The Mailer Review/Volume 3, 2009/Editing Mailer: A Conversation with Jan Welt and Lana Jokel: Difference between revisions

'''Chaiken''': Were you training to become an actor or were you hoping to write

for the stage?

'''Welt''': I graduated from Syracuse in 1964 so I must have been at NYU in late

1965 or early 1966.

'''Welt''': Haig Manoogian was largely it at that point. Also Calder Willingham,

who wrote the screenplay for ''One Eyed Jacks'' (1961) and ''The Graduate'' (1967).

And of course Shirley Clarke, who was my editing instructor. She gave me my first job as assistant editor on a twelve-screen film she was working on called ''Man in Polar Regions'' (1967). Graham Ferguson, who went on to inventIMAX, shot most of that film. It screened at the World’s Fair in Montreal in 1967.

'''Welt''': In the mid-sixties, I lived with my wife on St. Mark’s Place, directly

across from the Bridge Cinema where the New American Cinema was exploding. It was literally ground zero for all of that stuff and I was constantly over there seeing new work by Clarke, John Cassavetes, Jonas Mekas and others. When we first moved to the neighborhood, it was this quiet little Polish-Ukranian community and it seemed like within a week of arriving it became this epicenter of culture known as the East Village. It was an amazing time to be there; a constant flutter of activity that one couldn’t help but be inspired by.

'''Welt''': In school I was making films one after another either on my own or

shooting and editing for other people. NYU was a hotbed of activity and collaboration. For my thesis film, I directed a ''verité'' documentary about Frank O’Connor, the Democratic candidate running against Nelson Rockefeller in New York’s 1966 gubernatorial election. At the time, O’Connor was the District Attorney of NY and it seemed as if Rockefeller was the most hated man in the entire world. But thanks to these extraordinary political commercials he ran, Rockefeller won the election. If you were living in New York at the

time, Rockefeller’s “fish in the Hudson River” ads were unforgettable. His

campaign essentially portrayed the Hudson as one giant septic tank that, if

elected, Rockefeller was going to clean up. These ads were effective, brilliantly

so, and started a new wave of political commercials. At the outset of the campaign, it seemed like there was no way he could win, but by the end it was a

landslide for him. So, I took all the footage I shot of O’Connor and made a

film of my own that was shown on New York’s Channel 13.

'''Chaiken''': Making a verité documentary in 1966, I imagine that you were well

aware of what D.A. Pennebaker and The Maysles Brothers were also doing at

the time . . .

'''Welt''': They were the giants whose shoulders I climbed up on. In fact, just

before graduation, I was offered a job at Leacock-Pennebaker Films. The funny thing was right before that happened, I had shot this film about the

rematch between Jose Torres and Dick Tiger. The film was called ''Split Decision'' (1967) and was directed by Jon Ostriker. We were shooting in Torres” hotel room when in walks Norman Mailer. That’s where I met him for the first time. I remember Norman being fascinated by the French Éclair 16mm camera I was using. So, when I went to Pennebaker’s a few months later,

there’s Norman trying to cut ''Wild 90'' (1967). The first job Pennebaker gave me was helping Norman cut his film.

'''Welt''': Before I got there Mark Woodcock, another filmmaker working with

Leacock-Pennebaker, was helping Norman to synch the Wild 90 rushes. It

was around this time that everyone in the offices took off for San Francisco

to make a film on the Monterey Pop Festival. Mark helped Norman synch

the footage and I seem to remember there already being a very rough assemblage of the takes Norman wanted to use. Over the next several months, Norman and I worked to clean up the rough cut.

'''Chaiken''': Not having any formal training, how were Norman’s instincts as an

editor?

'''Welt''': From the outset he was highly capable of transferring his sense of editing the written word over to film. It really wasn’t all that difficult for him and

came somewhat naturally as I think it does for most people who’ve grown up

watching movies. Just by watching films, almost by osmosis, you arrive at

would come into Pennebaker’s studio and review the material on the Steenbeck. He would make decisions on what to cut and would leave me detailed notes. I’d take over from there and implement whatever it was he wanted. It was all pretty straightforward. ''Wild 90'' was shot in real time, so that dictated the order of events. Also, there was only one camera, so whatever footage Norman ended up with was what we had to work with. Unlike the other

films, just in terms of shots, there weren’t a huge amount of options. It was

'''Chaiken''': Was Norman a patient supervising editor? What was the dynamic

like that developed between the two of you?  

