There were many times, often at 3am in the morning, when Harry would push a button on his tape recorder, stopping it, and so closely did I identify with him that I would be amazed to find my KEM editing machine still running, having not obeyed Harry’s command.
This confusion was ultimately resolved: the cut is a blink, and this realisation, triggered by Gene’s performance, became one of the foundational ideas of my book on film editing, In the Blink of an Eye, first published in 1992.
The relationship between actors and film editors is a classic case of asymmetry: editors stare at actors 10 to 12 hours a day, sometimes more, and we microscopically study their every move, flinch, blink, gesture and inflection.
So in a very real sense, the integrity of Hackman’s performance provided the metronomic spine which supported and guided me, often without my knowing it, to find the correct pacing for each scene, and then the right structure of the collection of those scenes in the finished film.
If we later meet them in person, this asymmetry really makes itself felt; they frequently have no idea who we are, other than appendages of the director, but we have all that secret and microscopic knowledge: how they prefer to turn left rather than right, their characteristic way of hesitating before opening a door, how often they blink ….
