'The Shawshank Redemption' & 'The Green Mile', Editor, Richard Francis-Bruce

0:00Jawad MirThe beauty of the film, I think, was, which was gonna be one of my questions and now that we're talking about it, Morgan Freeman's narration. Like, that literally carried the film, the p… pacing of it, in such a beautiful way that I don't… I'm not saying that it wouldn't have worked had that not been there, but I truly feel that really carried the film in a very deep way.

0:24Richard Francis-BruceYeah. And it was a deliberate thing. A lot of da… a lot of times in our films they use that technique as a band-aid.

0:30Jawad MirYeah.

0:30Richard Francis-BruceBut that was written into the script. It was not an afterthought. In actual fact, we recorded Morgan reading that co… all the narration. So I, 'cause I said to the producer, I, "I really need it in the cutting room while I'm cutting."

0:47Jawad MirSure.

0:48Richard Francis-BruceBecause I've gotta p… pace things, pace dialogue.

0:52Jawad MirYeah.

0:52Richard Francis-BruceBut there wasn't much there. They went to the radio station and recorded it and Morgan did it just in one go and it was so good. Without seeing a frame or picture, it was so good that we want… we used it in the film.

1:16Jawad MirActually, I talked to one of, fellow Si… Sydney person yester… two days ago, John Seale, the…

1:23Richard Francis-BruceOh, yeah. I know John very well.

1:25Jawad MirYeah. We had a great conversation about English Patient and, I just remembered you when we were talking and it was, it was good to have someone talk to Australia again.

1:37Richard Francis-BruceYeah. I've worked a lot with John. I mean, we, yeah, we came up through the ABC in Sydney together working on drama and then when we both went freelance, he before me, we ended up working together on features in Australia and in the US. So long time…

2:01Jawad MirYou guys did work on a feature in Hollywood together?

2:04Richard Francis-BruceWell, we worked on,.. I don't know if you wanna... A couple actually. One, The Perfect Storm…

2:13Jawad MirOh, wow

2:14Richard Francis-Bruce... And, the first Harry Potter. Well, that was in London, but it was a Hollywood movie. Yeah.

2:20Jawad MirOh, fantastic. I didn't, I didn't put the two together. That's inter… that's good to know. That's good to know.

2:27Richard Francis-BruceYeah.

2:27Jawad MirThat's fantastic. Well, today we're gonna talk about the Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. You know, both based on novels, both directed by the same director and, one I think received a lot more critical acclaim because it came after Shawshank Redemption because Shawshank didn't really do well at the theaters, but it became…

2:49Richard Francis-BruceNo, it didn't

2:50Jawad Mir... A classic since then. Tell me about Shawshank and how did you get on board, o… on that film? Had you…

3:00Richard Francis-BruceWell, I…

3:00Jawad Mir... Worked with Frank Darabont before?

3:02Richard Francis-BruceNo, I hadn't and he'd only done one film before that, which was actually a, I think it was a TV movie, The Woman in the Room. That was…

3:11Jawad MirOkay

3:13Richard Francis-Bruce... Anyway, I just got sent the script as what normally happens, you know. They send out the script to a whole lot of people, whole lot of editors, whole lot of DPs and then they interview. I interviewed for it. I got on very well with the producer, Niki Marvin, during the interview because it was Frank and her and, we discovered that we had a very similar road to our career. She at the BBC, me at the ABC in Sydney. I did a lot of documentary work, she did, so we kinda hit it off. I th… she was kind of instrumental in making the decision f… or encouraging Frank to make the decision, so she told me to choose me, so. I just read the script and the story about that was, I was working on a film at the time I got the script a… and I was working seven days a week, long hours.

4:18Richard Francis-BruceI couldn't find time to actually read a script, so I asked my wife to read it and, came home one night and said, "Have you started that script?" She said, "Yeah, I have. It's, I don't know about it. It's about guys in prison." Anyway, the next day I came home, she said, "Forget everything I said. You gotta read, you gotta find time to read this script." So I managed to squeak it in here and there and, I thought this is the best script I've ever read and, I wanted to do it and fortunately I got chosen to do it. Very fortunate.

4:56Jawad MirThat's great.

4:56Richard Francis-BruceI mean, it's, so much of it is luck, you know. Like, if I hadn't have got on very well with the producer, would I have got the film? I don't know. You know, it's lot, lots of people f… were vying for it.

5:14Jawad MirYeah. No, it was, it was, it is definitely one of those things. You mentioned, you know, you working seven days a week at the time. This was, like, mid…'90s.

5:23Richard Francis-BruceYeah.

5:24Jawad MirHow... I mean, I know it's obviously something that, you know, people in art, you know, we love doing what we do in film, but still, seven days a week, I mean, there's always, like, a breaking point. How long did you go…

5:37Richard Francis-BruceOh, yeah

5:37Jawad Mir... How long did you go for working seven days a week? Like, what's the longest stretch you've gone?

5:42Richard Francis-BruceI think the longest stretch I've ever done that has been, like, six months.

5:48Jawad MirWhoa.

5:49Richard Francis-BruceBut that, it's never at a choice from the editorial department. It usually happens in post-production. Once they've finished shooting, they may have run over with the shoot, but the release date does not move. So you have to work to…

6:05Jawad MirYeah

6:05Richard Francis-Bruce... And you just gotta work, you know? And sometimes they decide they wanna do some reshooting 'cause the ending doesn't work, or they've still gotta do that in the same time. And so it just requires... I mean, I can, I'm okay doing seven days a week. What I can't do is all-nighters. I just can't do that. Some people can. I mean, for a while. I would rather... I mean, I was actually working on Sliver…

6:31Jawad MirRight

6:31Richard Francis-Bruce... When I got the script, and that was a very difficult post-production because there was a reshoot in there. And I remember trying to do a change that the director had asked me to do, and it was about 11 o'clock at night, and I was just, like, not functioning.

6:50Jawad MirYeah.

