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| Matthew Hannam at the 2014 Directors Guild of Canada Awards where he won Best Film Editing for Enemy. |
Swiss Army Man
opens in Canada this weekend after a successfully controversial and acclaimed Sundance premiere where
its unusual story featuring Daniel Radcliffe as a farting corpse was one of the festival's breakout hits. Radcliffe’s
trick of playing dead gets some immediate laughs, but Swiss Army Man ultimately transcends its irreverent humour and
grows into a moving bromance and a provocative musing on what it means to be
alive.
Cinemablographer
chatted with Hannam via phone ahead of Swiss
Army Man’s Canadian theatrical premiere to chat about his experience in the
Canadian film scene, the art of editing, and the power of delivering bold and
original work to audiences.
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| Daniel Radcliffe and Paul Dano in Swiss Army Man. Photo by Joyce Kim, courtesy of A24. |
PM: Pat Mullen
MH: Matthew
Hannam
PM: What
initially made you gravitate towards film editing?
MH: I grew up
watching a lot of movies. I loved movies and never really got it out of my head
that I could make them. After dropping out of economics, I had some leftover
tuition and decided to take a screenwriting course and fell in love with it. I
grew up in Winnipeg, so I just started making movies in Winnipeg and ended up
editing sort of by default.
PM: They seem to
have a really good film community there. Were you working with the co-op?
MH: Yeah, I
started with the Winnipeg Film Group and then I ended up working with Guy Maddin [on the shorts Sombra Dolorosa, A Trip to the Orphanage and My
Dad is 100 Years Old] and I worked with the key “Winnipeg Guys” [including
Maddin, Sean Garrity, and Gary Yates] and then ended up at the Canadian Film Centre.
PM: I wanted to
ask you about that. You studied as part of the Editors’ Lab at the CFC. What
was that experience like, especially coming from an economics background, at
least in terms of school?
MH: Well, I
wasn’t a very successful economist. [Laughs.] I jumped into it because in
Winnipeg I just started working, so I learned how to assist and learned how to
be an editor. I was editing low budget movies. I applied to the CFC on a whim
and everyone said I wouldn’t get in, but I did. I went and I think I didn’t really
didn’t know what to expect and it was a bit of a shock to be in a structured
adult film camp. Editing Lab was a new thing at the time—they’d been doing it
for a while, but it was undergoing an overhaul—and our group really had its own
unique experience. I worked with a bunch of different filmmakers in different
styles. I was doing absurdist comedies and serious art movies. I formed a lot
of important professional relationships there and came out with partners that I
worked with out of school. It was a positive experience, but it was also a
culture shock where you’re sort of told what to do and when—I had a bit of a
rebellious streak in me at the time. The amazing thing about a school like that
is that you get to do your own thing and find your voice.
PM: In terms of,
say, finding your own voice in each film, at what point in the process do you
usually become involved with a film? Do you generally work with your directors
before or during the shoot to develop the rhythm of the film? Do you always
come in in post? Or does it vary project by project?
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| Jake Gyllenhaal and Sarah Gadon in Enemy, an eOne Films release. |
MH: It definitely
varies project by project. On Antiviral,
I got the script and was a part of the script early on. Enemy I got the script early. It’s interesting because I don’t know
how much an editor can actually do in the pre-production stages. You can try
and weigh in on the story, but I personally believe that you need the footage,
so it’s been interesting.
PM: What about if
something doesn’t quite click? How do you work with the team to pull out the
best product, just in terms of changing the timing, rhythm?
MH: Each movie
calls for a different part of my skill set. I think that some movies, like this
one I did called James White—
PM: That was
great.
MH: Thank you. That
one was very much me, like, living with the director and we just dug in. We
found the movie together from top to bottom—from story to performance to
specific editorial styles that we developed together. It was a very holistic
thing. In the case of Swiss Army Man,
the Daniels have a very specific editorial style.
PM: How so?
MH: The most
important part of being a good editor, on all of the films, is be receptive to
what the film needs on a case-by-case basis. Editing, I think, is generally
seen as the physical cuts. Every year, the Oscar goes to whatever film has the
most cuts. That’s not really the case with good editing, it’s just not true,
and an editor’s job is to edit the movie, not really the material, but the movie. In the case of the Daniels, it
was about seeing this amazing virtuosic style that I can’t really add to. At
time, I could replicate it in my work, but the most important part for me was
to be the voice of reason and sometimes dissent, and to help see the movie in
the grand scheme of things and bring that experience. They do a lot of work
themselves. All of the montage work is so uniquely them that I would have been
a fool to change it or weigh in on that. The important part is to look at that
strong material, see if it tells the story, and then ask how we can tell the
story better.
PM: So things
like montages would already be mapped out in their mind during the shoot?
MH: It’s that way
with any movie. Things are always going to come out of the film because you
have to fine-tune them. A scene changes a great deal when you’re shooting it,
from the character to the setting. Sometimes things become redundant because if
one scene’s work is already be done in the previous scene, you have to really
have a keen eye and be concise and guide it. An audience can lose track easily
and the most important part in editing a movie is that the story is being told
in the most accurate way possible, whether that’s style, story, or music.
