'Natural Born Killers', Editor, Brian Berdan

0:09Jawad MirWelcome back, everyone, to another episode of Kingdom of Dreams Podcast, the making of stories. I'm your host, Jawad Mir. My apologies for missing in action. I've been working on a film for the last, little while, just developing it, so that's supposed to go into production in the next couple of months. But we're back. Today my guest is Bryan Burden. He's an editor, who got his break with Oliver Stone's film, Natural Born Killers, which was originally written by Quentin Tarantino, and then, Oliver Stone, gave his touch to it. This was before Tarantino was Tarantino. I think it's one of his f… earliest films. Maybe the first one or second one. I'm not sure if it was that or True Romance that was the first one. I hope you enjoy my conversation with editor Bryan Burden.

0:47Brian BerdanNice. Got a good stack of books there. Cool.

0:51Jawad MirYes. That's, somewhat of a knowledge that I've gained over the years, but, still learning. Really pleased to have you. Thank you so much for agreeing to do this.

1:01Brian BerdanMy pleasure. I don't, I don't talk about work very much at all and, it's like, really, what do I do? In fact, every time I start a new job, if there's any, been any gap, it's like, oh, how do I push those buttons? What am I doing? I'm not, I don't know how to do this. So, but it's,.. I've done a, taught a few classes over the years. Not a, not a lot, but that always makes me focus a little bit on, you know, what the process is and what my thinking is, and I'm gonna teach a little, a very short class in a, in a, two months here and, I've just been making some notes on that. So that helps gets, get the gears going again.

1:40Jawad Mir100%, I couldn't agree with you more. It's, sometimes it just comes second nature, right? And then when you start reflecting…

1:45Brian BerdanYeah

1:45Jawad Mir... Back on it's then you realize, oh, I did this because of that and X, Y, Z.

1:49Brian BerdanYeah.

1:49Jawad MirSo, awesome.

1:50Brian BerdanMostly instinct.

1:52Jawad MirYeah. True, and I just, I haven't s… so I don't know if I ever saw Natural Born Killers. I may have.

1:59Brian Berdanhuh.

1:59Jawad MirIt's been a long time, but I just re… if I rewatched it or I watched it the first time t… this morning, and…

2:05Brian BerdanOh, you did? Not…

2:07Jawad MirYeah

2:07Brian Berdan... Not a really good morning breakfast kind of show.

2:11Jawad MirNo, but you know, it is so interesting because, it is obviously Quentin Tarantino and Oliver Stone wrote, co-wrote it. It was way before Quentin Tarantino even directed Reservoir Dogs, I think couple of years before.

2:23Brian BerdanYeah, could be. Yeah.

2:24Jawad MirRight?

2:24Brian BerdanAnd they didn't co…

2:26Jawad MirYeah

2:26Brian Berdan... They didn't co-write it like they worked together.

2:28Jawad MirYeah, I know.

2:29Brian BerdanYeah, very acrimonious.

2:31Jawad MirYeah. But what's, what was so incredible about this film, even though it kinda caught me off guard, 'cause, you know, you're used to watching a film i… in s… one tone, one feel from… ... Beginning to end, but this had like everything from, you know, a ridiculous amount of cuts, then different color palettes, and the way the camera moved, and, you know, even the social undertones that were there in the '90s, which is unfolding in front of us right now, how everybody likes to be on camera and…

3:06Brian BerdanYeah

3:06Jawad Mir... You know, no matter how crazy it is.

3:08Brian BerdanYeah.

3:08Jawad MirIt is actually a very interesting commentary on society, and I really enjoyed it despite its little bit of un… disturbing stuff but, you know…

3:17Brian BerdanYeah

3:17Jawad Mir... You get accustomed to it. So thank you for being a part of it, an amazing cut. Probably one of the best, most amazing editings I've seen in a long time, so thank you.

3:27Brian BerdanGood. What's funny is, I was asked to speak at a friend's class, a few years ago.

3:32Jawad MirYeah.

3:32Brian BerdanI hadn't seen the film in pretty much, I don't think I'd seen it since it came out, and, we screened it in the beginning of the day, and I, it struck me, wow, this is actually a lot slower than I thought. You know, with the way things have developed over the years. At the time, y… you said there's a lot of cuts. We finished that on film, and the film, timer, the color timer, they had a m… little machine that was very mechanical, and he said, "You almost broke our machine," 'cause it would have to switch so quickly.

4:05Jawad MirYeah, this was before the digital, like the flatbed editing and, you know, when you're s… putting through the sprockets and cutting and taping and all that stuff.

4:12Brian BerdanNo, we cut it electronically.

4:14Jawad MirOh, you did electronically, okay.

4:15Brian BerdanYeah. It was the first show, that I'd ever done electronically and that, and just to get the bigger picture, that was really my first full upfront credit. I had, edited, as an s… additional editor on a show be… just before that, but that was the first time, you know, full upfront credit. And all my training…

4:37Jawad MirSo…

4:37Brian Berdan... As an assistant had been on film, and, we just decided, you know, let's, let's try this new system. It was called Lightworks, a British system.

4:46Jawad MirSo what's the difference between, I mean, I've cut on flatbed editing, like short films way back… ... In the late '90s, and done digital. What's electrical? How is that different from the two?

4:58Brian BerdanYou mean dig… dig… digital.

4:59Jawad MirDigital.

5:00Brian BerdanYeah. Computer.

5:00Jawad MirOkay. So, okay, so it is digital. Okay. When you said electrical…

5:03Brian BerdanYeah

5:03Jawad Mir... I was kinda like, "Well, what?"

5:04Brian BerdanYeah, right.

5:05Jawad MirOkay, awesome. Awesome.

5:06Brian BerdanUsing an antiquated term.

5:09Jawad MirWait

5:09Brian Berdan... The f… just the history of why, well, not really history why, but, just before I came on, Oliver had done, well, actually I was on Heaven and Earth just before as an assistant. Before that they did Natural Born Killers, I mean, sorry, JFK.

5:27Jawad MirJFK? Yeah.

