Director And Editor Chemistry Key To A Film's Success

When Tony Gilroy's mother heard that he was going to have his younger brother John edit his directorial debut, "Michael Clayton," she was worried her boys would clash.

It wasn't an unreasonable fear. Any two people locked in a small space for weeks on end struggling to transform hours and hours of raw footage into a concise, entertaining work of art are bound to have conflicts. When those two people are brothers with a history of sibling rivalry ("Tony is taller," John says; "But Johnny can kick my ass," Tony admits), the potential for disagreement is exponentially higher.

But Tony, who received Oscar nominations for writing and directing the George Clooney legal thriller, found that their differences produced not violence but a better film.

"It took about three days to figure out that there'd be a kind of push-me, pull-you (dynamic)," he says.

"I would always be pulling to not explain things and turning the thermostat down, and Johnny would always be pushing to turn it up, and the by-product of that would be room temperature. And we were both really happy with where we were going to land."

"It's very good to see different perspectives," concurs director Marc Forster, who has worked with editor Matt Chesse on six films, including 2007's "The Kite Runner," 2004's "Finding Neverland" (which earned Chesse an Oscar nod) and 2001's "Monster's Ball." "Matt and I have a very strong connection and love for cinema and a love for similar movies, but he sometimes sees things differently than I do. My attention span is a little shorter than his. Sometimes he likes to let it breathe a little more than I do."

They are reteaming a seventh time for MGM/Sony's upcoming James Bond film.

Long-standing editor-director relationships like the one between Forster and Chesse are not uncommon: Editor Joel Cox has worked with Clint Eastwood for more than 30 years, and Thelma Schoonmaker has been Martin Scorsese's go-to editor since 1980's "Raging Bull." And brothers Joel and Ethan Coen have been collaborating for decades under the moniker "Roderick Jaynes," an Oscar nominee for "No Country For Old Men."

"I think it's a trust-based relationship," says Chesse of the editor-director union. "You see all the warts and all the stuff that nobody gets to see, and you shape it into something that hopefully leaves people without any doubt of the director's vision."

Director David Cronenberg and editor Ronald Sanders have worked together since 1979's "Fast Company." On their latest film, "Eastern Promises," they followed the same pattern they have developed working on such films as 1986's "The Fly" and 2005's "A History of Violence."

During the shoot in London, Cronenberg did not look at any footage, except for the occasional dailies, which he finds less necessary today with instant on-set video playback. In the meantime, Sanders cut together an assembly of the film in proper narrative order that he screened for Cronenberg two weeks after principal photography wrapped. Cronenberg then joined Sanders in the cutting room to polish the edit.

"I feel that the only shot I've got at being fairly objective is to be surprised by my own movie," says Cronenberg of his willful ignorance of the first edit.

"It comes from my first movie -- (1975's) 'Shivers' -- that Ivan Reitman produced. I was basically sitting in the editing room as we were shooting, editing it with the editor. We had a screening, and nothing worked. But Ivan said, 'It's not so bad. You just do a little of this, you take a little of that and do that.' I thought, 'I want to be where he is, in his objectivity, rather than so intimately involved with every cut and every shot that I can't see the forest for the trees."'

On "Promises," he and Cronenberg were "in the zone," according to Sanders. "We weren't trying to force anything or fix anything." Easiest of all was the film's infamous bathhouse scene, in which a naked Nikolai (Oscar nominee Viggo Mortensen) fights two Russian thugs to the death.

"I did it in a few hours one afternoon," Sanders says. "I put all the masters together -- end to end -- so I could see where it was all going, and I used that as a template. It had the stuff that it needed, so it told me what to do."

"He nailed it so perfectly that I couldn't improve it by one frame," Cronenberg says.

Michael Clayton Movie Review

Tony Gilroy, the screenwriter responsible for the Bourne movies, makes his feature film directorial debut with the intense and riveting drama, Michael Clayton. Gilroy does a fantastic job of creatively exposing the shady underbelly of the corporate world in his engrossing rookie directing effort. George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson and Tilda Swinton deliver award-worthy performances in this conspiracy thriller that takes full advantage of the current political climate to lay out a compelling and hauntingly realistic tale.

The Story

Michael Clayton (Clooney) is the guy you turn to when you need things fixed or hushed up in a hurry. Clayton weaves his magic behind the scenes at the huge law firm of Kenner, Bach & Leeden where he makes anything that could damage any of the firm’s clients simply fade away.

Clayton hides well the fact thats he’s begun to feel repulsed by what his job entails. And while he’d just as soon tell these scummy corporate bigwigs where to go, he continues performing the job the firm expects of him while loathing himself for doing it. His displeasure is just barely contained beneath the surface when he’s called out of a poker game to take care of a hit-and-run accident. Arriving at the driver’s home, Clayton reels off the client’s options while obviously struggling to hide his distain for the man who clearly believes he’s entitled to special treatment due to his connections -- and money.

But that’s just the set-up for the main story of Michael Clayton which is the potential settlement of a $3 billion class-action suit that’s been dragging on for half a dozen years. The firm’s lead litigator assigned to the case, Arthur Edens (Wilkinson), has snapped. Edens has stopped taking his manic-depressive meds, as evidenced by a bizarre strip tease he does while in the middle of a deposition. Edens has come to the conclusion that the class-action suit against his client, the agrochemical giant U/North, has merit. Hundreds of people have died as a result of using weed killer from U/North, and Edens believes U/North should be held accountable.



Clayton’s called upon to rein in Edens, a man he respects, admires, and knows well. At the same time as Clayton’s assigned to watch over Edens, a pair of ‘investigators’ are hired by Karen Crowder (Swinton), the in-house lawyer for U/North and one of the most power-hungry beasts in the corporate jungle. Unfortunately for Clayton, Edens has become a man obsessed with getting the truth told – damn the consequences.
The Cast

Let’s face it. To say George Clooney is aging gracefully is a gross understatement of facts. The man appears to be eternally, youthfully handsome, even with grey streaks and a few wrinkles. However in Michael Clayton, Clooney disguises the boyish charm that works so well for him in so many different films behind the mask of a man resigned to the fact he’s basically sold his soul to the devil.

Tom Wilkinson spouts crazy gibberish as he passionately renounces the legal firm he’s dedicated his adult years to serving. Every little bit of torment Wilkinson feels as a lawyer who’s representing the wrong side of a lawsuit is clearly evident on his face and in his voice. Wilkinson delivers an amazingly powerful performance and one that sticks with you long after the credits roll. Swinton’s equally as mesmerizing as a woman you wouldn’t want to cross ever in life.


The Bottom Line

Michael Clayton may be his first film as a director, but here’s hoping it’s not Gilroy’s last. As a director, Gilroy has shown great skill and restraint in being able to patiently allow his story to unfold, without drawing things out or rushing the plot along. Gilroy also doesn’t play down to his audience. He assumes we’ll figure things out as the film moves along, and he’s correct in that assumption because he’s done a great job of crafting an intelligent script and then handing it over to actors who allow themselves to be completely absorbed in their characters. It’s a dialogue-heavy film and some of the scenes might have played out as too wordy had they not been delivered by actors of Wilkinson, Clooney and Swinton's talent.

The fall has become synonymous with serious George Clooney films. Of the lot – Syriana, The Good German, Good Night, and Good Luck – Michael Clayton is the best of the bunch. Fully fleshed-out characters, dynamic performances, and a compelling story add up to a smart must-see thriller.

GRADE: A-

Michael Clayton was directed by Tony Gilroy and is rated R for language including some sexual dialogue