Describing his first meeting with Oliver Stone in September ’98, Stuart Waks, editor/owner at Santa Monica-based Stuart Waks & Co, recounted, "I sat and watched him watch my reel, [which included] a Powerade spot ["Hurdler," via McCann-Erickson Seattle]. I watched him lean forward and go over the hurdle with the hurdler and I figured, ‘We’re talking a similar language here.’" Stone’s vicarious response was enough to bring Waks closer to the metaphorical finish line. About a month after their meeting, Stone asked Waks to be one of the editors for Any Given Sunday, a film that explores the microcosm of a fictional football team coached by Al Pacino. The film opened on Dec. 23, ’99.
Stone was initially attracted to the editing style Waks demonstrated in Reebok’s "I’m Emmitt," a spot featuring the Dallas Cowboys’ Emmitt Smith via TBWA/Chiat/Day, Los Angeles. Stone saw the commercial—directed by Allan Van Rijn (now with bicoastal RSA USA)—while looking for a cinematographer for Any Given Sunday. After writing and developing the screenplay for the film, Stone needed someone to fill the cinematographer’s shoes on the feature, as Bob Richardson, the DP on many of Stone’s previous films, was shooting Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out The Dead. (Richardson has just signed with bicoastal Tool of North America for representation as a spot director—see separate story, p. 1.) To find another cinematographer, Stone contacted Santa Monica-based The Skouras Agency, whose office happens to be located in the same building as Waks’ company.
Stone was so impressed by the editing in "I’m Emmitt," which was lensed by DP David Wagreich, that he asked to get in touch with Waks. (Wagreich is represented as a cinematographer by Skouras and as a spot director by bicoastal/international @radical.media.) Stone’s detective work at The Skouras Agency paid off with another score, when Salvatore Totino, who is represented by Skouras for spots and features, was chosen as the DP for the film.
Waks’ only feature experience prior to Any Given Sunday was editing a few racing sequences from Days of Thunder, directed by Tony Scott (who helms spots via RSA USA). "I’m a lifelong football fan," related Waks. "I like to try to raise the bar on what
I do here [on commercials], so it was pretty amazing to get a call from a guy [Stone] who’s trying to raise the bar in another forum." The other editors on Any Given Sunday included Thomas J. Nordberg, Stuart Levy, and commercial cutter Keith Salmon, who was formerly of bicoastal Lost Planet and is now at Santa Monica-based Hyena. "Every one of the editors can look at the film and find something that they did," Waks said. "We all did significant things in different places."
In Any Given Sunday, Waks put his editorial chops to work on scenes including the second game in the film; a confrontational dinner scene between Pacino and Jamie Foxx, who plays a young quarterback on Pacino’s team; the firing of the team’s doctor, played by James Woods; the fourth game in the film; a post-game locker room scene; and different pieces of the film’s last game.
Describing his interaction with Stone, Waks said, "He’d throw the ball up in the air, and I’d run as fast and as hard and as far as I could to catch it. I was a risk-taker, but I was involved with a risk-taker as well. If he wasn’t setting the tone, I couldn’t have gone there."
While editing, Waks said that his mantra was to "always try to expand the scene to the edges—and past the edges—of the page." This came to fruition in one scene where Pacino and Foxx butt heads over playing styles. When Waks began editing the scene, he recognized that the performances were so strong that he could have assembled it as a relatively straightforward confrontation by cutting from one actor to the other. "It didn’t take too much editing to make this scene powerful," noted Waks. "But on the other hand, when it just plays back and forth as two people at a table, it’s still two people at a table, and there’s only so much you can do with close-ups."
Stone suggested that Waks incorporate a "poetic loop"—an abstract departure from the narrative that would emphasize the themes Stone wanted to bring out in the film. "When I first sat down and talked with [Oliver] about the movie, he talked about it in terms of The Odyssey," Waks explained. "Ben Hur was on the TV [in the background], and Stone was talking about the movie itself on a mythic level. So I thought, ‘Why don’t I get the footage from Ben Hur?’ And I’ll just edit off the TV and start to cut it with the conversation."
Waks observed that such abstract jumps had to be incorporated carefully into the movie’s whole. "There are times where something like that could be insane editing," he said. "If you’re a really good editor, you can take people places. And you have to be careful when you do that. You have to measure where they should go against where you just took them."
Waks gained numerous insights into Stone’s directing style and the way he interacts with his actors. "Oliver Stone is amazing in that he gets a degree of commitment from actors that you just don’t [usually] see. The kind of commitment he got from me as an editor, that’s what he gets from everybody involved in his projects. Either you die for it or you don’t show up. That’s kind of the unwritten rule. And everybody goes into it like that. People take risks for him because of what he surrounds them with and leads them to."
Waks was similarly impressed by Pacino’s acting: "Pacino is amazing. There’s not a dead frame anywhere—he starts acting before the slate closes. If I cut the heads and tails of what isn’t good, we couldn’t even make a commercial out of it."
Though he had only worked on one previous feature, Waks said he found a comfortable groove editing this film. "The first thing I showed [Oliver] was game two [in the film], and it was eleven minutes long," Waks recalled. "And most of that’s still in the movie. … What [commercial and feature film editors] do—if we do it well—is all about the same thing: involving people in a subject."
