Filmed in one of the most ascetic hermitages in the world, the Grand Chartreuse monastery located in the French Alps, Into Great Silence enters and documents a world so different from our hyperkinetic, tech-driven, stimulus and spectacle-oriented society that, for some, it may as well be a trip to Mars. Although, like Mars, the world of the Carthusian Order is silent, still, and somewhat alien, that world slowly, yet hypnotically seeps into our consciousness. Image and sound—though sound more powerfully than image, as I will discuss below—enter where most of us would dare not go: the realm of silence.

As if God is present in all the small things, we see snowflakes fall silently, flames flicker in the dark, and dust particles float aimlessly on rays of golden sunlight entering a window. A monk prays with devotion while winter establishes its austere dominion outside. Slowly, a completely different sense of time emerges, one which is confident yet almost indiscernible, and can be experienced, it seems, only by leading a quiet life. Throughout the film, we see the simple and contemplative life led by the Carthusian Order, a life of prayer, meditation and reflection; even eating, sleeping, studying and manual labor are carried out in almost complete silence and solitude. As the seasons turn, the monks live their serene, hermetically sealed lives attuned to a universal rhythm that is radically different from what we know. Our version of time, an artfully contrived social convention, feels too frequently like a frantic countdown dictating daily priorities which cannot be ignored without consequence—missed deadlines, pangs of guilt or the creeping feeling that we may not ever have all the time we need to do all we had hoped. However, in the film, and it seems in the monastery itself, time moves slowly and life is not lived in haste. Every action, even the most routine or obligatory task, is undertaken with quiet purpose, so that the simple act of washing a plate, cutting firewood, or making a new robe takes on profound meaning.

“As the seasons turn, the monks live their serene, hermetically sealed lives attuned to a universal rhythm that is radically different from what we know. Our version of time, an artfully contrived social convention, feels too frequently like a frantic countdown dictating daily priorities which cannot be ignored without consequence—missed deadlines, pangs of guilt or the creeping feeling that we may not ever have all the time we need to do all we had hoped. However, in the film, and it seems in the monastery itself, time moves slowly and life is not lived in haste. Every action, even the most routine or obligatory task, is undertaken with quiet purpose, so that the simple act of washing a plate, cutting firewood, or making a new robe takes on profound meaning.”

That meaning is what the monks who live at the Grand Chartreuse seek. Following the dictum that “anyone who does not give up all he has cannot be my disciple,” the monks who belong to this nine-hundred year old monastery have taken a lifelong vow of silence and poverty so that they may contemplate and seek God in their daily lives. Although they are a community, the monks spend most of their time alone in small, Spartan cells, leaving their rooms only at designated times for prayer services, liturgical chanting, or Sunday (and feast day) meals eaten together but in silence. Once a week, the monks take an afternoon walk during which they may speak. Once a year, they are allowed a visit by families left behind in the outside world. What seems like a strict, regimented life—one that no doubt requires great sacrifice and discipline—appears to have its own sense of freedom because it is lived consciously in a perpetual, but silent, present moment.

But it is a misconception to think that, even in a place so removed as the Chartreuse, the moment is lived in pure silence. Like all things, silence is relative. Anyone who has ever meditated knows that when you quiet your surroundings and still your mind, a whole new world of sound emerges of which you were heretofore unaware: a bird chirping in the distance, the rustling of leaves as the breeze blows through the trees, the whirring of a passing car; then there are internal sounds of your body—gastric processes, rhythmic breathing and pulsing heartbeats. Although the monastery contains far fewer extraneous sounds than our world, the ones that exist are meaningful because they are caused by purposeful action. When a monk writes in a notebook or saws a piece of firewood, the by-product of his action is sound. Yet far from being disruptive to the overall mood of silence, sound in the film reveals a world of depth that seems more powerful than the visuals. While what we see is consistent and repetitive, sound made when a monk rings a bell or moves his hand across a piece of fabric as he cuts it, strikes through the surrounding silence as if we are hearing it for the first time. Due to the absence of audio elements like music, sound design or dialogue, sound is experienced in a way that is organic and pure—not the way it would sound in a controlled environment like a studio but in life under real acoustic conditions. The result, for the viewer and I would venture to guess for the monks as well, is an experience of sound as an object worthy of reflection itself.

