The style of 'Rain' amazed me. It seemed all the more shocking when I heard it had been made for the BBC; as an editor, I have always found them timid and conservative stylistically, when it comes to documentary editing. In Paul I found a determined rebel, undeterred by norms and accepted views, a man who didn’t give a damn about what might be expected of a documentary film-maker by those holding the purse strings.

At Sheffield, Paul stood up and began talking about editors, about the relationship between an editor and director. I wanted to know more and so interviewed Paul for this site.

“I shoot my own films these days because it’s so liberating. Let the cameramen go and work on drama, all those 'f' stops look beautiful, but never, never, never get rid of your editor. They are your closest friend, your ally, person to argue with. You climb a mountain to get a top shot of a location and you think ‘It’s slightly cloudy today, but it’ll do’ and in the edit it’s not in the sequence! And I say, ‘Where’s that top shot, it took me ages to get that’ and the editor comes back ‘It doesn’t work.’ That’s what a director needs.
It’s a big honesty thing. There’s nothing worse as a film-maker than showing someone your rushes, because they’re crap. I come away from a day’s shoot and I think ‘I’ve got something good today’, but you haven’t a clue where it’s going in the film or how to use it and you think ‘How am I going to make any sense out of this?’ but I know I’ll find a way. Editors are there to be bloody trouble in the nicest possible sense, but they have to believe in you.”

The style of Rain brings together shot material of the same person from different scenes. Some footage is interviews, some observational shots. All are cut together with no regard for continuity of time or place. There are almost no scenes to speak of, yet the story of our four main characters holds together perfectly, making a coherent and compelling whole. I wanted to know how this came about.

“The development of this ‘triple layering’ as I call it, is in other films I’ve made. Malcolm and Barbara has moments - parts of it were edited like that - it was made in 1999. I’m adding more material to it now for an updated version to be shown this year and when me and my editor Kim [Horton] were looking through the 1999 cut, Kim suddenly said ‘Look! There’s a bit of Rain’.
You are developing a style as you shoot, I know the shots and I know what won’t cut with what, in a conventional sense. For me, that’s the time to break the rules and make it cut. We did a lot of that in Rain, stuff that you would never dream of cutting together. I now believe you can cut an honestly shot piece or film with an honestly shot piece of film, regardless of convention about what should and shouldn’t work together. That is, if you shoot something with honesty and that means integrity, being honest to and for the subject, it will work. But you do not cut an affected piece of film with an affected piece of film. Must sound mad to some people. I’m not a religious person, I’m probably just a cynic, with a reasonable heart, but I do passionately believe that if you film something right there is an energy in the shot that is not of your making, it is of your collecting. That’s what holds it together. It’s not the easiest approach to cut like this. When I was learning about triple layering, we would work all day and at the end of the day I would say ‘Shall we have a look at it?’ and it was a pile of shit. At that point, a good editor will say ‘I know what you want now, why don’t you bugger off for an hour and I’ll fiddle around with it. You go and make dinner.’ And the magic is, when I come back, it’s what I wanted. But you need editors who’ve got the patience and the faith, the belief that what you are trying to express is better expressed in this seemingly oddball garble.
Triple layering hasn’t been used enough because we have the most timid film-makers in this country, too many directors are too timid.
There are no cutaways at all in Rain by the way, no meaningful shot of the mantelpiece or the bill behind the clock, unless it was integral to the story.”

I asked Paul what he thought held his film together. With no conventional linear narrative, no scenes with establishers, no voice-of-God narration telling us what’s going on, what is the glue? He talked about the two long scenes of Vanda, where she talks about her lover, her family and the death of her brother.

“What holds it together? The intensity of her passions! I thought, I’m sorry audience but Vanda is better than jazzy film-making. She is fantastic. The honesty! Yes, I cut things out, yes, I put words over her and added them from somewhere else, but it all enabled her to better tell that story. There are these moments when Vanda is talking about her lover cut with Vanda talking about something else and it’s like all these different women talking, like a Women’s Institute meeting, like a group of women in the pub. One’s drinking, one’s laughing, one’s talking, one’s angry, one’s crying, but it’s all the same person. These shots shouldn’t be cut together, but it works. But you have to know your material and your editor has to know the material very, very well.
I’ve started to call it cubist. Cubism was about showing different facets of the same thing, that’s what I’m doing. I’m showing three moods of one face in a very short time, a few seconds. So once my editor Dave [King] understood what I was getting at, he could fight and labour to find exactly the right frame and rhythm.”