5:28Brian BerdanAnd they cut that on tape. Tape to tape, three-quarter inch tape, and the crazy thing about that is it would record the numbers for the picture fine. It would make a, an EDL for the picture cuts, but there was no tracking of the sound, and very complex movie, complex sound. So there was no record except the audio sound of what they put together. They didn't know where it came from, where the pieces came from to go back to the originals to go to the final mix. So they had to hire, I think it was like 40 sound editors to ear match, to go through and listen…

6:04Jawad MirWow

6:05Brian Berdan... Listen to each little piece and try to find it in the, in the r… reel to reels. So the quarter inch. Anyway, that was crazy, so it was good to come onto electron… you know, electronic editing, digital editing.

6:18Jawad MirAnd JFK was one of those films, again, I have seen it. I haven't seen it in a long time. I mean, obviously the story, it, you know, it's a true story. ... And to have everything right in that sense…

6:30Brian BerdanPut quotes there. Put quotes there, you know?

6:32Jawad MirYeah.

6:32Brian BerdanBut…

6:32Jawad MirYeah. You know what I mean. Yeah. And it's based on a true story.

6:37Brian BerdanYes, absolutely.

6:37Jawad MirAnd, but, to have that kind of... You have to have to make sure that everything is authentic and… ... To have sound in a 40 sound editors is quite remarkable. I mean, it's, it's crazy. Like, I, again, going back to Natural Born Killers, it's, I don't... Y… when you said it was slow, I felt it became, I don't know if it became slow, it became very calm, especially even after the halfway through, like after…

7:05Jawad Mir... The, you know, Robert Downey Jr. Comes in, Tommy Lee Jones… ... Tom Sizemore. It doesn't become slow for me, it just became more calmer than the craziness that took place in the first hour.

7:19Brian BerdanYeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, the, you gotta modulate pacing and stuff like that.

7:23Jawad MirYeah.

7:23Brian BerdanIt just, it would be an onslaught if it stayed at that pace. So yeah, there were some places where we just let it kinda flow and, you know, change the music up and

7:32Jawad MirYeah. So tell me, how, did your process for that editing that film was? Like, what was the process of ma… you know, even when you came on board, like Oliver's vision to you, was it like, "Okay, we're gonna cut it like this?" Like, is that what he sort of gave you that information, or he just left it to you? So just whatever that was…

7:54Brian BerdanYeah

7:54Jawad Mir... Just, you know, you can…

7:55Brian BerdanYeah

7:55Jawad Mir... You can go through it.

7:56Brian BerdanYeah. So the f… the first time I cut anything for Oliver was on, Heaven and Earth. I was a, an assistant, and there was a scene that the editors weren't getting to, so they gave it to me. And, Oliver just said, "Just, you know, just wow me. Whatever. Just make it work." So I cut this rape scene, and i… he was like, "Whoa, that's a bit much," you know? So he never gave directions on how to cut things. He just want his, wants to feel something, you know, make you feel something. So, you know, he's not a real technical person. He just goes for the emotion and the truth of whatever the scene might be. So yeah, there were no directions for Natural Born Killers. And, w… working with Bob Richardson's footage was just what a great experience, 'cause you're just given this giant bucket of beautiful, crazy, messy, you know, you can pick what you wanna, which direction you wanna go.

8:59Brian BerdanAlthough a lot of times you wouldn't be able to edit a scene in any one format 'cause it wasn't covered completely in one format. It was constantly switching black and white, color, 16, 35. So you're sort of for… forced sometimes to intercut formats, which was fun. Like there was one scene in the, jail cell where Mallory, Juliette Lewis, is with Tom Sizemore and…

9:27Brian Berdan... It just, it's, I didn't have real coverage back and forth easily. So there's like five jump cuts in different formats on the same angle. Like, that's what you gotta do. But as far as the process goes, yeah, it was just Oliver's thing is just make me feel something. Just wow me. And, so I was working with Hank Corwin, who had edited on JFK. And he and I just took the script and divided it into six sections, 'cause that's how our hard drives would be divided. This, Lightworks system had these towers, the gigantic towers. Each one was 60 gigabytes.

10:11Jawad MirYes.

10:11Brian BerdanSeemed amazing at the time. Yeah.

10:14Jawad MirYeah.

10:14Brian BerdanAnd we had, we had six of them, so, if we wanted to trade off a scene or something, you'd have to put the tower on a little, we had a skateboard, and we'd roll it into the other editor's room and hook it up and, you know, very laborious to swap scenes. So for the most part, we stuck to our own sections of the film. It was every other, basically every other 20 minutes. And I would say it's kind of amazing that there's a lot of continuity in the style in the film, 'cause Hank and I are, I would say fairly different. He's very right-brained, I'm pretty left-brained. But, you know, we melded, and just had a lot of fu… had a lot of fun, basically. Kid in a candy store. I mean, that be my first upfront credit, was a great honor.

11:06Jawad MirAnd I think it shows in the cut, right? That, the word that you used, we had a lot of fun. Because it was very unconventional, right? Even the way it opened up with the camera kinda like a Dutch style and then moved this way.

11:19Brian BerdanYeah.

11:19Jawad MirAnd then everything sort of unfolded from there. And what was so incredible about the, you can call it the script, you can call it direction, you can call it editing, cinematography or all of the above…

11:29Brian BerdanYeah

11:29Jawad Mir... Is that even though that opening scene in the diner… ... You actually, I mean, maybe I'm crazy that I actually felt that way, because you feel for the characters, Woody Harrelson and Julie, you know, like right off the bat…

11:43Brian BerdanYeah

11:43Jawad Mir... Despite their actions.

11:46Brian BerdanYeah.

11:46Jawad MirAnd how, it's, it's just crazy how that, it, those emo… emotions kind of kick off.

11:52Brian BerdanYeah.

11:53Jawad MirAnd it also kind of goes back to what Woody Harrelson's character... I'm horrible with character names, but please forgive me.

11:59Brian BerdanYeah.

