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William Goldenberg has been working as an editor for over 30 years, during which time he has collaborated with A-list directors like Michael Mann (“Heat,” “The Insider,” “Ali,” “Miami Vice”), Kathryn Bigelow (“Zero Dark Thirty,” “Detroit”), and Ben Affleck, whose “Argo” won the Oscar for best editing. Yet when the time came to direct his first feature, the inspirational sports drama “Unstoppable,” there was still one thing made Goldenberg apprehensive: working with actors.
“That was the thing I was most nervous about,” Goldenberg told IndieWire’s Filmmaker Toolkit podcast. “Luckily for me, I got my first choice for everybody, and they’re all spectacularly good actors, so it’s not like I’m taking a first-time actor and trying to mold the performance. It was about making sure we’re all making the same film, that we all have the same goals and are trying to interpret the scenes in the same way.”
Goldenberg quickly realized that there was a direct corollary between his experience as an editor and what his actors needed from him to get on the same page. “What ended up happening was I spoke to the actors the way I like a director to speak to me as an editor,” he said. “I don’t have to give Jennifer Lopez notes. I’m just giving her the parameters and unloading all the information to her about what story I’m telling, and that’s the way I like directors to speak to me. It’s not tell me where to cut, but tell me how you want to feel, and I can make that happen.”
Once Goldenberg had set those parameters, the actors were free to explore. “So much of directing is just casting the right actors, which I feel like I did,” he said. “And then just giving them a safe space to work. I told all the actors, if a certain line of dialogue doesn’t feel right to you, or doesn’t feel like it’s the character, just change it. Make it your own. Consequently, I got a lot of different performances with different shadings and sometimes different words, but all with the same intention.”
For Goldenberg, those unique contributions from the actors were one of the biggest pleasures of making the movie. “Every one of the actors had great suggestions,” he said. “Whether it was blocking or a line, there were so many different things. Don Cheadle, because he’s directed, was so wonderful and helpful. He took Jharrel Jerome under his wing, and it served the story because they got so close that it really did feel like mentor and mentee. That’s obviously what he is in the movie, so it really helped the overall film.”
Goldenberg found that the biggest surprise about directing was how much he immediately enjoyed it. “I spent my whole career by myself in a dark room or with one assistant,” Goldenberg said. “If there are four people in a room, it’s a crowd. Being on a set with hundreds of people that were so talented and so committed to making the film that I wanted to make was a really wonderful place to be.”
That said, there was one surprise that wasn’t quite as positive: how quickly a day goes by. “We’d have a 7 a.m. call, and at 9 I would look at the first AD and say, ‘How are doing on time?’ ‘We’re behind.’ So you spend a lot of time looking at your watch, thinking, ‘OK, I need eight shots but I only have two hours, so what can I drop and still get the scene that I want?’ All that time management stuff was more difficult than I expected it to be.”
As happy as Goldenberg is with “Unstoppable,” he has no plans to abandon editing entirely for a directing career. “I hope to go back and forth,” he said. “I love editing, and I love the relationships with the directors that I’ve worked with, and I would hate to not have those relationships. I’m editing a Paul Greengrass film right now, and I love Paul and I love his family. He gives me so much creative freedom. But I would like to direct again. My plan is to go every other one, we’ll see how that works out.”
English (US) ·