Quentin Tarantino and I clicked'

Sally Menke, who has edited all of Quentin Tarantino's films, on their working
relationship and the thrill of John Travolta dancing in front of her during the
making of Pulp Fiction

Quentin Tarantino photographed at London's Soho Hotel. Photograph: Phil Fisk

Sally Menke
Published onSun 6 Dec 2009 00.09 GMT
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E ditors are the quiet heroes of movies and I like it that way. We have a

very private relationship with our directors, most often conducted in very dark
rooms. I've been with Quentin Tarantino since his very first movie and have
edited every single thing he's done since then.
We don't work at the studios. Quentin insists on renting little private houses in
LA and converting them into edit suites for the duration. It's very civilised and
enabled me to work through both my pregnancies – yes, my babies had
Tarantino movies played to them in the womb, but they seem to have come
out OK.

I met Quentin when he was interviewing for an editor – a cheap one. I got in
touch and he sent me this script for a thing called Reservoir Dogs and I just
thought it was amazing. It floored me. Scorsese was a hero of mine, especially
as he used a female editor in Thelma Schoonmaker, and this script just had
that tone. Later, when I found out Harvey Keitel was attached – he was the
first person Quentin had approached – I was more determined to get this job
than ever. I was hiking up in Canada on a remote mountain in Banff when I
saw a phone box and I stopped to call LA and they confirmed I'd got the gig. I
let out a yell that echoed around the mountain.
Quentin is the same now as he was then. He's encyclopaedic, passionate,
electrifying. We just clicked creatively. Editing is all about intuiting the tone of
a scene and you have to chime with the director. It's a rare, intense sort of a
relationship and if it ain't broke, you wouldn't want to fix it. We've built up
such trust that now he gives me the dailies and I put 'em together and there's
little interference.

The thing with Tarantino is the mix-and-match. We do study other films and
other scenes but only to get the vibe we need for our scene – like in Kill
Bill when Uma [Thurman]'s facing off the 5.6.7.8's and we looked at some
Sergio Leone close-ups, to see how we wanted to cut that scene. Our style is to
mimic, not homage, but it's all about recontextualising the film language to
make it fresh within the new genre. It's incredibly detailed. There's nothing
laissez-faire about Quentin's approach, but I know his film voice, always have
done.
Music is one of his obsessions, so I've cut a lot of great scenes to music. He's
very specific and will play music on set all day to get everyone in the mood. I
think he goes to sleep with his iPod on when we're filming, because the music
becomes the rhythm of his directing. Oddly, I don't cut to music. I just make
the scene work emotionally and dramatically, and then Quentin will come in
and lay the track over it and we'll tweak it to the beats.

That scene with Uma Thurman and John Travolta dancing in Jack Rabbit
Slim's diner in Pulp Fiction was unusual in that it was filmed to playback, to
the actual Chuck Berry song. It was easy to cut in that respect, and oh my God,
it was glorious. We chatted about using the long shot, the medium close-ups,
and when to focus on the hands. Most editing is painstaking but this was an
exciting scene to edit because it had momentum of its own and an obvious
magic – it's Travolta, dancing in front of me.
Watching Scorsese and Schoonmaker's work, I learned how to collapse time in
action but still push characters through a scene. It's a trick to give the illusion
it's all real; that's become crucial to us because the Tarantino thing is to make
the mundane feel very spicy. It's the illusion that time is ticking away. It's all
about tension, so you follow the emotional arc of a character through a scene,
even if, as in the opening of Inglourious Basterds, they're just pouring a glass of
milk or stuffing their pipe. We're very proud of that scene – it might be the
best thing we've ever done.
• Sally Menke was talking to Jason Solomons. Inglourious Basterds is out on DVD
and Blu-ray on 7 December
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