'Small Soldiers', Editor, Marshall Harvey

0:00Marshall HarveySo you remember the Godzilla teaser trailer. He's in the museum…

0:05Jawad MirYes

0:05Marshall Harvey... And I think a teacher with a bunch of students, and they're looking at the skeletons of dinosaurs. And then suddenly…

0:11Jawad MirYes

0:11Marshall Harvey... The big Godzilla foot comes in. And somebody at DreamWorks marketing thought, "Oh," and the tagline was, "This summer, size matters." So what they did, they got the same actors, the same location, the same set, shot an identical looking teaser trailer. You'd think, "Oh God, here's the Godzilla trailer again," right? But when the foot comes down, crashes down into the museum, suddenly the small soldiers come up and lasso the foot and bring the monster down. And then the tagline was, "This summer, size doesn't matter. Small Soldiers." Well…

0:54Jawad MirWow

0:54Marshall Harvey... They showed this to Steven Spielberg.

1:05Jawad MirOh, I just wanted to have a conversation, that's all, about Small Soldiers and, just a bunch of other, you know, casual conversation, whatever comes up. There's nothing planned.

1:14Marshall HarveyOkay

1:14Jawad Mir... You know. You,.. Was it your first time working with Joe on the Small Soldiers, or had you worked with him before as well?

1:23Marshall HarveyNo. Actually Joe and I met back in the 1970s.

1:29Jawad MirOkay.

1:30Marshall HarveyI worked on a movie that was distributed by Roger Corman at New World Pictures, and that's where I first met Joe, 'cause he was in the trailer department. And I ended up cutting a trailer for the movie. It was called Dynamite Women. Actually, it was retitled to The Great Texas Dynamite Chase. But I did the, ad campaigns and stuff for it since I had worked on the movie. That's where I first met Joe, and then years later we worked together on, a movie that John Landis produced, kinda like Kentucky Fried Theater. Amazon Women on the Moon.

2:12Jawad MirOkay.

2:12Marshall HarveySo I ended up editing most of Joe's segments of that.

2:17Jawad MirOkay.

2:17Marshall HarveyAnd when he needed an editor for The Burbs, I worked on that, and then Matinee, and a couple of TV pilots, I think. So yeah, we had done a few things before Small Soldiers came along.

2:31Jawad MirGreat. When did you get involved in Small Soldiers? Was it, at the production stage, or was it pre-production?

2:41Marshall HarveyWell, trying to remember. I think I came in maybe a week or two before they started shooting.

2:50Jawad MirOkay.

2:51Marshall HarveyI had to set up the editing room. And, Small Soldiers, they had a release date set in stone before they even started shooting the movie.

3:03Jawad MirYeah.

3:03Marshall HarveySo it was a race against time the whole way. It was a four-month shoot and, like, three and a half months of post, which is, like, ridiculous…

3:17Jawad MirInsane

3:17Marshall Harvey... For a movie like that.

3:19Jawad MirYeah. Yeah.

3:19Marshall HarveyIt was kinda the beginning of CGI. It was still rather new and expensive. I think we ended up with 350 some odd, effect shots, CGI effect shots, mostly s… to move the characters that they can't do with puppets. You know, when they're j… j… jumping around or something.

3:46Jawad MirRight. Right.

3:47Marshall HarveySo at the time, 350 shots seemed, like, enormous, especially with the lack of time we had. Nowadays, I mean, they have thousands of CGI shots in a big tent pole movie, you know?

4:05Jawad MirRight

4:05Marshall Harvey... So yeah, it was, like I say, a race against time. Normally on a movie like that you'd have at least six, seven, eight months of post-production. So what it meant was while they were shooting, we would have to lock sequences to send to ILM to start the visual effects. So that meant Joe would have to come in on a Saturday. He would work s… all day Saturday locking a, you know, a two-minute scene. And that would get sent to ILM. Otherwise they'd never meet that schedule. So it was a little crazy.

4:47Jawad MirI'm sure. And you know, one of the things that I really... I think it's a very... What's the right word I'm looking? It's a, it's a rarity that, you know, you have a film that is done by Steven Spielberg or Joe Johnson. You know, some of the very few directors have a mastery over visual effects, sort of blending in with the, you know, the real animatronics.

