juggling a massive cast ofwell-known starsin supporting roles.
Last summer, I talked to Lame about the awesome process of editingOppenheimer.
People in rooms talking.
And I slammed my hand down and I was like, What?
I would kill to do that.
But Id signed up to editWakanda Forever.
A couple of months later, he let me read the script.
And I just could not stop it was such a page turner.
Ive never read a script so fast.
But on this one, because I was doingWakanda, I didnt go to the shoot.
But wed worked together already, so he let me come on the week after it wrapped.
And then he went to vacation in England for two weeks!
I was just left alone with all the material.
Id never done that before.
But I loved it.
I ended up being able to cut a whole version of the movie because I just powered through it.
One of my best friends actually wrote a book, a fiction book, about Oppenheimer.
I told him I hadnt read the book on purpose.
And he was like, Im so glad.
Nolan does something with editing I find really fascinating.
He does this all throughout.
Can you tell me a little bit about the thinking behind that?Its all very much planned.
Hes open to me trying my version of it or how I imagine it.
I made one suggestion to move a scene.
There was one small scene, we couldnt figure out where it went.
At one point I came up with an idea to put it somewhere.
Then we all watched it and I was like, I dont know.
And hes like, Thatsexactlywhere it should go.
Its hard to do that kind of thing with his scripts theyre so planned out.
It was the second courtroom scene with Edward Teller, Benny Safdies character.
And Teller was one of the later characters, because he always worked great.
Then we realized,Oh, he could be even better.
So we did a Teller pass, and we were trying to figure out how to really milk that.
Was this when Teller goes into that hearing room where Oppenheimers being interrogated?
Because his betrayal is split in two.
Its kind of the way the whole movie is.
There are so many things that are not explained until the end, or not revealed until the end.
Like a series of nested mysteries.
Thats the other great thing about his movies.
Even the tenth time I watchedOppenheimer, I would notice little things.
Oh, that connects back to that.
Its all in there.
And timing wise, how long can the audience sustain until we give them something else?
Hes always thinking about the audience.
How do we get to that scene sooner?
I love the breakup story between Matt Damon and Cillian Murphys characters.
Its just so heartbreaking.
And then Damons the one thatdoesntbetray him in the end, which is kind of a twist too.
Thats the guy that could have totally fucked him.
But he was always straight up with him.
You mentioned yourself going through different passes on individual characters.
Tellers a good example.
He always played great.
People always loved that character.
He just took on other dimensions for people.
He wasnt just a character.
You could do so many different versions because theres just so much amazing material.
But we worked on shaping Strauss and making sure he wasnt too villainous too soon.
I always wanted to push it even more.
I feel so bad for Strauss at the end.
Which was actually hard for Chris and me, because it can make you complacent.
You mentioned that youd screen the film every Friday while you were working on it, for different people.
We have to shorten it!
But it was great to hear people say that.
Hes watching everyone cheering, but we can only hear his breathing.
And then the sound of the crowd comes belatedly, as this explosive roar.
That was fascinating, to mirror the way those two scenes were edited.
Was it like that in the script?It was definitely similar to that in the script.
But yeah, the idea was always to make those two scenes feel similar.
How to make that come across?
With Chris, sound was the key.
The idea was always to do that kind of explosion after the crowd.
Its funny when things are written out and it seems so simple to imitate whats written out.
It isnt, actually.
The Trinity scene came together really, really easily, partly because Chris just had that in his head.
Can you tell me about working with the music?
Ludwig and he had worked for a little bit on some pieces prior to when I showed up.
But Emma suffered through it.
And then Ludwig started feeding us more stuff.
The way that Chris and Ludwig work is so organic and allows for so much experimentation.
Ludwig lives down the street and he just comes over and everything feels so mom-and-pop in that way.
We never make him write to picture or anything.
He just comes up with these ideas, and then we put them in and try them out.
What was the hardest scene to edit for you?You know what scene?
Its a very small scene.
When he is saying, Someday people will look back on your time here …
There was a minute where I was like, Maybe we should cut this scene.
And Chris was like, Maybe.
It never really fit well.
Him seeing everyones faces, and we just let what he says hang in the air.
And then it became instrumental in that section.
Chris would always joke, Remember when you wanted to cut this scene?
Then the Casey Affleck scene.
Then, as we shortened it, I was like, I dont know.
Its not as good.
Obviously it comes at a point in the movie where you really cant spend too much time there.
It was interesting to keep revisiting, because youre supposed to be nervous.
He might be involved in Jean Tatlocks death.
He represents the worst part of the government.
Its hard when good actors have to pretend theyre bad actors.
But its not necessarily meant to be, Oh, yeah, somebody killed her.
More like, Well, somebody might have killed her.
Its a delicate balance to suggest that visually without necessarily asserting it as a fact.Exactly.
And no one knows to this day.
I think Oppenheimer blamed himself for her death either way.
Even if someone killed her or she killed herself, he feels like its his fault.
And I love the idea that hes not absolved in either version.
He cant even find his way out in the fictitious version.
In this scene, hes actually younger.
He became obsessed with them and was always trying to catch them and film them.
I think a lot of what you see is Chris throwing water into the water and making the ripples.
So he became obsessed.
And the minute we put it at the beginning of the film, it worked so perfectly.
Everyone that we showed early on really grabbed on to that right away.
It made them think back to him as a young man.
And the ripples are … Well, theres a lot of those in the film.
Or droplets on glass.
Science to him is beauty and art and poetry.
I didnt know how rich his life was with all of those things.
Thats how he came into science.
Its depressing and heartbreaking.
It makes me emotional to even talk about it.
