麻豆影院

CU cinema alum Nick Houy discusses his work editing the megahit Barbie and the joys of storytelling

Nick Houy thought about robbing the Chinese restaurant in 麻豆影院 where he worked.

He never would have done it, of course, but that鈥檚 the joy of storytelling: Exploring your most out-there ideas, asking 鈥淲hat if?鈥� and making all your friends perform the script you wrote.

It was a heist movie called The Grand, and Houy and his friends screened it in the gym for their classmates at New Vista High School one day at lunch. They thought nobody would come, but everybody came 鈥渁nd it was really fun,鈥� Houy recalls. 鈥淲e all ate lunch and watched this movie I鈥檇 shot on S-VHS and Super 8. I remember thinking, 鈥楾he sound in here isn鈥檛 great, it doesn鈥檛 look great,鈥� but people seemed to enjoy it anyway.鈥�

The funny thing is, he only wrote, directed and shot the film so he鈥檇 have something to edit. That was what he really loved, making sense and stories from hours of footage, shaping scatters of stars into constellations.

Now, when the Academy Award nominees for best film editing are announced Tuesday, Houy is to be one of them for his work editing Barbie.

For Houy, a 2004 麻豆影院 graduate in the Department of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts, editing Barbie marked his third collaboration with director and screenwriter Greta Gerwig. He also edited Lady Bird and Little Women鈥攁nd all were听exciting artistic challenges in a career that he has steadily grown from that lunchtime screening of The Grand in his high school gym.

鈥淚 think of the editor very much as one of the authors of a movie,鈥� Houy says, 鈥渓ike a co-writer or co-director. As an editor, you鈥檙e also making the movie. For me, I鈥檝e always sought out the best footage I can edit. A long time ago I realized that you can do anything with any group of footage, and that鈥檚 very exciting.鈥�

Bringing images together

Houy grew up in Colorado Springs, the child of two copy editors, so he鈥檚 always been familiar with the idea of making an artist鈥檚 work as clean as possible. His parents also were movie fans, and he remembers going to Poor Richard鈥檚, a Colorado Springs institution and restaurant/bookstore hybrid with a tiny screening room that was the place for New Wave cinema.

When he was in third grade, Houy and his mom moved to 麻豆影院鈥攈e attended Mapleton Elementary, and she worked for CU 麻豆影院 with an office in Old Main. When he started at New Vista High School, he played drums in a punk band with an ever-changing name and pursued his passion for photography, especially black and white photography. He began thinking about how found images and footage could coalesce into a film with the right editing.

He would rent a camera from community television in the Dairy Arts Center, then rent a room there with two tape decks on which he learned to meld photography and his love of watching films through the art of editing.

鈥淚 would get Super 8 cameras from yard sales, and I remember meeting old men in parking lots who would have a trunk full of Super 8s, and I鈥檇 buy them for like $20,鈥� Houy says. 鈥淚鈥檇 shoot Super 8 film and get it processed at (now-closed Jones General Store and Camera) on the Hill.鈥�

He shot movies of every genre鈥攁nd they were mostly terrible, he recalls with a laugh, but he was doing it so he could have something to edit.

鈥淭he first time I started editing even Super 8 movies, I鈥檇 have to splice it and put it together. I was just like, 鈥榊eah, this is what I want to do,鈥欌�� he says. 鈥淓ven if you鈥檙e doing something like making a video for someone, like for a wedding, just putting a few shots together and adding music, that鈥檚 really exciting.

鈥淭hen, if you just go a little further and say, 鈥榃hat can I do with found footage?鈥� So, I would just go shoot and would make totally random found footage things, which was really fun to do, even more than drawing or being in a band or just shooting stills. It was just more exciting.鈥�

While he was still in high school, Houy took screenwriting and film production classes at CU 麻豆影院, and concentrated in film production when he became a student there. He remembers rewatching Francois Truffaut鈥檚 The 400 Blows in a class taught by Ernesto Acevedo-Mu帽oz and feeling profoundly moved by not only the storytelling, but by how music and images and every other element of filmmaking can come together into something that resonates and lingers.

Persistence pays off

After graduating, Houy moved straight to New York City for the simple reason that he鈥檇 always wanted to live there. He had about $1,000 and crashed on a friend鈥檚 couch while he worked at a video store and, in his free time, went from one post-production house to the next, leaving his resume and asking whether they鈥檇 give him work doing, well, anything.