Philip Groning, the director, stated that he intended the film to be a meditation. Rather than simply depict a monastery, he sought to have the film become one by using “silence,” “repetition” and “rhythm.” The use of silence alone is so powerful that, for me, it achieves his objective. While an ordinary film has layers of sound and story, both of which absorb the mind, Into Great Silence has neither, thereby allowing a direct contemplation of the subject matter through sound and image. Lacking a story, plot or drama to follow, I began to think about the meaning of the monks’ actions, the reasons why they perform certain rituals repeatedly, and how they are still a part of the greater world despite being sequestered and hidden in a monastery. For two hours and forty-nine minutes, I almost felt like I was in the monastery myself, living with the monks, together yet alone, honoring, in solitude and silence, a larger, slower, more profound sense of time.

While the repetition of imagery never bothered me—after all, the monks do live a limited and regimented life—the filmmaker’s choice of repeating title cards with religious dicta did not work. The first two times the dictum “anyone who does not give up all he has cannot be my disciple” were shown onscreen, they were meaningful because the text provided insight into the monks’ austere lives. Though, as the film progressed, the third, fourth and fifth repetitions of that phrase lost meaning because none of the images that preceded or came after the title card related to the aphorism. Moreover, the repetition of this text, along with several other phrases, did not help me better appreciate the monks’ repetitive, ritual-oriented lives; in fact, it began to detract from my experience of contemplation and communion with the subject. Although many of the title cards were initially informative and useful as a formal device, unnecessary repetition diminished the power and purpose of a good idea.

Similarly, I found the editing choppy, sometimes disorienting and generally lacking in rhythm. While the film succeeds in conveying a different sense of time, the episodic moments captured on film are often ended abruptly and no visual explanation is offered. For example, a monk who is a gardener at one point siphons water into a tube at a creek in the forest. He then connects this to another tube. Rather than showing us where that second tube may lead or what its purpose might be—is the monk bringing water to irrigate the garden or taking it to the monastery itself which has no running water?—the episode simply ends there and moves on to the next. While an explanation of monastic life is obviously not the documentary’s intention, the lack of simple establishing or reverse shots that would show us the purpose of an action are glaring omissions.

In a similar vein, I frequently felt that many shots were too short and others put together awkwardly. For example, when individual monks are introduced in the film, it is always after a title card and three at a time, with each monk looking into the camera, one after another. The pattern of introducing the monks in this way not only became predictable, but also proved to be dissatisfying. With so few opportunities to look directly at a monk’s face and see into his eyes, I wanted to gaze at each person for far longer than he was onscreen. One would think, with these more intimate views, the shot would naturally run long since it’s the only chance the film gives you to meditate on the actual person, rather than on his anonymous actions. Unfortunately, the shots are not very long and, coming in successions of three, merely condition you to expect the shot pattern rather than allow communion with each individual monk, which I believe is the intention.

“At times fluid, at times rough, the film lacks a cohesive pace and ultimately offers, not a tranquil journey, but a choppy ride…And yet, despite its shortcomings, this film must be celebrated for its intimate exploration of a place many of us will never know. That place is not simply the Grand Chartreuse monastery but the abode of silence we carry within ourselves yet seldom hear because the noise of our world is deafening.”

Likewise, various sequences of monastery establishing shots seem to lack rhythm in the way they are constructed. The length of individual shots often feels arbitrary: some are too short, others too long. More than once I noticed that a shot was unnecessarily repeated, usually from a dramatically different angle, thereby causing a jarring effect. Since these particular shots had no subject except for an empty hallway, I wondered if they were mistakes or if the editor (in this case, the filmmaker himself) was not very experienced. The result of these sequences is that they do not facilitate a smooth narrative flow, one that would have done much to facilitate the kind of meditative state the director wanted to induce. At times fluid, at times rough, the film lacks a cohesive pace and ultimately offers, not a tranquil journey, but a choppy ride. In my opinion, if Into Great Silence has one major flaw it’s the editing. I feel like a big opportunity was missed to craft a work of art, one that would have had its own unique and beautiful sense of rhythm, and would have provided not only a rare window into an insular world, but also succeeded as a profound meditation on time.

