Letters from the Cutting Room

To whoever minds the editing bench,

The cutting room has no windows. Red grease-pencil marks cover the walls, and curls of trimmed film lie on the floor.

This letter comes from Chinatown in Los Angeles, early 1991, in a dark blue-green envelope with a textured surface. The bold condensed action-film title is lettered in ivory and vermilion. The paper is covered with cut-and-paste editing marks, framed by a border of sprocket holes, with a small sage-green street map and, at one corner, a warm restaurant receipt.

Cutting means finding the gap. In the Zhuangzi, Cook Ding carves an ox because his blade has no thickness and slips between the joints: "The joints have gaps, while the blade has no thickness; put what has no thickness into a gap, and there is room, more than enough, for the blade to play." — Zhuangzi, "Nourishing the Lord of Life" (c. 3rd century BC)

A good edit works the same way: a little space is left between one shot and the next, and the viewer walks into it. So does a letter. Welcome; come in through the gap.

Frame by frame, no hurry

Storm Post Office

Early 1991 · Chinatown, Los Angeles