'''Welt''': Needless to say, Norman was an extraordinarily complex guy. Enormously warm hearted and loyal, though I would sometimes see him fly into a rage with people he felt were insulting to him. I remember watching David McMulllin, a Wall St. guy who ran Leacock-Pennebaker Films, once trying to negotiate a deal with him. They got into this argument, over what I don’t remember exactly, but it got more and more vituperative until finally Norman went into this ferocious Texas drawl that so startled David that the negotiation immediately went in Norman’s favor. Almost instantly, he could become this whole other person entirely. In terms of our relationship, I honored him, he honored me and we always got along ... unless there was a major fuck up of some sort. Don’t forget Norman produced these films with his own money, so any fuck up was going to be a costly one. But, in the years we worked together, things rarely ever went in that direction.

'''Chaiken''': ''Wild 90'' is notorious for its muffled sound. Unless you are in a

closed setting and can hear what’s being said, it can make for a distressing

viewing experience. What happened?

'''Welt''': The sound was our Achilles” heel. It was complicated by two factors.

Our soundman was Bob Neuwirth who was a folkie, boyfriend to Edie Sedgwick and Bob Dylan’s road manager at the time. You can see him running around ''Don’t Look Back'' (1967), the famous Dylan documentary Pennebaker directed. Neuwirth wasn’t trained to do this kind of thing, so sometimes he’d have the mic pointed in the wrong direction. The other factor, the one that ultimately did the film in, was the optical soundtrack used on the 16mm projection prints. Optical soundtracks are terrible under any circumstances. The original Nagra sound reels Neuwirth recorded weren’t so bad, but when it was mixed down to optical, we lost so much of the sound that it left us with an inaudible mess. I was agitating for putting on subtitles, but it never happened. After the premiere at the New Cinema Playhouse, Norman took out

a full page ad in the New York Times offering anyone their money back if they

'''Welt''': Initially, I was being paid by Leacock-Pennebaker, then Norman, myself, Buzz Farber and Mickey Knox formed our own production and distribution company, Supreme Mix, Inc. This was during the ''Beyond the Law'' (1968) period when I was pretty much left alone to do my thing while Norman was off working on The Armies of the Night. I would do the edits and he would come into the studio a couple days a week. We’d look over material, confer and then I’d keep going. I was taking a salary from Supreme Mix, whose very existence was thanks to Norman’s investment in it.We had great ambitions for the company. Had the films been more successful we probably would have been able to realize some of them.

shoot and was there an immediate sense that Beyond the Law was a significant advance on ''Wild 90?''

'''Welt''': When ''Wild 90'' failed to reach any kind of audience it was dispiriting,

but since the film was a bit of a lark to begin with we got over it pretty quickly. With Beyond the Law it all got more serious. More cameras, better sound and a host of talented players. Norman was wise about shooting. The sine qua non of a no budget film is to have only one location. For ''Beyond the Law'' that location became the tenth floor of 56 W 45^th St., the same building where Leacock-Pennebaker had their offices. They were on the ninth floor, so we moved lights to the vacant floor above them. That became our

police station. It was me, Nick Proferes, D.A. Pennebaker and this guy we

hijacked into shooting for us, Richard Leiterman, who was part of a BBC

crew making a documentary on Norman at the time. It was right around this

'''Chaiken''': The editing of Beyond the Law follows a different kind of strategy

than ''Wild 90''. Can you talk about how the structure of that film developed?

'''Welt''': ''Wild 90'' was essentially cut flash frame to flash frame with complete,

or almost complete, takes from a single camera. Much of what was used in ''Beyond the Law'' was also single camera stuff, but we had many more options since some of the scenes had two, even three, cameras on them. We could pick the best angle or cross cut between the two if we wanted to capture a particular expression or a certain action. We had three crews in different rooms, so with Beyond you have all of this stuff happening simultaneously. That helped to dictate the parallel structure of the film. We tried to give a sense that all of the scenes were happening in real time over a single evening when in fact it was shot over several evenings. The parallel structure of the film was determined as much by the shooting as it was by the editing. As Norman says to his troops in ''Maidstone'', “you find out the nature of your attack, by attacking” and that’s essentially how these films were made since there wasn’t any kind of script or storyboard to follow. In that sense, these films were conceived and edited almost like a verité documentary would be. You’d shoot and shoot and shoot, and then with the material you had you’d make sense of it all in the editing room.

