‘The Holdovers’ editor Kevin Tent: ‘I’m a big believer in, ‘When in doubt, cut it out” [Exclusive Video Interview]
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Film editor Kevin Tent takes pride in the fact that he and Alexander Payne grew up in the film business together. The two men have collaborated on all eight of the features Payne has directed going back to “Citizen Ruth” in 1996 and subsequently teamed up on “Election,” “About Schmidt,” “Sideways,” “Nebraska,” “The Descendants” (for which Tent scored his first Oscar nomination) and “Downsizing.” Their most recent movie together, “The Holdovers,” has found Tent honored with his second Academy Award bid for editing. “Alexander is a very loyal guy and super collaborative,” Tent observes. “We kind of clicked from the beginning. Neither of us gets super wrapped up in the drama or takes things too seriously. He often will just go, ‘What’s everyone getting worked up about? It’s just a movie.’ And that’s kind of my attitude, too.” Watch the exclusive video interview above.
SEEAlexander Payne interview: ‘The Holdovers’ director
Payne likes to work old school when it comes to cutting down his films, Tent has found. He doesn’t watch dailies on the set or in a video village but sits by the camera and directs from there. “So the first time he comes back to the cutting room is the first time he’s seeing it through a frame,” Tent says. “Meanwhile, I’ve been cutting and already have a cut of the movie put together. So then we work together and basically start from scratch. We’ll go back and see how I cut scenes originally to see if there’s anything he wants to take from that. But basically after 10, 12 weeks, we’ll have a combination director’s cut/editor’s assembly. And then we start working off of that.”
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His experience in post was a little bit different with “The Holdovers,” Tent emphasizes, in that there were some production tricks done to make the film look as if it had been shot in the 1970s and sat around on a shelf gathering dust. “We did a few gimmicky things with adding some grain and some negative and positive dirt and some pops and crackles in the soundtrack. And it’s mixed in mono. So all of those things kind of help a lot. But editorially, we followed what we normally do, which is let performances guide our cutting probably 80 percent of the time.” And especially in a film as sentimental as “Holdovers,” Tent is careful to make sure nothing overly manipulative comes through and to edit it out if it feels like it is. “We have a schmaltz alarm built into our systems, I think,” he adds.
One of the reasons why Payne trusts Tent in cutting down his films is that the editor is never so attached to moments that he is reluctant to trim, always erring on the side of deleting something. He asserts that the process is never painful for him personally. “It’s more painful for Alexander,” he stresses.
SEEPaul Giamatti interview: ‘The Holdovers’
“I’m a big believer in, ‘When in doubt, cut it out.’ That’s huge. But we have a good relationship because (Payne is) super good at doing what’s best for the film and trusting me. I’m always like, ‘Let’s tighten. We don’t need this. Let’s get rid of this. Tighten, tighten, tighten!’ But Alexander is really great at going, ‘Wait a minute. That’s too tight. I don’t feel the moment right there, so let’s add a half-second back to it.’ I’m like, ‘OK.’ So we get to a good spot, I think, where it doesn’t feel too long. There’s enough time for people to register emotions and things like that, but not to overstay.”
Tent is always thinking about the film’s full running time when he’s cutting, and he has a sweet spot he doesn’t like to exceed. “When we were cutting it, I had a goal in my head of being around two hours,” he says, “just because I know my family, I know most people out there, there’s going to be resistance to seeing a movie or even turning it on if it’s over two hours. That’s a long time to ask people to (commit to something) these days.”
“The Holdovers” is two hours and eight minutes minus the credits, so Tent didn’t quite succeed. “But we dropped about a half-hour worth of stuff, mostly internal stuff within scenes, so I can live with that. The things that we did take out were because the actors were doing such a good job, you didn’t need them to say stuff, because their face was doing the work for them. That’s the advantage of having great performers.”
“The Holdovers” – which was nominated for five Oscars, including Best Editing and Best Picture as well as for its writing and the performances of Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph – is playing in theaters and streaming over Peacock.
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