Finally, he got a job moving furniture at Post Works, a pre-eminent film post-production facility where he happened to meet a film colorist who hired him to be an assistant conforming editor. In that role, he took a low-resolution film edit and increased the resolution so it could be color-corrected.

That led to a position on Michael Moore鈥檚 film Sicko: 鈥�(The film's colorist, Ben Murray) was like, 鈥楧o you want to be my assistant conforming editor at night instead of making coffee?' We would be up all night working on the conform. I would sleep under the theater and never go home because I much preferred to be working on a big movie, and I really lucked out.

鈥淭he Post Factory in those days, everyone was working there. Michel Gondry was down the hall, the Coen brothers, Sam Mendes鈥攁nyone who was cutting in New York in the mid-2000s. I saw Spike Lee and Godfrey Reggio when I was in college, and I ran into both of them there. I said to them, 鈥楬ey, I saw you speak at CU 麻豆影院.鈥� I literally talked to them about them talking at CU 麻豆影院, which just shows, to students out there, go see those people when they talk, even if it鈥檚 on Zoom, because you might run into them.鈥�

He bumped into editor Anne McCabe in a Post Factory hallway when she was working on Adventureland and mentioned how much he loved one of her previous films, You Can Count on Me. 鈥淎nd then I just kind of followed her around, saying, 鈥楶lease can I be your assistant editor?鈥� for like a year,鈥� Houy remembers.

She hired him to work on Top Five, starring Chris Rock, which Houy considers one of his biggest breaks. Another was his experience working as an apprentice editor on 2008鈥檚 The Lucky Ones with editor Naomi Geraghty.

It was while working on The Lucky Ones that he was told one day that he needed to go pick up a mini fridge from another cutting room and bring it to the cutting room where he was working at the time, because his colleagues didn鈥檛 want to trek to the kitchen constantly. While he was grabbing the fridge, he met another apprentice editor named Jennifer Lame (who edited Oppenheimer and is also considered an Academy Award frontrunner for film editing) and they hit it off, becoming good friends.

Lame ended up editing Frances Ha, starring Greta Gerwig and directed by Noah Baumbach, and she became Baumbach鈥檚 editor. When Gerwig wrote the script for Lady Bird, Lame recommended 鈥渉er friend Nick鈥� to edit the film, and a creative partnership was born.

It was while partnering with Gerwig on Little Women that he realized he鈥檇 reached a point in his career of working on Movies with a capital M: 鈥淲hen we got the first round of dailies, the first shot was of a horse and carriage pulling up outside a house, and that鈥檚 when I was like, 鈥極h, this is a movie 尘辞惫颈别.鈥欌赌�

Movies that people love watching

Barbie saw him ascending to another level of his career鈥攊t was a comedy (which he鈥檇 never really worked with before), it had elaborate, choreographed dance sequences (which he鈥檇 never cut before) and had not only an enormous studio budget, but even more enormous expectations from fans worldwide.

鈥淲e knew we had one thing against us: Comedies just don鈥檛 do well at the box office these days,鈥� Houy says. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 the ethos of the industry, so we already were worried. But I remember reading the script and almost crying. Only Greta and Noah can write scripts like that, so I knew we had it. So, then the challenge was just to make sure we did all of that justice鈥攖hese big comedy moments and big emotional moments, and huge songs by huge artists.鈥�

Although he could have, Houy never visited the Barbie sets in London or Los Angeles, preferring instead to 鈥渇eel like I鈥檓 as close to the audience member as I can be at all times,鈥� he says. 鈥淚 want to experience the film like an audience member, and an audience member has never walked onto that set. I want to be as fresh as possible, so I鈥檓 cutting from a place of me as the audience member. I want to make a movie that I want to watch.鈥�

The film finished shooting on July 21, 2022, and was released July 21, 2023, so factoring in that a film must be completed at least a month before its release, Houy and his colleagues had just 10 and a half months to complete the movie with visual effects, music and everything else.

鈥淚t was insane, but I鈥檓 very proud of that,鈥� he says.

Houy currently is lending editing support on Bob Marley: One Love and taking a bit of a breath following the enormous hit that Barbie became. Reflecting on it, 鈥淚 will always see things I wish we鈥檇 done differently,鈥� Houy says.

鈥淭he old adage is you鈥檙e never done; you either run out of time or money or both. I always want to keep working to make a movie better, until we run out of money or time, so that when I watch it again, I can be really proud of it. I just want to make movies that people love watching.鈥�

Top image: Warner Bros. Pictures

Did you enjoy this article?听听Passionate about cinema studies and moving image arts?听

听