11:59Jawad MirYou know, when he was d…

12:00Brian BerdanNo

12:00Jawad Mir... When he was doing the interview with Robert Downey Jr.…

12:03Brian BerdanYeah

12:04Jawad Mir... And like, "Why do you kill?" It's like, well, everybody, if given the opportunity, more or less…... Would do that, right?

12:11Brian BerdanYeah.

12:12Jawad MirBut which I think is true. I think we're worse than animals. If the opportunity presented itself…

12:17Brian BerdanYeah

12:18Jawad Mir... And we had to, we probably would.

12:20Brian BerdanYeah. Yep. I mean, I…

12:23Jawad MirSo…

12:23Brian BerdanOliver said that. He's like, "You know, we're all, we're all devils inside. We all have the devil inside, too," basically. I don't remember what his term was, but

12:31Jawad MirYeah

12:32Brian Berdan... Pff.

12:36Jawad MirBut let me ask you this, right? So you l… when did you last see it, just recently?

12:40Brian BerdanNo, it was probably, ooh, might've been, oh, at least 10 years ago, yeah.

12:46Jawad MirOkay.

12:46Brian BerdanBut I have…

12:46Jawad MirSo that was the r…

12:48Brian BerdanYeah

12:48Jawad Mir... That was the rise of social media around that time.

12:51Brian BerdanYeah.

12:51Jawad MirI mean, it was already there, so I always thought, have you seen that movie Ed TV with, directed by Ron Howard, Matthew McConaughey?

12:58Brian BerdanNo, I haven't. No.

12:59Jawad MirOkay. So great film. It's literally about doc… like, literally this guy deci… agrees to be on camera 24/7.

13:07Brian BerdanYeah.

13:07Jawad MirIt's like, think about live streaming, you know, on social media.

13:10Brian BerdanYeah.

13:10Jawad MirI always thought that was, like, the sort of the, if you wanna call, use the word pioneering in terms of predicting how the future would unfold, but I think Natural Born Killers is, was way ahead of its time.

13:22Brian BerdanYeah.

13:23Jawad MirWay ahead. And how…

13:25Brian BerdanYeah, the social and the, fame. The fame at, fame at all expenses. Yeah.

13:32Jawad MirYeah. So and then not just that, but the fact that audiences in the film, like, you know, but they were rooting for these two guys, like, you know…

13:39Brian BerdanYeah

13:39Jawad Mir... With magazine covers and how people... Kinda like that Jerry Springer Show, right? ... What was it? The Jerry Springer Show.

13:45Brian BerdanExactly.

13:45Jawad MirLike, how people like watching that stuff, so interesting. But, yeah, I'm just kinda rambling on. I just thought it was…

13:50Brian BerdanNo

13:50Jawad Mir... Interesting commentary.

13:53Brian BerdanIt's a sick world.

13:55Jawad MirIt is. I know it's been a while. Do you remember, it's been a long while, but do, would you remember any of the most challenging things that you had to go through in terms of editing a scene or trying to figure out how to put this scene together, et cetera, et cetera? Or any kind of technical or story-driven challenge that you may have had, whether on your own or working with, Oliver Stone?

14:18Brian Berdanyeah, I was thinking about Nixon a little bit.

14:23Jawad MirWhich is a great movie, by the way

14:25Brian Berdan... That's one of my favorites.

14:26Jawad MirYeah. It's a great one.

14:27Brian BerdanI had the most fun on that one 'cause it was s… Shakespearean and wild comedy, and, that had emotion to me. Partly because Oliver, kinda riffed off his feelings for his dad, who was very conservative. And, yeah, he just, you know, you really felt for Nixon, which was hard to, hard to imagine. I did at least. You know, when he's standing in front of the picture of J… painting of JFK and saying, "When they look at you, they see what they wanna be."

15:01Jawad MirYeah.

15:01Brian Berdan"When they look at me, they see what they are."

15:03Jawad MirRight.

15:03Brian BerdanI was like, yeah, we're all, Willy Lomax. Loman. But yeah, hard scenes.

15:11Jawad MirYeah.

15:11Brian BerdanYou know, the one in the jail cell had to figure out, okay, yeah, just don't worry about the format, just jump cut formats and stay in the same angle if you have to. Other hard... Yeah, you know, I should have reviewed the film this last night.

15:24Jawad MirThat's okay. That's okay. I was just...

15:26Brian BerdanYeah.

15:26Jawad MirBut let me, let me, let's go to something else then. Like, were you... I know some editors back in the day, I don't know if it's still the same thing, would be on set, like, as the dailies were coming in and they were just kind of popping it. Were you…

15:38Brian BerdanYeah, I'm the worst then.

15:40Jawad MirBut was that something? You came after it was done production, right?

15:44Brian BerdanNo. We're on from sh… the day, first day of shooting.

15:46Jawad MirOkay. So…

15:47Brian BerdanWe were on location

15:49Jawad MirSo…

15:49Brian Berdan... But we were in a trailer or a hotel room or whatever, you know.

15:53Jawad MirSo getting all the, different formats, right? 35, you know…

15:59Brian BerdanYeah

15:59Jawad Mir... 16, was that im… intimidating in the beginning, like, getting all this stuff?

16:03Brian BerdanYeah, it was a lot of, it was a lot of footage. Yeah, definitely it was a lot of footage. And, since that was the first show I'd cut digitally, I didn't, you know, I was daunted by it, and then I started to realize, oh, you just, you can just scroll through it quickly to see what the hell you got rather than having to spin through film. You know, can jump around. And there was also a delay in when we would get footage 'cause Super 8 stuff took a while to process. It was, you know, a little different, a little special. The 16 did too.

16:32Brian BerdanWe'd get the 35 mill… meter stuff right away. Yeah, what a logistical post-production supervisor nightmare. Bill Brown did that job, a friend of mine. And, just keeping track of all the footage, you know, you know. There were, on a lot of films, they lab… they label the cameras A camera, B camera, C camera. You know, maybe D, E, F. I think we went up to T.

16:55Jawad MirOh, my God.

