On screenwriting v directing

Writing a screenplay without directing it is obviously easier than writing and directing, just because it’s less work. But it’s not as much fun, mostly because you have no real control over the end product. There are exceptions. I had a wonderful experience recently doing a four-part television adaptation of Howards End for the BBC, which was then beautifully directed by Hettie Macdonald. Nothing turns out exactly as you imagined, whether you direct your scripts or not.

On director’s cuts

They’re all so different. Apocalypse Now Redux, for instance, seems like this great creative experiment after the fact. I prefer the original Apocalypse Now myself, but I can see that doing the longer version so many years after was a tremendously enjoyable experiment for Coppola – just to see what the film would look like if he put absolutely everything he shot back in it. But it doesn’t seem like the kind of director’s cut that represents the director’s original frustrated intention. It’s pretty well known that Ridley Scott was unhappy with the original release of Blade Runner and that his subsequent versions were his attempts to get the film back to where he had wanted it to be all along. The extended edition of Margaret absolutely meets that description. It represents my best attempt to bring the film to life as I conceived and wrote it, and as I came to understand it as a director.

On working with Martin Scorsese on Margaret

Martin Scorsese stepped in when we were at a standstill in the politics of the editing process. The theatrical release represents the cut I had submitted to Fox Searchlight in 2008 or 2009. I was unhappy with it and continued working on a version of my own that I could live with. I suggested bringing Marty in as a respected third party who could work with me to create a final version of the film that everyone could be happy with.

Searchlight had dug their heels in about the contracted two-and-a-half hour length – mistakenly, I think – and I’d been equally mistaken in trying to find a satisfying version of the film at that length, long after it should was obvious that I couldn’t do it. With Marty’s imprimatur on the film I thought the studio would be less apt to feel affronted if the running time increased a little – as I had learned it obviously had to if the film was to work. Marty’s always been incredibly supportive of me, but he really outdid himself this time. He worked really hard on the cut; he tried and I thought found a way to maintain the integrity of the movie while keeping the running time down. We passed the movie back and forth until we were happy, and in the end we turned in a cut that was about 12 minutes longer than the theatrical release.

I signed off on it, Searchlight signed off on it but unfortunately [producer] Gary Gilbert did not. Without his OK, Searchlight couldn’t release anything over the contracted length, so they released the two-and-a-half-hour version instead. I should also say that the length of the film per se is of zero importance to me. What matters is how long it feels, and doing whatever it takes to realize the film as fully as possible. Manchester by the Sea, for instance, feels about 10 minutes too long to me. But I wouldn’t go back in to cut it down because I feel it’s about as close to what it should be as I can get it.

On editing Margaret

I found myself focused on what felt like a new way of telling a story on film. One of the elements that felt very different from anything else I’d ever done or seen was this idea of letting the scenes play out much more as if they were happening in real time than is normal in a movie. In Margaret I tried really hard to create a more naturalistic rhythm, so that even if it feels a bit slow at first, after a while you get absorbed into the story as if it was something you were really watching in real life.

But I certainly didn’t go to all that trouble just for the sake of being different. This particular story demanded this particular treatment. For one thing, the film is about a teenager who discovers that the center of the world resides not in herself but in everybody’s self equally. And since teenagers – and some grownups too – tend to see their lives in very dramatic and cinematic terms sometimes, it was very difficult trying to tell that story effectively through conventional or ordinary cinematic means. The structure of the film exemplifies the story. Whenever we tried to shorten the scenes to meet the demands for a shorter running time, the whole film fell apart.

For a long time I really thought that I could get the film down to two and a half hours and still be happy with it. But it turned out to be impossible. The two-and-a-half hour version – the theatrical version – is my best effort to meet my contractual requirements while doing the best job I could, but I never considered it finished and I was never particularly happy with it. Because I was being sued for having supposedly failed to release a cut of my own, I wasn’t able to express any preference or dissatisfaction with the theatrical release publicly. But I wouldn’t have anyway, while the film was still in release; it would have been unethical, for one thing. I did express my unhappiness behind the scenes at great length, in a vain effort to secure the release of a version I liked better. Happily they approved the extended edition, which apart from some technical deficiencies which I hope to correct some day, is very close to the movie I wanted to make in the first place.

On the difficulties of director-studio diplomacy

Negotiating with a studio or whoever is paying for the movie or intruding themselves into the editing process, has nothing to do with editing – except in the broadest sense which includes politics and negotiation and personal relations in the equation of any collaborative creative enterprise.

When you are editing you are trying to put the movie together from thousands of pieces, shots, performances, takes; you are making decisions about the pacing, content, shape, etc, of the picture; you are trying to find a way to tell the story as best you can. Arguing with other people about how long or short the movie is or how long or short the scenes should be, assuaging generally ephemeral but extraordinarily pressing anxieties from people who are invested in and worried about the success of the film when it’s finished – all that is a totally different and unrelated process. When the two processes collide, it’s a real problem for everybody. Talking about the editing has nothing to do with the editing itself. It has to do with diplomacy, mutual trust, mutual respect, and sometimes blind faith.

Working well in an adversarial environment is really hard for me. It’s not so much a test of your will; it’s a test of your concentration. I’m worried about when to cut to the next scene and which shot to use; I don’t want to be thinking about the conversation I had the day before with three people in California. But the fact remains that the director is not the only person with a stake in how the movie turns out and if I could do things differently, I’d do them very differently. I think I had a lot more authority than I realized – I think in a way the studio and I felt bullied by each other and didn’t realize we were doing any bullying. I know that had they taken a leap and left me alone in the first place, and been patient, the movie would have turned out beautifully and on time and that the extra length would have been self-evidently justified. But since they were unable to do that it’s pretty clear that I failed to find a way around their concerns and apprehensions.

It doesn’t work to just say, ‘Please trust me, leave me alone, and it’ll be all right.’ People get very anxious when they write those checks; they want to know what’s going on. I don’t know that they would’ve accepted a three-hour movie no matter what, but had I been more vigilant in dealing with and calming their fears instead of just trying to get them off my back, I would’ve probably served myself better and they might have accepted a longer cut of the film in the end. It’s possible there no was good solution at the time. I’m very happy they paid for the Extended Edition and we all get along fine now – most of us, anyway.

• Margaret is showing as part of The Way I See It: Director’s Cuts a season of films at the Quad cinema until 18 January

• This article was amended on 16 January 2018 to correct the spelling of Hettie Macdonald’s name.