I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell

I did not like the first cut, it had massive problems and was not really what I envisioned at all. The second cut was better but I was still unhappy; it didn’t feel like the movie I thought we had shot. Fortunately, the crowd we screened it to loved it (despite its flaws, which many of them saw), and that made me feel much better. Now we are into the next round of major edits, and the movie is starting to become what Nils and I envisioned when we wrote it. This is making me much happier, but this is also teaching me something that I had heard but really couldn’t understand until I saw it:
Editing is not only incredibly important, it is an art unto itself and can completely make or break a movie.
When you first start this movie business thing, you think writing is the hardest part, and once you have that done, it’s all cake. Maybe it is, but then you have to get the deal. That’s really hard too. Once you have the deal, you have to attach a director and cast it. Lots can go wrong there. Then you have to go through pre-production, and there are 1000 decisions to make, the results of each won’t really be known for months. Then you have to shoot the movie, which is a fucking shit show. Once you get through all that–once it’s written, and you get it financed and you get actors and you set everything up and you shoot it–you think, “OK, now I HAVE to be past the hardest part, right? We shot the fucking thing, just put it together and we’re done.”
Nope. Editing is at least as hard and important as any of those steps. The massive amount of work we are putting into editing should attest to it.
Once the movie is out and it’s all said and done, we will release the original assembly, the director’s first cut, the second cut that we showed to the first screening audience, this cut, and then the final cut. It’ll be like a mini-course in movie editing. You will be SHOCKED at the differences. Literally, if you have no experience with editing and movies, you won’t believe it. The differences between the first cut and final cut are so profound, they are essentially different movies.
I know what you are thinking–”you have a script, just put the fucking scenes in order, how hard can it be?” That’s what I thought, and I was way wrong. Being an editor is not just “putting the movie in the right sequence” or pressing buttons. Editing is so hard, it’s even hard to explain why it’s hard. You have hundreds of hours film when you are finished, and it has to all be cut down to tell a cohesive two hour story, and in the case of a comedy, also be funny. It is the job of the editor to make this happen. It has to have the right timing–not be too slow and drag, but not be too fast and leave out important plot points or details. Each character has a story line, and those elements must be put into the film, and all of them have to fit together. It is multi-dimensional chess on a level of extreme difficulty.
The editor and director (they work as a unit usually but not always) can have a multitude of other problems: they have to test different ways to put scenes together and sometimes some of them just fail, other times they make the wrong decision about which take to use, sometimes the way something is written and shot just doesn’t work on screen and they have to find a way to make it work, and sometimes everyone just loses perspective on what is working and why, and you need someone with a fresh perspective to get you out of your own head. We are having all of these issues during editing–some things were shot wrong and we have to figure out a way to fix it, some jokes aren’t playing right, etc, etc, and at this point, we have to fix it through editing.
Editing can change everything; how a joke plays, how you feel about characters, what scenes are or are not in, what the movie looks like. Literally everything, and it takes skill and art to understand what does and doesn’t work, and how to get the result you want from the the footage you have. That’s another important thing to remember–the editor’s job is made infinitely harder by the fact that they can’t re-shoot or re-block anything. They have to get the right result with whatever the hell the director got on the day. Jesus, it’s hard on everyone–I’m just the producer and on both cuts I have taken over 10 full typed pages of notes of changes that need to be made to the next cut. And I don’t have to figure out how to make them work.
It’s not like any of this is unique to our movie; issues in editing happen to every movie. I’ll tell you one of those “everyone knows it but no one talks about it” Hollywood secrets that involves editing: Everyone has seen American Beauty, right? Well guess what: The movie Sam Mendes shot and cut and turned into the studio bears almost no resemblance to the movie we all saw. In his cut, the movie is set in a courtroom, and all the scenes play as flashbacks, with Kevin Spacey floating between the houses. It was as weird as it sounds. The studio essentially fired him, brought in their own editors, and re-cut the entire movie. And that cut won a fucking Oscar.
I know that I used to think editing was easy and that movies are “defined” things, but neither of those things are true. Until we lock the cut, the movie can and does change substantially just through editing alone. As much as any other aspect of movie making, editing is integral to the success of the movie.
