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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. It's award season, and in the weeks leading up to the Oscars, we will highlight the talented folks who work behind the camera. We call this annual series The Big Picture. Today, we begin with an Oscar nominee who had the challenging job of editing Best Picture nominee Oppenheimer. Our guest is editor, Jennifer Lame.

For this project, Jennifer works with an expansive cast of characters, decades of time to condense into three hours, and of course, an atomic bomb explosion. Jennifer has worked with director Christopher Nolan before. She edited his film, Tenet, and worked for many years with Noah Baumbach. Oppenheimer is up for 13 awards, including Jennifer, who is nominated for best editing. She joins us now to discuss the work she does. Jennifer, welcome to the show.

Jennifer Lame: Hi, Alison. Thank you. It's such an honor to be on WNYC. This is like a dream come true. [chuckles]

Alison Stewart: So happy to have you. We love talking to the folks who are super creatives behind the scene. Before we discuss the details of Oppenheimer, how would you describe the responsibilities of a film editor?

Jennifer Lame: Ooh, that's a tough question. You'd think I'd gotten better at this point. I think my responsibility is just putting the movie together and preserving the initial reaction I get from the script and talking to the director in the beginning. Then obviously, I'm usually there the whole shoot, so I see how things are evolving and issues that have come up. Then we have the movie that's shot and we're trying to emulate as best as we can that script.

It's the feeling of the script as opposed to the exact scenes and lines. Because obviously, my job is a lot of changing all of that and putting together the best film that's been shot, if that makes sense.

Alison Stewart: What's the first thing you do when you get a script?

Jennifer Lame: It varies based on the director. You mentioned Noah Baumbach who I worked with for a very long time. He's incredible. He would send me a script really early and we would workshop the script and I would almost edit the script with him. With Chris Nolan, I go and read it at his house and it's very close to shooting and it's very locked in. The two times I've read his scripts, there was not much editing to be done, and I just was like, "Shoot the script." He asked me, "Is there anything to be cut?"

In the two times I've read his scripts, there was nothing. It's always a different process based on what a director needs from you on that level, the script level.

Alison Stewart: Which is why I thought it was so interesting. They both make great films, but a Noah Baumbach film is very different from a Christopher Nolan film.

Jennifer Lame: Yes.

Alison Stewart: That speaks to your talent, your ability to be flexible and go in between and work with different kinds of people. Is that just a skill you've acquired over time, or is that just who you are?

Jennifer Lame: My first film was Frances Ha with Noah Baumbach, which is an incredible movie.

Alison Stewart: Oh, what a great movie.

Jennifer Lame: I love that movie. I just saw Greta last night. It was a great first film as an editor because Noah's so experimental in the editing room and we got to do so much cool stuff on that film. I think getting to work with a writer-director, I've actually mostly worked with writer-directors and it's a specific thing that I think I've grown quite fond of and quite comfortable working with writer-directors. That's the throughline, even though the films are all quite different. It's a specific personality and type that I really enjoy working with.

Alison Stewart: How did you get into the field?

Jennifer Lame: I fell in love with it in college. I made a documentary and just shot tons of footage and then everyone went away for spring break, senior year to party. I just locked myself in a room and cut 30 different versions of this documentary, went crazy, but then I was like, "This is crazy editing." Then I just pursued it. After college, I really wanted to just get to work and get a job.

I had a lot of hiccups along the way, but then this amazing woman, Jennifer Lilly, gave me my first apprentice editing job on a Sidney Lumet film, which that to be your first film job, it was incredible, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. Jen Lilly became a mentor, and then I gained a lot of mentors in New York. The New York editing film community is unbelievable. I've so many people I could list, but I won't waste the time, that have helped me and opened doors for me and given me opportunities.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Jennifer Lame. She's nominated for best editing for Oppenheimer. Once you have made your first rough cut of a film, you have the first rough cut, what are you hoping to accomplish? What are some of the aims for the very first pass-through?

Jennifer Lame: I think, for me, it's just getting to know the footage and working it and learning all the performances. In this particular film, there was just an insane amount of amazing performances, all the way from obviously Robert Downey, Jr., Cillian, Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, Matt Damon, and then you have all the scientists. They're all incredible actors. The ensemble in this cast was incredible.

For me, it's just really getting to know each character and each performer and all the takes and the different stuff they've given me and then just structurally starting to put it together. It's like baby steps. You can't think about the big picture right away. You have to take baby steps and just get to know each character and slowly start piecing it together and learn all the footage. It's my first step.