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| Daniel Radcliffe and Daniel Kwan on the set of Swiss Army Man. Photo by Joyce Kim, courtesy of A24. |
PM: What were
some of the challenges with Swiss Army
Man? The film’s doesn’t really fit any particularly genre or tone. It’s
funny but it’s also dark…
MH: To me, that’s
the brilliance of what the Daniels do. They are able to take what we often
modelled after a rom-com and turn it into a survival movie. They then take a
survival movie and make it into an existential art film. There’s a scene at the
beginning movie when [Manny, Daniel Radcliffe’s character] washes up on the
beach and he [Hank, Paul Dano’s character] is dragging him. My first take on it
was to make the scene this quirky thing. Everyone was into it and we doing it,
but then we realised that something was just wrong about the beginning of the
movie. We had this moment where we were all like, “You know what? This isn’t
right because it’s what’s expected.” It’s actually quite dark—this man he’s
desperate, he’s not free, not safe, and he has this dead body, so we went for
this darker tone. The other example I can think about is the scene when they
rocket out of the water, it was this explosive, victorious moment.
PM: Yes, it’s
quite a surprise!
MH: We matched in
musically, and then one day Dan Kwan had this idea that we should have a really
sweet song that would be like the kiss. It was their rom com moment and would
be the expression of their love. The editorial process was often about finding
those moments and turning them over to find what the film is actually trying to
say, not just what the image is calling for.
PM: Yeah, I think
there’s a lot in the movie that takes you by surprise and it’s because of these
shifts with tone, timing, things you don’t expect, and whatnot.
MH: I think the
biggest victory in the film is that when you’re having a ridiculous moment, the
movie sneak attacks you with a genuinely sad, scary or heartwarming event. One
of my favourite moments in the movie is when they’re lying by the fire and
they’re fantasising about staying in the woods forever. It’s that moment where
you realise that Hank’s learned enough and he’s going back to civilisation. It’s
so deeply, philosophically sad, but also it’s such a joyful moment of these two
friends thinking about the future of their friendship and one of them knows
it’s over. It makes it really beautiful.
PM: It makes a
crazy movie really honest. How did you work with putting together Daniel
Radcliffe’s performance? He’s basically playing dead in the movie but there’s
also a spark of life when he’s on screen.
MH: It’s all
Daniel Radcliffe. Daniel Radcliffe’s a genius. We had to do a bit of work to
make it come together, but the movie is 98% him. They rarely ever used the
dummy aside from things that would have killed him. For a good portion of the Jet
Ski scene, that’s actually Daniel Radcliffe being ridden by Paul Dano behind
the boat.
PM: [Laughs]
Really?
MH: There’s very
little trickery. Paul carried Daniel for most of it. Daniel’s so good at
freezing—he didn’t move; it’s him under the pipe; it’s him under water. He’s
just amazing, so it was a total pleasure to cut. His performance is just
genius.
PM: It’s really
funny. And now, you’ve now done a few American indies with Swiss Army Man and James
White. What can the Canadian film scene learn from projects like these? Are
there things that we could take away from these films? Do you think there’s
something that the Canadian scene should be looking at?
MH: Honestly,
I’ve learned so much from making films in the State not so much because—there’s
sort of like a Canadian disease where they’re like, “Oh, you’re in America now.
That’s an achievement.”
PM: Yeah, that’s
true. I see that a lot.
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| Cynthia Nixon and Christopher Abbott in James White. Courtesy of Films We Like. |
MH: It’s not.
It’s not my goal; it’s not what I want to do. I’m just looking out for what the
best movie I want to do is. I just loved Borderline Films, so when I had the
opportunity to work with them, I just leapt at it. And James White is a movie that we made for very little money and Swiss Army Man was a film that we made
for very little money, and the thing that I learned from making those movies is
that everything goes onscreen in the States. They scrap it together. We made James White for under a million dollars.
Sleeping Giant is an example of
something that scraps it together.
What we can learn up here is that the most important thing
is the story—telling an original story. I think there’s a bit of disease where,
and there’s obviously quite a conversation about this right now, people are
just waiting to be given money. With a really good script, you can get a lot
done. You can get great actors. You have to be a little bullish about it, but
you can get people to listen to you if the script is good.
The most important thing to remember is that you have to
tell original stories. I think that a lot of the time, people think, “Oh, I’ve
seen this before. This worked, so I’m going to do this.” The reason Swiss Army Man is successful is that
it’s nothing you’ve ever seen before. I don’t think there’s anything “American”
about Swiss Army Man. If Swiss Army Man were made in Canada,
there would be no difference. There’s no geographical difference. We have
beaches and water and trees. It’s the kind of thing where you have to be brave
to tell a story that hasn’t been told before and if it has, you have to find an
original way to tell it. That’s the only reason to make a movie, I think.
PM: Yes, and I
think this movie does it very well.
MH: They went out
there, they rattled everyone’s cages, and people got upset because they hadn’t
seen it before. But with sequelitis, people just want to see things again. I
think that’s exciting that they’re doing something new.
PM: I think so
too.
MH: The part that
I’ve been really inspired by is just going out and seeing young people with a
story to tell. Swiss Army Man is
about the feeling of being disenfranchised and James White is about the feeling of being alone. I think the
important thing for us is to write what you know.
Swiss Army Man is
now playing in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver from D Films.
Read the Cinemablographer
review of Swiss Army Man here.