5:16Jawad Mir... And in Small Soldiers it was so am… amazingly blended. Like, especially that sequence of,.. I... It's been a while since I've seen Small Soldiers, like a couple of years, so I'm not really good with characters. You know, the bike scene where he, the boy, the young boy is being chased, and that whole sequence, the way it was cut so seamlessly, you really had to watch it over and over again to figure out which one was, you know, animatronic and which one was, full CGI.

5:47Marshall HarveyYeah.

5:47Jawad MirSo it was a beautiful blend. It was a absolute beau… And c… even for today's time, I would say. I mean, it was really ahead of its time. And considering to do it in three and a half months as opposed to eight, I mean, kudos to you.

6:01Marshall HarveyWell, that sequence was one of the things we had to lock early on and send to ILM. So they were still shooting and we had to lock that sequence. Yeah, so…

6:13Jawad MirYeah

6:13Marshall Harvey... It was fun. But ILM did a really good job of,.. Well, they would scan all the, you know, the puppets into the computer.

6:26Jawad MirRight.

6:26Marshall HarveySo they could, you know, animate, you know, animate them and make a, make them look... Scratchit, what are you doing here? Get out of here.

6:40Jawad MirAmazing. Amazing.

6:41Marshall HarveyThis is a Marquette that I got to save of Scratchit, one of the Gorgonites.

6:48Jawad MirYes.

6:48Marshall HarveyBut they would scan these things. Stan Wis… Winston and his, company, developed all the characters. First drawing them and then making them, you know, in 3D models. And ILM would scan this into their computer, and then they can animate, do whatever they wanna do with it. So then.

7:12Jawad MirYeah.

7:13Marshall HarveyWhen the, when the production was all done, some of us got to keep these. I got Scratchit for some reason because nobody else wanted him, but...

7:24Jawad MirNo, that's, that's great. I mean, it's, it's, it's one of those films that appeals to kids but also to adults. I remember when, I think it was the same year it came out when Godzilla came out, the, Dean Devlin…

7:36Marshall HarveyOh

7:36Jawad Mir... Roland Emmerich. And the way the marketing was done, I know that has nothing to do with the editing, but the way the marketing was done, because in Godzilla's marketing was always about size does matter, and in Small Soldiers it was completely the opposite, so they kind of went like the different direction. I thought, which was just pretty cool. I mean, it was... I really appreciated the marketing behind it. I don't know if it worked or not. But I thought it was pretty cool.

8:02Marshall HarveyYeah. Me too. And I have a funny story to tell about that.

8:06Jawad MirSure. Sure.

8:07Marshall HarveySo you remember the Godzilla teaser trailer?

8:11Jawad MirYes.

8:11Marshall HarveyHe's in the museum.

8:13Jawad MirYes.

8:13Marshall HarveyAnd I think a teacher with a bunch of students, and they're looking at the skeletons of the dinosaurs.

8:18Jawad MirYes.

8:18Marshall HarveyAnd then suddenly the big Godzilla foot comes in and... Well, somebody at DreamWorks marketing thought... Oh, and the tagline was, "Size matters. This summer, size matters."

8:34Jawad MirYeah.

8:35Marshall HarveySo what they did, they got the same actors, the same location, the same set, shot an identical looking, teaser trailer. You'd think, "Oh God, here's the Godzilla trailer again," right? But when the foot comes down, crashes down into the museum, suddenly the small soldiers come up and lasso the foot and bring the monster down. And then the tagline was, "This summer, size doesn't matter. Small Soldiers." Well.

9:13Jawad MirWow.

9:14Marshall HarveyThey showed this to Steven Spielberg. And he said, "We can't use this. It looks so much like the original Sony Godzilla trailer that the Sony Pictures is gonna sue us."

9:30Jawad MirYeah.

9:30Marshall HarveySo the whole thing got squashed. Nobody ever saw it.

9:35Jawad MirI was gonna say…

9:35Marshall HarveyBut that's all really funny

9:36Jawad Mir... I don't remember seeing anything like that. Yeah. Yeah. That's actually pretty smart. But y… you know, you... Steven Spielberg is absolutely right, 'cause I was thinking in the back of my head, was there any legal ramifications to it, right? But at the same time, the genius behind is like capitalizing it for your own gain.