16:56Brian Berdan'Cause there were things like…

16:58Jawad MirOh, wow

16:59Brian Berdan... Pixelcam, the Fisher-Price toy, little Pixelcam that records on, audio cassette, basically. That was one of the cameras.

17:07Jawad MirWow.

17:08Brian BerdanCrazy stuff. Yeah.

17:09Jawad MirT camera.

17:10Brian BerdanYeah.

17:10Jawad MirThat's crazy.

17:13Brian BerdanBut, yeah, da… you know, daunting when you just sit down and see this big list of shots that you gotta go through, and, they worked pretty quickly. Had a, Oliver and Bob had a pretty tight system going, so they could fly through the day and just get a lot of setups done. So, yeah, it was, it was daunting, and I hadn't really developed my system 'cause I had hardly edited anything, and certainly not electronically. But then, you know, just close the door and

17:44Jawad MirOff you go.

17:45Brian BerdanOff you go. I was just thinking about, when we were in Chicago, they were shooting at the prison, Joliet Prison, and, we were in, the Ambassador East Hotel, a very nice hotel in, what are they called? The Gold Coast or whatever, north of downtown, and very nice place. And I'm cutting w… the scene where Jack Scagnetti kills the prostitute. The train's going by the window, and there's a lot of screaming and chaos, and I've got hotel guests… Around me. And we're just working. They were very concerned. My wife came to visit me once, and she left the room, and someone leaned out their door and said, "Are you okay?"

18:32Jawad MirWow.

18:32Brian BerdanBut yeah, just I just closed the door and, you know, just power through it. And I just started to realize the freedom that the unconventional coverage gave you, that you c… you could do anything, just have a feeling, find the best moments, and, you know, continuity doesn't really matter. Just emotional continuity. We had to cut pretty quickly, I would say. I don't remember, you know, the exact timing, but, you know, most films within a couple weeks after shooting, or even 10 days or a week, whatever, you've got a cut of some sort to show. Because we had to screen on film and we were cutting digitally, there was a lag having to conform the film. But we, I think we had a cut within four weeks, we were probably showing Oliver, you know, film.

19:25Jawad MirThat's pretty good.

19:26Brian BerdanYeah. That was, you know, it was a lot of, a lot of barriers to get to that.

19:32Jawad MirI'm sure. But I'm imagining, that the way it was shot, I'm imagining that there were not that many takes per s… per scene. Like, it wasn't like…

19:40Brian BerdanYeah

19:41Jawad Mir... Five takes, 10 takes. It just g…

19:43Brian BerdanRight

19:43Jawad Mir... It kind of felt like a run-and-gun situation, right?

19:45Brian BerdanYeah. A… and Oliver doesn't normally shoot a lot of takes. He m…

19:48Jawad MirYeah

19:48Brian Berdan... Five would be a full, a full run. And they just, they just wanted to get all kinds of great angles and the formats and stuff like that. So yeah, they wouldn't s… sit there and struggle over one line or whatever. And, yeah, the actors were…

20:04Jawad MirYeah

20:04Brian Berdan... Actors were good. They didn't... There wasn't…

20:06Jawad MirThey were

20:07Brian Berdan... There wasn't a lot of trouble with people not knowing their lines and stuff like that, so, which is…

20:12Jawad MirYeah

20:12Brian Berdan... A pain in the neck.

20:15Jawad MirTo be working on a film like that, right, even for today's time, it's pretty crazy. Did it have an emotional toll on you? Like, the w… work… working through it, that it would just kind of take you in a dark place?

20:29Brian BerdanNot me so much. You know, it's funny 'cause, I would read s… prospective jobs, the scripts, to my wife. We'd read them back and forth to each other. Natural Born Killers, we were sitting in the backyard, a beautiful sunny day, and I'm reading this crazy script, like hoping, hope the neighbors aren't hearing this. But we've, you know, we laughed a lot. It was, it was, v… very funny on the page. K… you know, Quentin's version was not supposed to be funny. And, Oliver put a lot of, a lot of humor in it, and then it got even funnier when they were shooting. You know, the opening scene where they kill everybody in the restaurant, in the diner, g… get into the ratings problems. But, you know, you have a shot where you're on a bullet, the bullet's twirling in front of the camera as you ride towards the victim. That's cartoon. You know, that's cartoon violence. So, that film I didn't really get upset by until later.

21:34Brian BerdanNext few years, you start to hear people attributing murders to it. I believe there were maybe a dozen people who said…

21:42Jawad MirOh

21:42Brian Berdan... "Yeah, I wa… I watched it over and over again before I went and shot this person." a… and…

21:50Jawad MirWow

21:50Brian Berdan... That's, that cemented my feeling that, you know, we really shouldn't be glorifying violence. We tested... I live up in Seattle, and we came up, had come up here before I moved here, come up here to test the film, had a couple of screenings. And, you know, you get your cards at the end of the night, everybody's comments on the cards. A third of the people hated it. A third of the people enjoyed it. A third of it were crazy passionate.

22:21Jawad MirDivided. Yeah.

22:21Brian BerdanNo, they... One guy, this is where I was like, "Oh gosh, we might be in trouble here." One of the cards, looked like it was scrawled in crayon, said, "This film makes me want to kill."

22:34Jawad MirWow.

22:34Brian BerdanThat was sobering. I, yeah, I don't remember the details of one of the famous trials, but it was a, it was a big issue in the trial. S… you know, someone had just, you know, it was a trigger. So I just turned down, being considered for a job two days ago that w… just too much violence. I just, I don't do it. And, horrors, I've done some horror fix-it stuff in the last few years, and that's kind of cartoonish. But even that, it's just not a place I think, I think we need to go too much. I'm, I'm…

23:13Jawad MirYeah.

23:13Brian BerdanI had the b… probably the most enjoyable job of my life last year, last film I did, was called Trust Me, I'm a Doctor. Kal Penn, very funny, and it's like, wow, why aren't we writing more films like this? It's just heartwarming, funny, you know, drama, and, you don't need too much blood. So.