And yet, despite its shortcomings, this film must be celebrated for its intimate exploration of a place many of us will never know. That place is not simply the Grand Chartreuse monastery but the abode of silence we carry within ourselves yet seldom hear because the noise of our world is deafening.

“Ostensibly about “[a]n uncompromising, visionary architect [who] struggles to maintain his integrity and individualism despite personal, professional and economic pressures to conform to popular standards” according to a logline, the 1949 film of The Fountainhead is, in fact, a stiff, wooden enterprise with characters so caricatured that you can practically see Ayn Rand speaking through their lips.”

Ostensibly about “[a]n uncompromising, visionary architect [who] struggles to maintain his integrity and individualism despite personal, professional and economic pressures to conform to popular standards” according to a logline, the 1949 film of The Fountainhead is, in fact, a stiff, wooden enterprise with characters so caricatured that you can practically see Ayn Rand speaking through their lips. Since she wrote the screenplay, I have no one else to blame for the melodramatic writing, which comes off more comical (unintentionally) than serious, and more cumbersome than fluid. As I’m sure is the case in the novel, characters are representative of “types” thrown together in the same universe to illustrate her philosophy of Objectivism, which, in her own words, is “the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”

The “heroic being” in the movie, architect Howard Roark, is played by a horribly miscast Gary Cooper. A Hollywood screen legend known for his rugged, cowboy looks and understated style of acting, Cooper’s stoic performance seems completely at odds with the passion required by the character. Roark, who literally fights the entire architecture establishment, turns down job after job, despite dire financial circumstances, because clients want him to design public pleasing buildings in an art-deco style devoid of individualism. Believing fervently that his architectural designs are an individual expression that must be accepted and built as intended, or else rejected outright (which they are in the early part of the film), Roark would rather perform back breaking manual labor excavating concrete from a quarry (which he does) than compromise his artistic vision.

While a person like Roark, in real life, would require a tremendous amount of passion (as well as a pretty large pair of cojones) to fight an entire profession, Gary Cooper’s delivery of even the most incendiary line is so restrained that if it weren’t for his powerful screen presence, one might easily find it laughable. Add to that the fact that we are supposed to believe that middle-aged Cooper is a college age architecture student at the beginning of the film and then subsequently an architect in his early to mid 20s, and the film borders on the incredulous, not to mention comedic.

But, perhaps, looking at it from another angle, the problem is not Gary Cooper’s acting, since he’s delivered a number of fine performances, most notably as Marshall Will Kane in High Noon and as Peter Ibbetson in the lesser known, eponymous 1935 film. The problem, I suspect, is Rand’s overly melodramatic writing. When dialogue is contrived, the acting suffers because actors have a difficult time connecting with the words and delivering their lines. As the old theater adage goes, if it’s not on the page, it’s not on the stage. Yet, given his experience and in light of what I’ve seen of his better performances, I’m inclined to speculate that Gary Cooper may have recognized the danger in playing the character like he’s written, with passion and fire, because taking the melodrama literally could have pushed the film over the top into a full-blown farce. Perhaps, then, he wisely chose to play against character, to underplay it rather than embody Roark with gusto. Either way, his character comes off bland and humorless, and Rand’s faulty writing is pretty evident.

If Cooper’s acting is at one end of the spectrum, then Patricia Neal’s is at the other. Playing his love interest, the mysterious, angst-ridden Dominique Francon, she gives a performance that, though outrightly laughable at times (due again to melodramatic writing helped along by a melodramatic score), has the color of alienation and the haughty air of a spoiled girl, or an ennui-soaked princess. A pessimist and a paradox, Dominique destroys what she loves because she does not want the object of her love “to be part of a world in which beauty, greatness and genius have no chance.” Sexually repressed but radiating a magnetic sexuality, she is the kind of woman no man can possess, yet when she herself can’t possess the man she wants, Roark, she takes it as a grave offense. In a famous scene that some liken to rape, she comes onto Roark by running away, causing him to pursue and take her by force, which was no doubt her intention. In parts of Neal’s portrayal, I see a precursor to Monica Viitti’s erratic and compelling performances in several great Micaelangelo Antonioni films, namely The Eclipse but especially Red Desert. And yet Neal’s performance suffers too from a lack of connection to the words; her facial expressions are sometimes blank and make you wonder if it’s vacuousness she wants to convey, or if she’s simply uncertain about what to emote.