9:51Marshall HarveyYeah

9:51Jawad Mir... But that's what marketing is all about.

9:53Marshall HarveyWell, it was a brilliant idea I thought, and a really funny parody. And it would've made the film... I think, the trouble with Small Soldiers is that people perceived it as a kids movie 'cause it was about toys, right?

10:09Jawad MirYeah. Yeah.

10:10Marshall HarveyAnd Spielberg, who had just shot Saving Private Ryan…

10:16Jawad MirRight

10:16Marshall Harvey... Told Joe. He said, "Look, we gotta make this movie edgy." Of course, that's Joe's trademark. Gremlins and everything.

10:25Jawad MirRight.

10:25Marshall HarveyMake it edgy. You know, when the soldier has a knife and slashes the boy's hand, go ahead and show some blood. You know, make it... We gotta make this thing appeal to an older, you know, teenage audience, young adults.

10:41Jawad MirRight.

10:41Marshall HarveyNot just kids. And that became... Of course, Joe went all out with that. That became a huge problem because Katzenberg, Spielberg's partner at DreamWorks…

10:55Jawad MirRight

10:55Marshall Harvey... Had made this huge promotional deal with Burger King. And in the contract it stipulated that the movie would not be anything more than a PG.

11:08Jawad MirOh.

11:08Marshall HarveyWell, when we submitted the movie to the, ratings board, we got an R rating. Because there was so much child endangerment, violence, explosions, you know. They drug Phil Hartman and his wife. Yeah. So there was no way we would get a PG. And Katzenberg freaked out and said, "We're gonna lose millions of dollars." So we had to do a lot of last minute trimming, and, cutting to kind of cut down on the violence at least. And it went back and forth and back and forth. Finally we got a PG-13, which is what Gremlins was, PG-13. And Burger King was not too thrilled, but somehow they worked it out 'cause they had made all these promotional toys as giveaways with Burger King or something and… Anyway, so that added problems.

12:15Marshall HarveySpielberg, you know, it was like the right l… the left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing.

12:19Jawad MirRight.

12:19Marshall HarveySpielberg didn't know they had this contract with Burger King for a PG, and he was telling Joe, the director, "Go ahead, make it edgy. Make it violent.". Anyway.

12:32Jawad MirYeah. No. That's, that's a good story to share. Thank you so much. You know, going back to Godzilla for a second. I'm not trying to talk about that film, but I just remember when that very first teaser of Godzilla came out of the man, fishing and the Go… I don't know if you remember. The Godzilla kind of comes out of the water and it was right, I think, couple of years after Independence Day, right? So everybody that summer, like it was gonna be the biggest Memorial Day weekend film.

12:58Marshall HarveyOh, yeah.

12:59Jawad MirEverybody was looking f… f… forward to it. And it opened with a bang, but then it tanked right after that. And then a lot of people, I think, I don't know. I don't have any data to back that up, obviously, and I don't think anybody does. But I wonder if that counter-programming of Small Soldiers, w… as opposed to Godzilla, did it help the film, or did it not help the film? With Godzilla tanking. Th… that size matters, size doesn't matter.

13:26Marshall HarveyOh, I have no idea.

13:31Jawad MirYeah. Ne… neither, I'm just, I just, I'm just fascinated by all these, you know, things that go behind the scene, and what happens and what doesn't happen. But, you know…

13:39Marshall HarveyRight

13:39Jawad Mir... Going back to Small sol… Soldiers, what was the toughest... Well, let me ask you this first. Were you on set f… as the dailies were coming in? Or were you in the st… in the, in the editing studio?

13:51Marshall HarveyOccasionally I would go to the set. There were a couple of times when, I forget exactly the s… the s… specifics. But, you know, we had three or four, five writers on the movie.

14:09Jawad MirYeah.

14:09Marshall HarveyAnd so there were some script changes in the middle of, production. And a couple of times, I don't know, s… maybe s… producer or a studio executive thought, you know, one thing should happen. And when we thought about it, "Well, no, that can't happen because what we shot last week won't work that way." So there was some…

14:35Jawad MirYeah

14:35Marshall Harvey... Back and forth. And sometimes I'd get called. Joe would call me to the set, and we'd try and figure out, "Well, you know, how can we change this scene?" Or, you know, specific things like that. So but mostly I was in the editing room. And which was right on,.. Well, let's see. We were at Universal, at DreamWorks.