The assembly is really just getting to know the movie. I'm not trying to put together a great film that's impossible. Chris is really great about that. Whenever I do my assemblies, he's like, "Just know the footage and work it and experiment." But obviously, it's going to take a while to edit the film.

Alison Stewart: Is there a particular scene or a moment in the film that looks very different from how it first was presented, how you first assembled it?

Jennifer Lame: That's interesting. Yes. There was a scene when Cillian and Emily are having a confrontation after he finds out about Jean's death and he goes into the woods and she finds him. Really early on in my assembly, I'd put this incredible performance by Cillian where he's staring right at her and he is sobbing. It's this beautiful performance, but as we kept refining the film, we started to realize that it didn't make sense.

Cillian gave so many performances where he's looking down and he's not even crying so hard, he's just in shock. We played more of the scene on Emily, Kitty's character, and it really made their relationship more interesting. You really felt this care they had for each other. The scene always worked, but it didn't get to the next level till really late when we replaced that take and played more of it on Kitty and messed with the Jean cut.

That was a really fun scene to keep tweaking because it feels like a small scene but comes at such a huge turning point. The two female characters in that scene are just so important to his journey.

Alison Stewart: When you're working on a film like this, how many different types of media were you working with?

Jennifer Lame: I just work on the computer in the Avid but then I have an amazing team of people, a lot of them New Yorkers actually, [unintelligible 00:07:22] New Yorkers, that come. I have an editorial team that helps me with the Avid material, not to get too in the weeds. Then there's a whole film department that's cutting film as I'm cutting. That's something I'm very conscious of.

Every cut I make, there's a person named Tom Foligno who's cutting the film. We show the director's cut on film, on film with pieces of tape. At any point, it could break. It's terrifying, but it's terrifying in a great way. It's like this adrenaline rush of watching this. You can see your cuts, you can see your splices. It's incredible.

Alison Stewart: We actually got someone who sent us a text or a call who is very into the segment right now and said he wanted to ask Jennifer her approach to using the music of Ludwig Göransson the composer.

Jennifer Lame: Oh my God, he's fantastic. I've been lucky enough to work with Ludwig now three times. Him and Chris, they start working on the music really early on, right before the shoot and during the shoot. Ludwig is constantly doing stuff. Chris doesn't use temp music, so I cut my assembly with no music. Then pretty early on as Chris and I start working, he'll start playing me stuff that Ludwig has sent and we lay it in.

The Trinity sequence, we had that piece of music basically when we started cutting it. It's an incredible piece of music. I feel so lucky to work with Ludwig. He's constantly experimenting. He's constantly popping over to the editing room and watching scenes, and then he'll try something new. It's a really amazing process working with him.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk about the Trinity scene since we're there. The Trinity Test, when the team finally tests to see if the bomb works. There are so many different cuts to characters or building tensions. There's shaking hands and buttons. There's sound that goes on for a moment, goes out. It's just quiet. Let's start with all the different perspectives. How does using all the different perspectives build tension?

Jennifer Lame: Like I said about the ensemble cast, leading up to Trinity, I feel like all the scientists and their faces and their slight-- they don't get too much screen time, but their personalities really shine. I feel like when we get to the Trinity sequence, their faces become so important. Their nervousness and when they're in that room and they're doing the measurements and they make jokes to each other.

I think, for me, what's so amazing about that sequence is how young these guys are and how scared they are. You feel like you're there. I really wanted to create that environment as did Chris, obviously. Just really showing all the little machinations to build to this moment that's terrifying for these guys. That was really important, playing it on these faces and showing these guys and how hard they worked and how nervous they are.

Then obviously, all the amazing stuff that Ruth, the production designer, did with the bomb and the tent and the mattress rolling under the-- like crazy, that they were just rolling mattresses in case it fell. We wanted to just highlight all these details to really show you how rough it all was and experimental.

Alison Stewart: What was a tough decision to make in that particular scene for you?

Jennifer Lame: In the Trinity sequence?

Alison Stewart: Yes, because that's the one you got to get right.

Jennifer Lame: It's so funny because that one to me was the most fun to cut.

Alison Stewart: Oh, wow.

