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The age-old question of who will be able to adapt the beloved Broadway hit ‘Wicked’ for the screen was finally answered the day Jon M. Chu was brought on board to deliver the wizardly magic behind one of cinema’s most iconic lands, Oz. His world-building vision of this subverted origin story extends to his department heads to craft one all-encompassing saga of female friendship that travels into the psyche of Oz like never before. Offscreen Central had the opportunity to talk to editor Myron Kerstein about the harmonious partnership between him and director Jon M. Chu, the importance of emotional connection and character development, particularly in scenes like the Ozdust Ballroom and “Defying Gravity”, and how they reassembled and reconstructed the opening sequence of “No one Mourns the Wicked” with influence from Lilo and Stitch.

Jillian Chilingerian: So nice to meet you.
Myron Kerstein: Finally, I know very nice to meet you as well. I’m a super fan of you and your enthusiasm, and I can’t thank you enough for doing this.
Jillian Chilingerian: Oh my gosh, I’m gonna say the same thing about you so I’m really excited to dive into everything with you.
Myron Kerstein: Let’s go, yeah, yeah.
Jillian Chilingerian: So first I want to start with this collaboration. You and Jon have worked together before, and I feel like watching this movie as a fan and as just someone who loves film, you can tell when there is such a harmonious synchronized vision between everyone. Everyone in this movie, like was meant to work on this movie, and was meant to bring this vision, I can’t think of any other way this movie should have looked or felt, or any of that. So first, I want to dive into what was it like to continue your collaboration with Jon.
Myron Kerstein: Well, it was a dream, to work with Jon after having done, In the Heights and Crazy Rich Asians, and then we did a couple of pilots together. When somebody who you already love, and you found this beautiful bromance with and make art together, and then he tells you, you’re gonna the next thing you’re gonna make is Wicked. It’s going to be a lot of hard work, hopefully, we still like each other at the end of the day, because the stakes are so high, but what I found was Jon was the same person that he was making Crazy Rich Asians as he was making Wicked. He was somebody who was just inspired to make things and find the heart. My initial discussion was how do we do that. How do we have the audience connect with Elphaba and Glinda? How do we make them fall in love with these characters in a very short period? How do we build and evoke these movies we loved growing up, and then make something that feels fresh that we could say that we contributed to, as far as the history of cinema? All these questions you’re asking yourselves, but you’re doing it with, like, one of your best friends that you worked with for the last 10 years. I was excited, then you arrive in London, and you’re like, okay, they’re moving armies to get this thing done. You need to capture the footage of the day and you try to make something out of it for 155 days and so.

My role is how to be the support system to Jon, Alice Brooks, and the crew. How can I make sure Chris Scott is getting feedback to make sure he knows that it’s working? I tend to be more of a cheerleader during that shooting process because I know at the end of the day, it’ll all fall on my shoulders to then make it work. I get to take the next literally, 12 months trying to craft this thing alone in this room, the same room with John for that amount of time to nurture this baby together. We feel like these co-parents. You hear about these great collaborations with editors, with Thelma and Scorsese, Joe Walker with Denis and I feel like I found my co-conspirator in Jon, like you said, like it was all meant to be this way for sure.
Jillian Chilingerian: This film to me, feels like a love story. Hearing from all of you it also feels like a love story of everyone coming together. I think that’s why we have so many great collaborations between editors and directors and you really can tell it and the work, because if it’s not great, then people can notice that something is off there.
Myron Kerstein: I agree. If you feel like it’s like the director telling the editor what to do, you have two artists who are giving their voices to this thing and so much of my voice is in Wicked like how I look at the footage, how I construct it, all the 1000s and 1000s of choices I’m making are my voice as an artist. Jon is doing the same by how he’s directing his actors and his department heads. I look at it in this romantic way, it’s 1000 heartbeats of all these craftsmen, people coming together, making this beautiful piece of art. It is truly a love letter from all these different artists, all these people who work tirelessly together with Jon being the ultimate Cupid, the guy is just like bringing us all together. So it’s been magical.

