28 EDITORS GUILD MAGAZINE : NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2009

To hear Stuart Bass, A.C.E., talkabout television editing, onemight think he has an insou-ciant attitude towards his craft.“Editing comedy is a specific

talent…it’s just difficult to say what thattalent is,” he says glibly. According to hiswebsite, www.filmbutcher.com, he haswritten or has been a contributor to suchbooks as How to Get Ahead in HollywoodWithout Any Talent and Make Sure the

Below-the-Line People Stay There. Alsoon the site, he extols a digital workflow of“dailies + lunch + paycheck = com-pelling cut of show,” maintains that hisupbringing on a Wisconsin farm taughthim to make splices with bailing wire andtwine, and longs for the days when studioemployees had to dodge Moviolasheaved from editing room windows byirate producers and directors.

Despite his poking good-natured fun

at the industry––and himself (his e-mailmoniker is TV Repairman)––Bass has a27-year editing career that defies the pop-ular notion of television as a toil-and-spincreative wasteland. Beginning with hiswork on the groundbreaking mid-1980sseries The Wonder Years and continuingon shows such as Parker Lewis Can’tLose, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, PushingDaisies, Arrested Development, Barber-shop and The Office, Bass has helped

FIXING TELEVISION,One Show at a TimeSTUART BASS BRINGS A CINEMATICSENSIBILITY TO CUTTING COMEDY

by Michael Kunkes portraits by Gregory Schwartz

EDITORS GUILD MAGAZINE : NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2009 29

define the shape of the modern single-camera television comedy, removing thelaugh track, adding the fourth wall andbringing to the small screen a synthesisof feature film and experimental cinemat-ic ideas about writing, production and, ofcourse, editing.

Just a year after winning an Emmy forhis work on the pilot of the ill-fated butcritically praised Pushing Daisies, Bassreceived a fourth Emmy nomination in2009 for Outstanding Picture Editing for aComedy Series, for the “Two Weeks”episode of The Office. He also won a2006 ACE Eddie Award for his editing onArrested Development. Editors GuildMagazine spoke at length with Bass, whois currently an editor on the new seasonof ABC’s Scrubs.

Editors Guild Magazine: Who are someof your cinematic influences and howhave you applied that to comedy edit-ing?

Stuart Bass: I am a huge Luis Buñuel fanbecause of the way he deals with time.He took film to a different level than justtelling a linear story that begins on dayone and ends on day ten. He made filmsthat were dreams. I was also very influ-enced by the Germans like Douglas Sirk,Fritz Lang and Anthony Mann, as well asby underground independent filmmakerssuch as George Kuchar, and the subjec-tive films of people like Maya Deren, StanBrakhage and others.

The Coen Brothers and Woody Allenare big influences on my comic cuttingrhythms. I remember taking a lot of ideasfrom Mike Nichols’ Carnal Knowledgeand The Graduate when I started workingon The Wonder Years, which I worked onfor four years. Most recently, I have beeninspired by editorial ideas from films likeAmélie by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, EdgarWright’s Hot Fuzz and documentaries likeThe Staircase.

EGM: How influential was The WonderYears?

SB: The Wonder Years was the first real“dramedy,” where people were confront-ed with very real life and death situations.

In terms of its editorial style, it developeda structure that was the opposite ofjokes––there would be a setup, and then,instead of a punchline, there would be atragic event. It wasn’t a pure comedy; ithad moments where characters would beconfronted with existential dilemma.

EGM: You were recently nominated foran Emmy Award for an episode of TheOffice. What makes it a unique show toedit?

SB: As editors, we are constrained by thefootage we are given. You can play withpace and performance, but ultimately,you will not be able to make drasticchanges in tone. The Office has a greatrange of material. There’s usually about18-22 hours of footage shot for eachepisode, so there are not only manyscenes, but many takes of each scene. Itcan be frantic or slapstick, or depressingand introspective––all within the sameepisode.

“Two Weeks,” my Emmy-nominated

episode, had long uncomfortablemoments, sight gags, ambiguous dia-logue and quiet moments, much like theBritish version of the show. With thatkind of off-the-chart dynamic range, youcould take a show and make it a dour,slow-paced Antonioni movie on one end,or pace it up, get more jokes in and turn itinto a Commedia dell’Arte farce.Editorially, we could take it almost any-where, and that’s what made it really funto cut. I discussed this issue with RickyGervais [original creator of The Office forBBC], who really enjoys the pacing of theAmerican version.