23:35Jawad MirYeah. Yeah, no, I agree with you, and I think it's interesting you mention that because when... So I didn't, I didn't see Quentin Tarantino's films until… ... 2013, 2014. And one of the reasons was that because I couldn't take violence.

23:53Brian BerdanYeah.

23:53Jawad MirAt least I thought I... Maybe I w… at the young age I couldn't. But, you know, 10, 12 years ago, I started watching them, and maybe my, with my age, the matureness probably had a different reaction to it, and I love all of the stuff that he's done. But I wonder how that would've been if I had seen them at the age of, you know, early 20s, mid-20s. I mean, it'd be…

24:15Brian BerdanRight

24:15Jawad Mir... By then you're more s… mature, but still.

24:17Brian BerdanYeah. Yeah. No, I… You know, the idea that it doesn't affect our culture is completely wrong. It does

24:28Jawad MirYeah

24:28Brian BerdanIt's a, it's a echo chamber and an amplifier like social media, you know, or AI. All it is doing is just building up whatever bad instincts we have

24:39Jawad MirYeah

24:39Brian BerdanSo why not build up the good instincts, so...

24:43Jawad MirI agree. I agree. But, you know, I think even though it was, it's pretty bad that all these people were referencing to it in courts or in killings, but it kinda goes to show that the film had a point that we all have…

24:59Jawad Mir... Ridiculously dark sides, and if you ex… If you, if you push those buttons…

25:04Brian BerdanYeah

25:06Jawad Mir... Things will come out.

25:08Brian BerdanYep.

25:09Jawad MirYeah. And, you know, what was... So I was on Rotten Tomatoes, just again after watching the film, even though it's probably not something that was reflective of the time. I think it was a 83% audience and t… to 28 or 33% critics.

25:27Brian BerdanYeah.

25:27Jawad MirRight? Right? You know, looking back at it now, does it scare you... Well, let's forget the violence for a second.

25:37Brian BerdanYeah.

25:37Jawad MirDoes it scare you how accurate it was in terms of the social commentary of how the attention is always sought no matter what it is? I mean, look at the Kardashians and, you know…

25:48Brian BerdanYeah

25:49Jawad Mir... All that stuff.

25:50Brian BerdanNo, it d… doesn't surprise me at all. You know, if you remember, the end of it has a lot of flashbacks of, or hits of the news that was going on at the time. Oliver was totally playing off of that and, you know, we knew that was integral to the reality of what's going on was inter… integral to the film. In fact, we had finished, wrapped, mixed, everything was done. I went on vacation to England, and, the white Bronco O.J. Simpson experience happened.

26:20Jawad MirOh.

26:20Brian BerdanAnd the film had to be opened up again to insert his little piece in there just because it was so current and so right in the zeitgeist. So, yeah, not surprised that it was, prescient or reflective of what was going on.

26:39Jawad MirYeah. I remember O.J. Simpson trial. I remember my dad used to watch the trial every single day. I think it was the first time…

26:45Brian BerdanYeah

26:45Jawad Mir... That something was broadcasted like that on CNN.

26:47Brian BerdanYeah.

26:47Jawad MirAnd that's what made CNN.

26:49Brian BerdanOh, my God, yeah.

26:50Jawad MirWas the O.J. Simpson trial.

26:51Brian BerdanYeah.

26:52Jawad MirWorking with Oliver, I mean, you've worked on him, on few projects, this and Nixon. What's that like? I mean, I've, I've seen a lot of his work. I've seen a lot of his interviews, even the Putin documentary series that he did.

27:05Jawad MirAnd how he sort of thinks out of the box even on…

27:09Brian BerdanYeah

27:09Jawad Mir... Political issues and film issues. What's, what's like that working with him as a director… ... And a human being?

27:16Brian BerdanYou know, s… just starting out and diving into his crazy world at the time, you know, he was at the peak of his powers right then.

27:23Jawad MirHe, yeah.

27:23Brian BerdanYou know, he had, he had final cut, and I was definitely spoiled by that. I had worked with, on David Lynch films as an assistant, and he had... No, he didn't always, he didn't have cut on that one. I'm forget, I forget now.

27:36Jawad MirBecause the, because I did read that there was a director's cut that came out later because the opening had something that was NC-17

27:45Brian BerdanYeah

27:45Jawad Mir... That was deleted

27:47Brian BerdanOh, we had 100, we had 170 cuts we had to made for th… to get an R rating. That, so I'll go down that road for just a second and we'll come back up.

27:54Jawad MirSure, please. Please.

27:56Brian BerdanSo yeah, it was, a struggle. We, the first one we sent to them, the board to view, it's like, "No. Can… cannot be done." So we just kept whittling away, and I don't know how many times we screened for them. Maybe four times, I'm not sure. But, yeah, it was a struggle. Funny, I mentioned that, bullet going in at the beginning. In the cut we showed them, the bullet is going, and just goes, and then bang, we cut to blood hitting the wall. So it, you know, doesn't go into the person, but…

28:28Jawad MirYeah

28:28Brian Berdan... Just definitely bullet, bang. Well, to make it less impactful, we stopped the bullet 'cause that, the bullet had to stop before it hit the person. It was a big prop bullet about this big in front of the camera lens. So you're riding down and it stops. Wait a beat, then go to the blood hitting the wall. That was more comedy. That was more Bugs Bunny, you know? So…

28:55Jawad MirWait. Bugs, speaking of Bugs Bunny, I think there was a piece of music in there that was from Bugs Bunny show.

28:59Brian BerdanThere's a…

29:00Jawad MirI may be wrong

29:00Brian Berdan... Well, no

29:01Jawad Mir... Like, some cartoon.

29:02Brian BerdanThere's not. There's a cartoon,.. There's a, when Rodney Dangerfield, gets killed by Juliette Lewis.

29:11Jawad MirYes.

29:12Brian BerdanThat was going to be the temp music we put in there was a W… Warner Brothers cartoon. I don't remember. I'm the one who put it in. I don't remember what cartoon it was from.

29:21Jawad MirCould be Road Runner.