NOTE: I am going to Cleveland for a week for Thanksgiving, so I won’t be posting again until December. If you’re lucky, Nils or Greg will throw something up, but if not, you SOL until I get back.
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If you follow culture at all, I am sure you have heard of the movie, Twilight. It opens Friday, is setting or breaking all kinds of pre-sales records, and is on track for a 60+ million OPENING weekend.
Why am I writing about this? What does this have to do with I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell?
Well, the movie has no stars in it, was made independently after several studios tried it but fucked it up, and is based on a very successful book that has a cult following, but got very little mainstream press and made up for it with a strong internet presence.
Sound familiar?
It’s funny to watch Hollywood execs try to wrap their heads around something new:

“In the age of big, studio tentpole pictures, it’s a surprise to find such encouragingly strong advance ticket sales for an independent film with no established boxoffice stars,” Fandango COO Rick Butler said. “That’s a tribute to power of the blockbuster novel, solid word-of-mouth on the movie’s early screenings and savvy Internet marketing.”

This comes as no surprise to those of us who, instead of just blindly accepting conventional wisdom, actually look at the evidence.
This is great news because the similarities between Twilight and Beer in Hell are definitely going to help us with distributor negotiations and other things like that. Hollywood is all about imitating success, and this success is coming at a great time for my movie.
That being said, I don’t want to go too crazy with the comparison here, the Twilight series of books (there are four of them) has sold over 17 million copies worldwide. Just the first book in the series has sold like 2 million copies domestically, which is way, way more than the 500k copies my book has sold. When the Twilight actors show up somewhere, they draw so many people they have to leave. When I do a speech at a college, I usually only draw a few thousand, and I have yet to incite a riot.
But there is one thing my movie has that Twilight doesn’t: The potential to be a multi-quadrant hit.
In figuring out who the audience for a movie is, you think of it in four basic blocks: young men, young women, old men, old women. Twilight will dominate the young women quadrant, but have very weak crossover to other quadrants. My movie in contrast, will dominate the young male quadrant, but, judging by the emails I get and who buys my books, will also have excellent play in both the old male and young female quadrant.
What does all this mean for this movie? We’ll see. Until the returns are in, the prognostications are worth what you are paying for them: Nothing. We’ll see what happens, but the success of Twilight is very encouraging for the success of this movie.
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Don’t pay attention to Tucker’s self-doubt, he is being far too hard on the movie. Here it is in a nutshell: The movie is good.
A week ago Nils asked me to organize a test audience of 35 of my buddies to get a feeling for how the cut was playing. The chosen few included: college buddies, their girlfriends and assorted people I had met at bars this week. The oldest of my friends was 27 the youngest 19. I strongly suspect that a good portion were in one way or another intoxicated, which is good given Tucker’s target audience. (Sidenote: I came in late because my friends are slackers and can’t read or write, much less follow directions. As such I sat in the front row next to a middle aged woman who I thought was drinking coffee. WRONG. By midpoint she was shithoused and the smell of vodka had somehow added to the feeling of déjà vu I had watching the film. Nice to know that Tucker really does bring out the best in everyone).
I’m going to skip my specific thoughts and go straight to the post-screening discussions I had at our local dive bar. And by discussions I mean the four most popular comments people yelled at me from across the room.
“That was fucking sweet man.”
“Hilarious dude.”
“How is that going to be rated R?”
“You are the worst actor ever.”
I especially enjoyed the actor comments, given that I was on screen for a total of 10 seconds.
Speaking of which, after the screening Jeff Kushner walked over to me and told me he could not for the life of him figure out why the scene I was in got laughs until he realized all my friends were laughing at me as opposed to the actual scene. Additionally, according to numerous comment cards filled after the movie screened I am indeed the worst character in the film. (This is probably not interesting to any of you, but dammit it’s cool to see yourself on screen).
Early on I was worried. If there is one concern I still have, it’s the opening. However, once the jokes start coming, and they do quickly–they don’t stop.
Given that Tucker is a perfectionist and I can tell that he is still is not happy with the cut, allow me to put to rest any fears you guys may have: the movie is going to be very, very entertaining.
Fans of the book–there are scenes that are indeed funnier on screen.
