There's one woman in the world who understands Quentin Tarantino better than anybody, and that's Sally Menke. Since her work on Reservoir Dogs, Menke has cut every single one of Tarantino's films, and for the last decade, she's eschewed almost all other jobs to devote herself solely to the genre-blending auteur. This Sunday, Menke will be receiving the Lifetime Achievement honor at the Hamilton Behind the Camera Awards, and as Inglourious Basterds begins its transformation from unexpected summer blockbuster to even-more-unexpected Oscar player, we thought there'd be no better time to talk to Menke about how she does what she does.
How has it worked out that you've worked almost exclusively with Quentin Tarantino over the last decade?
It's worked out perfectly. [Laughs]
But did you receive a lot of offers to work with other directors over the last few years?
Definitely a lot of films have passed my doorstep that seemed really intriguing, that I'd like to do, but I'm just totally dedicated to QT. Every time I've got a project, I always check with him first. "What do you think? Are you going to start in three months? Four months? Eight months? A year?" I always check with him first because I always want to do his films.
Quentin announced very early on that he wanted the movie to have a Cannes debut. Was the editing more breakneck than it usually is?
Good grief, yes. We worked so fast trying to get this done. The thing that's brilliant about the working relationship between QT and I is that it's very symbiotic. I've worked with him now for seventeen years, so I kind of know where he's going before he even comes in. I can get things in pretty good shape, and then he comes in and we do our thing. This one, though, we just had no time. It was down and dirty, but because of our relationship, we didn't have to work long hours. We work so cleanly together -- we're on the same railroad track, going to the same place.
Some reediting took place after the film's Cannes premiere. What is it like to have a very public showing of a certain cut, then go back and make changes based on the reception?
Well, we had decided to make changes prior to Cannes. We knew that we were going to Cannes with a different cut than we would probably end up with. I mean, we went in there proudly -- it wasn't like we were having a test screening or anything like that. In fact, Quentin did not want to go to Cannes without feeling really proud about it. Still, we knew ahead of time that we were going to put some things back in and address certain scenes, so it wasn't a surprise. It was like, "OK, let's get back from France! Let's go do this work, because we're opening soon!"
Take the scene where Michael Fassbender's character meets with the Basterds. The Cannes cut didn't include it. Why?
There were many, many reasons why we didn't put it in. One of them was that we physically ran out of time, especially with a couple of moments with Shosanna, where we knew it wasn't quite right but it still held the emotional arc needed for that character at that point, so we felt good about going into Cannes that way. There were definitely some points where we thought we should put some emotional beats back in for the character.
There are also some pretty well-known sequences that had to be cut from the film, and characters played by Maggie Cheung and Cloris Leachman were lost. I read an interview with Cloris where she said she knew from Day One that her scene would probably be cut. Do you read the script and make those same predictions and annotations?
Absolutely, I do. Sometimes I'm right and sometimes I'm wrong.
Did you know that when you got the big behemoth of a Kill Bill script, that it would eventually need to be split it in two?
At that point, when I first got the script? No, except that it was over 160 pages, so that alone was a good indication. It was pretty darn long. Still, even then, I thought, "Well, how is this going to get down to one film?" Very early on, we started talking about it being split into two, so it wasn't a surprise, given the quantity of scenes.
Was that a relief for you? You would have had to do a hell of job to cut that all into one releasable film.
You know, I have to say that it was a relief. It meant we could get everything in that we loved so dearly, rather than going, "Ohhh. We have to see that go."
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.