6:51Richard Francis-BruceAnd I said, "Look." He wanted me to stay and do it, and I said, "I'm all over. I'm thumbs and finger, thi… thumbs and I don't know what it is. But all thumbs, and, I can't really get my head around this change. It's... Gee," I said, "I'll go home, have a good night's sleep. I'll get in early and I'll do it." And I did. I got in early and I did it within a couple of minutes. It was done. That's, whereas a lot of other people will p… just push themselves through, and it's just I can't do that.

7:22Jawad MirYeah.

7:22Richard Francis-BruceBut seven days a week I can do, and I have done, many times. M… like a lot of people in my position. Usually for the same reason, that the, that the, release date has, is not movable. It's written in stone, planned years in advance. So.

7:44Jawad MirYeah. Yeah, no, I, that makes, that makes sense. And how big is it your editorial team? Was editor… how big was your editorial team at the time, aside from assistant editor and…

7:54Richard Francis-BruceIn those days they were, they, those days because we were, we were still cutting on film. In those days, depending on the film, on Shawshank it was just me, my assistant, and an apprentice. So three of us. The apprentice was the, would do everything from filing trims, reconstituting the footage, to getting coffee and lunches and things, and running errands. But I have had crews much bigger than that, like three or four assistants, a visual effects editor. When we first started cutting on digital we used to have to have, because you had to conform the work picture to match the digital edit, you needed basically two teams. One was a film team and one was a digital team.

8:55Richard Francis-BruceSo those teams, those crews got quite big. I think on Harry Potter we had something like 11 people in editorial.

9:05Jawad MirJesus.

9:05Richard Francis-BruceGot, it got, it got, big.

9:10Jawad MirYeah, no, I bet. And with the, Shawshank, i… it's a long film, you know, even by those days' standards, especially by nowadays' standards to have that long a film. But it didn't feel obviously that long at the time…

9:29Jawad Mir... You know, when people watch it. But did your post-production process start after or was it simultaneous, or how did you…

9:38Richard Francis-BruceI'm always working alongside of the... I'm just a day…

9:41Jawad MirRight

9:42Richard Francis-Bruce... Or two behind the production. Yeah, always. I think most editors work that way. I don't, I suppose the only people who don't are directors who edit their own films, like James Cameron I suppose. He doesn't. He…

9:58Jawad MirYeah

9:58Richard Francis-Bruce... He may come in on weekends and do when he's not shooting, but I don't know how he works. But it's always... You've got to, I think... It means that you're going to have a, at the end of the shoot, you're only gonna be a few days behind having something for the director to look at…

10:15Jawad MirYeah

10:16Richard Francis-Bruce... In a, in a rough form before we fine-tune it. But, yeah, I'm always cutting along with the shoot.

10:27Jawad MirYeah. And with Shawshank, was it any time when you, was there a scene that pushed you guys a little bit behind because of any technical or story edit challenge? If there, if there's some example that you may remember, I would love to hear it.

10:44Richard Francis-BruceWell, the o… very opening of the film was not the way it was supposed to... It ended up the way it was not meant to be. It was meant to be two discrete scenes. The flashback scene of the murder…

10:59Jawad MirYeah

11:00Richard Francis-Bruce... And then the courtroom scene. They didn't manage to finish shooting all the inserts they needed to complete the m… the murder scene, and we were gonna always plan to, because that very much had film stayed on schedule that, during the shoot, which is unusual. But it was low budget, they had no choice. So they just said, "Right, we'll do that later in post," which they quite often do inserts and things later with a very small crew, manageable. And during our first, after I'd showed my first cut of the film, we start from the beginning, Frank, with Frank and I. The, we'd sit down and we'd go through each scene, and we'd talk about changes that he wants to make and how it merged into the next scene. And it was obvious that it wasn't working, the sep… two separate scenes. So we came up with an... He came up with an idea, or we came up with it together, I can't remember, of integrating the two scenes.

12:05Richard Francis-BruceAnd it just… Just worked. It was like you look at it now and you go, "That was just the way it was meant to be" but it was never meant to be. So when the, when the p… the prosecutor is talking in court about what happened we're, we're actually seeing it or seeing suggestions of it, what we could cobble together from the two scenes. So the s… the courtroom scene basically stayed the same and we just picked points in his dialogue where we thought we could insert parts of the first scene to make... And it just streamlined the whole opening of the movie.

12:42Jawad MirRight.

12:42Richard Francis-BruceBut apart from that, e… everything else was, there weren't a lot of deletions to that film, but there were... There was another incident where, when the warden finally finds... This is a spoiler alert if anybody hasn't seen the movie. If there's somebody out there who hasn't seen that.

13:05Jawad MirI'm sure there are lots of people who still haven't.

13:07Richard Francis-BruceYeah, probably, you know, young children…

13:10Jawad MirYeah

13:11Richard Francis-Bruce... Who weren't alive. When the warden finally finds out that Andy has duped him, we used to go to a scene, I think it was of Red just laughing, I can't remember, in his cell. And then we would go to the police arriving. But then we s… just took out that laughing scene, 'cause it, although it was funny it didn't move the story, and then it went straight from the warden…

13:40Jawad MirYeah

13:40Richard Francis-Bruce... Seeing that his, sh… the shoes had been changed, I think it was, in the box. They weren't his shoes…

13:47Jawad MirRight

13:47Richard Francis-Bruce... They were dirty up. To him, the look on his face to the police cars arriving, scooting along the highway, and it just, it just propelled the whole e… part of the movie. But, you know, apart from other places I can't think of any. There's actually a great little book that Frank put out about the whole screenplay, and he had no… he wrote notes on the side of it of what was happening during production. I forget the name of the book. It's a very small paperback, but it's, it's like the script of Sho… the shooting script of Shawshank and he…

14:21Jawad MirYeah, I think I have that actually.

14:23Richard Francis-BruceYeah.

14:23Jawad MirActually.

14:23Richard Francis-BruceHe describes all these things that, you know, I, that I've forgotten so…

14:29Jawad MirYeah

14:29Richard Francis-Bruce... A while ago.