14:59Jawad MirRight. On the…

15:01Marshall HarveyMost of Small Soldiers was shot at Warner Brothers, so.

15:07Jawad MirRight.

15:07Marshall HarveyThat's why.

15:07Jawad MirAnd, would the, it was that time in the late '90s when Avid was kicking in from film. Had you s… had you, switched to Avid for… at that time for the fact, for that particular film?

15:19Marshall HarveyYeah.

15:20Jawad MirOr…

15:20Marshall HarveyAbout four hour, four hours. Four years before I had…

15:24Jawad MirRight

15:24Marshall Harvey... Started switching to the Avid. Yeah.

15:28Jawad MirOkay. Okay.

15:30Marshall HarveyYeah.

15:30Jawad MirA… and, any, particular scene aside from the bicycle scene that was quite challenging as an editor? And if so, why?

15:45Marshall HarveyWorking for, excuse me. Working for Joe is actually a dream for an editor, because Joe started in the editing room. So he makes things fairly easy. He knows how things will fit together usually. So nothing was that difficult. I think, near the end of the movie where all hell's breaking loose and, you know, Chip Hazard is on a helicop… like miniature helicopter and flying around. Just a lot of things going on at once. And, to keep the comedy and the action, you know, balanced in a way was maybe a little tricky sometimes.

16:39Marshall HarveyBut…

16:40Jawad MirYeah

16:41Marshall Harvey... Yeah, that w… That big assault on the house was, fairly complex. A lot of, lot of different things going on. And, yeah. So.

16:56Jawad MirYeah. You know…

16:57Marshall HarveyThat was a challenge

16:57Jawad Mir... Speaking of Chip Hazard, sorry, Chip, Cap… excuse me. Chip Hazard, he was perfectly casted. Like Tommy Lee Jones nailed that character.

17:11Marshall HarveyYeah. That was partly, I think... What was his name? One of the executives at DreamWorks. They were all about hiring big name actors…

17:24Jawad MirYeah

17:24Marshall Harvey... To do their animated films.

17:26Jawad MirYeah.

17:27Marshall HarveyAnd I think they suggested that they get, the, Dirty Dozen. The surviving me… members of the Dirty Dozen to play…

17:38Jawad MirRight

17:38Marshall Harvey... The, soldiers. Which made for a really fun ADR looping session to have Ernest Borgnine and Jim Brown. And,.. And then of course, Tommy Lee Jones came in to do, the Chip Hazard. Frank Langella, meeting him was great. And then most fun for me, 'cause I'm a big Spinal Tap fan, having Harry Shearer, Michael McKean, and, What's his name? Sorry.

18:19Jawad MirLet me just…

18:20Marshall HarveyI'm blanking.

18:20Jawad MirThat's okay.

18:22Marshall HarveyAnyway, to have the three guys who did Spinal Tap do the Gorgonite voices. That was a lot of fun.

18:30Jawad MirYeah. Let me just look that up,..

18:33Marshall HarveyOh, I'll think of his name. He made all those…

18:37Jawad MirMichael McKean, Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer, David…

18:40Marshall HarveyChris Guest. Yeah.

18:41Jawad MirYes.

18:41Marshall HarveyChris Guest. Yeah.

18:44Jawad MirYes. Yeah. Yeah, it, you know, it's, it's... Working with Joe, right? Joe Dante, is one of those directors that you don't, even though he's an amazing director and he has a really great way of storytelling, you don't really se… at least I haven't seen many of his interviews. I know he has his, a lot of films that he has done. But working with him, and you've kind of explained that already, that he was an editor, so working with him was a little bit easier. Just as a h… human being, aside from the technical aspect, what was, what was it working like with him?

19:22Marshall HarveyWell, we're kind of the same age, so we had a lot of similarities growing up, watching movies…

19:29Jawad MirYeah

19:29Marshall Harvey... Going to Saturday matinees, and so forth. So a lot of cultural things that, pop culture things that we grew up with, Mad Magazine and whatnot. We kinda shared a lot of, similarities, you know? So that helps. So we got along, always got along really well. And, you know, a director needs to kinda trust the, sensibilities of his editor, you know?

