Listen to Susan Littenberg share her story from starting as a PA in the entertainment industry to becoming an Editor and working with established Directors.
Alik Artinian: Hello everyone, and welcome back to Entertainment Unscripted. My name is Alik Artinian, and this is a series where we sit down with individuals in the media and entertainment industry to discuss their work and the field overall. Joining us today is an accomplished film editor and a lecturer at UCLA’s School of Film, Television and Digital Media. whose work has helped shape stories behind the scenes through the power of visual storytelling. With years of experience in post-production, she has worked across multiple films, bringing projects to life in the editing room and offering a unique perspective on the creative process. Please enjoy my chat with Susan Littenberg. Welcome professor, how are you?
Susan Littenberg: I’m doing great, Alik. Thank you so much for having me.
AA: Thank you. How has your day been so far?
SL: It’s been pretty good. Yeah, I’ve been up, I’ve been up since 6 a.m. because I need to bring my cat to the vet. But I don’t know if you’re editing this and need to include that information.
AA: Well, I hope everything is okay with the cat.
SL: Everything’s okay.
AA: Could you tell us what initially drew you to film editing, and when did you realize it was the career path you wanted to pursue?
SL: Great. I first considered film editing as something I was passionate about when I went to University of Delaware in the ’80s, and I took a variety of film classes, which were offered through the English department. And I took a class with Harris Ross, I believe it was. And we were learning about international films, or it might have been Thomas Leach. And I remember learning about the Soviet film theorists, and it blew my mind. I was so excited by Soviet film theory and the way that they studied editing in particular, and how passionate they were about it. Re-editing Griffith’s films and writing about editing and the psychology of putting shots together and how it affects audiences. And I remember getting really jazzed about it. But I didn’t really focus in on editing until after I graduated college, which was not, I did not have a film major. I made my own major, but I ended up going into film as a PA in 1990 in New York City, and I worked for a producer who said, “What do you want to do?” when I first started working for him as an assistant, and I said, “I’m not sure yet. I know I should be sure.” It doesn’t look good to employers to not know what you want to do. But I thought, either the art department, which seems really creative, or perhaps editing. And he said, “You seem really smart.” I said, “Thank you.” He said, “I’m going to introduce you to Jay Rubinowitz, who’s editing the next film I’m producing called Night on Earth. Well, this was a Jim Jarmusch film. Jim Jarmusch is and was a renowned auteur of independent cinema, working in New York, and I got an interview with the editor Jay Rabinowitz, and I got the job as an apprentice film editor, which was really outrageous because many, many people had interviewed who had gone to film school, but there was something about our personalities that just clicked, and I was very lucky to get my first gig in the editing room, working on film, on the amazing film Night on Earth. I was really just pinching myself every day.
AA: How did you get the PA job? Was it hard to get PA jobs then? Back then.
SL: I don’t know if it was hard or not. I mean, to be honest, when I graduated college, I was so naive. I didn’t even know what a PA was because I didn’t go to film school. I studied film in theory, you know, and film history and film feminist film theory and genres and things like that. But when I tried to actually get work, I was making cold calls out of the phone book, out of the yellow pages, and and I also couldn’t decide back then whether I wanted to do fiction film, which I loved very much, and I had studied theater, or documentary because I really loved nature films, and I thought perhaps I could work for National Geographic or something. So I did call National Geographic in D.C. and I was offered an internship.
AA: Oh, ok.
SL: But it sounded boring to me. I realized I was going to be making copies, and it would take a while to move up. And then I, the way I got this interview was, I called an organization called New York Women in Film, and I told them at that point, I said, “Listen, I’ve graduated college. I’m waitressing in New Jersey, living with my dad. I don’t know how to get my foot in the door in film, but I really want to. Do you have any suggestions?” And they said, “Well, first of all, you can intern with us. I said, “Great.” So I started doing that one day a week. And the woman who answered the phone said, “And a friend of mine is producing a really low-budget film. Why don’t you call them? Here’s the number. Tell them I sent you.” So I called the producer. His name was Louis Tancredi, I remember, and he got me in for an interview. And I wore like a blue button-down dress. I looked like I was going to Wall Street or something because I didn’t understand that I was supposed to look cool. I showed up and everybody was wearing, you know, ripped jeans and T-shirts that said things on them, and I was like, “Oh, I didn’t get the memo for what I’m supposed to wear, but better be overdressed than underdressed.” So I showed up for this interview. I took the train from my dad’s house. It cost fourteen dollars round trip on New Jersey Transit, and they said we’re not offering any money. This is a free internship, which by the way is illegal now. They couldn’t do it without at least college credit, which I was no longer in college. So I said, “Can you just pay for the train, fourteen dollar round trip?” And they said, “No, we have to treat everyone the same.” I said, “All right, thanks,” and I left. And that night, I had so much energy, and I thought, “Oh my God, this was my chance. This is my foot in the door.” And I called back the next morning, and I said, “I’m coming back to the city, and I’d love to stop by again and talk to you about the position as a, as a production assistant, and I don’t need to get paid. And they said, “Why don’t you just come in and work today?”