EGM: How does your editorial style dif-fer on a show like The Office, which hasalmost no music or visual effects, fromshows like Arrested Development orPushing Daisies, which are much morefleshed out sonically and visually?

SB: On The Office, we have the feelingand flow of a documentary, because thetalking heads and the hand-held shotshave to follow real-time film conventions.If you changed angles, you cut on theangle change and you didn’t do jump cutsor dissolves. Interestingly, ArrestedDevelopment had the same documentaryapproach, but with a lot fewer traditionalrules. We came up with crazy graphics tocut to, played with time in different waysand used split screens. When I tried todo these things on The Office I was calledout by executive producer Greg Daniels,though in later episodes, I did manage tostretch his rules. But ultimately, onArrested, we didn’t care about conven-tions, as long as it was funny. Iapproached Pushing Daisies in a muchmore cinematic way, ignoring coverageand letting beautiful masters tell the story.Not cutting became cutting. It was Zen-like.

EGM: Some of these shows reflect aguerilla-filmmaking sensibility.

SB: Without a doubt. In an episode ofArrested Development, the David Crosscharacter has a scene where he’s beinghelped out of a wheelchair, and we hadno coverage, only many takes of a master,

STUART BASS, A.C.E.TELEVISION EDITING CREDITS

Scrubs (2009)

Pushing Daisies (2007-2009) *

Notes from the Underbelly (2008)

Phil of the Future (2006)

Arrested Development (2005-2006) **

Barbershop (2005)

Method & Red (2004)

Sabrina, the Teenage Witch (1996-2003)

Sabrina, Down Under (1999)

Strange Luck (1995)

But...Seriously (1994)

Weird Science (1994)

Parker Lewis Can’t Lose (1990)

The Wonder Years (1988)

MacGyver (1986)

*EMMY AWARD

**ACE EDDIE AWARD

30 EDITORS GUILD MAGAZINE : NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2009

and there was just no way to make itwork. In the end, I just took the funniestpieces of him falling off the chair andjump cut them together. And if you thinkabout it, it makes no sense because it’sthe same take over and over again. But itworked. Serendipity.

EGM: You’re currently working onScrubs, which is going through a lot of

changes.

SB: The show has moved to ABC and isintroducing new and younger charactersin a teaching hospital environment. Sofar, I like what I am seeing; it’s a lot likethe Scrubs I remember from nine yearsago.

EGM: What is the director-editor rela-

tionship like in television comedy?

SB: Michael Dinner once likened TVdirectors to traffic cops––they are, for themost part, hired hands who change everyweek. Like the editors, they are trying torealize the executive producers/writers’vision. Veteran directors will make won-derful dailies where the shots flowtogether organically. They may suggest afew adjustments to my cut, see some-thing I missed, or even enjoy my take onsomething they didn’t expect.

Then the next week, I’ll be cursing andstruggling with a rookie director’sfootage, and invariably he will come intothe editing room for long painful days offixing his mistakes, and then, predictably,go back to the way I had it. As WalterBrennan said on The Real McCoys, “Nobrag, just fact.” I think I suffer from direc-tor-bipolar disease; my happiness is verydependent on the director of the day.

I have really enjoyed working withBarry Sonnenfeld, who first becameknown for his DP work with the CoenBrothers and has gone on to direct GetShorty, Men in Black and others. In TV, asan executive producer and director, hecollaborates on all aspects of writing andproduction. He gives everyone aroundhim terrific support, respect and creativefreedom. I’ve been with him on threeshows––Notes from the Underbelly,Suburban Shootout and PushingDaisies––and because our senses ofhumor are in sync, and we have similartastes in music and comedy, we are ableto elevate the footage beyond the originalscript.

EGM: How do you view the role of theeditor in a comedy show?

SB: I generally work with the executiveproducers/writers to keep the tone of theshow consistent, even as the directorschange weekly. Many of them are super-humans: Bryan Fuller, John Ridley, MitchHurwitz, Nell Scovell, Greg Daniels, BillLawrence. They balance writing, produc-ing, network relations, promotion, man-agement and budgets, and are still ableto maintain a focused creative vision. Mynumber-one mission is to interpret that

vision. In turn, they recognize the impor-tance of editors and what we bring to thetable. When schedules get tough andproduction is compromised, we are in thetrenches together fighting the battles.I’ve been lucky enough to work with thenicest and most generous of these folk.