20:04Marshall HarveyAnd, after working a couple times together it became very smooth. So whatever I would contribute, he usually said, "Oh, that's great," you know? So it was a, it's always been a easy working relationship, and we tend to politically we're, on the same note and, Joe's very political with his movies. Did you ever see Second Civil War, the HBO movie?

20:35Jawad MirNo, I haven't. No, I should.

20:37Marshall HarveyThat was a couple years a… maybe just the year before Small Soldiers.

20:44Jawad MirOkay

20:44Marshall Harvey... But somebody who wrote about Joe, called Second Civil War, I think Matinee, Second Civil War, Small Soldiers, his trifecta of, anti-war sensibility. But, yeah, if you get a chance the… Second Civil War was an HBO movie in 1997.

21:10Jawad MirYeah

21:11Marshall Harvey... And it's a political satire. So if you like, Dr. Strangelove kinda movies, you'd love this.

21:17Jawad MirRight.

21:17Marshall HarveyAnd it had a wonderful cast. James Earl…

21:20Jawad MirYeah, I'm just looking at it, Jim. Yeah, sorry, go on

21:22Marshall Harvey... James Earl Jones, Dan Hedaya

21:28Jawad MirPhil Hartman

21:29Marshall Harvey... Dennis Leary's in it. And, yeah…

21:34Jawad MirPhil Hartman and Ron Perlman.

21:36Marshall HarveyPhil Hartman, yeah.

21:37Jawad MirYeah.

21:37Marshall HarveyPhil Hartman plays the President of the United States, and Beau Bridges won an Emmy for Supporting Actor in that. But, it was a, it was kind of a movie ahead of its time, 'cause it's about immigration and, closing the borders of the state of Idaho to immigrants…

22:03Jawad MirReally?

22:03Marshall Harvey... And creating a whole, you know, problem and, w… that leads to civil war. Anyway, so.

22:10Jawad MirWell, I mean, not trying to get political, but things seem to be going in that direction right now. But I…

22:16Marshall HarveyYes

22:16Jawad Mir... I'm definitely gonna enjoy this film because I love political movies and I love political satire. One of my favorite ones is Wag the Dog with D… Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman.

22:26Marshall HarveyOh, yeah. Right.

22:26Jawad MirIt's a, it's an amazing movie, and it's, makes you wonder, you know, what you see on news.

22:33Marshall HarveyYeah. Right.

22:35Jawad MirComing back to Small Soldiers, when the film came out, I think it was in June of 1998, if my memory serves me right, or July.

22:44Marshall Harvey10th.

22:44Jawad MirI think it was July. July 10th, yes. July 10th. What, how did y… You know, as a, it's a different for an editor as opposed to for a producer, or executives and director. Do you remember the s… very first screening that you may have attended, whether it was a test screening or, you know, like a locked version screening, and the audience reaction?

23:09Marshall HarveyWe did have a director's cut test screening, that went pretty well. And then I remember the cast and crew screening was at Universal and, was in, like... It was a big event kinda thing.

23:32Jawad MirRight

23:33Marshall Harvey... What was the question? I forget.

23:38Jawad MirNo, I was just, I was just wondering, what the audience reaction was. But, you know, you talked about director's cut. How long was director's cut as opposed to the final film? I think the final film was an hour and 50 minutes or so. How long was the director's cut?

23:51Marshall HarveyI think it was pretty close. There were three or four, minor s… deleted scenes. Basically just the picking, you know, move the story along a little quicker. Oh, we, you know, we decide we wouldn't need that…

24:09Jawad MirYeah

24:09Marshall Harvey... And maybe this. So it wasn't too much different than I re… that I recall. Yeah.

24:16Jawad MirRight.

24:17Marshall HarveyBut I do remember seeing it, right when we finished. Two weeks after the movie came out I w… was flown up to Vancouver to work on a movie called Lake Placid. And I remember going to a theater in Vancouver to watch Small Soldiers with an audience. And the, you know, got a lot of laughs. Seemed to do well.

24:45Jawad MirYeah.

24:45Marshall HarveyS… the critics we… weren't really thrilled with the movie. I remember Roger Ebert really complained about the violence in the movie. "This is a kids movie. Why is it so violent? There's too many explosions." So he didn't quite get it, but...

