Editor/composer/filmmaker John Ottman has had a lot of success thanks to Bryan Singer. The duo of Ottman and Singer have worked together closely since the latter’s first major work, “The Usual Suspects,” and have collaborated on every project (minus 2000’s “X-Men”) up to last year’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which earned the editor an Oscar nomination. However, despite Ottman’s close relationship with Singer, he’s quick to tell everyone that it’s been a bit of a bumpy ride, leading to at least one experience that left him sobbing. And surprisingly, the sobbing had nothing to do with any of Singer’s…extracurricular activities.
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In a new interview with Deadline, Ottman discussed his career, which has been so closely aligned with Singer’s. And while the composer/editor has had tons of success, thanks to the fact that Singer has enjoyed quite a bit of his own, there have been issues throughout the duo’s working relationship, particularly on the film “Valkyrie.”
The crux of the issues between Ottman and Singer actually comes down to the fact that both men have worked together so much, leading to a trust that was seemingly taken advantage of by the controversial director.
“I guess when you start making films together, your sensibility and your taste kind of rubbed off on one another,” Ottman said. “So I think where one leaves off, one begins, and then you begin to have a shorthand, and then the shorthand becomes shorter and shorter, so it allows directors to depend more on the person who’s in the editing room, and they get to enjoy their life a little more. You get to a point where [Singer] just trusted that I would take care of things.”
Normally, that trust meant that Ottman would have a great amount of freedom in the editing bay. But on “Valkyrie,” Ottman and Singer enlisted Tom Cruise to star in the film. And if you know anything about the A-list actor, he’s a very hands-on collaborator. Making matters even more complicated for the editor, the film was written by Christopher McQuarrie, who we now know is a talented filmmaker in his own right. As you might imagine, the term “too many cooks in the kitchen” is there for a reason.
“Yeah, it was sort of a rotation. Tom would come in and see what I had done and spend a week with me, kind of checking in the editing room, and then Chris would come in and check what Tom had done,” Ottman said. “I would always stay with a table full of chess pieces, but I’m barely moving them.”
He continued, “Chris would see what Tom had done, and he would make a couple little tweaks to what Tom had done, and then after a while, Bryan would come in to see what Tom and Chris has asked him to do, and he’d put things back. So they would come back and sensed that he had put things back. I remember sitting and weeping. Literally, I would cry because I couldn’t finish because it got to the point where the changes I was making were not really making any difference one way or the other, and we were sort of a rudderless ship going in circles.”
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Obviously, an editor could do worse than having Singer, Cruise, and McQuarrie all collaborating on a project. Despite the filmmaker’s alleged proclivity highly-questionable relationships, Singer is definitely a talented director. Cruise and McQuarrie have proven themselves as incredibly well-suited for each other on the previous two ‘Mission: Impossible’ films. But alas, being micro-managed from all three on one project sounds a bit like a nightmare.
The interview also discusses the future for Ottman and the fact that he’s not sure if he and Singer will ever work again. Obviously, Singer’s “Red Sonja” would have no doubt included the composer/editor, but that project’s recent “on hold” status leads to Ottman having a bit of freedom that he hasn’t had much before. We’ll see what he has up his sleeve in the near future. Until then, he’s got the Oscars on Sunday.