AA: Whoa!
SL: I was like … and then I said, “What should I wear? “And he said, “Oh, we all just wear Eurotrash. That’s what he called it, Eurotrash outfits. Mind you, this is 1990. So I dressed in whatever I thought looked cool enough, took the train in, ended up staying on the sofa at my friend’s place, who was already living in New York, and this was my first gig as a PA, and it was fantastic. Because I hadn’t directed my own film or gone to film school where I had made my own film, I was thrilled to sweep the floor of the set, to bring a coffee to anyone, to be near a camera, to be near a Nagra, which was then the magnetic sound recording device, just to be there. I was pinching myself, and I ended up befriending the lead actress named Karen, Karen Young, and she happened to be in one of my absolute favorite films called Birdy, which had Matthew Modine and Karen Young and Nicolas Cage. It’s a weird movie that Peter Gabriel had done the soundtrack for, but I was obsessed with it. I had a huge poster in my, in my dorm. And I told her because I got tasked with driving her to set every day because I had a car, which was, was a very low budget film, and it was non-union. And so, I started driving her, and she was sitting in the back, and everyone said, you know, she’s not very friendly, but I got her to start talking to me, and I was playing cool music, at least what she thought was cool. I was playing Joni Mitchell and like the Davis soundtrack. She ended up sitting in the front seat with me by the end of the week, and we got in these amazing conversations. She said, “What are you doing after this film?” I said, “Going back to waitressing.” She said, “No, you’re not. You’re too smart, and you got to meet my friend Jim Stark. He’s a producer, and he needs help.”
AA: Wow.
SL: He needs an assistant. So that’s how it all happened. I then worked for Jim Stark, who then said, “You need to be working in editing. I’m going to introduce you to Jay Rabinowitz.” And that’s how I got that interview. So how – you ask sort of how do you get a PA job? I don’t know. I can just tell you how I did. Yeah. And I always say this too: it’s like I was hardworking, I was focused, I was fun. I don’t mean to be tooting my own horn. I’m just saying that I had an energy that people wanted to be around, and I think that’s the most important thing with probably any job.
AA: Yes. What does the collaboration process between an editor and a director typically look like?
SL: So, if it’s a director that the editor has worked with many times, you really have sort of your own language. You finish each other’s sentences. It’s almost like a marriage when you, when an editor and director have been working together a long time. And I definitely had that with Gary Winnick, for example. We made many films together, including Thirteen Going on Thirty, Bride Wars, Charlotte’s Web, a movie called Tadpole, which is the first film I did with him in 2000, ’99 or 2000, and we just had a you know a secret language almost. We were so connected, and so in those situations, you know, we would joke around, we would argue with each other, we were very familiar with each other, and he’d say, “Susan, what do you think of this?” And we would, we would get excited about things together. Yeah, let’s try it. Or, I don’t think that’s good. And we would have, you know, sometimes we wouldn’t agree on things, but it always was in great spirits, you know, and with an understanding and love for each other. He passed away unfortunately over 10 years ago, and many of us miss Gary Winnick. But with other directors I’ve worked with, such as Joel Hopkins and Nigel Cole, who are still around, but they’re both in England. I worked with them both two times, and we also had that sort of familiarity, especially in the second film. But whenever I’m working with a new director, it takes a while to find the rhythm. But generally, what happens is you have respect for their vision. I’ve also worked with Steven Soderbergh multiple times, who’s a little more intimidating than other directors, but also so incredibly talented, and I was still always pinching myself every day that I worked with Steven Soderbergh. So I was perhaps a little quieter with him because I was nervous. But there were times that I spoke up, and one time Steven, I was really speaking up about the way he was shooting kind of B-roll of some footage off the video, and I said, “Don’t you want to put it at twenty four frames per second so that it doesn’t make that weird look?” And he said, “Susan, this is not your film.”
AA: Oh.
