‘Oppenheimer’ - Interview with Editor Jennifer Lame

Oppenheimer became an unexpected box office hit, close to making 1 Billion dollars. Christopher Nolan’s three-hour historical epic follows J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), the man behind the atomic bomb. Nolan and his team, including Editor Jennifer Lame, came together to recreate one of the most pivotal moments in history.  

The film spans decades, locations, and perspectives during its lengthy runtime with over 70 actors in speaking roles and 18 being aged over time, taking the audience into the inner workings of Oppenheimer’s mind. Offscreen had the opportunity to talk to Lame about the role of women in the film, finding the pacing on what happens after Trinity, and working with black and white footage to create emotional layers.

Jillian Chilingerian: Hi. It's so nice to meet you. I'm very excited for this conversation. Oppenheimer's my favorite film of the year I just did number seven I was gonna go eight tonight but I'm like I got to spread it out. I'm so excited to chat everything about it with you. I have like a million questions, so I'm going to try to get as many through as I can. My first one is based on the idea that this film when we watch it, feels very alive. It's historical, but it feels like it's a thawed-out piece of history and you can feel the essence of the characters and the period. I feel that speaks to the way that you pieced it together. You can rewatch it like eight different times and feel like these are your friends and you're hanging out with them.

Jennifer Lame: It's funny because I've been doing a lot of panels with Ruth, Ellen, Jaime, and Luisa and just getting to hear all the hard work they did not to be cheesy but I think that they made my job so much easier in the sense that I didn't find any of the period or the makeup of the costume stuff distracting so the movie never felt period to me it just felt like kind of like you're saying like my friends, it felt like there wasn't this huge distance between me and the characters. It felt like people that I could become obsessed with and drawn into their weird mini-dramas and yeah, it just all felt so visceral and real when I was working on it. And I think it allowed me to dig and dive even deeper than I normally do because I was just not distracted by anything. So I kind of hyper-focused the four weeks I had to live with the movie. I think usually when I'm getting dailies, it's a bit more distracting in general just because I'm going to set to watch dailies on Chris's movies or you just pulled into meetings. So the fact that I had those four weeks to just like dive into the movie and then on top of that, every time I opened a scene then it kind of exceeded my expectations which my personality I'm pretty negative and down on everything and every movie I work out I'm like this is going to be disaster. My agents always joke that I'm always like, if I say I hate a movie, it might be good. So for me to actually say that when a scene exceeded my expectations is a big deal because I don't normally feel that way. It was more just, oh, I'm gonna have so much fun working on this and I didn't care whether other people liked it. At first. I was just so excited that I liked it, you know?

Jillian Chilingerian: When you feel so passionate about something, everything feels right and then it turns out to be something that everyone can see what you liked about it through your work and relate to it. We're moving through different periods, colors, and sequences, and so much is happening what I think is so special about this film, I realized that there are no subtitles on what period or place we're in because once you get it down off this pattern of where you're jumping around and what period is based off of like the prosthetics and the location. From your perspective moving along the story and tapping into the audience almost investigating and piecing this together without having those direct cues that distract us from what's happening.

Jennifer Lame: Ellen always talks about that. She would dress characters so they could kind of fit in between decades even in case we moved something around which we didn't do that often. She gave us the window to do so. I think that helps because even when we're dressing now, everyone dresses, in different decades and genres. Everyone has their style and I feel like Ellen tapped into that. So nothing ever felt period.

Jillian Chilingerian: There are these motifs placed throughout the film, we realize where they're coming from because it's really a story of this very complex man and his vulnerability and not necessarily a retelling of a historical event. When we see the raindrops in the beginning, and then they pop up on the map when they're having that argument about the bomb and then the sound of like the stomping, and then you don't realize that's the stomping from that big moment.

Jennifer Lame: Yeah, a lot of that is scripted, but I think what makes Chris's movies is everything is so scripted, but then you can play around with it and have so much. There's already a great template here that works because he's a genius. On top of that, he's also open to interpretation and different ideas. Oppenheimer has these visuals and then he also has these auditory things that later on in life kind of replace those visuals and become harder aspects and then the audience when you hear the stopping and once you realize what it is it starts to haunt you too. So you kind of like feel like you're him and I think it's such a brilliant trick. For us working that into the film, I talked about Manchester a lot with this. It's like we all know those tricks and the trick is to make it not feel like a trick, right? Like you don't want to feel like you're watching a movie with flashbacks, remembering something it's like okay, now he's remembering you want to feel what they're feeling and I think that's a very it's a very subtle difference and that's something that Chris and I talked about a lot is making sure every cut every sound and when it happens feels very purposeful emotionally and not like this would be a good place to put this. If it at times felt messy, as long as the messiness felt evocative then I think that it works, even though it's not beautiful. Like that's where it goes. So I think Chris and I would play around with things a lot just to get the feeling of it.

Jillian Chilingerian: Those sequences of black and white and the color within those are so many layers of emotion. How you were able to inject those visceral and emotional layers, I feel like it was such an emotional movie.