29:22Brian BerdanMaybe. I wish I kept all my tracks. But Warner Brothers, who was releasing the film, wouldn't give us permission to use their music for that.

29:32Jawad MirReally?

29:32Brian Berdan'Cause that would really taint their cartoons.

29:35Jawad MirIt's true, too. Good point, yeah.

29:36Brian BerdanSo w… we hired a composer who since I've worked with several times, Richard Gibbs, who was in, the keyboardist for Oingo Boingo, and he wrote this three-minute, cartoon music. Trying to think of the, composer at the time who... Carl Stalling, inspired by Carl Stalling, and, so that's, that's what's playing in there. It's, it's, our own music.

30:00Jawad MirOkay.

30:02Brian BerdanAnd, so s… so we're talking about MPAA. Oh, so yeah, we just kept whittling away. One thing we had to really cut down on, which we could have maybe extended it to make it funnier, but, Robert Downey gets a bullet through the hand, and the hole is the size of a, you know, a grapefruit. And, anyway, they thought that was a bit much.

30:27Jawad MirYeah.

30:27Brian BerdanSo that's very quick now. But, yeah, L… we trimmed a little language. You know, a lot of swearing in there, but that wasn't the problem. You know, it's, it just, it was just overall, just pull it, pull it back here and there and, or extend here and there. It get, got funnier. But yeah, it was a little struggle to get a, an R rating.

30:50Jawad MirYou know, it makes you wonder that, you know, watching that film, it's pretty violent as it is. Like, what must have gotten out? I mean, I g… I understand the beat of the bullet and the co… and the comic relief behind it.

31:04Brian BerdanYeah.

31:04Jawad MirBut I'm still wondering, like, 170 cuts, what was it that actually got out of…

31:09Brian BerdanIt's human. It's the same kind of stuff that's there…

31:12Jawad MirYeah

31:12Brian Berdan... But just less of it, you know?

31:14Jawad MirI got it. Got it.

31:14Brian BerdanNo particular, no particular, you know, there's no, yeah, no particular action that was so offensive. It was j… they just overwhelmed them. Like the, color timers machine almost broke them. But getting back to Oliver, you know, I just, I was young, just thrown into this, his crazy world, and, a lot of flashbacks going through my head right there. And, he just wanted, he just wanted passion. He wanted to feel something, and, he would... I wouldn't say he's Machiavellian, but he would, he loved having multiple editors 'cause he could, he could work them against each other if he, if he wanted to do that. Like, at, I think it was on Nixon, he says, I don't know if he was talking to me or Hank, but, "One of you know, you're fucking up my muv… movie. Give it to the other guy." You know, so we'd swap scenes, you know? And…

32:10Jawad MirI think, Coppola likes to work that, like, that way too.

32:14Brian BerdanOkay, yeah.

32:15Jawad MirYeah. But go on. I had, two editors on from Megalopolis and they said the exact same thing, but go on, please.

32:21Brian BerdanYeah. Yeah. I pity them. That must, that must've been hard. But, I had, I had worked for an editor who, was passionate, great storyteller, but he, you know, took, he took it very seriously, and I just realized, oh, he's not, you know, he's not mad at me for something. It's just, he's just into his work. So I learned how to let, passionate people pass by me. So, Oliver's tirades and stuff didn't bother me at all. And, well, I mean, it was stressful, but I didn't take it personally, so, we survived. I worked with him just a couple years ago just, during COVID. We did a couple of documentaries, one on JFK. And, he's mellowed a little bit. He's much more complimentary. And

33:17Jawad MirYeah

33:17Brian Berdan... We had a, we had a good time. I hadn't, I hadn't seen him s… since Ol… well, hadn't seen him basically since Nixon or U-Turn. So

33:27Jawad MirW… U-Turn was another interesting film, which I have to see. We watched. Sean Penn one, right?

33:32Brian BerdanYeah. Yeah.

33:32Jawad MirI think it was. Yeah.

33:33Brian BerdanMatthew Lopez. Yeah. Yeah.

33:34Jawad MirYeah.

33:36Brian BerdanI was on that for, half the time. I wasn't gonna do it 'cause I'd gotten a job up here in Seattle, and I intended to move here. So I said, "All right," you know, "Nixon was the last. I gotta go. I'm gonna, my life, I'm leaving Hollywood." And he said, "No, you're not. You gotta do this film." So, we made an agreement that I would go until January 1st when we were assembled, and I would move off, to my job up here. So anyway, yeah, the job up here was doing commercials, and I realized I don't wanna do commercials.

34:10Jawad MirYeah. Yeah.

34:11Brian BerdanBack to Hollywood I went.

34:13Jawad MirBack to Hollywood, yeah. It's interesting, right? Like, I mean, there's so many facets of cinematography and editing that you can do from commercial, to events, to docs, to…

34:22Brian BerdanYeah. Oh, yeah. No

34:23Jawad Mir... Film, but there is just something about the arc of storytelling, like how…

34:28Brian BerdanYeah

34:28Jawad Mir... The arc forms that you can do that in commercial nowadays, too, but it's just not that fulfilling…... At least for me personally, right?

34:35Brian BerdanNo.

34:35Jawad MirBecause, like, 30 seconds, how much can you pull that off?

34:39Brian BerdanYeah, exactly.

34:40Jawad MirRight? But

34:40Brian BerdanIt was, like little Rube Goldberg things, you know, Fabergé eggs, little things that don't really mean anything. I enjoy, I enjoyed it on some of them.

34:49Jawad MirYeah.

34:50Brian BerdanWhat dri… drove me crazy is they were, when I was doing them, we were cutting them to 32 seconds and then speed varying them. Like, it's just f…

34:58Jawad MirOh, really, eh?

35:00Brian BerdanCome on, you can lose a few frames and still, and let the... It seems stupid to me. If you have a format…

35:05Jawad MirThat's interesting

35:06Brian Berdan... Fit the format.

