We’re going to guess if you told Myron Kerstein a decade ago he was going to be known for editing three of the foremost movie musicals this century he probably wouldn’t have believed you. After starting in the indie world with dramas such as 1999’s “Black and White” or Sundance breakouts “Raising Victor Vargas” and “Garden State,” Kerstein has edited hit comedies such as “The Dukes of Hazzard,” “Little Fockers,” and “Crazy Rich Asians.” The latter movie introduced him to director Jon M. Chu which led to the already underrated 2021 musical “In the Heights.” The rest is history.
READ MORE: Nathan Crowley on boarding The Emerald Express Train to ‘Wicked’ and “Touching Oz”
Kerstein earned his first Oscar nomination for editing the feature directorial debut of a friend of Chu’s, Lin Manuel-Miranda‘s “Tick, Tick…Boom!” He then segued to the two-year process that will encompass bringing the celebrated Broadway musical “Wicked” to the big screen in “Wicked: Part One” and “Wicked For Good.” In January, Kerstein earned his second Editing Oscar nomination and it was once again for a musical. Something tells us he may have stumbled onto something.
During a conversation a few weeks ago, Kerstein reflected on the difficulties of editing such a long movie musical, how the daring “Defying Gravity” number came together, gave an update on how November’s follow-up is proceeding, and much, much more.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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The Playlist: This is not the first musical you have edited before. What would you say the difference between this project and “In the Heights” or “Tick, Tick…Boom!”
Myron Kerstein: Well, certainly the scale was like no other thing I’d ever worked on in any film, let alone a musical. Having fantasy elements, having big sets, having CG characters, flying monkeys, flying witches, and also the live vocals was a big deal. I had done that to some extent in my other projects, but not to this degree. So, tackling the scale between all those things was immense. I went from a $40 or $50 million budget with “Tick, Tick…Boom!” and “In the Heights” to over $150 million. And so right there you can see to what degree the complexity goes along with that.
When you started the project, how soon did you know it was going to be two films and a relief at all?
Yeah, none of it’s a relief. It’s all terrifying. [Laughs.] I knew from the get-go when Jon came on board that he wanted to make two films, and what we learned from working on films like “In The Heights” was that it’s really hard to have a complete musical without it feeling like a big montage, a song to song, and that you don’t have a lot of real estate for scenes before you have another song again, and that really constrained you. So when Jon decided to divide it into two movies, I was a bit relieved because I knew I was going to have more real estate to work with to build the world-building and also the emotional arc of the film. And of course, again, it was terrifying because there’s a lot of expectations for this [project]. A lot of people knew it from the Broadway stage, so we had to get the first one right. When I read the first script, I cried at the end of “Defying Gravity,” and I knew if I could match that emotional intensity that was on this page, then I knew it was going to work as one movie, but we had to meet that challenge.
The traditional rule for Hollywood musicals is keep it under two hours, don’t go longer than that, and this is way beyond that. When you read the first script, did you realize how long “Part One” was going to be?
Every project, you look at a script and you’re like, “O.K., there’s so many pages of the script, and that’s going to translate to this running time, and that’s before and after you have the music embedded in there. And my original assembly was close to a four-hour cut. And so right away we knew it couldn’t exist at that level. And also, at the end of the day, the movie is the length that it’s going to be. I know that’s dodging the question a little bit. Of course, I want to make a film that’s an hour 45 or two hours. Look, I’ve done all the research, I’ve looked at all the musicals, I’ve looked at the musicals that made a lot of money. I’ve looked at the musicals that have won Academy Awards. I’ve looked at the editors, who won Academy Awards for their musicals. I know all the data, but at the end of the day, the film speaks to you. That said, I’ve done those versions. I’ve done the versions where the movie is an hour and 45. I’ve done the versions that it’s 2:05, I’ve done it with certain scenes out, certain scenes cut in half. My challenge is to turn over every stone and present that to Jon and the producers in the studio and make sure that we’re not being gratuitous in our length. Because you can start to fall in love with your footage and the length sometimes gets carried away, but my challenge was to make a film that felt right and listen to it and hopefully the audience will agree.
Was there one sequence, one number where you felt like it was the biggest challenge in terms of pacing for the rest of the movie?
Well, the Ozdust Ballroom is the centerpiece film and that is also a scene that on the page could be told in three or four lines. So, that is an example that where a studio might say, “Can we cut this scene in half? Can it work that way?” Because it’s really quiet and it’s very awkward and it makes your audience squirm a little bit. And what we found is by stretching and being bold and not being afraid of the silence and working these points of views in between Elphaba and Glinda and the rest of the characters, that we built something really unique and special for the centerpiece of the film. And that inherently also helped the bonding between Glinda and Elphaba in a way that if we didn’t have that scene, people were like, “Wait, they’re best friends already? How did that work?” And so that was an example of where we had to be really bold and explore the footage. I had these long 12-minute takes which have Cynthia [Erivo] and Ari[ana Grande] at the beginning of her entering the Ozdust to the very end. And every single one of those takes made me cry. And so I was trying to listen again to that footage to say, “O.K., there’s something about the rawness of Cynthia and Ari’s performance that is resonating with me.” But a studio may say, “That’s all fine and good, but why can’t you just cry and get on with it?” And so that sounds counterintuitive when you have a film that has monkey transformation scenes, flying monkeys, CG goats, and big dance numbers with precision choreography defying gravity. But if you don’t get a scene like the Ozdust, right, none of the rest matters.