People who hate Tucker–you are still going to laugh and you’ll end up hating Tucker even more.
Jesse does scene stealing work. His lines more than any other were the ones I heard being repeated again and again.
Both Geoff and Matt do great work, they play very well off each other. Their chemistry is evident.
To be sure there is work to be done. It does drag in places. But that’s all part of the process. Interestingly enough the two scenes I really liked in the screening room didn’t get the laughs I thought they would. Other scenes that weren’t funny in the editing room were hilarious with an audience–weird how that works.
At the dive bar, a couple of my friends and I ventured down to have a drink with Sean, Nils, Jen, Jeff and Tucker (Tucker being the main attraction on their end anyway). We all sat at the bar while Tucker held court at a table, talking about the film. An especially adventurous one of my friends (read:drunk) bought a round of shots for their table, in the hopes of being able to get them to come over and talk with us.
Didn’t work. They nodded, said thanks and went right back to work. Heads down, talking shop.
And that’s a very good sign.
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My camera and video assistant on the movie, Greg Dunaway, has previously written stuff I put on the production blog and wants to write more, so we are going to give him his own little avatar thingy, and he’s going to start writing a little more regularly.
[Note that we made his avatar dark because he isn't good looking enough to have his face on my production blog.]

After I saw the first rough cut, I was just not sure about the movie. It’s not that I thought it sucked, it’s that it was just so rough and so different than what I had imagined it would be, I wasn’t sure if we hit the mark, or we missed completely. I was so immersed in the details I couldn’t see the big picture. I talked about it in this piece:

“I don’t know. I really don’t know. This thing could be an amazing, genre-defining comedy that is even better than I think, or it could just totally miss the mark. I don’t know…I think what we need to do now is make all the scene fixes, and then I want to show it to people I know and trust, and see how they react. Because right now, I need some honest outside perspective.”
So we did just that. We spent two weeks making as many fixes as we could, and then last night we did a viewing.
I’ll be honest; I was really fucking nervous last night. Nils and I have worked for over two years on this, we have all our chips on the table. And the movie isn’t anywhere near where it should be; when we are finished editing it, it will be substantially better than it is now. But the fact is, even though it will get much better, right now it resembles what the final product will be enough that we can get a good indication of whether or not we’re on the right track.
Getting help from Greg and a few other people, we found 50+ people to see it. This audience was very representative of what an average audience who would see this movie would be; almost all of them were 18-25, a good mix of male and female, people who liked comedies but who don’t know me and are not associated with me or the movie or even big fans of mine (some of them had heard of me though, and a few had read the book, but a minority). If these people didn’t like the movie, it would mean very very bad things for us.
I came in late to the screening because I didn’t want any of the audience to know I was there (in case it would influence their rating). I sat next to my girlfriend and couldn’t enjoy the movie at all, because all I could see were the problems and mistakes and things we still needed to fix. I know there was a ton of laughter from the audience, but I couldn’t enjoy it because of my anxiety over the mistakes. I hate it when my close friends read rough drafts of my written stories–having 50+ strangers watch a very rough draft of my movie was almost unbearable.
As soon as it was over, I slipped back out and waited for the audience to fill out their questionnaires. Now, in a typical questionnaire, at the end the audience is asked to rate the movie on a 1-10 scale, and that score, averaged across 100 people, is considering the movie’s “rating.” Since this is still only the second cut and very rough, we did not ask for a 1-10 rating, we only asked a bunch of short answer questions like, “Who was your favorite character and why,” “What was your favorite scene and why?” etc, etc. But there was one question more important than the rest:
“Would you recommend this movie to your friends? [ ] Yes [ ] No”
It was the only binary answer question, and that was the score we were most focused on for this, our first screening to a real audience. If a movie scores 80% or more on the recommendation question, that is considered a huge number and studios shit themselves over the movie.
We got a 95%.
That’s higher than Superbad or Juno got on that question. That’s really good news. But there is more.