SL: and I was like, ooh, yeah, no, it was a stab, you know. And it sort of upset me, but it was also a lesson, you know. I feel two two ways about that as an editor working with directors, it is their film, but it is also your film. You become one with that film when you’re working. You and the computer now, or whatever editing device, you are in communication with the film, and so you do take some possession of it. But generally, you know, during the shoot, you’re working on your own as an editor, and you create an assembly of the film. I’m talking about feature films. Perhaps you have a week or two after they finish shooting to make your assembly, and you present it to the director, and then the director has 10 weeks to do their cut of the film before the studio and producers officially get involved. They may choose to involve them before that, but during, during those times when they’re in the room with you, you’ve presented your cut, and you might have alternate versions of scenes or sequences that you want to say, “Hey, there’s another version of this. I thought you might consider”, and so they’ll sit back, watch what you’ve done. They’ll make suggestions, and you know there are times when you’re sort of their hands. In other words, they have an idea, and you just need to execute it. But a lot of times it is a conversation where you try to problem solve together, and then once the studio executives or producers do get involved or financiers, they’ll have notes, and then you go through the notes together, and try them or not try them, and so that’s generally how it goes.
AA: So, from what I’m understanding, is that when you get the raw footage, for example, in the beginning, you do your cut, and then you show it to the director, and then the director helps you with what to do?
SL: Yeah, I mean they have technically what’s called their cut, and their cut might be them telling me exactly which take they want to use. But you’re still running, you’re sort of servicing them by running the takes for them and saying, “Here’s this line by this character”
AA: Got it.
SL: “In takes one through seven,” and you’ll show that line one through seven, so they can help choose and say “Which one did you choose?”. Well, I chose take four, and often they’ll say, “Yeah, that is the best take.” Like your instincts often do jive with the director’s instincts, but sometimes they’ll say, “Actually, I like take six better. Let’s try that.” And you’ll replace it, or let’s move this scene. Then it becomes less surgical. Let’s move this entire scene. Let’s move scene ten before scene six, and you know you start moving scenes around and taking scenes out, and yeah. So you’re, you know you’re working together, but you’re the one with your hands on the machine usually.
AA: Yeah. What has been one of the most challenging editing projects you’ve worked on, and what did you learn from it?
SL: You don’t have to think about that. I mean, there are challenging people I’ve worked with, and I don’t know if that’s different than the project being challenging. I would say it
is.
AA: Yeah.
SL: Sometimes you have a challenging project with a film is not working. They tried, and there’s something about the way the performances came out or the way it’s shot, and it’s just not working, and it’s challenging in that way. Tadpole was challenging. The first film I did with Gary Winnick, he really didn’t like the way the DP had shot it. Many of the, let’s say, singles, for example, where you’re doing shot-reverse shot between people speaking at a table or something. They were all different sizes, and Gary was so frustrated, and he had me resize the shots so that they were pretty much the same framing for each character because it felt like it was jumping around. It wasn’t. It didn’t feel organized in a way, and that really bothered him. So that was a challenge, sort of technically, to sort of reframe things and work around the cinematography that he wasn’t happy with. But I’ve also worked with some challenging directors who weren’t completely respectful of me and my opinions. It didn’t happen often, but in one case, I could see it happening right from the get-go. So I had a director who was challenging from the get-go, and he was not very experienced. But he hired me because I was experienced, but the way that I felt he was being disrespectful to me is that when we got into the editing room, he was criticizing my assembly in a way that didn’t feel productive to me. I was telling him what I thought the problems with the film were and the problem with the character not being likable, and he just disagreed and kind of you know bulldozed through and said this is what we’re going to do, and then when we got into the editing room, he started telling me to cut four frames off the head of one shot and two frames off the tail, and he was being really specific, and I ended up quitting.
AA: Oh.
SL: Which I’ve never done in my whole life. I’ve never quit a job, but it just felt like a really bad and, like you said, challenging situation that was not worth my time. And when I did quit, he was shocked. It was a really hard thing to do. And I said, “Well, you know, you should work with an editor who you’re excited to work with” that, you know. Anyway,
AA: Yeah.
SL: And then awkwardly, this is just a funny aside. The assistant editor and I went to lunch after I had quit, and I told him I said I’ll work for the next two weeks while you find someone else. I’m still happy to keep working on it, and he said “No, Why don’t you pack up your things now,” and I was like, “Ooh”
AA: Oh
SL: And I had been in that editing room for a year or something like that because the film I had worked on before this film was in the same room. So I suddenly was packing up things for a year in an hour, and I went to lunch with my assistant, and he went to the same restaurant and had his little tray with his food, and there was nowhere to sit. And he said, “Can I sit with you?” And I said, “Of course.” And it was very awkward, and we talked about our families. But I’m kind of glad that happened because it was, it was not the best feeling, but at least we had sort of a human lunch after.
