Catherine Zeta-Jones: Chicago

Depending on how you look at it, scoring the gig as editor on Rob Marshall's Chicago didn't come easily to Martin Walsh. "I was actually on a boat halfway across the Atlantic when I learned there might be a chance of me doing Chicago," he recalls. "I was sailing from the Canary Islands to St. Lucia. I phoned home to let everyone know we hadn't sunk yet and my wife told me my agent in LA needed to speak to me. It kind of ruined the trip, really. The rest of the way I was constantly interrupted by mad calls and questions. 'How can we get a script to you—can we e-mail it to the boat?' was my favorite.

Several months and his first Oscar nomination later, Martin Walsh may not consider an interrupted vacation such a high price. Here, he discusses the challenges—and comedy—of cutting a musical and catching Richard Gere with his pants down.

Jennifer Wood (MM): Especially on a film with this much constant motion, I know there's a mindboggling array of editorial decisions. What do you believe was the biggest challenge for you on Chicago?

Martin Walsh (MW): Just keeping it moving! The dance sequences were mostly standalone in the script and we found that when we stopped for people to talk, the pace dropped. Rob had always used His Girl Friday as a benchmark for the kind of pace he wanted, so we started sliding pieces of dialogue further and further into the numbers. I guess the best example of this is "Good to Mama," Latifah's introduction to the story. What began as a song with a chunk of dialogue in the middle became a kind of patchwork of lyrics and dialogue woven into each other. Sounds easy, but we were dealing with a musical structure, which would have sounded horrible had it not been done right. I think we got it there. Once we'd gotten through the first three songs, we were on a roll. Ha! It only took months.

MM: The "musical" is one genre that is very rarely done successfully anymore in film, with Chicago being one of the recent exceptions. Did you reference any other films with Rob Marshall before (during or after) going through the material?

MW: We've moved on so much in the last decade or so in terms of pace and technique, so there really wasn't much point in my looking back at anything past Moulin Rouge, which I'm not a big fan of as a movie. I've no idea what Rob watched when he got home at night, but I will confess to sneaking a look at Cabaret and All That Jazz a couple of times. Most of the other stuff is pretty old fashioned in its storytelling technique. You know, people suddenly bursting into song, which is what they did in the stage version.

By the way, All That Jazz (which was the last musical to win a Best Editing Oscar) was one of the most influential films on me as a fledgling editor. Until Fosse, nobody really worried too much about transitions. Rob really worked hard in the planning and shooting of his transitions, and almost all of them survived.

MM: In total, how much footage did you have to go through? How long did the editing process of the film take?

MW: Fucking miles! I must have sat through two or three hours of dailies every day for three months, so you can work it out for yourself. We shot with at least two cameras and always four on the numbers. I've never really understood why. By the time you get to cameras three and four, the shots are usually of camera two's arse. I guess it's a way of getting maximum coverage, which is lovely for the boys and girls on set, but then they don't have to sit through several miles of out of focus wobblyvision before bed.

As a result, editing takes a long time because you've got to watch it all again to prove to the director that you're not lying and there really wasn't a usable frame on that take on that particular camera. Sorry, did I just go off on a rant? Drives me mad.

Seriously though, the editing process was longer than normal—at least in my experience—simply because of the amount of footage and the nature of the process. We'd literally break down each song into a couple of bars at a time and look at all the material pertaining to those two bars. You couldn't take in much more than that before you forgot who you were. We'd work on that bit until we liked it, or lost the will to live, and then move on to the next.

MM: So obviously the editing of this film was very different from all your previous work?

MW: Totally. Nothing before has been as intense and concentrated; it's a completely different kind of filmmaking. There was so much to look for in every frame. Rob would point out that in take three, the girl fourth from the left was late on her step. We'd search around for something better, another angle, a different take of the same angle. If we couldn't find anything else we'd try slipping the shot a frame or two, improving her sync. It's one of the reasons the film is so impressive from an editorial point of view. It's so precise. Often Rob and I would disagree on the timing of a cut. On the beat? Just ahead? Just behind? Every single cut was examined with equal scrutiny until we were both happy. And that's just the musical sequences! Cutting a dialogue picture will be sooo easy.

MM: Did Rob's background as a choreographer help in keeping the material more manageable? The feeling of the movie is so quick-paced and full of energy; what was the atmosphere in the editing room?

MW: You must be kidding. See my answer above. Rob's a great choreographer, but he hadn't really made a film before so there was much prevaricating. "Frame fucking," we call it here. A clever person could probably calculate the number of possible combinations of images there could be. I think we exhausted most of them. There was a lot at stake.

Luckily I had a fantastic support group in my fellow travelers Dave Rogow, Andy Weisblum and Eddie Nichols, who kept it as light as possible even when the pressure was on. And just being in New York made up for a lot. Eddie always made an extra effort to make us all fatter than we already were by providing sweet, sticky things at around four in the afternoon. Or was it to keep the energy up?

MM: One can only imagine the number of outtakes you came across in the editing room. What was the most memorable piece of footage you recall from the editing room?

MW: Late one night I was watching dailies and eating sushi and Richard Gere's underpants fell down before he got to pull them off.

MM: What are you working on now?

MW: I start Thunderbirds in a couple of weeks at Pinewood Studios here in sunny England. It's a big live action version of the ´70s puppet show. Lots of visual effects, rockets and stuff. Minute after minute of computer generated sequences I just have to slot in and put some music on, right? And no playback and no dancing! Then I want to do a western, or cowboy film as we called them when I was a kid. A musical, a western and a big action picture: film editor nirvana. Then I can sell up and go sailing.

Filmography for Martin Walsh
Chicago (2002)
Iris (2001)
Cocozz's Way (2001)
Bridget Jones's Diary (2001)
Whatever Happened to Harold Smith? (1999)
Mansfield Park (1999)
Hilary and Jackie (1998)
The Mighty (1998)
Welcome to Woop Woop (1997)
Roseanna's Grave (1997)
Feeling Minnesota (1996)
Hackers (1995)
Funny Bones (1995)
Backbeat (1993)
Bad Behaviour (1993)
Wild West (1992)
Hear My Song (1991)
The Krays (1990)
Courage Mountain (1989)
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (1988)
Sacred Hearts (1985)