25:03Jawad MirI mean, there are so many explosions nowadays in kids cartoons.

25:06Marshall HarveyI know.

25:07Jawad MirBut I guess with time things change. I… you talked about Lake Placid. It just, you know, like a lot of people I love, you know, movies with monsters, right? So whether it's Jurassic Park, Anaconda. As a kid I saw this movie when I was, probably 10, and I shouldn't have seen that movie at that age. It was called The Alligator. It was called The Alligator. And, it was just about this, if I remember it, I haven't seen it since then. There was like a baby alligator and they flush it down the toilet, and it goes into the sewer system and it grows to be this big, you know, a… alligator and it, like, hunts the town. And then Lake Placid is obviously also about, a crocodile or alligator. And, I remember watching it and I really enjoyed it. I just, you mentioned that so I just wanted to bring that up. It was, it wasn't…

26:02Marshall HarveyAnd funny enough…

26:03Jawad MirYeah, go ahead.

26:03Marshall HarveyFunny enough, the movie Alligator, that was a L… Lewis Teague's movie written by John Sayles, by the way.

26:12Jawad MirAh.

26:12Marshall HarveyI did the trailer for that. I did the trailer for Alligator and the TV spots.

26:18Jawad MirHow old is that movie? I… it must've been in the mid…'80s, right?

26:21Marshall HarveyThat was 1980.

26:23Jawad MirYeah.

26:23Marshall Harvey'80 or '81, something like that. Yeah.

26:27Jawad MirYeah, 1980 with Robert Forster. Yeah. I gotta see that again.

26:30Marshall HarveyYeah.

26:30Jawad MirIt's, that's

26:31Marshall HarveyAh, it's a…

26:32Jawad MirI mean…

26:32Marshall Harvey... Good movie. Yeah.

26:34Jawad MirYeah, I'm sure. I mean, there's only been, what, there's Lake Placid, there's Alligator, and the one that just came out four or five years ago by Sam Raimi. I forget the name. It was about the small town and a daughter trying to survive in the house, and the father trying to rescue her. I don't know what that was called. Let me just look it up.

26:58Marshall HarveyAnd it had an alligator in it?

27:01Jawad MirCrawl.

27:02Marshall HarveyCrawl. Oh, yeah.

27:03Jawad MirYeah. From Paramount Pictures. And it's actually, it's o… it's entertaining. I mean, it's not, you know…... It's not gonna bring t… tears to your eyes, but, it's, it's entertaining. I mean, I would recommend watching it if you're just kind of looking for some entertainment. It's pretty fun.

27:19Marshall HarveyYeah.

27:20Jawad MirYeah.

27:21Marshall HarveyCool.

27:21Jawad MirWhat are you up to nowadays,?

27:24Marshall HarveyNot much. I'm semi-retired…

27:28Jawad MirEnjoying life?

27:29Marshall Harvey... Since the pandemic. And, traveling and whatnot.

27:36Jawad MirLastly, I just, normally I ask this in the beginning, but we just kinda got on to Small Soldiers so quickly. If you would be comfortable, just sharing your journey as an editor. How it all began. What inspired you. If it was a particular movie or particular editor.

27:56Marshall HarveyWell, in high school I kinda wanted to be an actor. I was taking drama classes, and my friends and I started making, eight millimeter films. This is like Spielberg's The Fabelmans a little bit. In high school we made, 16 millimeter and eight millimeter films. Sometimes I was in front of the camera, sometimes I was, you know. But, as we went on I became more and more interested in filmmaking. And in college I went to film school, at CalArts. A… and my best friend Bob Rogers and I both got accepted as kind of a team, based on the short films that we had done. A couple of which won awards and whatnot. But anyway, so, I went to film school at CalArts. And my mentor there was a film director named Alexander Mackendrick, who did a lot of British comedies with Peter Sellers and Alec Guinness.

29:01Marshall HarveyDid Sweet Smell of Success here in the States. Terrific director and teacher. But, Mackendrick was... He knew that everybody who goes to film school wants to be a filmmaker and make their own films, right?