14:29Jawad MirYeah, I read it a long time ago.

14:31Richard Francis-BruceIt's a great idea to do.

14:33Jawad MirYeah. Yeah. And Frank…

14:36Richard Francis-BruceBut you talk about it, but you talk about it being a long film. That was the perception, but it was actually almost the same length as Forrest Gump, but no one complained about Forrest Gump. Which I always thought at the time was a, was, you know, I didn't ca… a bit hypocritical, you know? There wasn't a lot of difference in the length of the film.

14:58Jawad MirYeah.

14:58Richard Francis-BruceWe were like two hours 20.

15:01Jawad Mir22 minutes.

15:03Richard Francis-BruceAt least. Yeah. Yeah, two hours 22.

15:04Jawad MirBelieve me, for me it wasn't long at all because... And Forrest Gump is also two hours and 22 minutes, I just Googled it.

15:11Richard Francis-BruceYeah. Yeah.

15:12Jawad MirBoth films weren't long to me. What I was meant to say earlier was nowadays the two hour seven minute mark is roughly the place where I think exhibitors because of the runtime and the, you know, to have multiple showings, additional showings, that…

15:28Richard Francis-BruceOh, yeah. There's…

15:30Jawad MirRight?

15:30Richard Francis-Bruce... There's that. Very much that.

15:32Jawad MirYeah. But it didn't feel... The beauty of the film I think was, which was gonna be one of my questions and now that you were talking about it, Morgan Freeman's narration. Like, that literally carried the film, the pa… pacing of it, in such a beautiful way that I don't... I'm not saying that it wouldn't have worked had that not been there, but I truly feel that really carried the film in a very deep way.

15:59Richard Francis-BruceYeah, and it was a deliberate thing. A lot of da… a lot of times now films they use that technique as a band-aid, but that was…

16:06Jawad MirYeah

16:06Richard Francis-Bruce... Written into the script. It was not an afterthought. In actual fact, we recorded Morgan reading that, a… all the narration. So I, 'cause I said to the producer, "I really need it in the cutting room while I'm cutting."

16:22Jawad MirSure.

16:23Richard Francis-BruceBecause I've gotta p… paste things, paste dialogue, to pop in around the narration, around the dialogue. And, so sh… she said, "Well, what'll we do?" I said, "Can you record it? Just get him to record it and then we can, you know, redo it." Well, they went to a radio station, 'cause they were on set in Mansfield, Ohio, which is this tiny little town, industrial town, that was very depressed after all the industry had moved out.

16:52Jawad MirYeah.

16:52Richard Francis-BruceBut there wasn't much there. They went to the radio station and recorded it, and Morgan did it just in one go, and it was so good, without seeing a frame of picture, it was so good that we wanted... We used it in the film while we were in p… production and doing screenings. When we came to actually do the physical mix of the movie, and we're in a proper sound facility, we found out that there was a technical problem with it all. It had a very high pitch whine that you couldn't hear normally until you get into one of these studios.

17:32Jawad MirYeah.

17:32Richard Francis-BruceAnd we couldn't get rid of it, couldn't filter it out. We tried all sorts of things, so we had to get Morgan to redo it. So we redid it to picture using his old one as a guide for him. And we were trying to match the performance, and we did it, but it took us five times, five complete sessions with having, picking the best lu… read of each one to get it to the what it ended up being. But took him five times. He had to come in five times and re-read the whole thing. But it was used on the set a lot. They would play it on the set… And shots were timed to it. The one that's really, springs to mind is on the tarring of the roof scene.

18:21Jawad MirYeah, I was gonna guess that.

18:21Richard Francis-BruceThere's a great one at the end when it pans along all the men and it goes to, up to Morgan and then it ends on, Andy. That was all being played so they could move the camera and be at the right place at the right time. But all the others were just, they were, a scene was cut

18:45Jawad MirYeah

18:45Richard Francis-Bruce... And the dialogue was fitted in between. So if I might have to, have to put a longer pause in the dialogue than would be natural for a scene, so the dialogue wouldn't overlap the dialogue. The, voiceover wouldn't overlap the dialogue.

19:02Jawad MirAnd…

19:02Richard Francis-BruceThat scene particularly on the roof was a combination of both those problems. It was, there were two conversations going on. If you remember, there was a conversation going on with Andy…

19:13Jawad MirYeah

19:14Richard Francis-Bruce... And Hadley, the guard, about his money and his wife and…

19:18Jawad MirYeah

19:18Richard Francis-Bruce... And then there was a conversation going on with Red and the guys that had to intertwine, and you made sure, had to make sure, had to make sure that it was, felt logical enough to cut away from one conversation to another conversation and get back to the other conversation and not feel like we'd just held the picture, held the scene still while the other part went on. It was a very tricky scene to do. But it worked.

19:51Jawad MirWell, I... And also I think, I mean, they probably, he, Morgan Freeman probably would've found another way to do what he does now, narration. I mean, that sort of s… I think was the first time or one of the first times he actually narrated, and now, I mean, you know, he's done films…

20:06Richard Francis-BruceNow he's n… now he's Mr. Narration. Yeah

20:09Jawad Mir... Everywhere now.

20:10Richard Francis-BruceVery much. I know it's…

20:11Jawad MirI mean, that was a setting ground basically.

20:13Richard Francis-BruceIt was. It was. I don't think he'd done narration before that.

20:16Jawad MirI don't think so either because I think before that he had done Driving Miss Daisy…

20:20Richard Francis-BruceThat's right. Yeah

20:21Jawad Mir... And Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and Glory, I think. Those were his three major films.

20:26Richard Francis-BruceYeah, so it's not like he was a household name by then either.

20:29Jawad MirYeah. No. You know, working with Frank Darab… Darabont, what was that like the first time? You said, you know, it was his first major film coming from TV. How did you guys work together in his creative process? What was that like compared to, let's say, other directors?