Jillian Chilingerian: When we see Broadway plays getting a film adaptation, it enhances so much more of what you can’t do on the stage. In this, we see that in the different tones and the passage of time that enriches the relationship between Elphaba and Glinda so when we get to the part where they have that moment together. I’m wondering during this process because there’s something about this movie where you watch it and everything has a completely different meaning. I don’t know if it’s because of the actors or because we all have the same level of playing field, of being able to see all these interactions. How were you informed by the musical and what are some things that there are opportunities to do in the movie that may have not had the time in the musical?
Myron Kerstein: Well, a good example of this is the Ozdust Ballroom. In the Broadway musical, it’s a pretty fast number and moment where they’re bonded together, and there’s a version of that in our movie that I could have cut, but I knew that if I didn’t take the time and have the real estate to manipulate the audience to feel what it feels like to be bullied or to have that moment where everything is lost with Elphaba, and if you didn’t feel this gesture that Glinda made towards Elphaba, then I don’t think that that moment would feel earned, and I don’t think that we would buy their relationship as deeply as one might feel unless we had expanded and messed with the pace and just took our time. We could just sit in the silence and be bold with that section of the musical. I could say 1000 examples like that throughout the entire movie, where we just took our time developing character and allowed us to become more invested, and that way when you have this moment in “Defying Gravity” when Elphaba says, So, are you coming? and she just says, Elphie you’re trembling, and there’s heartbreak immediately in that moment because we’ve earned that over the course of the last two hours. In the Broadway musical, again, it fits because they’re just jamming in two parts, and you’re going to have to make those connections on your own, but with cinema, there’s an opportunity to guide the audience and make them feel more deeply involved in characters by taking your time with those moments. Then you can hold on to Elphaba’s face and feel that the answers that Glinda just gave were deeper. There’s this unsaid sort of melancholy and pain in that moment that she was going to lose the only friend that she’s ever made in her entire life. You’re taking the essence of the beats from the Broadway show, but at the end of the day, you have to be able to feel them. We don’t have the luxury of people leaving the Broadway show and then connecting the dots on their way to dinner. We need them to feel it in that moment and you can’t do that without really making the audience feel these characters.

Jillian Chilingerian: I like that we flesh out a little bit more of their enemies to lovers. She has this beef with Elphaba because of her skin and you realize that Glinda is the only person that has an actual issue with her, because she’s in the sorcery program, and it’s the first time in her life that she doesn’t have something that she’s thought that she should have. We see her make her choices based on her glances when she’s looking at her books before giving her the hat and then realizing her mistake once they’re at the ballroom. It’s like you have much more of that to track, even though they become friends, she still has her little resentment about like, I wanted that life, but I can never have it in these circumstances. It’s fascinating to see that like you’re saying connecting the dots through these human moments between the two of them, and in the scope of a musical, which I appreciate, of allowing that time to breathe.
Myron Kerstein:If you’re going to tell the greatest love story that’s ever been told, then you have to have an arc to that, there’s their meet cute which is basically in the quad, where they’re sizing each other up. Then you have “What Is This feeling?” which is the mean girl’s montage, but then you have to guide the audience to believe that they’re bonding throughout this whole film, and you’re doing that by taking 1000s of looks. There are so many looks between the lines that Jon and I are finding, we’re sorting through 250 hours of footage finding the perfect moment that says something in the subtext. There’s so much storytelling that goes on in these unsaid moments, and so investing the audience over two hours and making you really believe that they’re friends at the end of it, and then you can have something that feels like a big cliffhanger Empire Strikes Back moment that you’re so invested in these characters that you’re like, Okay, what’s next? That can’t happen by rushing it, and you have to carve and craft performance to make people yearn for the way those characters feel.
Jillian Chilingerian: Part one is so emotional, part two, I’m not going to be okay. I can already see things being placed and Wicked is a story of relationships with consequential moments, of what it feels like to be rejected, and where you go from that. Being able to see those moments of these actors so articulated well, without having to say it, but we can feel it through the music, through the glances, through the love for each other.
Myron Kerstein:But isn’t that great? When was the last time we could say that when we’re watching a movie like The Sound of Music, or these movies that just touched us and that you look in the highlight reel at an award show and it’s these love stories and these dramas that you just felt these characters, and when someone gets killed or they die tragically? There’s a power in cinema that, if you embrace those looks and those quiet moments and those cinematic touchstones then you can make something really special. If I could say that’s why people respond to the movie is because we’re reminding them of how they felt when they were watching these movies as a kid.

