How Editors Greg Ng and Graham Fortin Shaped the Gory Gags at the Heart Of Oz Perkins’ The Monkey
Theo James in The Monkey.
Directed and written by Osgood "Oz" Perkins and based on the Stephen King short story of the same name, The Monkey follows identical twin brothers Hal and Bill Shelburn (played by Christian Convery in a dual role), who, after discovering their father's old toy monkey in the attic, begin a series of chilling and gruesome deaths tearing their family apart. Believing the toy monkey is cursed, they decide to throw it away and go their separate ways. Twenty-five years later, there is a new series of outrageous deaths, leading the brothers (now played by Theo James in a dual role) to face their fears and confront the cursed toy. With its blend of highly memorable gory death scenes, a wicked sense of humour, and over-the-top silliness, as well as an electrifying dual role performance by James, The Monkey is an incredibly campy and entertaining time.
Recently, REVERIE chatted with editors Graham Fortin and Greg Ng about working on The Monkey.
The Monkey film poster.
“I don’t read a lot of books, but I have read a lot of Stephen King, so it was very special for me,” says Ng. “But along with that comes an expectation, because there is a built-in audience to that author about what the movie should be or could be, or the history of his movies leading up to it. That can be a dangerous thing to work with, especially if you are doing an honest adaptation, but in our case, that didn’t matter because the movie was a very loose interpretation. It was based on the characters from the short story and had a very different tone, which, on one hand, is kind of scary because I remember Graham and me talking, like, ‘Are people gonna like this?’ We like it… During the filming of the movie, Oz was like, ‘My happiness is important too.’ We are making something and thinking, 'Will people think this is funny?' But his happiness is important too. It’s about the audience, but it is also about what makes Oz happy and what makes all of us happy.”
“I would say it was a love letter to Stephen King and his tone, it’s obviously different than the short story, but there are different flavours of Stephen King, and even he has a pseudonym too, and this is the lighter, sillier, Creepshow kind of Stephen King, which I appreciate,” states Fortin.
Along with having a different tone than the short story, The Monkey is a huge left turn from Perkins’ previous film, Longlegs, which was a psychological horror thriller full of dread. Making such a deeply unserious film like The Monkey was a fun experience for Fortin and Ng. “I just love laughing at things,” smiles Ng. “When we were working on the movie and started laughing ourselves, or when we were working and going crazy watching things too many times, it becomes funny in a way that we only know. There are certain parts of the movie that other people won't laugh at, but we have fond memories of… With comedy, if you can get a vocal laugh or a reaction out of a thing, you know it's working. When the movie finally came out, I went to it with my wife on a Tuesday night. It was very gratifying because people are snickering and laughing at things, and we can laugh at it too with people, instead of wondering ‘Are they gonna laugh?’”
“The fun part [about editing the film] was remembering the nuts and bolts of cutting all the different kills,” laughs Fortin. “Putting together the air conditioner pool death was a lot of fun.”
“They obviously filmed the women diving for real, but then after that, they got a guy in a green screen with a bucket of body parts to stand on the diving board and just throw body parts in slow motion all over the location,” comments Ng. “That was fun to watch.”
The simple answer to what an editor does on a movie is putting footage together so that the movie flows coherently and makes sense narratively. However, in practice, it is a lot more complicated than that. “When a production starts, you read the script and you have an idea of what the movie is gonna be like,” shares Fortin. “As they shoot things and material starts to come in you’ve got to process it and it gets in your soul, your brain, and your eyeballs. You start putting stuff together and try to execute the director's vision and also bring your own interpretation of the material and footage to the screen to tell the story and satisfy audiences.”
“In the beginning, you’re scrambling to put together the movie as it comes in, and you’re putting everything in order, then after you put everything together, you show the director the first cut,” explains Ng. “You start to work with the director to make the movie that it actually is instead of what it was actually planned to be. You are digging to search for what it is, rearranging things, playing with the tone, playing with the timing of the jokes, or the scares, or the pacing.”
How exactly did they come to know what The Monkey was going to be? "We knew it was about the jokes, but it is dressed up as a horror; the punchlines came out different, instead of being serious, people were laughing, or maybe some people were scared," comments Ng. Additionally, it was a process of discovery and intention. “Once things start to arise out of the movie, you start to manifest those things, cultivate them, and work on the strengths of the footage you have. That being said, with editing, you can bend over backwards and say ‘That was not what it was intended to be. If we have this idea, maybe we can impose this on the movie and help accentuate something that was never there from the beginning.’”
“When you go into a project fresh, you think, what is this movie gonna be like in a year or two?” says Fortin. “It's this crazy journey of all these different elements coming together... Every layer of the process builds up to what the movie is gonna be, and you just don’t have control of what it is ultimately gonna be.”
Greg Ng and Graham Fortin.
Photo courtesy of Greg Ng.
Since Fortin and Ng have worked together for so long, they have a fantastic relationship when it comes to collaborating. “There is a lot of talking and a lot of emotional support,” shares Ng. “Even when we are not working together, we are supporting each other emotionally, because the editors are the psychologists of the director, but who is caring for the editor?” Similarly, having an amazing team to work with, like they did on The Monkey, is another bonus and adds to the overall experience of working on the film. “It’s good to be working with people that you enjoy being around and support you. There is a community vibe happening. It is definitely a film community when we talk about working on short films or feature films. I like to talk about it like we’re a band.”
“There is a lot of work that goes into getting the footage to us that I don’t take for granted: long hours of preparation, all the ideas from all the different departments, the performances, everything comes together for us to have footage every day of the week,” says Fortin. “It’s a pleasure to be able to work on Oz’s films.”
Whether Fortin and Ng are editing a frightening jump scare in Longlegs or a shockingly gory death scene in The Monkey, they have learned many important things to help the scene land right. “Some instances when you put something together and you have multiple versions of a scene, a scare, or anything, you do the first version and maybe you overthink it,” shares Fortin. “You reedit it and start from scratch again. Get back to zero and try and see what the intent of the scene is… An editor friend of ours, Sabrina Pitre, who edited Final Destination Bloodlines, mentioned in a Q&A something that has always stuck with me:‘ You just have to sit down and play with the footage.’ Just get into that Zen zone.”
“One thing we are constantly reminded of is stripping things down,” says Ng. “You don’t have to dress things up so much in order for something to land.”
The most challenging part about editing The Monkey was finding the right tone. "We went a lot of directions to make it scarier, and then we were like, 'OK, no. It's not a scary movie. We're going to make it more funny," recalls Ng. "There was a lot of talking back and forth about what's happening here. What is the vibe? Is it a father-son moment? Is it a monkey moment? Is the monkey scary or just a monkey?” Ng also shares that maintaining the momentum throughout the movie, especially during father-son moments, proved to be quite difficult, too. “How much father-son serious stuff can we sustain with all the gags, because as the audience, you’re waiting and thinking when’s the next thing, but you still need to care for the characters.”
“There also was a lot of playing around with the timeline of the film,” adds Fortin. “The script was much different in terms of what happened when and what happened first, so over the course of the film, there were a lot of changes in terms of the structure of the film.”
On November 14th, Perkins’ new film Keeper will be out in theatres. Again, Fortin and Ng edited the film. “Keeper is my favourite of the movies that we have worked on,” comments Ng. “I really like it a lot, especially from an editing standpoint. It’s a crazy movie… I’d say it's surreal, dreamy, and Lynchian in its flavours.”