AA: Yeah.
SL: So those are some challenging situations. I hope that’s helpful.
AA: Yeah. Well, now you switched to teaching. I wanted to ask, why did you decide to switch to teaching, and what’s your favorite part about being a professor at UCLA?
SL: Oh, great. Yeah. So, you know, I first taught when I was an assistant editor back in the ’90s, someone else I was working with at an organist, at a company called Spin Cycle Post, where Hal Hart had his films done, and Ang Lee and some and I, who I worked with both of them, but other people came in and one of the assistant editors was teaching at the City College in New York, and said, “Susan, I think you could be a teacher.” I said, “Me? I don’t think so.” I hadn’t edited yet. I’d only been an assistant. He said, “I think you can, and they’re really looking for professors or teachers to teach the graduate editing program at City College.” So I took the job, and I was absolutely terrified, but I did it. So I taught grad school when I was in my mid twenties, not even that experienced. And I did come up with a syllabus and a curriculum. And like I said, because I hadn’t gone to film school, it was a real struggle to feel like I wasn’t an impostor making up this curriculum. But I ended up teaching some fantastic people of all ages from all countries at that college. So that was a long time ago. Then I taught at the main college. Back then, it was the Maine Center For, no, the Maine Photographic Workshops, and they had film workshops as well. I think it’s now called Maine Film and Photography Workshops. It’s still there. And I taught a week of editing there, and I was also terrified because people were coming from all over the world to come and learn a week, a week’s worth of editing. But a now dear friend, Carol Stutz, had found me somehow, maybe through City College. I don’t remember how she found me, but she remained a good friend after hiring me to teach that week back in the nineties. So I came up with a curriculum for a whole week to teach a workshop in editing, based on being an assistant. I had worked on Sense and Sensibility and The Ice Storm. I had outtakes and you know alternate cuts of scenes that I shared with the, with the class, and then I didn’t teach again for a very long time, and I had my baby, my child, in September of 2012 and I knew I was going to take a break from editing. I hardly ever had breaks between features for many, many years, but I took a break for two years to focus on on her, and then I took a job in England on the Love Punch, which is a fun film with Pierce Brosnan and Emma Thompson, Timothy Spall, Celia Emery, great cast, and I was working again with Joel Hopkins, this English filmmaker, and he had me come to London. So I brought the family, my then husband, and my toddler, and I did that film, The Love Punch, and by the end of it, I thought I can’t be a mom and work on feature films. So many people do it. So many people have multiple children and remain editors. And I, I was almost ashamed of myself that I couldn’t hack it. But for me, I just, I needed to focus on my kid and not be gone those long hours. And it was also very hard on my body, which I don’t mind sharing that I have now been diagnosed with it’s called psoriatic arthritis. Psoriatic spelled P-S-O sort like based on psoriasis, which is a skin condition. And long story short, I didn’t know why I had so much pain. I’ve had chronic pain for many, I’ve had chronic pain for many many years, and it was hard for me to sit at a computer after a while for that many hours. And so that was a real deterrent for me, was was sort of the pain I felt from sitting at a computer and feeling like I needed to spend more focus on my child, so right around the time that I made that switch, I was still consulting on some feature films, and I cut another feature film, which started as a consultation job and turned out to be that was called All About Nina. I can’t remember what year that was. Maybe 2022, 20–, no, I’m really bad with years right now.
AA: It’s ok.