Jennifer Lame: It's funny, I don't talk about this a lot, but for me, the black and white is quite emotional and I love Robert Downey Jr.'s character Strauss. He's one of my favorite characters and the fact that his point of view is told in black and white, I find it so sad. There's something so sad about it to me and like that, his life lacks this thing, he's kind of jealous of Oppenheimer and he has this jealousy and this void inside of him that can't fill. His story unfolding in black and white feels very sad and then obviously when it gets sinister, it gets sinister and evil and it works quite well for that too when we realize he orchestrated the whole thing. At the end when you know he doesn't get the votes, I just that scene is so devastating and I don't think it would be as devastating in color. There's something with the black and seeing his face the first time in that beautiful IMAX black and white shot and you know how old he looks but he still looks beautiful, and there's nice little manicured Strauss. Black and white work on so many levels and that's just one aspect. It's so brilliant that he chose to do with the color what he did because it works as most of his movies do on so many different layers. I just find it fascinating and again, like I can watch the movie over and over again because I always I always see new things.

Jillian Chilingerian: I was looking at your credits and I was like she has so many incredible films that are so different. Going into this knowing you're doing a three-hour historical epic that can be a thriller, it can be a love story, and a tale of humanity. I am wondering if you pulled any influences from anything like this film really reminds me of one of my favorites JFK and I just love it.

Jennifer Lame: That's so funny. I just saw that. Did you see it at the Academy?

Jillian Chilingerian: Yes!

Jennifer Lame: You went! and Oliver Stone was there.

Jillian Chilingerian: When they were like he’s here I was like oh my gosh.

Jennifer Lame: I saw so many people kind of dozing off and I was like Oliver Stone is sitting in here. I was like on the edge of my seat the whole time. It's so good. Oh my god and how attractive is Kevin Costner? And he's like, I'm just gonna work late in the office every night.

Jillian Chilingerian: For Kevin Costner, where was the Oscar nomination? There are such amazing films like that where you're engaged the entire time that whole last 20 minutes. It's like wow, so I'm like curious if that was an influence for you going into this.

Jennifer Lame: It's funny because I watched JFK after and I remember watching that being like, I could never do it. Because to me JFK is insane like the crazy shit that they did. I think every movie just has its thing and like, I looked at that movie and I didn't model or look at anything. I just use the script. I think also in movies, especially like this, you just have to take one day at a time. Chris would say to me sometimes if you get too overwhelmed by it, you're just like, oh my god, this is crazy you just have to take every day in every minute and just focus on whatever is in front of you because the big picture can be daunting. I'm sure to those guys JFK like that was a whole thing.

Jillian Chilingerian: Going back to Manchester by the Sea, Casey Affleck is in this. Probably one of my favorite sequences and so many good actors. I always wonder with editors when you're working with such incredible actors and you're watching their takes I would imagine it's really hard to pick, especially building up that whole sequence where it's keeping you on the edge of your toes. You're dealing with so many iconic people and that sequence in general, how do you approach that and, make sure the tone matches where we're like kind of scared, and then we have some comedic relief?

Jennifer Lame: The scarier it gets the funnier it is. Oppenheimer's floundering this badly, like the scarier Casey is and the more Cillian is like bumbling you're just like, oh my god, this is insane. So I think for me just think that those two actors are so amazing and that it just becomes clear what the best performances are and they know what their best performances are too. When I first got that scene, I cut a long version of it and I loved I remember Emma saw an early version of and she was like, I love this but we had to cut it down obviously. It's such a fun sequence and the way Chris wrote that was like Matt on the train with killing and being like you want it it's just so funny. It's dark and disturbing. Casey's an amazing actor. I loved when he showed up in the movie. I was so excited. Because I wasn't there. So I didn't know. Like, that was a day when I opened that scene. I mean, I think I kind of knew he was in the movie, and I was distracted by what I was doing. So I didn't totally like know that was him. Then when I watched that scene, I was like, oh my god, this is amazing.

Jillian Chilingerian: Oh my gosh. That's this just sounds like such fun. It's probably really stressful. But like everything about this just sounds so fun.

Jennifer Lame: Those four weeks were fun and I had a good time. I never have a good time.

Jillian Chilingerian: My favorite part of the film is the second half of the film after the bomb. Knowing like okay, people's attention span might be for that first half and anticipating this bomb, but I feel like the film like for me at least like picks up so much in that second half. So I'm like wondering about if there was an approach of like knowing about this first half and second half going into like, I don't know, just continuing to build up to like his big moment with Jason Clarke and the little room.

Jennifer Lame: For me, that's my favorite part of the movie. So like, for example, when I cut my assembly, I skipped Trinity. Like I threw in some explosions and I just put them like putting it together and everything but I just like moving on because I just want to get to this last third of the movie. After all, it's so exciting to me. I knew that the Trinity stuff would be cool, but yeah, so I loved it and then I think for Chris his big thing was pacing and making sure that the people know that the movie doesn't end after Trinity, but that it will end at some point. From Trinity onwards, we have to just be very strategic about what we're telling the audience where we're going and like, it's okay to take left turns a little bit but Strauss starts telling you what happened next and it's very clear, we're telling what's happening next. I think for Chris, he never just wanted the audience to feel like we were meandering or tricking them or it was leading somewhere. I think it's so kind of him and I remember reading the script. I didn't think he was going to tell us what was said at the pond. It was going to be our Inception and like, you never knew. I remember when I got to the end of the script, and we're back at the pond, I out loud was like holy shit. Because I wanted to know what they said to each other. I was like Strauss like what did you just say to him? So I think it's also great that Chris gave us that. I think the movie pays off after Trinity he doesn't fuck around for lack of a better term. There's a lot more excitement left and that's what's so brilliant about him.