“While the film comes close to making an admirable statement about resisting conformity and expressing your individuality through art, and of never giving up in your struggle to do so, in the end Rand’s heavy moralizing comes down like a sledgehammer.”

Perhaps my biggest problem with The Fountainhead is that Rand constructs a black and white universe to prove her point, a place where extremes are the only choices, where there’s never a middle way and no possibility of compromise. It’s either the client’s way or Roark’s, it’s either architecture or drilling granite, it’s either Roark give up architecture for his love of Dominique (which, as a bona fide Randian “heroic being,” I can assure you he does not) or he give her up instead. Virtually every scenario in the film is set up as a false dilemma so that the character has no choice but to be driven toward his own happiness, or face an alternative that is the very antithesis of his raison d’etre. While the film comes close to making an admirable statement about resisting conformity and expressing your individuality through art, and of never giving up in your struggle to do so, in the end Rand’s heavy moralizing comes down like a sledgehammer. When Roark, in what would today be called an act of “terrorism,” blows up a public housing project he designed because it was altered against his will and he was powerless to stop construction, he is brought before a court of law. In the climax of the film, Roark defends himself in a long, expository speech that sums up Rand’s philosophy and, of course, leads to his acquittal while simultaneously turning around public opinion that was rabidly against him.

Lest I beat up the film a little too much, I will say that King Vidor’s direction, Robert Burks’ cinematography, and David Weisbart’s editing make for visually pleasurable and easy viewing, as they should considering that all three were seasoned studio professionals. (Robert Burks photographed a number of Hitchcock films, including Rear Window and Vertigo, and David Weisbart cut Mildred Pierce and Dark Passage.) Raymond Massey and Robert Douglas, as billionaire newspaper mogul Gail Wynand and the delectably scheming, architecture critic Ellsworth M. Toohey respectively, are excellent. And Ayn Rand’s screenplay, despite its egregious faults, is well-plotted and has a clear three-act structure that any average moviegoer could follow.

In the end, though I obviously do not enthusiastically recommend this film, I’m glad I watched it. 114 minutes saved me the trouble of reading 752 pages I’d never get through, and I instantly got the jist of Ayn Rand’s philosophy: Never compromise, never give up, and always pursue your own rational self-interest and happiness as your own moral obligation–even if it might cause the unintentional suffering of others, be it one’s lover, the public good or the planet.

The narrative begins with the Watergate burglary, its connection to the White House, and the revelation of Nixon’s secret tapes–which catalog every conversation that ever took place in his office. As we see a psychologically unraveling Nixon listening to one particular tape, the camera ventures into the heart of the tape recorder–with wheels and gears turning ominously–and we come to understand the real significance of the tapes: More than just evidence, they are a testament to Nixon’s very existence. They are also a formal device the film uses to examine his life and memories.

Erratically traversing time and space, from the present moment to his childhood, political rise, and a complicated retelling of events leading up to Watergate, the first hour two hours of the film are tiresome and sometimes confusing. Evocative of JFK in its visual storytelling, replete with repetitive and, at times, unnecessary and unmotivated changes in film stock and color, the narrative presents a disjointed portrait of Nixon’s early life and career. Because the chronology seems haphazard, and memories triggered for seemingly no important reason other than what I’m guessing is a structural need to present them early in the film, the performances suffer. The film’s style–which was interesting when used in JFK because the story of the assassination is one of conjecture and contradiction–draws attention to itself at the expense of the story and the acting. It’s not until you get into the third hour that Nixon finally begins to live and breathe.

