Reflections on "The Square," "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey," "House of Cards"
By Robert Goldrich
LOS ANGELES --It’s been a memorable awards season for The Square (Netflix) which this year earned an Oscar nomination for Best Feature Documentary while winning for director Jehane Noujaim the coveted DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary. Now add four Emmy nominations to the tally–Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special; Outstanding Directing for Nonfiction Programming; Outstanding Cinematography for Nonfiction Programming; and Outstanding Picture Editing for Nonfiction Programming.
Among those nominated in the latter category was editor Pedro Kos. The other four editors on The Square were Christopher de la Torre, Muhamed El Manasterly, Pierre Haberer and Stefan W. Ronowicz.
The Square chronicles two-and-a-half years of the ongoing Egyptian Revolution, conveying the story as seen through the eyes, hearts and minds of different protestors as we see them transform over time. “The power of the material is intimate and personal. It puts you on the ground during the revolution,” said editor Kos.
Kos and his editing colleagues culled some 100 minutes worth of feature documentary from 1,600 hours of raw material.
“The film has had an impact in America, reaching a wider audience due to Netflix which believed in the work and did a tremendous job of getting it out there,” assessed Kos. “This is more than just a film. It’s an archive of the revolution. I think the filmmakers are looking to partner with an institution to preserve this archive. Hopefully this historical material will be of use as a resource in the future, something others can learn from.”
Kos recalled first meeting director Noujaim and producer Karim Amer at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. “They had been filming for a year at that point and they were looking to raise funds to continue filming. At the time I had been cutting a film called The Island President. We really connected and they asked if I could come on board–but I was beginning another project. Still, I became enamored with their project and with them. A year later we met again at Sundance. That year I was at the festival with The Crash Reel, a documentary I had cut. Jehane and Karim were still filming yet they showed a work-in-progress version of the film at Sundance and it went on to win an Audience Award though it wasn’t finished. They asked me again to come aboard and I did.”
The modus operandi called for Kos to edit in Los Angeles and relay it to the filmmakers in Cairo. “We would recap and talk almost every night,” related Kos. “They’d tell me what they were filming, the situation on the ground, what was happening to the characters, what additional material we needed to get. We’d discuss the transformation of the characters and what we could do to bring out these characters as much as possible. We were under a tight deadline to deliver the finished film but we made it–in time for the 2013 Toronto Film Festival.”
Kos’ editorial credits also include the documentary Waste Land and the alluded to The Crash Reel–both directed by Lucy Walker. Earlier this year, The Crash Reel earned Walker a DGA Award nomination for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary–an award won by Noujaim for The Square. Back in 2011, Waste Land earned an Oscar nomination for Best Feature Documentary.
House of Cards
Byron Smith has earned his first Emmy nomination on the strength of “Chapter 14” of House of Cards. The Netflix show tallied 13 nominations this year, including for Outstanding Drama Series.
Regarding House of Cards, Smith affirmed, “This is the show in which I’ve taken the most pride in my career. I feel like we’re reinventing episodic. We don’t call it television anymore. We’re in a whole new world in terms of how people are absorbing entertainment.”
Smith also enjoys collaborating with the House of Cards ensemble, including Carl Franklin who directed (and is Emmy nominated for) “Chapter 14,” series showrunner/writer Beau Willimon and executive producer David Fincher. Of the latter, Smith related, “David would walk unannounced into the cutting room. ‘What’s going on?’ That would be my cue to press ‘play’ no matter what stage of the scene I was in. I would show him something and he was very flexible, very forgiving, easy to work with. We would chat about the characters, the actors and then he’d go on about his day. Things would just come up in casual conversation that provided food for thought in terms of what I should apply to a particular scene or episode.”
Among Smith’s prior notable TV credits are Nip/Tuck (FX), The Big C (Showtime) and Big Love (HBO). Smith worked on Big Love (as an editor and associate producer) with co-producer Peter Friedlander who was with Playtone Productions at the time. Friedlander now works in original programming at Netflix and thought Smith would have good chemistry with Fincher. “Peter just kind of floated my name over to David since he was in the market for an editor,” recalled Smith. “I was asked to submit a reel to David so I threw one together. I remember going to Amoeba Music to buy DVDs for copies of my work. I was ripping DVDs and put together a reel, created a website in a couple of hours and sent everything to David and he wound up giving me the opportunity.”
