"Gerald McBoing Boing" gives a master class in film editing

Walter Murch is the premier, high-profile American film and sound editor associated with longtime film school colleagues Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas (and in the grand old days American Zoetrope). This is a documentary where Murch talks to us, while the editors playfully manipulate the images a bit sometimes to illustrate his points (jump cuts, sound channel shifts, etc.) and intercut clips from films. They show clips with the dialogue just a tad off to remind us the elements are separate. Murch talks about how he edits "mute" initially to simplify the process.

Murch is a superb elucidator of his art, his talk pungent with interesting comparisons, metaphors, vivid hypotheticals and examples. You hear the methodical craftsman in the calm voice and see the inspired artist in the sampled work. David Ichioka is one of Murch's former assistant editors.

This is about breaking the rules, starting with how Godard's 1960 Breathless used taboo jump cuts, which was like an artist letting brushstrokes show in a painting, Murch says. Murch went to Paris to study at 19, in 1963, right at the height of the New Wave, and "got bitten by the film bug." He came back to study film at USC and combined his new "bug" with his old one for tape and sound editing.

Another rule to break was the one against looking directly into the camera, a taboo much broken to good effect in Apocalypse Now where it makes sense because everything is from Willard's point of view. You invent or reinvent to suit the work, Murch is implying. Thus 5.1 sound (RIGHT /CENTER /SUBWOOFER / LEFT-SURROUND / RIGHT-SURROUND) was invented for Apocalypse Now and Murch reedited sound to fill theater space divided that way. The sound mixer plays a Times Square "shell game," Murch explains: he switches which elements are highlighted among ambient sound, music, and dialogue, bringing only one or two of these to the fore at a time, alternately, because this is clear, while to present the whole package all at once all the time would be a blur to the audience.

Film is a "theater of thought," Murch says. Actors' faces show the passage of thought and emotion to the camera, an effect impossible to create on stage. Blinks of the actor's eyes indicate articulated joints of thought that may be a place to cut.

Murch stands up to edit, because of the energy, and it's like conducting an orchestra or performing surgery or butchering meat, all jobs done standing up. He doesn't say anything about the switch to digital, which might be interesting, but maybe to Murch the transition has been too seamless to mention, one can't say. This is a rich condensed sampling of the Murch wisdom, not an entire treatise.

The 1989 reediting of Orson Welles' Touch of Evil following Welles' 58-page memo to the studio is one of his triumphs; I think that's when I learned who he was and how important his work has been. Likewise the reediting we know as Apocalypse Now Redux with the film riskily but successfully cleaned, a new richer soundtrack, and missing sequences restored.

It's an art form Murch is talking about here, hence his stress on fostering accidental collisions that are better than conscious decisions, that overcome the limitations of the rational.

You will see details of how the Bronx "El" train sounds are used to lead up to Michael's (Pacino's) shooting in a restaurant in The Godfather to avoid music and make the music when it comes more effective.

Music can be overdone, "almost spray-gunned on the film" after it's cut, and Murch is a master of the inspired under-use of music of which that Godfather scene is an example. Another astute collage-ing of music works (to keep it from over-determining, which is "like an athlete taking steroids") as we see in the horse's-head-in-the-bed scene.

Murch talks specifically also about THX 1138, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, and Touch of Evil, classics it's exciting just to dip back into. Also discussed with clips: Minghella's (and the Saul Zaentz Studio's) The Talented Mr. Ripley, The English Patient. The master talks about his early love affair with a tape recorder in the fifties: as a pre-teen, he knew what he wanted to do. They called him "Gerald McBoing Boing" from the animated cartoon character who could open his mouth and emit any sound. The whiz kid is no nerd; he's a brilliantly articulate adult, simply as straightforwardly informative as you could ever want.

The Ichiokas have neatly and appropriately edited Murch's talk. This is a short film (it's only 78 minutes), but it is packed with nuggets of gold any cinephile might want to memorize.

Part of the San Francisco International Film Festival 2007:
Sun, Apr 29 / 04:15 / Castro / MURC29C
Tue, May 1 / 01:00 / Kabuki / MURC01K
Sat, May 5 / 03:30 / PFA / MURC05P

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.