Jillian Chilingerian: For these musical numbers, does it require a different part of your brain to understand the difference between a musical and a nonmusical? I love the breaking up of “Defying Gravity”. She’s climbing up to the top breaking those moments with conversations.
Myron Kerstein: Well, before I did a musical, I thought I was supposed to cut a musical, like a music video, like I was just supposed to make it sharp and fast, and you’re just feeling the energy. Throughout making In the Heights, Tick Tick Boom, and now Wicked, I realized that there shouldn’t be any difference between cutting a musical number and cutting any scene or action sequence. It should feel like the story doesn’t stop as soon as the musical number starts. My approach is I sit in a dark room, I built a screening room in London and here in Los Angeles, and I’ll watch, whether it’s 15 minutes or two hours of dailies, I’ll just watch them wash over me like I’m the first audience member. It was like, this ritual of I’m the first person in the history of the world that gets to watch the footage for Wicked. It’s a treasured moment and I’m gonna sit there and think, okay, as an audience member, what moves me? What makes me laugh, what makes me cry? We had nine to ten-minute takes of the Ozdust Ballroom of Cynthia, entering to her leaving uncut. I admit, every take would make me cry and I would say, Okay, I’m going to take these feelings and then I’m going to bring these into the other room. The same thing with “What Is This Feeling” I have a massive amount of footage. What are the shots that give me a little giggle, or like I feel like I’m connected to a character one way or another, and all these little feelings become my compasses to then construct the number or the scene or an action sequence, they’re all the same to me and so and of course, once I get in there and I start constructing something like “Defying Gravity”, which has so many starts and stops to it, and scenes in between is like, well, how much can we get away with before people are like, where’s the song? We’re trying to pace out how much story and how much we can mess with the audience’s expectations throughout the edit without losing them, or them getting angry with you, or when they say she’s supposed to say the climax and now she’s falling through a window. At the same time, I have live vocals, instrumentals, ensemble, VFX, sound design, and all these things I just have to keep straight as I keep building these scenes from these initial moments in the screening room alone to two years later when we’re mixing this thing. I have to be the person who’s shepherding this thing, but at the end of the day, I strongly feel there shouldn’t be a difference, and that there aren’t any rules. I need to cut it in a way that makes me feel something and that’s all that there is. How do I connect emotionally as a first audience member and then I can go to my music editors who are like, you might be off a couple of frames if you want to find just the right musicality to something. So there’s a compromise at some point because sometimes the musicians are like, Okay, I understand your heart and everything, but our musicians can’t slow down as quickly as you just did it there.
Jillian Chilingerian: For some of the moments that a lot of long-time fans are waiting for there’s so much payoff with the build-up. It’s fun to be waiting for “Popular”, and then it happens. My friend grabbed my arm in excitement. We are expecting it, but it’s like, how are they going to do it?
Myron Kerstein:Thank you. Yeah, I feel the same way. I’ve even seen the movie hundreds of times. When you come to something like that after the Ozdust Ballroom, what was always fun with Jon and me, was when we would do test screenings, the laughs came even more from the audience. They just love these characters so much so suddenly every joke felt like a roar because they love these characters together so much so then you can have something that feels earned and fun. It’s this weird Kismet that you’ve created between having people wait for it and having it feel earned. I think that same philosophy you’re utilizing with something like “Defying Gravity”, like even though “it’s me” should come right there when she’s about to jump out the window, having the audience wait one more time before the war cry then you lean in more. The fact that we can manipulate through editing the pace and the expectations and you don’t realize that we’re manipulating you.
Jillian Chilingerian: It feels you’re leaning in and you want to listen closely to what’s going to come and I think it also gives these actors more room to make these characters their own. It’s Ariana and Cynthia’s words coming out and speaks to what these words mean.
Myron Kerstein: There shouldn’t be a difference between music and character. I always treat vocals like dialog, and they should be one and the same. Andy Nelson, he’s Spielberg’s mixer, he mixes all the vocals at the same time as he mixes dialog, and separates all the sound effects and all the instrumental tracks. It’s that same philosophy from the beginning of where I’m first cutting it, or the actors are first performing it through the mixing, we treat it all as one unit.

Jillian Chilingerian: The opening montage of “No One Mourns the Wicked” because you can read it in so many ways. Once you finish the movie, and you go back so much was happening with the way that Glinda was feeling, and what was captured, and then getting to dive more into Elphaba. We get to see more of her magical beginnings, seeing her as a child, and how that pays off again in the end.
Myron Kerstein: Thank you. The opening of the film was the hardest thing to cut. It was the last thing we got right as far as a big section of the film. At the end of the day, we knew that the audience wanted to meet Glinda and Elphaba together. We knew it was like when are we going to meet Jaws or something? Building that anticipation, but also giving that just enough backstory about who Elphaba was to begin that origin story and then finding the nuances of Ari’s performance, about how there’s melancholy in her looks when they’re burning this witch and, and there’s just, we’re packing in a lot there. It took forever to understand how these pieces work. We took out all the flashback stuff at one point, because we’re like, Okay, what do we need here, as far as to tell the story, do they need to know younger Elphaba? Do they need to see baby Nessarose? We’re like thank God, we left it in. The opening number is not a banger number, it’s dark and it’s a mob mentality, and they’re talking about killing a witch. There’s a lot of anger and pain there it’s really hard to start a movie that way. There were lines in Munchkin land that we ended up using as voiceover over the shot of the hat, we were tearing it apart and putting it back together to make it work.