20:49Richard Francis-BruceOh, look, you know, I really like, always have liked working with the writer-director because there's, there's only one vision. I mean, it was, it was easy. It was a dream. It was like you didn't have to try and please the writer and the director 'cause it was the same person.

21:08Jawad MirRight.

21:08Richard Francis-BruceHe was great to work with. I mean, he would, he was very, he wasn't precious about any of his dialogue because you gotta remember all this dialogue in, e… even though it's from a novella, it's all Frank's dialogue. None of this…

21:25Jawad MirYeah

21:25Richard Francis-Bruce... Appears in the book. The book is actually the short story. If you read it, I mean, I didn't read it till after the film because I didn't wanna be kind of poisoned or influenced by it.

21:35Jawad MirYeah.

21:36Richard Francis-BruceIt's like this is nothing like the film 'cause it's, it's set over a longer period. It's set over, it's got more, m… more wardens in it, about five I think, whereas this one has one. So Frank was great about getting, dropping dialogue out that he thought was superfluous, and there was never any kinda, argument. It was just an easy, he and I sitting down at a, at a, in those days sitting down at a Steenbeck, which is a flat, I don't know if you know that, it's a flatbed editing machine.

22:11Jawad MirYeah. I worked on one of those.

22:12Richard Francis-BruceAnd, just working it day to day, and Frank was great 'cause he, his writer, the way the writers, all writers work or he did, he was a nighttime person and I was a daytime person. So, he would come in late and leave early and give me time the next day to do the changes we talk about. Same thing happened on The Green Mile. He'd do the same thing. It w… just was perfect 'cause I d… didn't like working through the night. I'd… I'd do my changes in the morning, and then he'd come and look at them, and then we'd yes or no or tweak that, tweak that, and then we'd move on. So it was very easy. And what helped with both that, both those scripts actually is they were just so well-written. You didn't have problems like with a lot of films where scenes aren't working and let's try…

23:08Jawad MirYeah

23:08Richard Francis-Bruce... Moving this around to there and that around to there or put it at the end of it or whatever. The only real complication was the opening, as I've already talked about, which worked out brilliantly.

23:19Jawad MirRight. And, you know, with The Shawshank Redemption, one of the things that people always remember it with, among many other things, is, you know, the conversation that happens in the s… semi middle part of the film about hope and in the finale. You know, "Hope is not a good thing, it's the worst of things. Hope is a great thing, it's the best of things." And that ending, was that, in terms of the dialogue, was that always there in the, in the script i… the way it was in the final film?

23:59Richard Francis-BruceYeah. Yeah. I mean, I mean, the, before I came onto the project, the only thing is that the end of the film was a lot earlier, was planned to be ho… hope, him driving away in the bus And the bus is going away from camera, and I think the last words of his narration were, "Hope. I hope to see my friend. I hope." And that was the end. We always shot the end of the film where they meet on the beach, but, it was m… much simplified. You know, it was... He walked up playing the harmonica. And, 'cause, you know, he never played the harmonica that he had in the cell?

24:45Jawad MirYeah.

24:46Richard Francis-BruceHe put it to his mouth and he never played it, so Frank had him play it, but it just seemed a bit hokey, so we dropped that part of the scene. They just walk up and see each other and hug, you know? Which was perfect. One of those things that by simplifying a scene, that made it better than it was. But the end of the end of the film, the last bit of dialogue was always, or voiceover was always that, h… the hope, "I hope to see my friend. I hope."

25:19Jawad MirThe ending the way you just described, I'm so glad that we get to s… we got to see the way, the way it's done now. You know, I do love that shot on the beach with the boat, the water…

25:30Richard Francis-BruceYeah

25:31Jawad Mir... You know, them coming together.

25:32Richard Francis-BruceIt was such a contrast. I mean, I had a big,... The only time I was really very forceful about a, an opinion, I mean, I'm... I always, you always give your opinion, but you try to do it diplomatically. But Frank and producer Niki Marvin were in the cutting room t… talking about ending the film where they originally wanted to end. They both said, "Yes, it should end with the bus going away." And I went, "You are nuts." I said, "I think you'll have a riot in the theater if you end the film there." And the studio also agreed with my... Not that... They were in agreement, I didn't know it, but they were in agreement with my side of the story. It was just the producer and the director. 'Cause they had a collab… collaborated so much on the screenplay…

26:26Jawad MirOh, screenplay

26:26Richard Francis-Bruce... For years, that…

26:31Jawad MirThey were too close to it.

26:32Richard Francis-BruceThey were. And fortunately we never previewed it like that. We never previewed it without the ending. So, never got to see whether the audience would revolt, but I rec… I, having seen the way the audience from it reacted to it, during the, screening, they would've revolted 'cause they were so into it. It was very rare to have a preview, a test screening where the audience are vocal about what's going on. You know? Like, they're, they're so with the characters that they're, they're like they're sitting in their living room, you know, watching it. You know, they were just not holding back about the... It was dynamic. It was, even more, surprising that the film didn't do as well in the theaters as it did at the preview, but I think that was a lot to do with the marketing of the film. They just... It was just the studio didn't know...

27:33Richard Francis-BruceThey should've known what they had, 'cause it scored very high, very high score, like 96 or 98% or something.

27:40Jawad MirThat is high, yeah.

27:42Richard Francis-BruceYeah, really can't get much higher. And, but they didn't know how to market it. Th… the name in... I mean, I think the name should've just been as what everybody calls it now, just the one word, Shawshank. People would've understood that, but I think the word redemption trips a lot of people up.

28:06Jawad MirReally? You think so?

28:07Richard Francis-BruceYeah, because it, what does it mean in the context of an, of this other name, Shawshank, you know? And the original name is even worse, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. That one was a real mouth… mouthful. But that was the novel or the short story, whatever.

