🎧 Cutting Seth Rogen’s Jokes and More Daring Story Feats From TV’s Top Editors
Emmy nominees Eric Kissack, ACE (‘The Studio’), Jamie Martin, ACE (‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’) & Peggy Tachdjian, ACE (‘Monsters’) tell all
Welcome to the new season of Art & Crafts, our podcast that brings audiences behind the scenes with artisans who create the film and TV we love. This conversation is sponsored by Apple TV+, MTV and Netflix. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts.
As moderator Molly Shock, ACE, said during The Ankler’s Art & Crafts Live event, being an editor is, first and foremost, about the story. “That is ultimately what drives everything we do,” Shock said. “But you all have three very different vehicles by which you are telling your stories.”
During the Aug. 7 panel at the American Society of Cinematographers’ famed Clubhouse in Los Angeles, Shock discussed the art of her craft with three of this year’s Emmy-nominated editors: Eric Kissack, ACE (The Studio), Jamie Martin, ACE (RuPaul’s Drag Race) and Peggy Tachdjian, ACE (Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story).
“The Studio was different from any show I ever worked on, probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Kissack says on the Art & Crafts podcast recorded at the event. The breakout Apple TV+ comedy series, co-created by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, focuses on a fledgling studio executive (played by Rogen) who tries to juggle his desire to make great art with the company’s business needs. Among Kissack’s challenges: The Studio features several Hollywood icons playing themselves (including Emmy nominees like Martin Scorsese and Ron Howard) and is shot in a way where every scene appears to be executed in a single unbroken take.
“I was like, ‘Well, how’s that gonna work?’” Kissack says. As he found out, the workflow included not just several post-production stitches to make sequences appear seamless, but also Kissack being physically on set every day to provide “live editing” for Rogen and Goldberg, who co-directed all 10 episodes. “We would watch a take, usually three or four takes, and then I would walk up to Seth and Evan and huddle, and I’d have my script, and I would say, ‘Okay, this joke, it’s a funny joke, but it’s not an A-grade joke. I think we should cut it,’” Kissack recalls. “My heart would be pounding because I’m telling two of the funniest people in Hollywood that their jokes weren’t funny enough. And they’d be like, ‘Yeah, you’re right.’”
For Tachdjian, collaboration with Monsters’ key creative forces — including co-creator Ryan Murphy and pilot director Carl Franklin — was similarly vital.
“I was in on all the tone meetings and concept meetings with Ryan. And I got to have a sneak peek into his brain, just very early on about what the tone of the show was going to be,” Tachdjian says. The anthology series is about the 1989 murders of José and Kitty Mendenez at the hands of their sons, Lyle and Erik. “The parts that were highlighting the murder were going to be as brutal as possible and as shocking as possible,” Tachdjian says. “It was important for both of us that the audience always remembers that this is like a real thing that happened to real people, and it’s horrible.” But in concert with the reality of the situation, she had the opportunity to provide relief for the audience during some lighter and comedic moments, like when the brothers play the Milli Vanilli song “Girl I’m Gonna Miss You” during their parents’ funeral service.
“My first cut of it was a lot more serious. And then I got into the edit bay with Carl, and that’s sort of when we were like, ‘We should let it breathe more. We should play into the awkward pauses,’” she says. “That’s my favorite part.”
Martin’s job as the lead editor for RuPaul’s Drag Race is slightly different because of the nature of nonfiction storytelling, but she’s also trying to guide the viewer.
“We have hours and hours and hours and hours and days and days and days of footage, and at the end of the day, the audience still needs to have the same takeaway that the judges did at the end of each episode,” Martin says. “So our job is to make sure that the audience is getting that in a very succinct little package with all those moments of humor, with all those moments of heart and personality added to them. And so we do what we can to add that all through timing and pacing and comedy and to allow the audience to follow along with this competition that they weren’t there for — which went far, far longer than you’re gonna see. That’s how we shape the story.”
Listen above for the rest of the enlightening conversation, and check out our earlier Art & Crafts live episode featuring cinematographers.