'''Chaiken''': Do you recall any specific instructions Norman gave to you as a

cameramen on Beyond the Law?

'''Welt''': There were none whatsoever. It was all based on happenstance and

spontaneity. He set up the situation and you followed it as a documentarian would. Of course, in the editing room all that changed and Norman came in with a lot of ideas and instructions. I specifically remember him wanting me to do this very elaborate title sequence for Beyond the Law. The way he envisioned it I just couldn’t fathom, so, as I often did, I went ahead and did it the way I wanted to do it—the cityscape in time lapse with the titles overtop. I remember showing it to him and afterwards he was dead

silent. Finally, he says,”This is the first time I’ve ever been double crossed, but

it’s great. Leave it. I love it.’

'''Chaiken''': By all accounts, Beyond the Law received a somewhat mixed

own catalog, and were able to reach more people. Particularly on the college and film society circuit which was their bread and butter. For the same reasons, New Line Cinema eventually ended up with ''Maidstone'' (1968–1970). Bob Shaye, who at that time was essentially working out of his apartment on 15th St. and 2nd Ave., took ''Maidstone'' and helped distribute it to college campuses. Bob started New Line Cinema after picking up a print of ''Reefer Madness'' (1936) and distributing it to college film societies. They soon became a great distributor of political, avant-garde and foreign films.Way out stuff by Jean-Luc Godard, Peter Watkins and us.

Welt: After we finished Beyond the Law, I was twiddling my thumbs on salary. Then it all just started. Norman told me he wanted to make a movie about a film director who had become so popular that he was going to run for President of the United States. This was right after Robert Kennedy’s assassination in June 1968. Next thing I know, I’m in East Hampton making

this crazy movie with what seemed liked hundreds of others dedicated to the same crazy movie.

'''Welt''': The absolute chaos. All of the cameramen were mobile chess pieces. I

was initially assigned to follow Rip and his group, The Cashbox, but when

nothing was happening with them I decided I would go look for better targets of opportunity and just start shooting anything that moved. I can remember having lunch at Barney Rosset’s East Hampton estate when his wife came running into the living room screaming “There’s a dead baby floating face down in the swimming pool!” So Jose Torres runs out and discovers it’s not a baby, but actor Hervé Villechaize. He’d drank himself into a stupor and was floating face down in the Rosset’s pool. They were able to resuscitate him, but still had to take him to the hospital. It was quite an ordeal as he nearly drowned to death.

throughout the shoot. We’d all gone to the beach for the day. Coming back I caught the tail end of the fight and immediately went for my camera. There were actually four cameras on the fight. Aside from my own there was Leacock, Pennebaker and Daniel Kramer, a still photographer, who you can see at one point trying to break Norman and Rip apart. When the film was edited I primarily used Pennebaker’s roll as an unbroken take.We tried a few different approaches, though in the end we found using the long take was best.

'''Welt''': By the time we got to edit ''Maidstone'' we had moved out of LeacockPennebaker to an upstairs office in the same building. ''Maidstone'' cinematographers Nick Proferes and Jim Desmond had started their own company, Proferes-Desmond Films, and that’s where we worked. It was around this time that I was doing interim work as an editor on Michael Wadleigh’s ''Woodstock'' (1970). Working on that film, I had come up against the KEM editing table, which gave you the ability to have three screens going simultaneously. Pretty sophisticated stuff for 1969 ... the KEM dictated the tripanel look of Woodstock. I was pretty astonished by them as an editing system and suggested to Norman that we buy a couple and make some extra

'''Welt''': Yes, we looked at all the rushes together. It took nearly two months.We

finally, from that morass of 30 plus hours of footage, we ended up with a 3 1/2 hour “keeps” reel. Lana, Norman and I worked on that material for quite some time, putting together a rough cut just shy of three hours. I always thought that cut was the best version of the film.

all thought there was so much great stuff in the 3 1/2 hours.