Smith has cut multiple episodes of House of Cards and is gearing up for season 3. He also recently edited episodes of Power, a Starz series.
Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey
John Duffy, ACE, shares with Michael O’Halloran and Eric Lea a nomination for Outstanding Picture Editing for Nonfiction Programming on the strength of the “Standing Up in the Milky Way” episode of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey.
This marks Duffy’s third Emmy nomination, the first coming for Outstanding Film Sound Editing for Space in 1985, and then a Single Camera Picture Editing nom for a Miniseries or a Movie on the basis of The Temptations in 1999. He also has three American Cinema Editors’ Eddie nominations for the TV series Tour of Duty in 1988, the telefilm White Mile in 1995, and The Temptations in ‘99. He won a Student category Eddie in 1977.
For a documentary series such as Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey–for which he was an editor on a range of episodes–Duffy said his task was “to create drama without changing the facts. There’s no twisting of factors or bending of truth but you still have to create drama with the content. If it’s done properly, these explorations of science can make for a very dramatic story.”
Duffy’s schedule precluded him a few years ago from taking on the chance to edit for executive producer Brannon Braga the Fox series Terra Nova. But Duffy remained on director/executive producer Braga’s radar for Cosmos and the two came together on the series which has a total of a dozen Emmy nominations, including for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series and for Braga an Outstanding Directing for Nonfiction Programming for the same “Standing Up in the Milky Way” episode.
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This is the 10th installment in a 12-part series that explores the field of Emmy nominees and winners spanning such disciplines as directing, cinematography, editing, animation and visual effects. The series will run right through the Creative Arts Emmys ceremony and the following week’s primetime Emmy Awards live telecast on Aug. 25.
To read The Road To Emmy, Part 12, click here.
To read The Road To Emmy, Part 11, click here.
To read The Road To Emmy, Part 9, click here.
To read The Road To Emmy, Part 8, click here.
To read The Road To Emmy, Part 7, click here.
To read The Road To Emmy, Part 6, click here.
To read The Road To Emmy, Part 5, click here.
To read The Road To Emmy, Part 4, click here.
To read The Road To Emmy, Part 3, click here.
To read The Road To Emmy, Part 2, click here.
To read The Road To Emmy, Part 1, click here.
To read Primetime Talent, Pre-Road To Emmy feature 2, click here.
To read Primetime Talent, Pre-Road To Emmy feature 1, click here.
Rom-Com Mainstay Hugh Grant Shifts To The Dark Side and He’s Never Been Happier
After some difficulties connecting to a Zoom, Hugh Grant eventually opts to just phone instead.
"Sorry about that," he apologizes. "Tech hell." Grant is no lover of technology. Smart phones, for example, he calls the "devil's tinderbox."
"I think they're killing us. I hate them," he says. "I go on long holidays from them, three or four days at at time. Marvelous."
Hell, and our proximity to it, is a not unrelated topic to Grant's new film, "Heretic." In it, two young Mormon missionaries (Chloe East, Sophie Thatcher) come knocking on a door they'll soon regret visiting. They're welcomed in by Mr. Reed (Grant), an initially charming man who tests their faith in theological debate, and then, in much worse things.
After decades in romantic comedies, Grant has spent the last few years playing narcissists, weirdos and murders, often to the greatest acclaim of his career. But in "Heretic," a horror thriller from A24, Grant's turn to the dark side reaches a new extreme. The actor who once charmingly stammered in "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and who danced to the Pointer Sisters in "Love Actually" is now doing heinous things to young people in a basement.
"It was a challenge," Grant says. "I think human beings need challenges. It makes your beer taste better in the evening if you've climbed a mountain. He was just so wonderfully (expletive)-up."
"Heretic," which opens in theaters Friday, is directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, co-writers of "A Quiet Place." In Grant's hands, Mr. Reed is a divinely good baddie — a scholarly creep whose wry monologues pull from a wide range of references, including, fittingly, Radiohead's "Creep."
In an interview, Grant spoke about these and other facets of his character, his journey... Read More