Diego Peralta
One Battle After Another moved audiences from all over the world with its dangerous tale. Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio) only wanted to create a better world for his daughter to grow up in, but life got in the way. Paul Thomas Anderson produced one of the most acclaimed stories of his career through the Warner Bros. release. Andy Jurgensen worked as the editor of One Battle After Another. The artists helped the director set the pacing and tone of the story, providing audiences with an unbelievable experience that will not be forgotten any time soon.
Awards Radar had another opportunity to interview Andy (after Joey spoke to him here) following his nomination for an Academy Award due to his work on the movie. Here are some snippets from the conversation, where Andy provided plenty of insight into how the world of One Battle After Another works:
Awards Radar: How important was it to get the prologue right?
Andy Jurgensen: “It was the most important thing, I would say. You’re setting up so many characters, you’re setting up the whole French 75 entity, and what they’re fighting for. And you’re setting up Perfidia (Teyana Taylor). She’s always there, she’s always being talked about. She’s in the shadows. It was really important to set up her journey. The part where she shoots the guy during the bank robbery, that starts the whole story and her downfall. This is the reason why Bob has to live with his daughter.
It went through a lot of versions, I would say. It’s something that we talked about. It couldn’t be too long, because it is still considered a prologue. We always knew we were going to take people out of the movie a little bit when we realized we were going to go sixteen years later after a 25-minute prologue. But we couldn’t just make it a big montage. We couldn’t do that, it wouldn’t work. We had to turn the prologue into its own mini-movie. It set the pacing of the whole movie. There is a momentum flowing. We go from scene, to scene, to scene. It establishes that.”
AR: How were you introduced to this massive narrative by Paul Thomas Anderson?
AJ: “He sent me the script. I had heard that things were happening, and that casting has started. He didn’t give me a preface. He gave me the script to read and he said we were going to meet a day or two later. I think it’s better to get into something (while remaining) objective. It’s good for him, too, especially with people that have worked with him for a while.
Now, when I’m reading a script, I can see it through his sensibility. I realize what the movie is going to be like. I read (the script for One Battle After Another) twice in a row, especially because of the humor and the tonal shifts. I didn’t quite get it at first. Later I saw that were going for an absurdist thing. One thing that was really clear in the script was that the emotional core was the father-daughter story. That was really well established. I remember that when we were just talking about (One Battle After Another), this was something that we would always have to ground. After that, you can have all the whacky things and the action. But it was always going to be about the father-daughter connection.”
Andy previously worked with Paul Thomas Anderson during the production of Licorice Pizza, Phantom Thread, and Inherent Vice. This is why the editor is very familiar with the way in which the director prefers to work.
AR: Correct me if I’m wrong, but One Battle After Another is very performance-driven. As an editor, how do you influence a performance by cutting things out or changing the pace?
AJ: “You’re always watching with an eye for authenticity. That’s always what you’re doing. In fact, when watching dailies and raw footage, we like to pay attention to when sometimes an actor makes it a mistake. It can be a stumble or something that is not perfect. We sometimes keep that stuff in. It gives something real to the performance. It’s not perfect, because that’s just the way that people are. Maybe for some directors, that is their style. For everything to be perfect. Paul’s sensibility is to make something that is a little off for it to be real. You need to grab on to this sort of thing. When there’s a flow between two characters, that is something you have to hold on to. Trust your gut with what feels right.
There is always going to be stuff you have to cut out. Paul is really good at realizing that, even if the scene was hard to shoot. I could say “We can get rid of this”. Or even he would say “You know what? This scene needs to be cut”. Even if we re-shot it twice. You’re always serving the story. You’re always serving the movie as a whole. That’s what’s important.”
AR: What was the point behind the Christmas Adventurers Club scenes having a different pace from the rest of the movie?
AJ: It was written like that. We didn’t want to have a two-and-a-half hour movie that went just like “Go, go, go”. You lose the power of that, and the audience will get tired out. The Christmas Adventurers scenes are there for audiences to take a breath. The camera is not moving, it’s just close-ups of people in a room. There’s no music. It’s just a way to reset the movie so we can slowly ramp it up again after that.
Another scene that has that purpose is the one we call the kitchen table scene. That is between Bob and Willa (Chase Infiniti). It’s setting up their bond. It’s another moment in which the camera only focuses on them having their first scene together. It sets up their relationship, and it’s another spot in which the audience can breathe.
Andy Jurgensen is nominated for the Academy Award for Best Film Editing thanks to One Battle After Another. This interview was edited for length and clarity purposes.
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