28:27Jawad MirYeah. No, it's, it's, it's, it's one heck of a film. It's funny, I, you know, recently, like literally late last year, I finished a feature narrative documentary right here, this poster, Citizen of Moria, and it's…

28:44Richard Francis-BruceOh

28:44Jawad Mir... About a filmmaker, a Afghan filmmaker who leaves his family behind because, you know, Taliban, put him under threat, and he fled to Europe and he ends up in Europe's worst refugee detention center. So couple of, couple of things that I was trying to do, and actually in the first few cuts we had it, we had these three scenes in the first act, second act, and third act where he tries to relate his story to some of his favorite films. And one of them, there was a scene about a friendship in the film, and his friend and him k… kinda get separated. Not separated, they kind of, you know, say goodbye to each other. And we brought the scene in of the, you know, the friend at the end when, Tim Robbins' character leaves and everything, and we had a scene from Inglourious Basterds and another movie, The Fault in Our Stars, and a brief clip from The Green Mile because there was a mouse character. We had all that done, and then we approached the studios for licensing.

29:45Jawad MirWe found out the cost and we scrapped the whole thing. It was… It was like four grand for five seconds. It was…

29:55Richard Francis-BruceOh.

29:55Jawad MirYou know, it was absolutely ludicrous. And we didn't have, we didn't budget for that. That just something came in post. The reason I'm telling you this is because even though we didn't end up using it, those films had such an impact, not just on me and other filmmakers, but just society as a whole, that how we relate to them in such a way, in a very personal manner.

30:19Richard Francis-BruceYeah, lots of people s… get a lot out of it. I am surprised how much... If you go onto YouTube and you look and you find so many people see significant religious aspects of both those movies, Shawshank and Green Mile. And unless I wasn't in on the, in on the meeting where it was discussed, there was never any deliberate intention to make it that way. But people see in it very religious aspects. Certainly with Andy getting out of the pipe and in the rain and the mud and putting his hands out like that. But as far as I know, Frank never talked about that being a religious, symbol. But I mean, the h… the hope part and friendship and... I suppose you could read it, you could read anything into it. Just adding to your point that everybody gets something out of it.

31:21Jawad MirYeah. Well, I think it's when films like, you know, Back to the Future, Jaws, Schindler's List, Jurassic Park, The Rock, Seven, all these films that are still remembered, like, you know, obviously being timeless, people who really love them, and including myself, you'll watch these movies over and over again, and you'll think about them so much that you'll start creating your own ima… you know, using your own imagination to connect these things that are not even there. And I think that's where you know that the script, the performances, the direction, the editing, everything was in sync and it clicked with people in a very deep personal manner.

32:07Richard Francis-BruceOoh. No, agreed.

32:09Jawad MirAnd that's what it is, honestly. Like I, you just over… And I, sometimes I overanalyze films too. I did that with you last time. Like I, you know, looked into them so much that I will just overanalyze them because it becomes such a part of us.

32:24Richard Francis-BruceYeah, I mean, and that's fine, I suppose, if you, if you, what, if you get out of it is something you can relate to. And, but it's still surprising, you know? It's still surprising.

32:37Jawad MirI thought, I mean, I've never seen religious symbolism in them, but there was one, Frank Darabont film which, I don't think you were on that, The Mist. I mean, that was all about religion. I don't know if you've seen that, with Stephen King's book, The Mist.

32:53Richard Francis-BruceOh, right.

32:54Jawad MirYeah.

32:54Richard Francis-BruceNo, I was in London then.

32:57Jawad MirYeah, that has ridiculous amount of religious symbolism. That I saw, but I didn't, I've never seen... Now that you mention it, now I'm gonna be looking for it if I ever watch it again.

33:07Richard Francis-BruceYeah. Well, you know, John Coffey, he's in, Green Mile, his character. If you, if you look at it, I mean, he's a, he was this kind of spiritual guy, you know?

33:18Jawad MirYeah.

33:19Richard Francis-BruceAnd, but, watching analysises of it's quite eye opening. It's good to see what people see, and you just, you're, I was just looking at a completely different level, you know, on the face value of it, you know?

33:36Jawad MirYeah. Right. And with speaking of Green Mile, what, that, was that like an automatic, marriage after Shawshank Redemption?

33:47Richard Francis-BruceYes. Yes, it was. Yeah, Frank wanted me to do it. And, it was a little tricky working out because I was so busy at the time. I was on, I was just in post-production on a film that kind of went under the radar with Anthony Hopkins and Cuba Gooding Jr. Called, Instinct.

34:11Jawad MirI think I know about it, yes.

34:13Richard Francis-BruceAnd so I had to, I was kind of working on the tail of that, and then on the weekends going in on that film until they ended. So, yeah, but,.. No, that was very much Frank wanted me to do it. He wanted me to do The Mist too, but I'd already committed to go to London to do Harry Potter, and I couldn't back out of it, so.

34:35Jawad MirYeah. So the Green Mile, was it similar workflow, and was there any kind of challenges or difficulties, that you faced while editing being on the set?

34:50Richard Francis-BruceWell, no. I mean, fortunately, we were editing at the, studio in Hollywood in, West Hollywood, which was usually called Warner Hollywood. And, they were shooting on that s… stage right near my cutting room. So it was easy if I had a question. It's always great if you're close to them. And so much of that was interior sets, you know? There was just the…

35:20Richard Francis-BruceThere were very few out… exte… exterior locations that were done, I forget where, Carolina or somewhere. So, I'm just trying to think if there was anything tricky on that film. I mean, the length of it was. It was…

35:41Jawad MirThat was a long film

35:42Richard Francis-Bruce... Three hours and 15 minutes or something.

35:44Jawad MirYeah.

35:45Richard Francis-BruceBut most people thought it was like two hours and 15 minutes.

35:49Jawad MirYeah.

35:49Richard Francis-BruceThat was, that was such a tightly knit, well-written script that you couldn't just drop a scene out. If you dropped any scenes out, it didn't make any sense all of a sudden. Everything was so well... Like, the motivation of going from one scene to another was so strong and logical and obvious and necessary, because we tried. We were pressured by the studio to shorten it, and we actually said to them, "Look, give us your notes. Tell us what you want us to drop." They couldn't, 'cause they had the same problem we had So they eventually bit the bullet and released it, and it didn't harm it at all. I mean, there was a lot... Some reviewers said it was long. It was, but so was Titanic, you know? That was over three hours. So i… this whole thing of ti… of length, I always think... Look, I've seen some terribly long 90-minute movies.

