Ep. 131 – Sam O'Steen (feat. Darrin Navarro, ACE)

The B-Side: A Film Stage Podcast

Welcome to The B-Side, from The Film Stage. Here - today - we talk about movie EDITORS! Not the movies they edited that were legendary but the less legendary ones in between. Today we speak with the great editor Darrin Navarro (the recent, incredible The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial) about the lauded editor Sam O’Steen, who worked on such masterpieces as The Graduate, Rosemary’s Baby, and Chinatown. The O’Steen-edited films we cover today are: The Day of the Dolphin, Straight Time, Nadine, and A Dry White Season. Navarro talks about the editing process with William Friedkin (and how it changed a bit with The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial), how knowing when not to cut is as important as knowing when to cut when editing a film (“when you can tell a story with a shot, you don’t need a cut”), O’Steen’s essential book Cut to the Chase: Forty-Five Years of Editing America's Favourite Movies (written with his wife Bobbie O’Steen), and what a gem of a film Nadine is. Highlights include marveling at Dustin Hoffman’s incredible ‘70s output, that moment in the ‘80s in which movies were built around movie star Kim Basinger, the underwater photography in The Day of the Dolphin, and the crazy filmography of Robert Benton. Additional references include James Garner’s amazing autobiography The Garner Files, Peter Biskind’s juicy Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America, Dustin Hoffman replacing himself as director on the set of Straight Time, Brando in A Dry White Season, and Navarro’s appearance on the “Art of the Cut” podcast discussing The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial. There’s also this incredibly interesting, in-depth video from Bobbie O’Steen: Sight, Sound & Story: Live - "Inside the Cutting Room of Sam O'Steen". Be sure to give us a follow on Twitter and Facebook at @TFSBSide. Also enter our giveaways, get access to our private Slack channel, and support new episodes by becoming a Patreon contributor.