Chris Tellefsen’s New York Story

Seasoned editor looks back on the lessons learned from Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan

by Chris Tellefsen | Published November 19, 2007

In 1988, early in my career, I received a feature script that excited and intrigued me. It was an odd, timeless story about New York debutantes and their escorts which offered a surprising take on the human condition, examining the virtually unexplored phenomenon of downward mobility among the upper class. It asked if privilege could be a curse to ambition and success by telling a story about people with whom we are rarely put in a position to genuinely empathize. This world was alien to me outside of the George Cukor films of Philip Barry plays like Holiday and The Philadelphia Story. The fascinating script for Metropolitan was entirely different.

Its distinctive point of view felt as if it was written from direct experience. It wasn’t the usual depiction of wealthy stiffs versus implicitly virtuous others; the script was about 135 pages long and it read long. It was filled with outrageous philosophical and thinly veiled political speeches spouted by callow youths, in a plot of misguided attraction inspired by the works of Jane Austen.

I met Whit Stillman, the writer and director of Metropolitan, on the main set, a borrowed brownstone on the Upper East Side. There I also met the film’s cinematographer, John Thomas. With his particular knowledge of lighting, Thomas was able to give this Super 16mm film the black, white and gold look Whit was going for, imbuing it with the glamour it needed. When I walked in, a week and a half into filming, they were shooting the “truth or dare” scene. The group of young actors had been culled through an open call in Backstage and from a local girl’s school. They seemed so natural to me—like a group of kids who had been hanging out for years. To achieve this, some recasting had been done after shooting a scene or two. Whit had let a friend play a record producer to disastrous effect, and had clearly miscast one key role. So Chris Eigeman was inserted as “Nick” at the last minute, and was a revelation in the role.

Whit was inexperienced in post-production and came around with books on editing by Edward Dmytryk and Karel Reisz. His eager approach was charming, if not annoying. We theorized for a while and I suggested putting them aside so I could just shape the scenes. The challenge at hand was to make this talky piece “cinematic”—to find rhythm in the words, looks, gestures and atmosphere. It was clear to me that the film had much potential, but when I had a first cut to match the script, the film was running nearly two hours and 45 minutes—every verbose monologue in its origial length was shot entirely as written. So I sat Whit down and told him “Now we start.”

At first, Whit held tightly to the script. As I suggested lifts and cuts, he disagreed with me, at times claiming “You can’t do that—it’s grammatically incorrect!” Frustrated, I suggested asking a handful of trusted friends to view the film “as is.” By the third reel he had to relent. Being a fast learner, Whit snapped into the task, letting me shape the narrative. With his dry, off-kilter sense of humor, I enjoyed working with him. Throughout the process we continued to screen our latest cuts in order to feel how it was playing. Some people responded, others didn’t; the conversational nature of the film would always perplex some people. An assistant I had once worked under responded by saying to me “Maybe you should try cutting exploitation films.”

But we weren’t going to lose faith because of differing tastes, particularly when what was being shaped was so new and original and therefore bound to be challenging.

The editing of Metropolitan stands in contrast to a few subsequent films I have edited, more often studio, star-driven ones where the organic process of discovery and finding a film’s true voice was severely damaged by a slavish response to preview screenings. I have seen several situations where character was gutted out of a piece for reasons not integral to the film or to the best outcome.

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