SL: No, my daughter would have been. Let’s see, she was born in 2012, it was probably 2016. It was right around when the Me Too movement started. I remember that. So whenever that was, probably 2016. So I did another feature at that point, there was another editor that started, and I helped finish to film festivals, and, and that was fantastic. But it was right around that time that my dear friend Matt Chesse, who’s a fantastic editor, works with Mark. Oh God. Can’t think of his name right now. German filmmaker. Anyway, Matt Chessey is a fantastic filmmaker, and he was the temporary chair at AFI in the editing department, and he called and really gave a long, very convincing speech of why I should come teach at AFI. And I was having imposter syndrome, saying I tried teaching before. It always terrified me. I don’t know. And he said, “You just come talk about your experiences, watch their films, give your feedback. It’s going to be a piece of cake. You got this.” And I started teaching at AFI to the grad students and giving feedback and starting to make up some lectures for the grad students. And I did that for two, three years, but decided to stop there. And right when I decided to stop, there was sort of a regime change, it was a different head of the department. It wasn’t feeling good there for me, for various reasons. Right at that time, Nancy Richardson, who was the head of the editing department at UCLA, called me and said, “I saw your name on the AFI website. We’re looking for a lecturer here to teach editing.” I said, “Fantastic! I would be so honored to work at UCLA.” It just kind of again came to me in all the cases of teaching. It was people coming to me saying, “I think you could teach this. Why don’t you try?” It was never really me seeking it out. So I started teaching at UCLA in the grad program and the first year class, where we were reviewing their six-minute films, I believe it was six minutes, and then Nancy asked me to switch over to this large class, FTV 122D, where I would be teaching film editing, history, theory, and practice. And I said, “No, no, no, no I can’t do that. It’s too big. It’s a lecture class with history. I’d have to research again. And I don’t feel like I’m an academic. I don’t know if I could do it.” Nancy said, “You could absolutely do it. Have guests come in, share your favorite films. You got this.” And I started doing research and coming up with the curriculum that I now have, which I love. I love teaching this class, and it, you know, I started by just doing some work in my own heart and saying, Susan, what made you get into film in the first place? Because I’d become jaded after thirty years of doing this, you know, I thought, what made you want to make films, Susan? Try to look back. and I thought of my favorite films, like All That Jazz on Golden Pond, Blade Runner. I mean, there’s so many, Wings of Desire. I haven’t even shared all of these films in our class yet, but and then I thought, well, what makes you love that those films? And also, when was the first edit made and the first dissolve, and how did editing develop? And I got really into researching and creating a curriculum of my own, and that’s something I love about teaching. Teaching this class is, to be honest, I don’t really answer to anyone. I hand in my syllabus and I look at the students’ feedback over the years. I’ve been teaching this since 2019, and it feels to me like the feedback is great, and it’s where it’s where I’m supposed to be. It’s what I’m supposed to be doing, and I absolutely love it.
AA: For our last question, looking ahead, how do you think advancements in technology and AI might impact the future of editing and storytelling?
SL: So, as far as AI goes, I don’t consider myself an expert. I’m also not in the business technically anymore, as I am teaching. But I do interview a lot of guests in the class. I almost call it my show because it does feel like a live podcast or something when I, when I have guests up there and we do a Q and A. So I do try to keep my finger on the pulse of what’s happening. I now am in the Academy, which is very exciting. I got asked to be in The Academy of Motion Pictures just this last year, so I go to every event I can, and I really do try to stay very present with what’s happening. My opinion is that I don’t think there’s going back. I do think many people have become creative with the use of it to create fascinating imagery. I try not to look at it because the concept does scare me. Of course, the idea that it could take away jobs, many jobs, but also that people’s brains are going to get lazy whether it’s in creating film and screen content or anything else, research, anything AI does. So it concerns me. I try not to use it often, but I do find it almost impossible. Now, when you try to search up something, the first answer is always a you know an AI summary, so it’s hard to escape. And I do find myself using it a little bit, but I like to keep up my own practices of doing deeper research and doing things myself. As far as film goes, I know that people. There was a talk about this that The Academy hosted on Zoom with its members, and what I learned from that talk is that many editors are using it to, with the actors’ permission, to use temporary voice, you know, temporary ADR, temporary dialog changes from actors, where they use the voice of the actor use AI to create new lines of dialog, but they promise that it’s only for temporary use while they’re doing rough cuts, and that they will get the actor to come back in and re-record it themselves. I am sure that there’s cheating in that, and that as time goes on, I have a feeling Actors will just have to sign off on, you know, AI being used for their voices. So I don’t know where that’s going. It does scare me, but I do believe, and I said this in class as well, that every new technology has always scared people. And like I teach in class when, when those first Lumiere films came out, and the train arriving at the station was shown in 1895 in Paris, and people went running out of the room supposedly because it looked too real and it scared them. I think now people will just become savvy that just because that actor looks like they’re saying something. We know that it might not really be that actor saying something, just because that ape is now sitting on the lap of this person in an AI-generated video. We’re now savvy enough to know that it’s a, it’s a kind of animation in a way. We just can’t believe what we see anymore or what we hear, and that just has to be accepted, I believe.
AA: Yeah. Unfortunately.
SL: Yeah.
AA: Well thank you so much professor. It was lovely listening to you and we wish you good luck on your journey.
SL: Thank you so much. I had a real pleasure doing this. Have a great afternoon.
AA: And if you want to learn more about the world of entertainment, make sure to continue to tune in to Entertainment Unscripted. You can listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, dailybruin.com, and follow @dailybruin and @dailybruinpodcasts on Instagram to be the first to know when a new episode premieres. Thank you so much for watching.
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