The guy who helped Nils and I really learn how to write a script and understand screenplay format is a co-producer on the movie, David Zuckerman. David is one of the biggest A-List comedy showrunners in Hollywood; he was one of the original writers on King of the Hill, he is the guy who developed Seth McFarlane’s characters and jokes into Family Guy, and he is the current showrunner for American Dad. He was in the screening (he didn’t fill out a survey) and was seeing it fresh, having not seen the movie, the dailies or anything.
He had a bunch of notes about things that could be improved (we all did), but these were the two big things he said:
1. “You got a million dollar cast. They were amazing. I am surprised at how good the acting was. All of them were just awesome.”
2. “It was really good, and once you work out the issues we discussed, I think this is going to be great. I think you guys have a hit movie on your hands.”
David’s not the type to blow sunshine up my ass. He’s a straight shooter, and his words meant the world to me. I have never made a movie before so my instincts on this process are still being developed, and to hear him, a man who has succeeded multiple times doing what I am trying to do, give that kind of praise to the movie…it’s nice.
Look, I know this is only one screening, and I know that it might be a bit stacked in our favor because at least some of the people had heard of me and read my book, and I know even David is probably a bit biased because he helped us learn how to write a script and has consulted at various points throughout the process and likes me and Nils, and I know we still have A LOT of work to do, but still…I feel really fucking good right now.
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This past week, everyone has been busy integrating all the notes after seeing the first cut, and we are having another big screening on Thursday, this one with more people, some of whom are really smart and accomplished Hollywood people whose opinions I trust. I will have a report on Friday with my thoughts (and theirs) on the newest version. But in the meantime, I have a mildly amusing Hollywood story for you:
People ask me all the time what it’s like hanging out in Hollywood. I don’t really know because I hate most of the people here, so I never hang out with them, but my girlfriend, who just moved here from Ohio, had a pretty typical LA experience tonight.
She and bunch of her nurse friends went to a bar on Melrose. She’s pretty hot and so are her friends (they’re traveling nurses, I guess that’s typical), and so of course they attracted lots of male attention. One guy was paying special attention to my girlfriend. The conversation went as such,
Guy “So, are you here alone?”
Erin “Uh…no, I’m with my friends. That are standing right here.”
Guy “Can I buy you a drink?”
Erin “Thank you, but no, I have a boyfriend.”
Guy “Well how about you and your friends join us?”
Erin “Um…I told you I have a boyfriend.”
Guy “Do you even recognize me?”
Erin “I don’t know your name, but I think you’re the guy who played Aiden in Sex and the City maybe?”
Aiden “Yeah. You still don’t want to join us?”
Erin “You’re kidding, right?”
That’s my girl.
And Hollywood really is like that.
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Greg, the camera and photo assistant, visited the editing room the other day, and wrote this up. It’s interesting to me because I have no other basis upon which to compare editing to–this is normal to me because it’s all I know. He’s got a take different than mine:
“Today I visited Nils and Jeff Kushner (the editor) in the cutting room of I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell. It was quite the experience.
Walking in the room, immediately on the left is a gigantic HDTV with full speaker sound screen where you can in effect watch any take, watch any assembly or if you wish, watch the whole damn movie. It’s an impressive way to take in the film, especially when looking for specific beats or tones in a scene. It’s also a far cry from the way I’m used to editing movies, behind the scenes stuff, whatever. Most editors stare at two monitors with headphones crouched in a dark corner.
Jeff has three quality monitors, not including the HDTV. However, the sheer amount of footage that Jeff has to sift through is incredible. I saw three of four different sequences (completely surreal to see sets I was living and breathing in Louisiana on screen). It makes the work that Suki and the lighting department did all the more incredible.
The conversations between Nils and Jeff were particularly instructive to myself as a filmmaker. One little conversation, one 3 second edit completely changes the meaning of a scene. It’s not ever as simple as a click here or a click there. Listening to them was a lesson that isn’t ever taught in film school. Watching scenes completely change after Jeff’s whirring fingers go to work was inspiring. It’s no joke that editing is a 10-7 job. One scene can take weeks on end to get “right.” And in this film, there is absolutely no room for error given the territory Tucker and Nils want to explore.