Largely due to Anthony Hopkins’ brilliant performance–at turns powerful, uncompromising and firm, yet simultaneously riddled with self-pity, nostalgia and grave self-doubt–Richard Nixon emerges as a complex, driven but ultimately flawed character. Hopkins, who prepared for his role by watching every available videotape of Nixon’s public speeches repeatedly, has the mannerisms down pat, including the awkward two-armed victory salute. Capturing more than just Nixon’s idiosyncrasies, Hopkins conveys the man’s tortured soul: Though not particularly good looking, athletically talented, or hailing from a privileged family background, Nixon raised himself up out of poverty by the sheer force of his will, the cruel twists of fate, and a calculating amoral ambition. A self-made but ever unpopular president, he constantly compared himself to the ever more popular (and far better looking) John F. Kennedy, wondering why Kennedy seemed to have the public’s adoration practically handed to him on a silver platter, while Nixon received scorn and derision. Deeply patriotic yet borderline megalomaniacal (and some would say sociopathic), he alternates between admiring Abraham Lincoln and callously ignoring a groundswell of public opinion against the Vietnam War, choosing instead to bomb Cambodia and North Vietnam back into the Stone Age for the oxymoronic principle of establishing a “peace with honor.” This is the same man who, driven by hubris, subverts the United States Constitution, yet forges, boldly and singlehandedly, diplomatic ties with Red China and a peace treaty with Russia. It’s a poignant moment in the film when Mao tells Nixon:

You are as evil as I am. We are the new emperors. We are both from poor families and others paid to feed the hunger in us. In my case millions of reactionaries. In your case millions of Vietnamese…The real war is in us. History is a symptom of our disease.

“You are as evil as I am. We are the new emperors. We are both from poor families and others paid to feed the hunger in us. In my case millions of reactionaries. In your case millions of Vietnamese…The real war is in us. History is a symptom of our disease.”

It’s no easy feat to traverse this chasm of contradiction, to make it feel real, to convey the logic of decision through the eyes as it unfolds. It’s no easy task either to condense history and deliver it as truthful fiction, to check your own desire to rail against a man many call a “monster,” to portray instead the deeply flawed human being who stood at the precipice of greatness. For this, both Anthony Hopkins and Oliver Stone, as well as numerous others who labored behind the scenes (writers, editors, advisors, spouses), must be acknowledged.

In the end, the important tape Nixon listens to is one he chooses not to surrender, and is forced instead to grudgingly surrender his presidency. Haughty, unapologetic and secretive, Nixon is portrayed as a strong-willed man blind to his own weaknesses: a victim of his own self-aggrandizing desire for power yet, paradoxically, a cog crushed by the very machinery of power he believes he commands and controls. Protracted as it is, the film manages to convey the complexities of the man, and of the single historic event for which he is largely, though perhaps unfairly, remembered.

What does it mean to start at the very beginning? For that matter, what does the concept of “beginning” mean? And how exactly does a beginner “begin”? These are the questions I now began to contemplate as my understanding of things was shattered by the concept of beginner’s mind.

For starters, a beginner does not begin by expecting to do anything good, great or original: He or she simply wants to tell a story, which can be defined as a narrative with a beginning, middle and end. The beginner does not desire to structure this narrative in a complex or ambitious way, but keeps things simple. Moreover, a beginner doesn’t expect to make his or her collaborators happy, or audiences respond in a positive way; those thoughts simply don’t occur because the beginner’s only goal is to tell a story.

Obviously, the desires Isabel and I had for Be Seen & Be Heard were ambitious–we wanted to address racism in the film industry and depict the struggles of minority actors and filmmakers striving for success. But this wasn’t Be Seen & Be Heard any longer; it was a new film called My Dinner with Andre Royo. As I began to recognize and discard the weighty ambitions which were holding me back, I started to see the material before my eyes in a new way. What if the film, which is named after My Dinner with Andre, and is ostensibly about a dinner conversation with Andre Royo, was actually just that–a dinner conversation? What if the storyline was simply about a struggling actress who goes from New York to Baltimore to talk with an established actor over dinner. Straightforward, yet very much like Louis Malle’s My Dinner with Andre in which a struggling playwright and actor has dinner with an eccentric and acclaimed theater director, and what ensues is a deeply engaging and enlightening conversation.