I asked him how he chose a cutting style for a film. 

“It’s for others to determine the style. You, as the editor, are more likely to tell me what the style is than I am to tell you. However, I know the bricks of the wall that I have built are different. I’ve built it in a different way from how I have built other films. I started my career as a painter. Film is an organic thing, like painting is an organic thing. You start off here and you scratch down something and you rub it out and you paint over it and you get this evolution of imagery. You can only do that when you get time.
Every film has its own identity hidden in it and it's like presenting Michelangelo with a lump of rock, it’s in there somewhere and he picks it out. And that’s what I do with film and I listen to what it is trying to say to me. My worry is that next year this film is going to give rise to some horribly edited films; but that doesn’t mean other film-makers shouldn’t try it.”

I wondered how the T.V. audience had reacted to this fragmented style.

“I believe that the audience is much more aware of film than most people working in television give them credit for. The audience watch far more television that we programme makers do. They determine fashion change. I think they enjoy variety. No member of the viewing public has complained about the editing style of Rain. There were occasions early in my career when people said ‘This film jumps about a bit’. But we all go through transitions, I mature, I grow up, I get better at something, they get to understand the language. There are moments in the film when I show people the future and then go back and lead them into how we get there.  No one says ‘Oh fuck! Nigel’s dead! Why are we watching the rest of this?’ A story must have a beginning, a middle and an end, but as M. Godard famously told us, not necessarily in that order.”

I talked about my experience as an editor in screenings with executives and commissioners where a conventional storytelling mode is enforced, because, we are told, the audience won’t understand it otherwise.

“The trouble with the children who run television in this country is that they don’t spend their time making films. They spend their time second-guessing the audience. It’s a complete waste of time. You can’t put yourself in the position of all the audience. You can’t even put yourself in the place of one little old man in Blackburn. You’ve got to give the film-maker the absolute powers, the things that are needed to drag out of their soul, their heart and their mind, an amazing story about however little a subject. You must not patronise your audience. I think if you start saying to yourself ‘Will they like this, will they like that?’ it just won’t work. You cannot make films by committee.  It’s not being big-headed, it’s not arrogance on the part of the film-maker. So when television executives say ‘We know all about non-linear, yeah, very clever. It’s great in theatres in Hampstead or at the ICA’, I say, ‘Fuck ‘em!’ It's not an exclusive style for the intelligentsia of this country, for the middle classes who’ve had a slightly different sort of education. It’s for everyone.
You cannot make art second-guessing anyone. No composer says ‘Who will want this piece of music? What issues does it serve?’. The only purpose it serves is mine. You have to stick to your guns. The more we compromise with these buggers, the worse it will be. And we’ll end up with a T.V. of mediocrity because most people who want to work in T.V. management are mediacrats. I have hopes of Angus McQueen and there are some others - Peter Dale, but the rest of them might as well be running a baked bean factory. They would always be looking for ways to put less tomato in the beans.”

What would you advise an editor and director team faced with the bosses saying the audience won’t understand it?

“You have to say ‘Does it work?’. You say ‘Do you understand it? Does it say something about Vanda, which cut in a conventional way, it wouldn’t?’ If they say ‘Yes’ you can say ‘What makes you so different from the rest of the world?’
If the storytelling is riveting, why waste time putting in boring bits when you could put in very good bits."

I asked Paul how the BBC had reacted to the film and the style of it.

“I had trouble with the title! BBC hated it, ‘Rain In My Heart’? Didn’t understand it, didn’t know what it meant.
At my fine cut screening, they were upset about the style. They said ‘That’s not how you do the subject.’ They said this from a good basis of knowledge of meaningful films about people, but 20 years out of date. We’ve all moved on. They thought I had mucked up what looked in a very early rough cut stage like a very good film. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing as I had respect for the BBC person I was working with. Everything inside me said ‘You’re wrong!’  I was looking forward to them coming to see it. I thought they’re going to get it. They said they didn’t understand it.”

I wanted to know how he persuaded them.

“It happened by osmosis. They now believe it’s a really good film because they got more comfortable by listening to other people’s response, the audience’s response.”

I asked him whether editing was a pain or a pleasure.

“There is only one element of filmmaking that I like passionately and that’s cutting. Editing is simply wonderful. It is the craft we must use bravely, to invigorate our documentary making. I’ve often wondered whether I would like to be a film editor with other people’s rushes and there is a certain interest in condensing and compiling. But no, I realised it is cutting the material I shot that really interests me and somewhere in the back of my brain I know where it all goes.