35:08Jawad MirI never, I never noticed that. Now I gotta watch some '90 ads, re-a…

35:12Brian BerdanYeah

35:12Jawad Mir... Watch them and s…

35:13Brian BerdanYeah. I don't know, I don't know how many people did that, but that's the company I worked for. That was his trick to cram more things in there and then cram it in shorter. So...

35:22Jawad MirI mean, two seconds is 48 frames. How much can you…

35:25Brian BerdanYeah.

35:26Jawad MirYou know? Wow.

35:29Brian Berdan60 frames working at 30 frames a second. Yeah.

35:31Jawad MirOh, you're working, right. Back then it was 30 frames a second television.

35:34Brian BerdanYeah. Yeah.

35:34Jawad MirIt became more so, yes. And you know, just to kind of as we sort of, kind of get to the last portion of our conversation, I, what was one thing that you learned about yourself while working on Natural Born Killers? I know it's been a long time, but if you can… You know, did it make you more confident? Did it make you more like, "Oh, I can do anything after this," or...?

36:00Brian BerdanIt was a bit of a whirlwind, and that, you know, kicked my career into gear. I got a lot of calls after that and, you know, got an agent and all that sort of stuff. And, yeah, it definitely g… gave me a lot of confidence. The violence part of it bothered me. You know, I turned down some good jobs that were, you know, or at least being considered for them, just because they were s… it's like I was gonna get pigeonholed as this violence editor.

36:31Jawad MirYeah.

36:31Brian BerdanYou know, I didn't wanna do that. So that, I s…

36:32Jawad MirWelcome to Hollywood.

36:34Brian BerdanYeah. I've definitely sold my soul along the way, but, yeah, so it made me realize that the story is important for me. It's not just a paycheck or, you know, box office or whatever acclaim. I choose jobs for the most part, unless I'm starving.

36:57Jawad MirYeah, of course.

36:58Brian BerdanBut is this a…

36:58Jawad MirWe've all been there.

37:00Brian BerdanYeah. Is this a world I wanna spend six months or a year in? I mean, there... Yeah, there are some that I would not wanna go back to. But, for the most part it's like, yeah, these are gonna be lines that I'll be saying to my wife, will be, you know, quoting lines from a movie. Is this the kinda movie I wanna quote? So, yeah, it made that... That experience made me, value a really good script. So…

37:30Jawad MirRight on.

37:31Brian BerdanYeah.

37:31Jawad MirWhat, are some of the movies that you turned down that became to be more pop… like, very popular in terms of part of popular culture?

37:42Brian BerdanYou know, I'm not sure I sh… should say those kinds of things but I will. Okay.

37:47Jawad MirI… if you're willing to c… share. You don't have to. I was just curious.

37:50Brian BerdanOh, well, you know, I'm trying to... Actually, I'm trying to think. Yeah, no, there are, not things... You know, Gun Crazy, was one that came out right after, Natural Born Killers. I didn't wanna do that. That was a pitching only one. Yeah.

38:01Brian BerdanThere are other ones I turned down so I could stay home, up here in Seattle, and, I…

38:06Jawad MirSure

38:06Brian Berdan... I regret some of those, but those will be unnamed.

38:10Jawad MirI think you also edited, that Minnie Driver movie, right?

38:13Brian BerdanYeah, Grosse Pointe Blank

38:14Jawad Mir... And John Cusack. G… Grosse Pointe Blank, yeah, which…

38:16Brian BerdanYeah

38:16Jawad Mir... I…

38:16Brian BerdanThat was a lot of fun. Yeah.

38:18Jawad MirYeah. I mean, back, romantic comedies were the thing back then in '90s.

38:22Brian BerdanYeah. That was a lot of fun. The music, you know, I love the music in it, and, it just, buoyant, ex…, fun serial killer. Or a, you know, hitman.

38:36Jawad MirYeah. So you brought up music. One of the things that I... I mean, there was so many music, a lot of, pieces to Natural Born Killers.

38:43Brian BerdanOh, my God.

38:43Jawad MirBut one that's…

38:43Brian BerdanThere's more music, there's more music than there is film. There's so many overlapping songs that there's more time…

38:50Jawad MirReally? Okay

38:51Brian Berdan... Music. Yeah.

38:52Jawad MirOkay. But one music piece that stood out for me, was, it was, I forget the scene, it lasted maybe a minute, was the vocal of, the Pakistani singer, Nusrat Fateh…

39:04Brian BerdanNusrat Ali

39:04Jawad Mir... Ali Khan? Yeah.

39:05Brian BerdanNusrat Fateh Ali...

39:07Jawad MirFateh…

39:07Brian Berdan... Fateh Ali Khan

39:08Jawad Mir... Ali Khan.

39:08Brian BerdanYeah.

39:09Jawad MirYeah.

39:09Brian BerdanYeah.

39:09Jawad MirSo I grew up with his music.

39:11Brian BerdanOkay.

39:11Jawad MirAnd, yeah. So he was also, I think, he was more thoroughly used by David Robbins in Tim Robbins' Dead Man Walking with Sean Penn and…

39:19Brian BerdanOh, yeah

39:19Jawad Mir... Susan Sarandon. So how did that come about? I mean, because in Dead Man Walking, he was there, like, he participated with Patri… Peter Gabriel. But in this film it just has like a small piece. W…

39:29Brian BerdanYeah

39:29Jawad Mir... What was the genesis of that?

39:31Brian BerdanThat's funny, we had Peter Gabriel as well in the film.

39:34Jawad MirBecause Peter Gabriel discovered him in Pakistan.

39:37Brian BerdanYeah.

39:37Jawad MirSo they worked, they even produced an album together.

39:40Brian BerdanYeah. Was it Real Records? Real World, Real World?

39:42Jawad MirYeah, I think so, yeah. Yeah.