Jennifer Lame: Chris and I had that music. I think the hardest scene in that whole section was the part when Kistiakowsky comes in the tent and he says that thing failed. There's just a lot going on in that tent. It's raining and the phone rings and the guys are making bets about whether they're going to ignite the atmosphere. That tent sequence is kind of that sets it all off.

The second half of the Trinity section, the night half when it starts raining, that particular scene we cut many, many different versions of it. There's just a lot going on. Once we lift off after that tense scene, I feel like the rest it was just putting in the pieces and tinkering around and it was more just fun.

That sequence was really like the machinations of it all and getting all the little pieces right. We were constantly tweaking it, but it was really just putting it together, whereas other sections of the film I find were more challenging editorially speaking than that one.

Alison Stewart: Like what?

Jennifer Lame: I think the first 20 minutes of the film and after the bomb goes off. For me, especially when I was reading the script, that section of the movie I find the most interesting, but as an editor, the most challenging of how do you keep an audience absorbed after the bomb goes off because that's what everyone's waiting for and then the bomb goes off. How do you keep everyone's attention all the way to the end? Because that's some of my favorite stuff.

I think that was a challenge in a good way because I loved all this stuff. It's a challenge, and the pacing of that last third of the film was a constant stress and challenge of making sure everybody was locked in because it's a three-hour film, and as an editor, you got to keep people's attention.

Alison Stewart: I was going to ask about pacing. My guest by the way is Jennifer Lame. She's nominated for best editing for Oppenheimer, nominated for an Oscar. Pacing is so interesting because pacing doesn't necessarily mean quick.

Jennifer Lame: No.

Alison Stewart: It's actually almost musical in that way. It's a flow, right?

Jennifer Lame: Exactly.

Alison Stewart: When you're thinking about pacing and you're thinking about the flow of the film, the flow of the story, how can you tell when pacing isn't working? What's your Jennifer test?

Jennifer Lame: Well, luckily, Chris has this great thing he's always done where every Friday, very early on, we invite one or two people to the editing room and sit with those people and watch the whole film, whatever stage it's in, even if it's pretty rough. That's the greatest test, is sitting in a room with another person. You can feel whether they're checked out, whether they're bored, whether something's confusing.

I swear every time the lights go up, Chris and I both know what the person's going to say before they even say it because you can feel it. That's a great test. I think just my own gut instinct of when I'm watching something. I can tell if I feel things, something's too rushed, or something doesn't feel natural. I think particularly with the pacing of this film, it's baked into it of when things need to be rushed and when you need to feel the anxiety for Oppenheimer of things are out of control or right after the bomb when he's waiting for the call and he's wondering what's going on, things slow down because things are slowing down for him and no one's giving him information.

I think you're right when you say it's musical. It's this gut instinct musical ebb and flow of you have to take the audience on the highs and the lows with the character so they never get off the train, they never get off the ride. You have to keep the ride having the ups and downs, and it can't be up all the time obviously because that gets boring. It's incredibly difficult to talk about, but it is this constant calibration and tweaking it all the way till the end on the sound stage.

I would notice things sitting on the stage with the mixers. I'm like, "Oh, this isn't good." I can tell these guys are checked out. You're just constantly tweaking it and shaping it.

Alison Stewart: What's something that's important for an editor to keep in mind when you have a film that has a lot of dialogue, interrogation scenes, there's courtroom drama, there's planning in the labs? What's important to keep in mind with dialogue-heavy moments in films?

Jennifer Lame: They're obviously my favorite stuff. I love that. I think because I came up under the great Noah Baumbach who's so good at dialogue-heavy scenes and he also shoots a lot of takes, which is great because characters, actors get lost in their characters and these performances. I think, for me, it's all about the footage. If I feel like a scene isn't popping for me or doesn't have that moment, I just keep watching the dailies.

Even if it's one word or one sentence or one look or someone touching someone, I never give up on making something better. I always go back to the footage as if I'm an archeologist and I'm excavating. I feel like I find new and interesting things all the way at the end. I think as an editor, a big thing is to know that you're always going to do so many passes.

Again, you have to stay looking at the minutiae of it, not the big picture, because you'll get overwhelmed because I know that I can change something all the way till the end. We do character passes. This week, we'll do this character, and next week, we'll do this character. If you see something bad with another character, you just have to put it out of mind and you'll get to it. You just have to compartmentalize that stuff and know that you can always fix something and find something great-

Alison Stewart: Someone texted-

Jennifer Lame: -in the footage.