36:53Jawad MirI was gonna just say that. I mean…

36:55Richard Francis-BruceYou know, i… if the story hasn't grabbed you, y… you should be taken, you should be transported and not even look at your watch, or need to look at your watch. The story should be that compelling, and I think The Green Mile was. The people who liked it, the ones that have spoken to me, have said they... When I tell them, "You know that film was over three hours long?" They can't, they go, "No, it wasn't. No. Really?" "Yeah, go and look at, look it, look it up on IMDb. You'll find out." But, yeah, ac… actually there's a little, on the wall here, speaking of Green Mile…

37:39Jawad MirOh, okay

37:39Richard Francis-Bruce... I don't know if you can see.

37:41Jawad MirYeah.

37:42Richard Francis-BruceFrank Darabont, me, the, one of the producers, David Valdez, cinematographer, I forget his name, 'cause he was ju…... This was a reshoot on the back lot of Warner Brothers. I was arriving to go to work on Perfect Storm, which was being shot there, and cut to, and Frank was shooting the opening scene with the girls, the two dead girls. He was shooting it in an artificial la… location there. Of course they... I can't remember now if it was a reshoot or it just never got shot in the first place. But…

38:19Jawad MirYeah

38:19Richard Francis-Bruce... No, that film, there wa… again, with that film, there was no real problem with, juxtapositioning scenes or having to move scenes around.

38:31Jawad MirYeah.

38:31Richard Francis-BruceIt was just, that was just so well-written.

38:37Jawad MirAnd I think that's…

38:38Richard Francis-BruceGreat source material

38:39Jawad Mir... And that's what it is, right? Like, for example, you know, we, I talk about this to a lot of people too and, you know, let's just take example, I was talking to Don Burgess, who is the cinematographer for a lot of Robert Zemeckis films.

38:51Richard Francis-BruceYeah.

38:51Jawad MirAnd we did an episode already with him, and we just did another one with Contact, and that film was two hours and 30 minutes long, right? I never felt anything with that. So I convinced my kids, 11 and 13, that we gotta see Contact, and they asked me, "How lo… old is it?" You know, the kids nowadays…... The first question they ask is, "How old is it?" I said, "1997." I'm like, "Just give it a shot." They started watching it. We paused it, I think, around 50-minute mark for just a washroom break. They were so hooked they couldn't even feel that it was two and a half hours long, and that's what it is, because the character has to draw you in first with the story…

39:33Richard Francis-BruceYeah

39:33Jawad Mir... And everything else has to sink in. And you don't feel anything. And yes, you're right, I've seen sitcom episodes 22 minutes long that feel like they will never end.

39:44Richard Francis-BruceRight. And, you know, you... I don't know. I haven't, haven't worked in the business for five years. I c… so I can imagine it's still pretty much the same where the studio, somebody at the studio in power, somebody in power, has a fixation with the length of the movie.

40:03Jawad MirYeah.

40:03Richard Francis-BruceAnd that they want you to take out a couple of minutes. And they go, "Okay, so you take it out." And they go, "Well, what did that do for the movie?" "Well, it's still a bit long. Let's take out another 10 minutes." Well, how do... What do we... It's li… it's like you're making something, I don't know, something that is, it can be just chopped up and...

40:27Jawad MirYeah.

40:27Richard Francis-BruceBut it still goes on, and, I've fort… I've been fortunate to experience, or unfortunate to experience, both sides of that.

40:37Jawad MirWell, I've ran into both problems, short and long. One of, the film that I was talking to you about, it's 75 minutes long. So it got into several festivals, and couple of major ones turned them down. And then later I found out it's because festival films normally when they take it are supposed to be 90 minutes and above. And I'm like, "I'm not gonna make my film long just because it has to be taken to festivals." And then the other film was 81 minute long, and I was pushed, you know, by some investors, "Bring it down to 60 minutes." I'm like, "That's like losing 20% of the film almost. Like, you're gonna lose it." And, you know, I…

41:19Richard Francis-BruceI've seen films get ruined. I've seen films ruined…

41:22Jawad MirIt do

41:23Richard Francis-Bruce... Because of that

41:23Jawad Mir... And I s… I, and I s… you know, stuck with my guns. But had the film probably done better? Maybe, sure, but at the same time, the story is so much better with the ti… time it has, because that's what people are engaged in. Like, if you just tell them half a story or the character development is not there, it's not gonna work.

41:43Richard Francis-BruceRight. They, if they're not invested 'cause you haven't spent the time to invest, then they're wondering, "Well, why am I, why do I care about this character?" And that's when the film starts to drag.

41:53Jawad MirYeah.

41:53Richard Francis-BruceSo it's a, it's, it's, it's like shooting yourself in the foot. Yes, you made the film to a set time, but nobody engages with the characters because we cho… you chopped out all that development footage of the characters. They unders… I worked on Mosquito Coast, the Harrison Ford film, Peter Weir film.

42:13Jawad MirRight.

42:15Richard Francis-BruceI just worked on the middle section of the film. I was about to go off to America to do Wizards of Eastwick for George Miller, and Peter Weir asked me to come in and help out… So I just helped out for about a month or so. And when I left the film, it w… I thought it was pretty good. And then I was in Los Angeles and I was invited a few mon… months and months later, invited to the premiere of the film. When I went to see it, I couldn't recognize it as the same film. All of a sudden the film starts, and straightaway Harrison Ford is this crazy guy, and you go, "What?" They cut out all the development stuff of how he got to be this way. So you're just watching this guy go crazy all the way through the film and you don't understand why. I couldn't believe it…

43:05Jawad MirNo context

43:05Richard Francis-Bruce... And it came... Huh? No context.

43:08Jawad MirNo context, yeah.