EGM: How much of an actor’s perform-ance is created in the editing room?

SB: On shows like The Office, or on thepilot for Pushing Daisies, there is enoughtime for rehearsals. Editing performancebecomes an exercise in nuance and sub-text. However, television acting is oftenalso the world of the 11-page shootingday with no preparation, and that’s whenperformance becomes editing. It’s allabout stealing reactions, covering mis-takes, revoicing intonations, pulling uppauses and creating moments.

Every day, I thank Stan Tischler, whomI assisted many years ago and who gotme my first editing credit. I sat behindhim for two years on After MASH and gota PhD in shaping comic performance.Stan alone didn’t make this stuff up; I owea debt of gratitude to a century-old collec-tive knowledge base of Hollywood edi-tors.

EGM: How much do you work withmusic and sound effects?

SB: Though we still use music editorsand sound editors, producers todayexpect to see things as fully realized aspossible, with sound effects, opticals andmusic cut in, as opposed to doing whatused to be called a “rough cut.” Theimportance varies from show to show.On Parker Lewis Can’t Lose, action wastimed to the sound effects, so theybecame a really important element in thefirst cut. The Pushing Daisies pilot waswall-to-wall music, and we had a big jobfilling temp music until the composertook it over many weeks later. Typically,once a show is done, we pull OMF files,and all my music and sound effectschoices end up on the dub stage; hope-fully, the sound crew enhances theserough tracks and adds more depth.

EGM: What’s the difference between asitcom and a comedy?

SB: In a sitcom, someone ends up on thebalcony of his apartment in the middle ofthe night in his fluffy slippers and can’tget back into the house. In a comedy,someone could die at the end.Sometimes the joke is through a charac-ter’s unique view of a creepy world, butyou are not making puns and jokes andinsults, which is the stock in trade of thesitcom.

EGM: Where do you see televisioncomedy going?

SB: We’re in a period now with very fewmulti-camera sitcoms. They still look thesame today as they did in 1980: four cam-eras, three walls, two characters and acouch. There are a few very good ones,such as Two and a Half Men and How IMet Your Mother. They are just not verypopular right now but will be again.They’re just dumb fun and have done verywell over the years, simply because theyare cheap to make and the studios arecutting back.

The corporate mindset tends to shunrisk, so I think we’ll be seeing a lot of lessrisky television. Every season, some ter-rific innovative pilots are made, butalmost none of them are picked up.There was a time when a few greatshows could garner Emmys and stay onthe air without having great ratings, butnot in this climate. Networks are notgoing to sell advertising where they haveto look for an audience. Unfortunately,it’s part of the general dumbing down oftelevision.

EGM: Dumbing down?

SB: When I talk about dumbing down, I

don’t mean that in a bad way. The first sit-coms were cavemen sitting aroundcampfires making poop jokes. Then pre-tentious, sophisticated cavemen like mesecretly laughed with them—and thentold their cohorts it was vulgar. Anyway,if we smartened up TV, the advertiserswould jump to someplace like YouTube.

EGM: Was the transition to non-linearediting difficult for you?

SB: Not for me. I started working on non-linear videotape systems back in 1983 asan assistant on After MASH, when CBSand Sony introduced their experimentalsystem. I also cut shows on theMontage, Touchvision, Ediflex and others.My first show on the Avid was in 1994––adocumentary for Rob Reiner calledBut…Seriously, which earned an editingEmmy nomination. It seemed like wewere learning a new machine every fewmonths, and Avid was simply one moremachine on the continuum. Right now, Iam cutting Scrubs on Final Cut Pro.Despite the technology, editing stillseems to be about character, story andperformance.

SB: What is your role with theAcademy of Television Arts andSciences?

SB: I am in my third year as a Governor ofthe Academy, and I regard myself as aspy for ACE and the Editors Guild. It’sbeen a great way to give back to theindustry and guard against the movementto perceive picture editors as workstationclones.

EGM: Have you ever gone after featurework?

SB: Yes, and I’ve given up. Feature peo-ple don’t want to hire a “TV guy.” That’sjust the reality of it. Just don’t ask me todo any reality shows! l

Michael Kunkes is a freelance editor andwriter specializing in animation, produc-tion and post-production. He can bereached at writermk@sbcglobal.net.

EDITORS GUILD MAGAZINE : NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2009 31

“The first sitcomswere cavemen sitting

around campfiresmaking poop jokes.”