Let’s talk about “Defying Gravity.” The song is broken up over a period in the narrative that could have gone really wrong. When you got the script and saw that, did it give you hesitancy at all? And how much did you guys have to fiddle to make it work just right to reach the perfect emotional punch?
It was a real challenge. We literally were working on it with the VFX and music departments all the way to the very end of post-production to get that right. And as far as the pacing and stopping and starting, it’s terrifying to stop and start a song so many times because you think that there’s some of that in the stage show. But to do that again and again and again, you could start losing your audience unless you really hold them tight dramatically. Whether it’s exposition or the guards coming in or the finishing of the origin story of Glinda with the pieces of the hat and the broom and the cape, and they’re longing for each other when they say goodbye, the jumping out the window – if you don’t get all that right pacing wise and performance wise, and then go to your music departments, go to your VFX departments, go to your sounding departments and just collectively make it feel like we have the audience. “Don’t worry, audience, we are not losing you. We know what we’re doing and just hang in there.” And, at the same time, every time you start and stop, you sort of build the emotion subconsciously. And every moment you’re sort of holding your breath a little bit more. And by the time she is this sort of entity in the air with her gigantic cape, you feel the power of that moment. But you can’t do that without building again and again and again over the course of that scene.
I recently saw the movie again and noticed for the first time that during that sequence when Madam Morrible is giving her propaganda speech about Elphaba, when she calls her a “wicked witch,” you do not cut back to Madame. You stick on Cynthia’s face the entire time. That’s a gutsy choice. What was the thinking behind that?
The thinking was that watching Cynthia/Elphaba take in that information was much more powerful than cutting to the person who was saying it. And by the way, we had that version. We’ve cut every version. We have awesome footage of Michelle [Yeoh] saying those lines. We have these closeups of her lips in it. You watch her lips curl like she’s the witch and it’s incredible. But watching Elphaba take in this information and feeling wait and look. If you don’t have an actor like Cynthia Erivo playing there and feeling those words, then it’s not going to work. You need to have somebody that good who’s you watch every word sort of affect her. But what I love about “Wicked” in general is the looks and the glances and the quiet moments and holding on people’s faces. I love films that just do that. And the great ones just have the best looks and the best of the silences. It isn’t always about the line read. And so that’s one of those moments where you see that they’re giving it. Cynthia is giving everything she has in that moment to listen to Morrible say the things that she’s never wanted to hear. Basically, “You’re a monster and you’re always going to be an outcast.” And us taking that in with her, it was so powerful, I just couldn’t cut. And it’s also one of those few moments that I was actually on the set while they were shooting it. And so watching Cynthia perform that live, I just knew that there was a possibility there. You’d never know because of course, again, with pacing, if I cut to marble, I could cut that speech down a little bit more. There are so many things I have in my toolbox if I cut away. But this was again, an instance where if I hold on and I make the audience work and I feel Cynthia’s Elphaba just taking it all in, then that is going to be a real powerful moment.
Later on, there’s an echo of that line that repeats while she’s falling. Was that in the script or was that something you added in the editing room?
It wasn’t scripted at all, the sort of reprise of that speech. We just thought that having that texture as if it was being broadcast all over Oz, over Shiz, there was something to that and feeling that “Unlimited” section. Whereas this Cynthia, our Elphaba is very meditative and then we go around the horn with all our characters. There was something that felt right about that, but, again, that took a lot of experimentation. We thought maybe we should rewrite the speech so that she says more or different things, but we just found that there was something by using the same speech twice and even more immoral, like grasping Glinda in her arms, there’s just something really wicked about that as well. Look, none of the beats were really scripted as far as the end of the movie. A lot of that was Jon finding it in pre-production and in post-production and then us sort of breaking things. And even the jump out the window was something he found really late in a younger Elphaba singing to her younger self. So, what’s really nice about that is that we get to explore together and break it apart and try a lot of different versions.
Was there one dance number, or musical number outside of the centerpiece number that you had the most fun editing?
Cutting musicals is the hardest thing I’ve ever cut because it’s so many balls in the air. I’m having to wrangle between keeping everyone in a rhythm, making the choreography fill in time, having Elphaba flying, singing live vocals, trying not to make it feel like a music video, and making it feel more like a scene. There’s so many musical numbers. I love, love “The Wizard and I” for simplicity and “The Sound of Music” sort of finale to it. I love “What Is This Feeling?” because of the precision of the choreography and the split screens that we tried. At the end of the day, I think that “Defying Gravity” is probably the one to beat because of the starts and stops and because of the fantastical elements to it. It was a real challenge to keep things building, but also using the live vocals of Cynthia when she was doing all her stunt work. None of it’s easy. There’s no easy way of cutting a musical, especially a Jon M. Chu musical because he’s going to throw everything at it, that’s for sure.
Are you guys still working on “Wicked For Good”? Is it done? I feel like you’d be one of the few people who’d still be working.
We have a long way to go. We are just getting into the meat of it. But that said, we’ve seen a version of it. We saw that weeks after they were done in production. We’ve seen movies back to back actually. So, we have the goods, but these movies take a long time. The first one took me two years to make. It’s going to be a race, but when you have ILM and Framestore doing your VFX, sometimes they need a year to make a shot for you. It’s that complex. One shot out of maybe 2000. And so it’s just balancing a lot. The orchestrations, the scoring, us just getting the edit right. We’re just scratching at the surface.
“Wicked” is available in theaters and on digital download services.
