Inglourious Basterds Editor Sally Menke Talks Tarantino, Cannes Cuts, and Kill Bill 3

At what point are you getting that script? Right away, when it's hot off the presses?

Yes, right away, but it depends. Sometimes he reads portions of it to me on the phone while he's writing it, like he did with Pulp Fiction, or even Kill Bill. I get it the day he's finished it with all the revisions, always.

When he's reading it on the phone to you early on, do you still retain that director-editor rapport and give him that kind of feedback?

Not in terms of editing, no, nothing like that. It's a different relationship then, in fact...it's like, "Wow, these characters are fun," that kind of stuff. It really has nothing to do with editing or the arc of the character.

His films are so iconic in their use of music. How do you cut to that?

I never edit my first run-through with music. I never put the music in until I have a fairly sure cut that I feel pretty comfortable with. I don't always know what piece of music will be in, although I did know that David Bowie was going to be [in Basterds]. I wasn't so sure about the opening music -- I had a couple ideas bouncing around. For the most part, though, I don't put the music in until we start working together, and then we get very frame-specific. Quentin tends to know what music he's putting in what scene, and he has this profound ability to layer the rhythm of the music onto the scene while he's shooting it. It's actually rather simple for me to figure out his needs because it's cellular on his level. He affects how the scene is paced by the actors with the music internally going on in his head.

Obviously, Quentin is very into homage and pastiche. When he goes on a cinema-referencing tear in the editing room, can you keep up with him?

For the most part I can, but let me tell you, he pulls out obscure references often. Especially on Kill Bill -- not so much on this film -- because he's so deep into a martial arts world that I'm not privy to, he gave me 25, 30 films to watch. Then, when we got into the cutting room, I was able to understand what he was talking about.

Expertly playing up the suspense in your cuts is so crucial to so many of the sequences in Inglourious Basterds. Do you ever doubt that those sequences are working right when you've been staring at them for months in the editing room?

You always doubt yourself. [Laughs] At some point, you have to show it to other people to be sure that it's working. Even so, for me, I just have to sometimes go for a walk. If I'm sitting there, struggling to make something work, I can go outside and clear my head and come back in and look at it fresh. I think that every editor probably works differently, but you have to find tricks to keep yourself fresh and to be able to turn around and look at it like you've never seen it before. What's fun about it is that sometimes you're right and sometimes you're wrong, and when you're wrong, you make the adjustment a month later. It's very exciting because suddenly the character is doing something thirty minutes down the line that you have to adjust for in scene one.

Quentin keeps mentioning that he'd like to do a Basterds sequel and a Kill Bill 3. Do you think these are pie-in-the-sky ideas, or are they for real?

I think it's a for-real thing.

If you had to say which potential project was more for real...

That I can't answer. I can say that he's had more time to think about Kill Bill...well, wait, that's not true. That's only since its completion. He's had both Inglourious Basterds and Kill Bill in his head for ten years. I really don't know. It's up for grabs.

Do you feel like Quentin's changed much since Reservoir Dogs?

He's definitely the same guy. I would say he's a very inquisitive artist. He has such a curiosity about different angles, different types of film, and he seems to always be studying different filmmakers and drawing inspiration and ideas. He's very curious about what other filmmakers from around the world are doing.

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