In addition, Anthony in particular, was... He had what I would call a 'very low water content.' What I mean by that is: it's an analogy with the grape harvest, in the sense that sometimes, there is a rain late in the season and the grapes soak up a lot of moisture. And then they're picked, and so now you have grapes that are full of water, that has to be kind of boiled off to give you a good wine. You have to condense it, otherwise it's going to be too weak. And Anthony's material was very rich, there was not a lot of water content. So that he might shoot, let's say, he would shoot... [Talented Mr.] Ripley, I think, was 340,000 feet of 35mm film, and the first assembly was four hours and a half. And if you kind of do the math, you can see what the ratio is.

Whereas Tetro, Francis Coppola's film that I edited, was... He shot the equivalent of 800,000 feet for that film, and the first assembly was three hours, so in that case, there was a big disproportionation between the amount of film shot and the first assembly. What meaningful stuff out of that... There was a lot of material in Francis's... I mean, it's a wonderful film, but there was a lot of material where you would just say, 'Well, that's not going to be in the film. That's the extra camera shooting the same thing', or something, whatever it happens to be. Whereas Anthony's material is very dense. He didn't shoot a lot of time, but it was very meaningful and dense, and it made for a very interesting... I mean, these first assemblies were fascinating things. They weren't like, 'Okay, that's four and a half hours, I'm bored.' They were fascinating films, but it was clear that you couldn't release a four and a half hour version of Ripley. It had to be cut down. So that puts you in the awkward position of finding ways to cut out material that is really very good and interesting, but at a certain point, it just becomes too much. It's like, you know, a 12-course meal, each course is delicious, but by the eighth course, oh, another delicious meal, you know? Another kind of fatigue sets in.