As this basic premise began to form in my mind, I started thinking that the narrative could stay close to the actual conditions under which the interview with Andre was obtained, and that the film could unfold like a documentary. In so doing, we would be straddling the boundary between fiction and reality: the film would depict a real interview involving a dinner conversation between two people who are themselves, but since the footage was shot for an altogether different film, our narrative would essentially be constructed after the fact with a new intention, premise and storyline. The result, I imagined, would be a hybrid of documentary reality with fictional storytelling technique and an editorial process akin to making a film with found footage. Thinking in this way got me excited again, and soon a rough storyline started to emerge. The beginning would show Isabel’s journey from New York to Baltimore setting up the premise of the film, the middle would be the actual dinner conversation with Andre, and the end…well, that wasn’t quite clear. But having arrived at this point now feeling creatively reinvigorated, I was confident that if I followed my intuition the rest of the story would fall into place.

I put together a rough assembly of the opening using b-roll footage to create a visual montage of the drive from New York to Baltimore. Then I began to think about how to approach the body of the film since we had footage of Andre in three different locations: an interview in his trailer on the set of The Wire where he is in character as Bubbles, another interview in the makeup trailer while the Bubbles makeup is removed and Andre begins to change back into himself, and finally a much longer interview over dinner where Andre is well-dressed and groomed, and looks completely like himself. Thinking about how best to use the interviews, I contemplated all the different structural possibilities: Should I intercut between the three locations? Should it all be presented in chronological order–trailer interview, then makeup removal, then the dinner? Or should it all be mixed up but organized by the subject of conversation? If so, then what would motivate the cut from one location to another?

For a day, I did nothing except think about these questions and visualize different ways of structuring the story. Since it had taken some time and unexpected inspiration to pull myself out of serious creative difficulties at the start of the project, I wanted to be careful not to fall back into the quicksand of assembling things only to scrap them and begin again repeatedly. I went to sleep that night without any clear answers. Sure enough, as is the case with creative ideas and the mysterious workings of the unconscious mind, the answer came to me at the inconvenient hour of 5 AM. In a state of hypnopompic semi-consciousness, I realized that a chronological approach would be the strongest structural choice, beginning with the journey from New York to Baltimore (which would include opening titles and a voiceover narration to set up the story), and unfolding with seeing Andre, at first, as Bubbles in his trailer, then witnessing the transition from the character to the actor, and finally the dinner where he is completely himself and opens up to Isabel’s questions. Title cards could be used throughout the dinner sequence as a formal device to structure the different topics of conversation. At the end, we would take the journey back to New York accompanied with another narration by Isabel that reflects on what she experienced that day. It seemed simple, almost too simple, and yet perhaps the point I needed to learn (and embrace) was that simplicity can sometimes be a refreshing way to tell a story, and that complexity and ambitiousness can be hurdles, not merely in storytelling but in thinking too.

“It seemed simple, almost too simple, and yet perhaps the point I needed to learn (and embrace) was that simplicity can sometimes be a refreshing way to tell a story, and that complexity and ambitiousness can be hurdles, not merely in storytelling but in thinking too.”

With this new creative direction, I watched all of the footage again and selected the parts that would best fit the story, choosing clips that jumped out at me as being interesting, humorous, honest, poignant, or revealing. At the end of this first pass, I had an assembly that was an hour and fifty minutes long culled from 4 hours of total interview footage. Then I decided that I should meet up with Isabel and share news of the exciting breakthrough.

As an aside, I must mention here that Isabel is one of the best creative partners I have worked with. When we began editing Be Seen & Be Heard, we agreed to take an intuitive approach towards the editorial process–we would look at the material and allow it to tell us what it wanted to become, rather than impose some sort of external structure upon it. Agreeing to let the process evolve organically, we followed as it unfolded, and gave ourselves the flexibility to take breaks when feeling stuck or change course as needed. We were almost always on the same page creatively, and the editorial experience was such that we began to read each other’s minds after a while. When Be Seen & Be Heard did not pan out, Isabel was disappointed and depressed but she remained open to the possibility of a new film. When I told her how stuck and burned out I was, she gave me the space and time to do whatever I needed, and reassured me of her faith and support through encouraging text messages.