43:09Richard Francis-BruceAnd it, yeah, and it came, it came down to the, I don't know who it was, but somebody made the decision to, chop all that stuff out, probably for time, and, I don't... It didn't serve the film. I was sur… I was surprised.

43:26Jawad MirThat happened, recently, when I say recently I think in the last five, six years, where at least, you know, there's a lot of Alien films that have come out, Promethe… Prometheus and…

43:37Richard Francis-BruceYeah

43:37Jawad Mir... Alien Covenant and a bunch of others. One of those films, I don't remember which or what it was, there was a scene that Ridley cut out that wa… I don't think it was in the theatrical version, I could be wrong. So they released it on the web. It was an o… like, basically the intr… the, intro to all the characters, you know, sitting in a round table discussion on a spaceship which was about nine, 10 minutes long. And they gave the audience a flavor online first that these are the people's…

44:07Richard Francis-BruceAh

44:07Jawad Mir... Lives that you're gonna see, and it wasn't in the theatrical version. And…

44:12Richard Francis-BruceThat was clever

44:14Jawad Mir... It was. It was. But the problem is people who didn't see the version on the web before, you know, they prob… But I, at the same time I think there's a fan base for Alien films, so I'm guessing majority of the people did see it. But yeah, you have to have that context even if it's a five, 10 minutes. People relate to that stuff. People love that stuff.

44:36Richard Francis-BruceYeah, they do. Anyway.

44:41Jawad MirYeah. So Green Mile, going back to that film did critically and I think box office-wise much better than Shawshank.

44:52Richard Francis-BruceIt did.

44:52Jawad MirYeah. When the screenings of that s… film happened, the test screenings and whatnot, how was the reaction if you were to compare it to Shawshank? Like, what was the audience going through at the time, if you remember?

45:09Richard Francis-BruceWell, yeah, they, well, they weren't... They were engrossed in it because the f… it's the kind of film that just sucks you in, and you... Whereas Shawshank is more emotional in what's, in a lot of ways. I mean, it's a, there's a lot of emotion in Green Mile too, but, the... I don't know. It, we t… we did preview Green Mile a few more times than we did, Shawshank, I think, and th… therefore... Yeah. The audience, I d… I don't think they reacted so viscerally to it, but they didn't... Interestingly enough, l… the, issue of length, I don't ever remember it coming up at a Green Mile screening. People just…

46:01Jawad MirOh

46:01Richard Francis-Bruce... Did not, they just thought it was about two, maybe two and a half hours long. But they were out by 45 minutes. Huge chunk. Because it was so gripping, you know? It was one scene after another, you know, of just great dialogue and great acting and just, great story. A unique story. I mean, pretty unique. Pretty unique film.

46:33Jawad MirIt was. My wife watched it recently, she had never seen it before, and she saw Shawshank before Green Mile, and she's like, "How the hell did I miss this film?" As we were watching it. And she said once something which I never thought of, and like, okay, that does make sense. Both Shawshank and Green Mile have a lot, a, kinda like has a Broadway feel because, you know, the thea… like, the dialogue and conversations and lines and sh… she really dug into them, both of them, especially Green Mile. I dug more into Shawshank than Green Mile, but she dug way more into Green Mile than Shawshank.

47:11Richard Francis-BruceYeah, because they're both, they're both, well, similar subject matter. They're both in prisons. They're both…

47:16Jawad MirYeah

47:16Richard Francis-Bruce... Roughly the same time. So that, the dialogue, the style of talking in those days was fairly similar. There was no snap, it's no snappy dialogue like, or slang like there is today, you know? It was all very limit… they were innocent times in a lot of ways.

47:37Jawad MirYeah. I, you know, the fact that you mentioned snappy dialogue, whenever I'm watching a film and there's that two-word, three-word that drop in for no ne… necessity just to have, you know, something, people to react, it just ruins the... Like, especially in a serious film, like, just to have that in there, I, it just takes me right out of the film. Even an action film I find it takes me right out.

48:04Richard Francis-BruceYeah. I mean, a film's gotta, you know, suck you in, and if something s… throws you out, takes a while to, for you to be pulled back in. You know, it has to be a good film.

48:13Jawad MirYeah. And one thing I wanted to, I think I may have talked about this before, but obviously it has to do with a director and writer. You know, we talked about The Rock, Michael Bay. Completely different film than Se7en, David Fincher. Then you have Shawshank and Green Mile, Frank Darabont.... Completely different pacing, completely different scripts, completely different story. Is it easy to transition from those type of films from one to another? Or is it easy because the scripts are different and they're good?

48:48Richard Francis-BruceYeah. If the scripts are g… it all comes down to the script. Starts with the script, ends with the script. But also, I don't find it difficult at all because, if you pay attention as you're moving along, you know, like, y… you know, an action scene, you don't, you cut it a different way, you know? It's not, you don't cut a dialogue scene like…

49:15Jawad MirYeah

49:15Richard Francis-Bruce... Like an action scene. Although I've seen a lot of dialogue scenes cut like they're action scenes. I don't comprehend it at all. But, I think you just gotta pay attention and real, and j… and, let the footage talk to you. You know? In other words, pay attention to, like, if a director's used a big tr… long tracking shot and he's also done close-ups, well, you know the close-ups are probably just for s… safety. Y… the tracking shot's been d… g… done for a reason. Don't cut it up.

49:48Jawad MirYeah.

49:49Richard Francis-BruceYou know, use it. You know? Like, I don't know. It's, it's reading the material. It's r… and I don't mean literally reading, I mean, like reading the room, you know? Like, you pay attention to what's going on and you can tell... It should, the pacing should be set harder in d… in action because action scenes in the rough form can look boring and, un… un… unexciting until you add some sound effects. But just, you know, with dialogue scenes you pay attention, you know, to the, to the script, to the, to the way it's been shot. Don't force a style on it is what I'm saying. It should come with it. It should come with that.