But why exactly was I there? A couple reasons, one of which I’ll keep to myself, but the other I’m happy to share. There is a particular sequence in the film that actually required me to sit and recut some of the film. That’s right, the lowly assistant was sitting at an AVID station sifting through footage. Now, before someone freaks out and emails Tucker a million “YOUR MOVIE IS TERRIBLE THE ASSISTANT IS EDITING LOL!” allow me to issue a quick note. What I was editing was not essential to the well being of the film. It’s important, it will be on-screen, but if I did my job right, you won’t notice it a bit.
So there’s that and I couldn’t be more grateful for the invitation to contribute my editing skills and a few thoughts about the scenes I took in. Jeff and Nils work in a way that is very organic and very open- if you have something to contribute (and you aren’t a functioning imbecile, they are open to listen).
To wrap up: I liked a lot of what I saw. I think one key scene needs some work, but it’s getting there. Interestingly enough, two of the funniest jokes I reacted to were not in the script. One was a hilarious goof, the other was a “miracle of editing” joke.”
Whole post is here.
Comment and discuss here.

Got this question from Charlie Hoehn (who has a good blog that I read):
If your movie’s being released in August next year (and I’m guessing all the editing will be done within the next few weeks), then what all are you and the studio going to do during those several months before it’s released? Do all movies have this much time between post-production and release?

In short, yes, in the current system most movies have at least a year from wrap to release, and many have a lot more. I am still in the middle of this process, so I am no expert in post-production, but let me outline a very basic post time frame (this is for a normal movie with no big CGI or action effects):
Once the movie wraps, the director gets his six weeks to edit his cut. He works with the editor to put the assembly together, then the first cut, etc. Then the producers and/or studio executives come in and give their notes, and revisions are made until a consensus is reached (or in bad case scenarios, the studio takes over the movie from the director and hires a new editor and goes their own way).
Once the final cut is agreed upon by the director, producers, etc, then the sound mix and Foley artists are assembled. All the sound captured on needs to be mixed by professionals, footsteps need to be added in, some sounds need to be taken out. This is a long and complex process, it can take anywhere from 6 to 12 weeks, or even more on some movies. Additionally, actors usually have to come back and re-record some dialog. In our movie, I know we will need to do this. We also need to choose and acquire music rights and then insert that into the film, though this process can usually run concurrent to the other sound stuff.
Picture wise, our film needs to be colored (timed). The D.P. does his best to make all the film match over the course of the shoot, but since every lighting setup is a bit different, we have to go in and tweak colors. If there are special effects (I can’t remember if we ended up with one or two FX shots) they need to be developed with FX guys usually over the course of weeks depending on the length of the shot.
Once this is finished, all parties need to agree on this cut, titles get added in. From there, press and marketing do the roll out, which takes a minimum of three months and usually six. Then prints have to be made and delivered to theaters for the opening. From start to finish, post is almost never less than six months, and is usually around a year.
Now, this process doesn’t have to take this long. You can always hire more editors and speed up the process, but it just costs a lot more money–e.g., the Oliver Stone movie, W., which was shot in Shreveport just before IHTSBIH and is already in theaters. They had a team of editors working around the clock to get that thing out in time for the election. However, the additional time helps make the movie better, because it allows for changes to be made, audience test screenings, marketing to be developed, etc.
Also, part of the time to release is determined by when the studio wants to put the movie in theaters. There are any number of factors that influence this; economics, accounting, competitive movies being released the same weekend, seasonal issues, holidays, etc, etc. For example, the next Harry Potter movie has been ready to roll for six months, but Warner pushed it to this coming summer from Thanksgiving because of The Dark Knight. If a movie’s release date is October for some reason, and it’s ready in May, it doesn’t matter. It just waits until October.
Now, we have an indie film, so we have another thing that adds time: We have to sell the film to a distributor. Selling it won’t be the issue, but different distributors will have different ideas of when it should run, or will only have certain holes in their schedule. Our movie will probably be completely finished as a film by February; we could conceivably have it in theaters at any point from April to September (or later), depending on who we pick as our distributor, the market, and many other factors. Plus when we sell it can affect the release date–if we sell it in December and the distributor wants to rush, it may be out in April. We may sell it in early March, and the distributor will want a large lead time for marketing and plans a September release.
Like I keep telling you, it’s three dimensional chess with multiple moving pieces, and each one affects the other.
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