29:18Marshall HarveyBut realistically, a small percentage of the students are gonna become directors. So he really stressed his students to work on each other's films. And I had become friends with a guy named Michael Pressman, who did go on to become a director. And co-producer of Lake Placid, by the way. Anyway, so Mackendrick said, "Well Marshall, you should be Michael's editor on his student film, and then Michael can help you write your screenplay for your film." So that was my fir… I kinda, that was the first time I was shoved into an editing room. And I tended to really like it. Being an editor on a film is the next thing to being the director. Because the editor is concerned with the same things the director is. How to tell the story the best. Getting the best performances out of the actors.

30:22Marshall HarveyPacing. So… I always said that if the director is like the captain of the ship, the editor is the first lieutenant, you know? Next step down.

30:35Jawad MirYeah. Yeah. I agree.

30:36Marshall HarveyBut also as years went on, I started editing documentaries and working at different places and a lot of trailers at New World and so forth. The more experiences I had with different directors…

30:53Jawad MirOh

30:53Marshall Harvey... Even Joe, I realized I don't wanna direct.

30:59Jawad MirYeah.

30:59Marshall HarveyIt's too chaotic. There's too, you know, it's just... Being in the editing room and really concentrating on the creative elements, you know, given to you, it's just, it's, it's pleasurable, it's creative. Most directors always say, "Ah, I can't wait to get into the editing room and get o… get off the set."

31:24Jawad MirYeah. Yeah.

31:25Marshall HarveyBut seeing what directors very often have to deal with, temp… temperamental actors, studio executives, just all kinds of technical problems, it's like, ugh, no, that's, that's too difficult. I'd rather stay in the editing room.

31:48Jawad MirYeah. I... You know, touché, because I, when I went and took some film courses about 22 years ago, it was a similar thing. I think it was... We shot some stuff on Bolex, the 16 millimeter, but at that time digital transition had happened. And it was the same thing. It was six of us. Each of us worked as a, you know, different position on each of those films, so from sound to editing to cinematography to assistant director to all that. And I've always been sort of, you know, I always thought of myself as a director just like you. And then somehow I started liking, enjoying shooting and editing.

32:29Jawad MirBut I did that for a long time. I even edited my, some other feature documentaries, one of my first feature documentary. And then I've told myself I'm done with editing. As much as I enjoy it, I just wanted to be on the set.

32:45Marshall HarveyYeah.

32:45Jawad MirAnd I wouldn't be surprised based on what you're saying maybe down the road that will flip. Who knows? But, you know, a certain experience. Because it is, it is very challenging. Especially if you're working for a studio, and then there's, you know, actors and there's budgets and there's times and everything just piles on your head, and you gotta make decision in split of a second and, you know, the right decision…

33:10Marshall HarveyYeah

33:10Jawad Mir... Hopefully.

33:13Marshall HarveyAnd as Joe has mentioned in many interviews, the bigger the budget, the less control the director has.

33:20Jawad MirYes.

33:22Marshall HarveyAnd the bigger the committees.

33:26Jawad MirI agree.

33:27Marshall HarveyThat's right.

33:27Jawad MirI agree wholeheartedly.

33:28Marshall HarveyYeah.

33:29Jawad MirWhich is one of the reasons I haven't moved in that direction of big budgets because of that very reason of, you know, having that full creative control. I, you know, I truly believe as a director even if you screw up it's the... It's, it's you own the fault, not…

33:47Marshall HarveyYeah

33:47Jawad Mir... You know. You don't blame it anybody else. Like, either you're right or you're wrong, and that's it.

33:52Marshall HarveyYeah.

33:53Jawad MirYeah. Great. Thank you so much for your time, unless you wanna add something, to our conversation.

34:02Marshall HarveyNo. We've covered a lot, so.

34:04Jawad MirGreat. Thank you so much for your time. Again…

34:08Marshall HarveyI'll look for your documentaries

34:08Jawad Mir... Thank you for all your work. Yeah, they're on Amazon Prime actually. You can check them out…

34:14Marshall HarveyOh, great

34:14Jawad Mir... If you like.

34:15Marshall HarveyOkay.

34:15Jawad MirYeah. Yeah. We'll, we'll email you a link.

34:19Marshall HarveyOh, terrific.

34:21Jawad MirPerfect. Thank you so much, Marshall.

34:23Marshall HarveyAll right.

34:24Jawad MirAll right.

34:24Marshall HarveyThank you.

34:24Jawad MirTake care. Have a, have a good one. Bye.