50:33Jawad MirDid you ever feel, again, I mean, I, you answered the question, but I, you know, when there is like, for example, a comedy film that needs to be edited, a director would prefer somebody who has comedy experience, right? A director who would ex… expect somebody who has action sequence, drama, horror, suspense, all those genres. Does that somehow become in… di… did it ever become intimidating for you in the early part of the career or mid part that you haven't done this genre and like, was that ever…

51:10Richard Francis-BruceYeah

51:10Jawad Mir... A case at all?

51:13Richard Francis-BruceWell, it wasn't because, you have to have faith that you can do it. And

51:20Jawad MirYou do, but the directors I'm, I'm talking

51:22Richard Francis-BruceYeah, the director. Well, I was fortunate because when I started, I started in Australia and there wasn't a lot of choice. You know? It w… I mean, from the director's point of view. There wasn't a lot of, a big, it wasn't a huge, you know, selection of people doing what I w… editing.

51:42Richard Francis-BruceAnd so it's, it was basically like, "Oh, you're an editor, so you can do it." And then you just learnt how to do it. Like I learnt a lot about, you know, action b… working with George Miller, who had w… you know, worked and learned a lot of stuff on the, on the first Mad Max film by doing a lot of the editing himself. You know? And so, w… we, you know, you give him something and he gives you something and then you've done the film, and then all of a sudden you've got that credential. He can do action. You're only gonna do one, and then you do a drama film. Yeah, it's, it's hard. You've, you've gotta convince the people you can do it, and the only way to do that is to, is to do it. I mean, they, if they don't like what you're doing, they can get rid of you.

52:31Jawad MirYeah.

52:31Richard Francis-BruceAnd they do.

52:33Jawad MirYeah.

52:34Richard Francis-BruceSo, yeah, I think a lot of... You know, if you fail, you fail, and th… therefore you don't have a career. So you gotta just, you know, man up and hopefully you, by doing it, you will, prove to yourself you can do it and then, and more importantly, prove to the director that you can do it. Just by showing you that you've done it. If you cut a scene and show it to a director and he doesn't like it, he's gonna tell you he doesn't like it or we gotta fix it. And if you can't fix it, then they bring someone else in who can either fix it or they f… then they find out that it's inherently in the material, that it's not, it wasn't shot properly. So it's…

53:19Jawad MirHave you ever brought…

53:20Richard Francis-BruceSorry.

53:20Jawad MirHave you ever been brought onto a film where somebody was let go?

53:24Richard Francis-BruceYeah. Yeah.

53:26Jawad MirWhich film was that? I don't need to know the name of the other editor, but which f… which film was it?

53:30Richard Francis-BruceLet me think. There's been a few. Just trying to think of one that... Well, I was brought on to... I suppose the one I was brought onto that was the biggest name director was a TV movie that I did straight after, I did it straight after Harry Potter, which was, for John Frankenheimer. It was his last film. It was an HBO film called, The Path to War, which was about the How… the Johnson era, President Johnson's last term of office in the Vietnam War and why he got out. And, I was, he didn't like, he didn't like what the editor had done to it, so he brought me on and I finished, they were still shooting at that time. And, I went all the way through to the end.

54:31Richard Francis-BruceThere've been others. I mean, a really… I don't wanna really go into it because there's, there's a lot of them.

54:39Jawad MirYeah. Okay.

54:39Richard Francis-BruceBut yeah, it happens a lot. Most editors have had it done to them and, you know, and they've been brought on to do it to other editors. So it's a, it's a really tricky area. You know, it's like sometimes you can be seen as a, one, ah, one of those editors. You'll go and recut someone else's stuff and then, you know. It's silly because it is part, it's part, you, everyone's gotta make a living, you know? It's like you're asked to fix something and you look at it and you think, "Yes, I think I can fix that," and they just give it to you. It's rare that they just give it to you and say, "Fix it." They interview you, they ask you, they show you the film that, what it is like at the moment, and give you the option of whether you think you can fix it. You don't really know until you get into all the material.

55:31Jawad MirYeah.

55:31Richard Francis-BruceThat's the problem. Sometimes you can look at it and go, "Well, I gotta be able to do it, do it better than this. This seems to be unnecessarily awkward or can't over cut." A lot of the times it's over cut. Too many cuts.

55:48Jawad MirYeah. No, I agree with that and I think it's, it's a big problem even now, like, you know, with whether it's mainstream or independent filmmakers and just I always find filmmakers who are from other parts of the world, like whether it's Asia or Africa and all that stuff, not all, but just the way of storytelling over there is still in most cases still the old way. Especially if you go to Iran or, you know, people from Afghanistan and stuff. It's, they just like to keep the shot in one frame and tell the story as, in less, as less shots as possible. And I find that very appealing and very interesting and it's something that's missing in Hollywood now j… very much so, I find.

56:49Jawad MirMaybe there is a turnaround coming, I'm not sure, but I really hope there is because I genuinely miss those films.

56:57Richard Francis-BruceYeah. Comes back to the script.

57:01Jawad MirYeah.

57:01Richard Francis-BruceIf the script's good you don't need to cut it up. Force a…

57:05Jawad MirYeah

57:06Richard Francis-Bruce... Force a, force a style onto something, you know? You don't need to do that.

57:12Jawad MirI would recommend you watch this film. It's a Persian film. It's directed by, I think he was nominated for a few films. His name is Majidi. It's called Color of Paradise. It's, it's a beautiful film. Yeah, I can guaran… and it's really well put together too.

57:33Richard Francis-BruceI'll, I'll, I'll look it up.

57:35Jawad MirYeah, it's a beautiful film. But, thank you so much, Richard, appreciate your time as always. You know, and…

57:43Richard Francis-BruceMy pleasure

57:44Jawad Mir... Yeah. And, hopefully if I can c… see something else that we wanted to have you on, I would definitely reach out to you again.

57:53Richard Francis-BruceWill do. Good.

57:55Jawad MirThank you so much, Richard.

57:56Richard Francis-BruceThank you.

57:57Jawad MirEnjoy your day.

57:58Richard Francis-BruceThank you. You too. Bye.

57:59Jawad MirBye-bye.