'''Welt''': He always felt that Beyond the Law needed a stronger ending and

wanted to get back to it. Blue was shot very quickly with my Éclair 16mm

blue, otherwise the two versions are identical. I edited Blue and thought it

don’t think it ever really screened.We showed it once to invited guests at the

another film with United Artists, so I stayed on and shot and edited ''Money

Talks'' (1972), a nice film that has totally disappeared. I was still with Funt for

was working on with his students at Binghampton, a very experimental, multi-screen, autobiographical film. I said to him “Nick, I just finished a film like this ... ,” meaning ''Maidstone'', “but I have this script ....” So I gave him the script of City Blues and, along with Norman and Norris Mailer, showed him ''Beyond the Law''. Ray was planning a move back to NY and became interested in the script and in working on it with me. Little did I know that he was a drowning man and would grab at anything that came his way. But he was Nick Ray, a hero figure of sorts, so I went along with it. The film was to star Rip Torn and Marilyn Chambers, both of whom I had worked with previously.

'''Chaiken''': When did you work with Marilyn Chambers? Presumably, you

were behind the camera . . .

'''Welt''': It’s a good story. Sean Cunningham, who would go on to make ''Friday the 13th'' (1979), was directing this film for American International Pictures called ''Together'' (1971). Wes Craven, the ''Nightmare on Elm Street'' (1984) guy, was his assistant editor and they were casting this thing out of Proferes-Desmond offices. I’ll never forget the day Chambers, this beautiful eighteen year-old blonde, first came to the studio. Almost immediately she was accosted by Buzz Farber in the elevator. He couldn’t resist and was all over her from the moment she walked in. Turns out Chambers was the daughter of Sean’s next door neighbor, literally the girl next door. He asked her parents” permission to film her for a nude diving sequence and amazingly, you might say alarmingly, they said “yes” to having their daughter appear in what was essentially a soft-core exploitation film. At the time, her name was still Marilyn Briggs and our friend Roger Murphy, one of the cameramen on ''Monterey Pop'', shot this amazing footage of her repeatedly diving into a pool. It was like Reifenstahl’s Olympia (1936), only better, and I was dying to edit it, which I eventually did on top of narrating the entire film. So, when City Blues started to come together, I introduced Marilyn to Nick Ray. Even after all the notoriety of Behind the Green Door he didn’t know who she was, but he certainly knew Rip having directed him years before in King of Kings (1961).

'''Chaiken''': Was any of City Blues ever shot?

in New York getting rid of the shelter, so the money immediately disappeared. Nevertheless, Rip and I persevered. We recast the thing with Amy Wright as his co-star and I raised another $250,000. Milton Moses Ginsburg, a good friend who worked with Rip previously in ''Coming Apart'' (1969), took over as director. As soon as we started shooting, the Teamsters came down on us like a ton of bricks. We were doing this as an indie venture, totally outside Union regulations and that’s what ultimately eviscerated us.We got half the picture shot, but all the material is gone because I was never able to pay the lab bill.

'''Chaiken''': How soon after that did you move to Alaska and what precipitated

the move?

in Florida but shot entirely in Alaska. My first digitally shot and edited

feature.

films to come to Alaska as long as there is Vancouver, B.C. However, the Alaskan Film Group finally agitated and got passed a bill that becomes law on June 18, 2009 that places Alaska among the top five states in the nation for a tax rebate for any productions that come here. A rebate of something like 42% of the total budget, which could be a huge incentive for producers. So, we’ll see how all that goes. In the meantime, I’ll continue to do my thing

regardless.

'''Welt''': For me, ''Beyond the Law'' is the one that stands best on its own. I also

think ''Beyond the Law (Blue)'' was an improvement on the original; the domfem’s murder providing a more fitting finality. ''Wild 90'' is, well, ''Wild 90'' ...

one of the first attempts to use ''verité'' techniques to make a narrative film.

Perhaps when the DVD comes out, Criterion might consider subtitling it so

it can be more easily comprehended. Norman said that, like fine wine, ''Maidstone'' would require time to mature. I haven’t seen it in twenty years, so

maybe it has. As for my take-away—what can I say; I loved the guy. I’ve certainly never run into another person as uniquely brilliant as he was. I learned

'''Jokel''': I was born in Shanghai to Chinese parents. Raised in Brazil, educated

there in a British prep school, before attending a Catholic nuns college in

America.