Alison Stewart: -to us, "Was there a thought to not showing the Trinity Test explosion directly, only the reactions? I appreciate not glorifying the weapon."

Jennifer Lame: Yes, I think that was really important to Chris and that was in the script. It was something that he felt very important to the movie, especially since the movie is in first person. It's very much an Oppenheimer's experience and in his head and we experience that on Oppenheimer's face. I'm assuming this person's talking about when they're watching the aftermath of the bomb and the horrific images we all have probably seen and heard about.

He really wanted to play that on Oppenheimer's face as that slideshow. I really wanted that slideshow when you hear everyone feel sick. On his face, to me, it's way more horrifying than all the images because again, we've seen the images, but seeing the man who helped create the bomb's reaction to those images, to me, is particularly disturbing and effective and devastating.

Alison Stewart: Cillian Murphy has a great face. You look at a lot of faces. What is it something that he does as an actor just with his face? He's born with that face, that's genetics, but actors really use their bodies. What's something that he does that is unique to him? You've looked at him a lot. [chuckles]

Jennifer Lame: I have looked at him a lot. I don't know because I don't know what he does because I don't know much about acting. I just know what I think is authentic to the characters that I'm creating, but he is brilliant. The fact that he was able to make-- When I was going through the dailies and making my assembly, I couldn't look away from him. He just brings you in.

Even though he's playing this character that no one really knew what they felt or what they thought half the time, you just become so locked in and obsessed with who this person is and you don't want to leave a room with him. I don't know how he did it, but he had that enigmatic kind of quality that I think Oppenheimer did where people were drawn to him, but you also couldn't totally figure him out.

He just nailed it. I don't know. Maybe that's a little bit part of his personality because he's a little bit like that, but I think he's just a brilliant actor and he just nailed that performance. I was nervous because obviously Oppenheimer, the person is-- everyone says no one really knew who he was. That's a tricky part to play, but he really nailed it.

Alison Stewart: As you mentioned earlier, you've worked with Christopher Nolan before on Tenet. What did you learn working with him on that film that was useful for a historical drama because that was a little bit more sci-fi and actiony?

Jennifer Lame: Yes. I think what was great about that film is it was such a huge change for me on so many levels. I was so incredibly nervous and it was challenging. I think the first time I sat in a room and worked on a scene, it was actually during the shoot. He wanted to see some of the car chase scene, and I'd done a really rough assembly of it and it wasn't great.

He made me show it to him and I was so nervous, but then he was like, "Let's go for a walk." I was like, "Okay, I'm going to get fired now." He was just so lovely and he just told me a little bit about his life in London, and then we were in London at the time, but then he just was like, "It's going to be okay. I know you can cut a car chasing, we can cut the car chasing together. That's not why you're here. You're here because I think you're a great editor and you can do this."

He was so kind and supportive and I didn't know him at all. It was just I think just learning his personality and that he trusts people and he trusted me and he allowed me to trust myself. Then I was really able to flourish and lean into the material and just experiment and not be nervous that there's one specific way to cut a car chasing and I don't know it because I had never cut a car chasing before. That's not a thing.

He really disabused me of that mentality very quickly. I just realized, "Oh, he's just a great filmmaker and he just wants to make a great film and that's what I'm here to help him do." Just learning that and getting to understand his process on Tenet. I remember at the end of the film, I was like, "I hope I get to do another with him." Because now I really understand how he works and I know I can nail it. I was so grateful that he allowed me to work on Oppenheimer.

Alison Stewart: Can you tell us what you're editing next?

Jennifer Lame: I'm not sure yet. I just finished doing Postcard from Earth with Darren Aronofsky, which I had a fabulous time on, and that's the Sphere in Las Vegas. Now I'm waiting just to see because you know the strikes and everything, I think everyone's just coming up for air, but I am really excited to get to work on another film. I had a great time with Darren Aronofsky. It was amazing.

Alison Stewart: Jennifer Lame is nominated for an Oscar for Best Editing for Oppenheimer. Jennifer, thank you so much for the work you do and for spending some time in explaining your process and work with us.

Jennifer Lame: Thank you so much, Alison. I had such a great time.

Alison Stewart: There's more All Of It on the way. Coming up, we'll continue our public song project launch with a contribution from Philadelphia rock and roll Low Cut Connie and for the history of the blues music in the '20s. That's right after the news headlines.

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