John Slattery Quotes

I have no control over a film. I don't know what will be left on the cutting floor.

David and I got cut out the editing process on that. We were able to affect it more than not. We sent in our notes, we were able to see cuts. We weren't allowed to see dailies and we weren't allowed to sit in the editing room and just work.

I've never made any film that I wouldn't go back and re-edit.

I'm not one of these directors, so far, that wants to have a whole separate director's cut of these things. So far they've turned out to be kind of the length that they wanted to be.

There's no such thing as a non-final cut director.

Editing is the only process. The shooting is the pleasant work. The editing makes the movie, so I spend all my life in editing.

You never really know as an actor; it's completely out of your control, in terms of editing, and music, and film stock, shot selection, and what takes they use.

In film, you're so much in the hands and at the mercy of the editor, so sometimes it's good to watch it just to see how it turns out - it can be so different than how you imagined it. But sometimes it's better to just let it go for your own sense of self worth.

The initial spark, your affection for the characters, all those things can disappear. It's a perilous thing.

I enjoy editing when I'm directing, but when someone else is directing, that's their film to cut.

I may have given my best performance but what if the role gets edited?

I used to sit on the editing table to see where I may have gone wrong because after editing, only the good parts go on screen.

I believe in hiring people to do their jobs.I want to hire an editor.They say you make a movie three times: when you write it, when you direct it, and when you edit it. So I have three shots to get it right!

It would only lead to disappointment, even heartbreak, and her heart was too precious for me to let that happen.

In editing, you really face what the movie is. When you shoot it, you have this illusion that you're making the masterpieces that you're inspired by. But when you finally edit the movie, the movie is just a movie, so there is always a hint of disappointment, particularly when you see your first cut.

The idea that a film is created in the editing room - it's only a certain kind of movie that's made in the editing room and it's not one that I really want to see.

The first cut I do is usually between five and 10 minutes shorter then the cut that we release. Anything I think isn't working or might not work, I don't even put it in the director's cut. And usually it's the studio suggesting I put stuff back in, as opposed to studios saying, "You got to lose 40 minutes," they are always saying, "You've got to gain five minutes."

If I could get myself in an editing room, that'd be trouble. I mean, that's how it works, you know? You leave everything on the field. I would pick apart - I do, even on the first time. More than once is just too much self-destruction. I don't need that.

I almost can’t believe I’m going to make myself vulnerable to him again. But what is love but the most extreme and exquisite form of risk perception? I know that relationships don’t last. And yet, with him, the risk of not being with him is much worse than any other hurt I can imagine.

When I'm editing, I tend to cut, go back over it, cut, go back over it, cut, so by the time I'm done, even with a cut, I don't have a rough cut and then work on it so much. I have a pretty rigorous cut of the movie that's usually in the range of what the final movie is going to be. It doesn't mean I don't work on it a lot after that, but I get it into a shape so I feel I can really tell what it needs, or at least it's ready to show people.

I'm so consistent that my director's cuts are usually 20-25 minutes longer than the released version of the movies.

Love's pure free joy when it works, but when it goes bad you pay for the good hours at loan-shark prices.

The fonder you are of your ideals, the greater your heartbreaks.

Desiring another person is perhaps the most risky endeavor of all. As soon as you want somebody—really want him—it is as though you have taken a surgical needle and sutured your happiness to the skin of that person, so that any separation will now cause a lacerating injury.

I love editing. I think I like it more than any other phase of film making. If I wanted to be frivolous, I might say that everything that precedes editing is merely a way of producing film to edit.