Like any creative endeavor, editing in the early stages is a fragile process that’s introverted and unarticulable. When you begin, you frequently feel like you’re groping about in the dark: you can’t see clearly using the logical abilities of your left brain, but feel and sense and make your way often not knowing where exactly you’re going. Perhaps other editors don’t have the same experience, but I’m constantly insecure and unsure of what I’m doing in the beginning, and don’t know if anything I do will actually amount to something (although somehow it always does). When I first started editing, I used to think something was wrong with me, that I was emotionally imbalanced or unable to handle the creative pressures. With experience I learned that this is all a natural and healthy part of the creative process, for me at least. I have grown accustomed to the insecurities and uncertainties, and have come to see them as my friends because they let me know at the beginning of a project that I’m on the right track. As the process evolves, those feelings are replaced by a resounding sense of confidence in what I’m doing and the final stages of the work take on a teleological import, as if the end result was always the ultimate purpose. For some rational-minded individuals, or those who are either not process oriented or uncomfortable with their own emotional world, this approach would seem alien and unintelligible. But perhaps because Isabel is an actress and the process of acting involves a similar journey, or because, like me, she is comfortable with an intuitive way of working, she was always understanding and supportive.

“Instinctively, I’ve always felt that film editing is very close to music composition because an editor manipulates time and deals with intangible things like tone, rhythm and pacing, all of which are felt on an unconscious level and exert an undeniably powerful influence on the viewer.”

When we met for coffee and I told her the idea–I wasn’t yet ready to show anything because it was too long and too rough–Isabel responded enthusiastically. She liked the simplicity of the approach and, after reflecting on it, thought it could be a real strength because it would allow Andre to show different sides of himself: raw, honest, emotional, humorous. With Isabel now on board conceptually, I took another pass at the assembly to bring it down to half its current length. Hoping to find some suitable music for the film, I auditioned a number of music tracks from two CDs that Isabel owned the rights to. Finding music and being inspired by the tempo, melodies and beats always inspires me when I’m editing. It’s something visceral; I feel the music in my body and use my hands to harmonize sound and image, or work to set them contrapuntally against one another, or play them off each other in interesting ways. Instinctively, I’ve always felt that film editing is very close to music composition because an editor manipulates time and deals with intangible things like tone, rhythm and pacing, all of which are felt on an unconscious level and exert an undeniably powerful influence on the viewer. Having found a nice track for the opening, I recut the intro montage to the pace of the music and then worked my way through the rest of the assembly. I inserted title cards in the dinner interview to break it up thematically, going from Andre’s early life to discussions about family, fear, success and typecasting. The ending of the film still eluded me, but I managed to whittle down the edit to 54 minutes in length, no easy feat considering that I had seen the footage so much that at times I struggled to remain fresh.

Next came the moment of truth: a much needed check that I was on the right track. I screened the 54 minute edit for both Isabel and my girlfriend, Erica, who had been an observer and frequent participant, creative consultant and sounding board for us during Be Seen & Be Heard. Even though Erica had witnessed first hand my struggles with the material and heard about my difficulties, she had not yet seen what I had been doing with My Dinner with Andre Royo. When I screened the cut, It felt like a long 54 minutes–partly because I felt like the film should be around the 30 minute length and partly because, after being in my own head with the material for so long, I was excited for some feedback. The response was favorable and both of them agreed that we finally had something creatively interesting. They both also thought it was too long and, since this first rough cut had no voiceover or clips from The Wire, it felt a little heavy on talking heads. Clearly, it had a ways to go before it would feel like a real film.

But the important thing was that despite the difficulties at the start–or perhaps because of them–we finally had something that we could fashion into a story. For me it was also about learning the importance of cultivating beginner’s mind, and keeping that foremost when working. It’s one thing to read words in a book or adopt a concept or theory; and another to practice in real time, to remove mental obstacles that prevent you from seeing clearly, and to create with the abandon of a beginner.

Coming Soon: Part IV: From Rough Cut to Finished Film

–Robert Bresson