Samuel Pollard

From editing to producing and writing to directing, Samuel Pollard’s experience runs the moviemaking gamut—and that’s just the way he likes it. Though he originally gravitated toward the editing room, after a decade of cutting footage for other directors Pollard decided it was time to move behind the camera. Best known as a frequent collaborator of Spike Lee—both as editor and producer—here Pollard discusses their 15-year relationship, the benefit of a non-fiction background and why he won’t hesitate to put his money where his mouth is.

Jennifer Wood (MM): How do you think the industry has changed from when you first started out? Do you think the opportunities for young people are more plentiful today?

Samuel Pollard (SP): I think a couple of things. In terms of opportunities, it might be more difficult for young people who are attracted to editing to attach themselves to professional editors who are doing television and films. Right now there is such a plethora of material out there that really young people are starting to edit immediately. They don’t have the opportunity to be mentored by a more experienced, older editor like I did.

MM: Editors often talk about the importance of having a really strong mentor. Who were some of the people who mentored you when you were first starting out?

SP: Well, the gentleman that hired me for my first film in 1972, Victor Kanefsky, was probably the most important mentor I had in the business. He was one who, three days out of the week, would make me sit behind him at the Steenbeck in the afternoon and teach me. He would explain to me why he made every cut, what the importance was of going from a medium shot to a close-up, from a master to a long shot, when to use a dissolve, how to use voiceover and how to select a performance. He really taught me so that, by the time I was 25 and cut my first film, I had a wealth of experience.

Another important mentor for me is George Bowers, a feature film editor now in California who edited A League of Their Own, The Good Son and The Stepfather. He was very important to me because when he was an editor in New York I worked as his assistant. Then when he became a director in the early ’80s, before he went back to editing features, I edited two of his features, Body and Soul for Cannon Pictures and a film called Private Resort for TriStar which had, at the time, a very young Johnny Depp and Rob Morrow. And my final major mentor was a documentary filmmaker named Sinclair Bourne, who’s been around for many years.

MM: Do you think that there is a value to learning to cut film today as opposed to going straight to the Avid?

SP: I don’t think there’s a value to cutting film, to tell you the truth. I think the difference is that by cutting film, a young editor like me had the ability to learn how to think. When you were going through the physical process of splicing a picture, it gave you the ability to think about what you were going to do and why.

What’s happened now with the digital medium, because everything can be done so fast, is that people don’t have the tendency to understand that editing is really about what you think—not about what you do physically. It’s really how you think in terms of conceptualizing the way a sequence should unfold, particularly when you’re cutting documentary footage. How the sequel should build structurally—it’s a real thinking process. To me that’s the one downside to digital technology. People are so impatient now and things are on TV so quickly, there’s no opportunity to think.

MM: What is the difference for you then cutting features and documentaries?

SP: The big difference for me is in cutting documentaries—and particularly verité documentaries. As a young editor I was given the responsibility to really direct the material. Nine times out of 10, the producer or director doesn’t stay in the editing room when you’re doing a documentary film; they leave it to you to sort of help build the concept, find the direction and find the story.

With a feature film, most times you’re given a script and you see the dialogue and you basically have to make sure it’s the best performance—the best moment—and make it work. But it’s right there in front of you. I’ve been fortunate to work with Spike Lee on a number of films because he tries different styles and approaches. He’ll do a sequence like you’re watching a documentary, a verité sequence. For example, in Jungle Fever, there’s a sequence when the women are talking about black men. That was shot like a documentary. He didn’t script it, really. So I was able to bring my documentary tools to that scene. It depends on what the director of a narrative film is doing.

MM: You’ve edited both documentary and feature films for Spike Lee. You approach the films differently as an editor, but do you think that he approaches them differently as a director? Does he have a different style of direction from a feature film to a non-fiction one?

SP: In terms of Spike, he’s never different: he’s completely intense. [laughs] Whether it’s narrative or feature, he has his mind on a particular approach that he wants to implement or execute. So no, he’s not different.

MM: How did you first meet Spike Lee?

SP: It was 1988. I was producing two shows for the series Eyes on the Prize in Boston. I got a call from Spike in the summer of 1988—his production manager happened to be a good friend of mine. He was looking for somebody into jazz to cut Mo’ Better Blues. We got together about a month later and I said yes!

MM: What is it about your relationship that keeps bringing you back together?

SP: I am going to say this so you put it in print! [laughs] This guy, to me, is one of the great filmmakers on the globe, and I appreciate what he tries to do. I don’t say that he’s completely successful every time, but I appreciate the challenge of trying to make a story work from Bamboozled. I appreciate that this guy never rests on his laurels and he knows that me and Barry Brown, the other editor who has done a lot of his films, come from a documentary background. We understand the challenge of always trying to make sure you step up to the material. That’s why we still work together.

MM: Now that you’ve been producing and directing films as well, do you think that editing is something you’ll ever give up completely?

SP: No. I still love editing—I love the challenge of editing. I look at these guys who hired me the other day for this reality thing and I think ‘I’m crazy. Why am I going to jump into this?’ But then I think ‘Let me see if I can do it.’