The Social Reckoning: Baumgarten plants the fist pump
Editor Alan Baumgarten, Aaron Sorkin's go-to cutter and an Oscar nominee for The Trial of the Chicago 7, told The Credits how he shaped The Social Reckoning. Midway through, Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison) sees a basketball player pump his fist on a muted TV and says she can't understand how someone can feel so much joy. After her testimony to Congress, she walks down a hallway and pumps her own fist.
Baumgarten called the basketball game a deliberate setup that the audience isn't meant to see coming, and said the hard part was deciding how much weight to give it. At one point they didn't show the TV at all and stayed on Madison's face while she described what she saw. In the end they kept the screen insert of the player, because it registers a little more strongly for the payoff later.
The same restraint ran through the rest of the cut. The film jumps around in time, and early versions carried dates and "days before or after" cards until Sorkin came up with a simple slider, a white ruler line from 2019 to 2023, used sparingly so the frame wouldn't clutter. For the January 6th material, shot on many cameras in the first two days, Baumgarten said you aren't looking for the perfect shot but for what punches through: the unusual, the organic, the real.
Go deeper on Kingdom of Dreams
- → EP 332: Byron Smith on cutting AMC+'s Kill Jackie
- → EP 329: Dody Dorn on Heart of the Beast
- → EP 225: Eric Kissack on long takes in The Studio
We have not sat with Alan Baumgarten yet. Go deeper with editors who talk about structure, pacing and protecting performance in the cut.
Headline inspired by reporting at The Credits (Hugh Hart interviewing Alan Baumgarten, Nov 6, 2026). Full article remains on their site; this page is our craft lens and episode guide. Read the source at The Credits ↗