Walter Murch: An Interview with the Editor of “Cold Mountain”
The epigraph for Charles Frazier’s best-selling 1997 first novel, “Cold Mountain,” is a couplet from the Chinese poet Han-Shan:
Men ask the way to Cold Mountain
Cold Mountain: there’s no through trail.
Clearly, the 8th-century poet never met 21st-century master film editor Walter Murch, whose 16-month editing effort on the movie version of “Cold Mountain” cut such a compelling throughline across half a million feet of accumulated footage that the Civil War epic is generating early but substantial Oscar buzz.
Writer/director Anthony Minghella’s adaptation of Frazier’s book covers the long, treacherous journey of Inman (Jude Law), a wounded Confederate soldier, as he tries to return from the war to his love, Ada (Nicole Kidman), on Cold Mountain, where she runs her dead father’s farm with help from a drifter, Ruby (Renee Zellweger).
Murch, whose credits include “Apocalypse Now” and “The English Patient,” has a history of pushing tools as vigorously as he pursues the fluid cut. Still, he turned industry heads by choosing to cut “Cold Mountain” — an $80 million picture — on Final Cut Pro and several off-the-shelf Power Mac G4s. To keep it interesting, Murch conducted his experiment halfway across the world in rural Romania, where the film was shot to capture the look and feel of 19th-century North Carolina.
We talked to Murch about that decision, how it worked out and how it might affect industry practices and expectations going forward.
The Project
How did you come to work on “Cold Mountain”?
Anthony Minghella and I struck it off when we worked together on “The English Patient,” at the end of which he began to get interested in “Cold Mountain” as a project. He talked to me about working with him on it, but in the interim he got involved with “The Talented Mr. Ripley” (1988), which I also edited. Eventually “Cold Mountain” re-surfaced. He wrote the screenplay in 2001, and we started shooting in July 2002.
“When I’m actually assembling a scene, I assemble it as a silent movie. Even if it’s a dialog scene, I lip read what people are saying.”
Did you read the novel before you read the script?
I did read the book before I read the screenplay, which is my normal procedure. Generally, I try to immerse myself in the world of the book/film as deeply as possible, even reading secondary research material — things that the author used to help write the book.
Once I start editing, however, I let all of that go, and don’t even refer to the screenplay very often — I just respond to the story, images and sounds that are on the screen in front of me.
Were you on the set much watching the shooting?
I prefer to stay away. I like to see only what the audience sees. I don’t like to be reminded too much of how it actually got made.
The Cut
How long did the edit take?
We started editing as soon as they started shooting in mid-July, so 16 months.
You’ve written that you normally edit images and sound separately. Was that the case on “Cold Mountain”?
Well, I create my first assembly without reference to the sound. I view everything with sound, and I take detailed notes about what the sound is like. But when I’m actually assembling a scene, I assemble it as a silent movie. Even if it’s a dialog scene, I lip read what people are saying. I then refine it as a silent movie, and when I feel that it’s telling itself as a series of images, then I’ll light up all the tracks, and see what all of my cuts have wrought.
In some cases, of course, it’s wrong. But in other cases I discover serendipitous things I never would have come at had I been listening to the sound all along. So I listen to those serendipitous things and, of course, improve the things that are just clearly wrong.