Originally, Ari was supposed to sing from the platform, and then I pitched to John to have Ari sing from the sky, these things weren’t from the stage production, but we knew that if we could just keep tearing apart and putting it back together, then it would feel like we could find the different pieces of puzzle come together, but it was daunting. There were moments when we didn’t know if this beginning was going to work. There’s a funny story where I took my 11-year-old son to go see Lilo and Stitch at Vidiots, this video store in Los Angeles, and I’m watching that movie, and there were nine or 10 minutes of me watching the movie when I was like, Where are the credits? I don’t understand where the credits are. I realized that I was watching one big prologue and I remember that feeling of sitting in the audience. I feel warm and there’s something about this feeling that I love. The next day, I walked into the editing room, and I said to Jon, we need to Lilo and Stitch the beginning of Wicked. We treated the whole opening as a prologue.
Jillian Chilingerian: Oh, that’s so funny. I love when it goes from the mountains into the sea, and then we come up and the ship, and then it’s like the title, and you’re just like, we’re here. We made it.
Myron Kerstein:I was just talking to Jack Dolman, our music editor, about that exact moment when we were at the premiere. He just started crying during the premiere because we had worked so hard collectively to make all these pieces work, and even finally getting John Powell’s score in there. I finally switched shots around of how we’re going to see Shiz for the first time based on his score, which I don’t usually ever do, and we work so tirelessly to make it work. Even that underwater shot took four months to do, that was not an easy shot for a VFX house to deliver to transition seamlessly from Glinda back to her emerging from the water. Hundreds and hundreds of hours of artists just trying to make that transition work. That prologue was many people throwing everything, they could throw at something as an artist to make work.
Jillian Chilingerian: When you’re a viewer these things that you would have never known were going behind the scenes. I love that transition too, because, to me, I read this part of the film as Glinda’s memory of their relationship. Almost like a time machine going through the water and coming up but we’re going to be back in the present day in part two where they both connect.
Myron Kerstein: 100% that’s exactly how we wanted you to feel. It’s one thing to conceptualize something in your head or Jon has the vision of it, and then to guide your VFX crew and then try to get the music and the sound design and everything to hold together you’re not supposed to notice all these things. When you present it to the audience, you just want them to enjoy it. Sometimes you feel, as an editor that you’re letting 1000s of people down because they’ve built Munchkin land, they’ve done all these things to make us want to be there so we have to keep reassembling those pieces to make it feel fulfilling.

Jillian Chilingerian: There is so much I could say about this movie. I want to talk about the ending where we also get to see where each character is at before we get to catch up with them. I love the moment between Michelle Yeoh and Ariana, where she gives her the hug and Ariana is hesitant as she puts her hand around her. We see Fiyero ride off. They are all put into motion for what’s going to be unpacked. Because I hate sometimes when you watch a movie with a cliffhanger, and it’s like, but where did that character go?
Myron Kerstein: Yeah, it was really important to be able to have everybody in there. We can’t be in there too long because we’re in the middle of the song, we’re going to be around on everybody. I’m working with my music editor on how long can we expand unlimited. Can we reprise that? So you’re trying a lot of different ideas and experimentation about who should we see when we hear Elphaba’s voice and can we fit in Morrible’s voiceover in the middle of that. There’s a lot of fun experimentation, but then they wrote Interlude Music to interweave and I just love how again, like something that you know shouldn’t feel the audience should never notice any of these things. We remind you of where is everybody at this point in their lives.

Jillian Chilingerian: Oh, my gosh, I love it so much. Well. Thank you so much for this time. I feel like I could ask so many more questions because I’m just so addicted to Wicked.
Myron Kerstein: Jillian if you ever want to do the book version of making the edit of Wicked you let me know. I just love your enthusiasm towards this movie, but just movies in general. I love your brand, and I think that’s, it’s really great because you represent the newer generation of cinephiles, so I’m really excited to see where you go with this. So thank you.
Jillian Chilingerian: Thank you so much. That means so much to me. I really appreciate that.
Myron Kerstein: I’m honest about it. It’s a real joy to see your name pop up and your love for film so keep at it and thank you for seeing it so many times. It means so much to me because you’re seeing a lot of movies, and the fact that you even want to keep going to see them and seeing new things in it
Jillian Chilingerian: Thank you so much.

Wicked is available on demand.
You can find our review of the film here.
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