'''Jokel''': I arrived in 1967 around the time I first went to work for LeacockPennebaker Films. I was a language major and spent my junior year in Paris. After college, I went to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School. At the time, I was married to a Harvard graduate student and came to New York shortly after my divorce when I was still in my 20s.

told me he made documentary films. I remember saying to him, “Documentary films?” So, he invited me to the studio and showed me ''Don’t Look Back'' (1967), the film he had just finished on Bob Dylan, and also ''Primary'' (1960), a film he worked on about John F. Kennedy. I was totally mesmerized by these and became interested in learning how they were made. Soon after, Pennebaker offered me a $75 a week job and promised to train

me as an editor. It was too good an opportunity to pass up, especially

because I am a visually oriented person and not good with words! So, I took

the job and was very glad I did because at the time they were just getting

back all of this fantastic footage from the Monterey Pop festival. We would

Mailer shortly after and became involved with the editing of ''Beyond the Law''

(1968).

'''Chaiken''': Was there an immediate sense of how good the Beyond the Law

footage was?

were raw, gritty and true to life. In that respect, I think Beyond the Law is

'''Chaiken''': Did Beyond the Law go through many successive edits?

'''Jokel''': Beyond the Law found its proper rhythm early on and Norman took

I asked him why he hired me to edit, considering I had virtually no experience. He told me that he liked my intuition and also the fact that I didn’t go

to film school so I wasn’t bogged down by rules. He also said he liked my

”nimble oriental fingers” (''laughs'').

Jokel: I was very fortunate that Norman let me edit certain scenes, but it

could be frustrating because he was so articulate about what he wanted. I’d suggest a way to cut a scene and he would go on and on about how he thought it should be done. It got to the point where I just looked at him and said “Norman you are so articulate and I am just the opposite. You’ll always win in the argument, but my instincts tell me that we should ....” More often than not, Norman would tell me the way he wanted a scene to work and then

afterwards turn to me and say “Ok, let’s try it your way.” We were dealing with

'''Chaiken''': With Norman running for Mayor of New York and writing Of A

Fire On the Moon in the middle of editing ''Maidstone'', were there long gaps

in the work?

'''Jokel''': After Heat, I was editing again for Michael Blackwood. He had a connection at a German television station, who commissioned him to make a number of documentaries. Michael asked if I had any ideas and I told him that I would love to make my own film on Andy Warhol. We presented a proposal to German TV and Michael got us the money. Since I had access to Warhol, it all seemed to make sense. The only problem was I’d never directed a film before. When you are very young, it’s amazing how fearless you are. I was convinced I could do it so I went ahead. I hired a great cameraman in New York, Mark Woodcock, who worked with Pennebaker. I went with Andy, Paul and Jed to Cannes for the premiere of Heat and took my own camera, a non-sync, handheld, 16mm Cannon Scoopic. I filmed our entire European trip and used a little tape recorder on the side to capture our conversations along the way. I edited together all of this wild footage I shot, alongside the material Mark shot in New York. Many people still think it’s one of the best documentaries on Andy because I was able to get him to open up and talk in front of the camera, which was unusual for him.

'''Jokel''': Bob Hughes, the art critic for Time magazine who was a close friend,

'''Jokel''': Yes, Andy introduced me to him the summer we were editing Heat.

'''Chaiken''': One of the most striking things about Larry Rivers: Public and Private (1993) is the intimacy between director and subject . . .

to work with which became this very personal film of mine titled ''China

Revisited'' (2000).

'''Jokel''': More than anything else, I learned how to become more fearless, to

move forward without necessarily having all the answers and to live with this

ambiguity. Personally, I found him to be patient, charming, responsive ...

the public rarely saw this private side. When you work with Norman as

closely as Jan and I did, you got to see the entirety of his personality. He was

incredibly loyal. He could have chosen anyone to work with, but he chose to

stick with Jan and I. He took a chance on me, believing in my instincts and

whatever else. For that, I’ll always be grateful to him. The last time I saw Norman was after the screening of ''Tough Guys Don’t Dance'' (1987) at Lincoln Center in the summer of 2007. After the panel discussion between you, Norman and Michael Lennon, I went up to the stage to say hello to him. In spite of the canes, he struggled to get up from his chair and introduced me to Mike by saying,”Lana was an editor on ''Beyond the Law'' and ''Maidstone''. Isn’t she beautiful?” That’s Norman ...