39:43Brian BerdanYeah. I got to go to Peter Gabriel's, studio and stay there one night on our London, England trip 'cause of the movie. We got to meet him. That was a great... That was a lot of fun. But, I'm not sure who chose Nusrat, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna think it might've been Hank, 'cause he was working on that section. We chose the music a… almost exclusively. That w… and, we wanted to be eclectic, you know, all over the board. Opera, you know, comedy, rock and roll, you know, L7, whatever. One of the producers came into the cutting room one day and just said, "Who do I have to sleep with," with another word, "to get some good music in this film?" And, like, "What? We love it." So, yeah, I'm, I'm gonna guess, Hank, chose that.

40:35Brian BerdanYou know, KCRW is a station in Los Angeles. They play, you know, Morning Beclums, Becomes Ec… Eclectic. It was a great music, show, that they had that just... They might still have it, I don't know. That exposed us to all kinds of music. In fact, I probably had a Carl Stalling CD because of that. So yeah, just pack everything in there and overlap it and, yeah, I think there's a... At one point there's four songs playing in the opening titles, I think, at one moment where they're blending.

41:12Jawad MirIt's, it's insane that I wonder if somebody can take, of, you know, what's his name? I think it was Topher Grace did this? Some actor who was a big fan of Star Wars, and he recut one of the Star Wars films and just uploaded it on YouTube.

41:29Brian BerdanYeah.

41:29Jawad MirAnd I wonder if somebody can pull that off in a similar way, a film that's maybe somewhat closer in terms of theme to Natural Born Killers, but kinda recut it in such a way where it…... Comes across like that with musical tracks and…

41:43Brian BerdanFunny

41:43Jawad Mir... And desaturate footage and, you know, make it look like…

41:47Brian BerdanYeah

41:47Jawad Mir... It's 8 millimeter or 16 millimeter. That'd be interesting to see.

41:51Brian BerdanThat'd be crazy.

41:52Jawad Mir'Cause editing does change the film. It rewrites the film completely.

41:55Brian BerdanOh, my God. Yeah. A friend of mine teaches a course in editing, and he will take a scene, dailies from a scene, or, you know, a scene and give it to the class and say, "It's a drama, but m… now make it a comedy. Just totally change it." You know, you can add lines and cheat things and all that kinda stuff.

42:12Jawad MirYeah. No, 100%.

42:13Brian BerdanSo…

42:14Jawad MirAnd you can have footage without any music of a man walking in a forest…

42:18Brian BerdanYeah

42:18Jawad Mir... And then you add some creepy music to it just completely changes…

42:21Brian BerdanExactly

42:22Jawad Mir... Everything.

42:22Brian BerdanOr whistling and, yeah.

42:24Jawad MirYeah.

42:24Brian BerdanYeah, the music,.. I was kind of, I wouldn't say... Well, wasn't pissed, but, Nine Inch Nails, we took a song of theirs and, put it in. We, you know, we chose it and stuck it in, and then Oliver, our music supervisor, wanted someone, wanted Trent Reznor to, c… put together the a… the soundtrack album. So he chose pieces from the film. In fact, he chose a piece that I put in. I put in probably more music than anybody else in the show. I fiddle around on a keyboard a bit and drop it in scenes when I'm working, and if it passes muster, it gets in. So he gets credit for doing the soundtrack to Natural Born Killers. Like, well, he assembled the soundtrack album from our stuff. But anyway, setting the record straight there.

43:14Jawad MirYeah, no, it's all good. It's…

43:16Brian BerdanYeah

43:16Jawad Mir... This is really cool information. I mean, you just don't know about these things, right? Because, A, people don't share because they don't think it's that important, or B, they just kinda…

43:26Brian BerdanYeah

43:26Jawad Mir... Gets forgotten. But it's really cool to know.

43:28Brian BerdanYeah, it's funny to…

43:29Jawad MirIt's really cool to know

43:29Brian Berdan... Remember all these things.

43:31Jawad MirYeah, 100%. You know what I would love to do, Brian, is, since you said Nixon is some… one of your favorite… ... That you worked on, maybe we can have another episode and talk about it in thorough, i… in more depth…

43:45Brian BerdanI'll…

43:45Jawad Mir... If that's, if something you're up for

43:46Brian Berdan... I'll re… Sure, I'll rewatch it.

43:49Jawad MirI'll, I'll, I'll do that too. But anything else you wanna add at the end, about Natural Born Killers or just in general of editing or storytelling?

43:57Brian BerdanYou know, I just, I will just say, how grateful I was for Oliver to give me the chance to dive in there. I was an assistant in the morass of Heaven and Earth when he was about to start Natural Born Killers. They sort of overlapped. And, there were some politics on the crew that were starting, and so he just said, "You. You're, you know, get on, get on the bus." So, it was a really great honor to be given that chance, and it s… served me well. And, very, just a great full circle to come back and work with him here so much later in my career. And, yeah.

44:43Jawad MirI was gonna ask you, did you, did you convey him the, this thought, when you re… when you met him five years ago for JFK documentary?

44:51Brian BerdanY… yes, I did. Yep. Yeah, he was working, his office was just a couple doors away from where, an office of mine was. And I just called him up and said, "Oliver, I'm next door. I'm coming over." And, we had a g… great, we sat and talked for a lo… almost an hour. Just hadn't seen each other for a long time. So I never felt like I was his best friend when we were working, but, you know, I feel welcomed into the filmmaking community by him.

45:16Jawad MirThat's good to know. No, he's a, he's an incredible director and very outspoken. Sometimes…... Interest… interestingly controversialist, which is not a bad thing. It's a good thing…

45:26Brian BerdanYeah

45:26Jawad Mir... In my world. But, he s… says what he thinks, and that's…

45:30Brian BerdanYeah

45:30Jawad Mir... We need more, m… more of that in this world and everybody will be at ease.

45:34Brian BerdanYes, we do.

45:36Jawad MirAwesome. Thank you so much, Brian, for your time. A really pleasure having you and talking about this very interesting film, Natural Born Killers.

45:44Brian BerdanThank you.

45:44Jawad MirI'd love, looking forward to talking to you Nixon. Maybe that will be some different conversation completely.

45:48Brian BerdanAll right, great.

45:49Jawad MirAll right. Take care, Brian.

45:50Brian BerdanThank you. Bye-bye.