EVERYONE IS AN EDITORColumn by Cayle Chernin SEPTEMBER: THE Big picture: Everyone’s an Editor! Happy New Year! Overview, the big picture. I used to say “I live for the moments”, I found regular life a bore with its vagueness and linear’ness and regular’ness…then I passed through the phase of:I know it’s the moments but the moments aren’t enough and then I discovered ‘the interregnum’ or for me what Albert Camus described as ‘the resting place between yes and no: the I don’t know” I have always respected my process, even while suffering through certain stages of it. I no longer live for the moment or eschew the interregnum, but in seeing the first interactive film created at Canadian Film Center in conjunction with the National Film Board, Late Fragments of which Anita Doron who directed me in Not a Fish Story, was a contributing director, I question the democratic approach to creation. Overview. Where is it if the audience chooses the trajectory? I had difficulty separating this innovation from the television democracy that is rampant in the World these days, the audience votes on everything. Which screenplay gets a full read, referring to WILDsound’s readings of three first acts and the audience votes on which script gets a full reading; to the ‘idol’ shows, and now the audience gets to edit the sequence of what they are watching, given three hours of material. I can imagine this as thrilling depending on the material available but as an editor myself, for my own documentaries and script editor on projects, I would of course produce ‘my own edit’ of the presented material. I wonder how it was for the three film makers to see what was chosen in the screening by the person operating the program for the audience at the Royal last night. Myself, I would have perhaps made other choices as may have each audience member…so we all create our own version of the possible stories.. Everybody’s a story teller, and the three directors must have felt a lot like actors seeing their work used at someone else’s discretion. The material contained some very well acted, well directed scenes but I began to have a creeping feeling of sameness and though the stories moved forward there was a sameness and a mood that did not come from an overview, or perhaps did, the overview of the person running the show from the console.
The overview of an individual filmmaker creating with their material has at the best of times, a momentum, a journey shaped by the sensibility of its creator or envisioner. But hey, alls fun in love and movies and they must have had a ball doing it. The sameness of the stories which for me didn’t compliment because they seemed too often to reiterate each other makes me think the story conferences created decisions the film makers made, given certain parameters. Like when you are given a line to improvise around.’ Just prior I watched two of my friend Henry Jaglom’s movies..first and most recent, and was reminded of the comment George Luscombe made when I presented a Juliet speech to him at an audition. He said “you didn’t reach a climax”. I think I just now know what he meant..the build to the culminating moment was not there..I was in each moment but there was no momentum, driving force. Improvisation has a rhythm that is very different from the rhythm created by the actor who has absorbed the writer’s words. And the latest: on Arianna Huffington’s website you can create your own presidential debate edit, ‘mash up’ they are calling it…but editing at the site to create your own version of the debate..Everyone’s an editor! 
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