Jillian Chilingerian: That's exactly how I would articulate this. A few weeks ago I attended the making of premiere for this film and saw you and all the women behind this film. When this came out, everyone was like, oh, it's like men talking. There are so many women behind this led by Emma and Chris so how was it working with all these women?

Jennifer Lame: Yeah, all of the heads of department are women except for Hoyte, Scott, and Andrew. I think Chirs loves a strong woman, he just likes the best person for the job and he's super great to collaborate with. There are a lot of strong women behind all these like Ruth, Ellen, Luisa, and Jaime. That was so much fun and I've had so much fun getting to know them, and they did such amazing work. On top of that at a screening recently with Florence, Emily, and Cillian, they did a Q&A and someone asked Florence straight up how did you feel about having such a small role and were you almost not going to take it. They kind of just address the elephant in the room with Emily and Florence's parts being quite small for how big of actresses they are. Florence said something so eloquent, she said to her that small parts sometimes are the most important, and like in her own life, people she interacts with daily who aren't like the main players in her life sometimes play bigger roles in her life and the main players like she was saying like her dog walker in any given day or like her doorman or some of the deliver her package she might like to go down or they might like to change her life that day. And she was like, I find it more interesting to play those parts than play like a lead. For example, and I think I was just talking to someone about this Strauss is one of my favorite characters because he has this immense vulnerability and he's like what did you just say to him out loud? Like we all think about all the time and he's okay, being vulnerable and like caring what just happened and if it was about him, and I loved that about Strauss, and Oppenheimer would never do anything like that so the only vulnerability I think we truly have in the movie with Oppenheimer is Emily and Florence. Without them, it would just be a movie about a guy. Emily and Florence elevate this movie to the level of making $900 million and just hitting so hard and being such an amazing script that Chris wrote and, and the fact that he was able to write these women into the film and weave it in a way that it hits so emotionally and obviously, you only had so a certain amount of time to have the minute and I think he did such a brilliant job and they did a brilliant job with it. Emily and Florence can be a big deal in the Oppenheimer movie. They had some of my favorite lines in the movies and some of my favorite performances and scenes in the movie.

Jillian Chilingerian: It's a very consequential movie of what you're talking about, like those people that we meet or we pass by and like, the impacts that they can have with our relationships further on, and how that can come back to us either like positively or negatively. This film and the way it's structured is so beautiful in that aspect. Going. back to Florence brought up another thought about the Jean Tatlock sequence. For her death and piecing that together as he's reading the note and then the sound. It's just where it kind of everything stops.

Jennifer Lame: Jean Tatlock is such an important person in his life. They were engaged off and on again constantly and she just constantly kept breaking up with him. It feels like a very modern rule. She would just keep breaking up with him but then try to get back together and just and eventually you had to move on because it was tormenting for him, but she still needed him in her life and she was not well. With that final sequence to your point, this person in his life had a huge impact, and eventually for someone who's still brilliant like him, he couldn't figure it out and he had to walk away, which I think for someone like him is very difficult. When she dies, it's his fault either way in his mind. She was killed by someone that Casey Affleck sent after because they followed him to her room and she was a communist and he met with her while he was like, that's insane that he did that. So either she was killed or she killed herself and either way it's in his mind, it's his fault and he will never forgive himself. It's a great metaphor for the bomb too. He has these things in his life that he clearly suffers from and beats himself up over and can't let go. So obviously this person is not going to survive after this thing happens. I think that that sequence we wanted to kind of make sure and the way Chris wrote it, it's like, it doesn't matter what he's saying. She wrote a note but she didn't sign it and she had this thing in our system and he's basically in his head trying to wrap his head around it, but then he realizes like, Oh, it doesn't matter. Like it's my fault. Yeah. And it's so devastating.

Jillian Chilingerian: I love that you mentioned it's kind of like this introspection, but like being played out audibly and visually how he would think and how it continues to haunt you. When you are suffocated by someone's point of view, I feel like this movie does it in such a good way. I could talk about this for hours.

Jennifer Lame: Well, you ask such good questions!

Jillian Chilingerian: I've talked to all of your fellow HODs and I'm I really wanted to talk to you to make my year. I love this movie.

Jennifer Lame: Oh my gosh, that is so nice of you. I love that you love this movie so much because I love this movie.

Jillian Chilingerian: Thank you so much for the time. There are often movies in the award season where I'm like, okay, like, what more can we discuss? This is one where I continue to learn every day something new. It is so fun to dive into this world that you all created that I think is definitely going to be a film that we look back on and be like, wow, like, what an achievement.

Jennifer Lame: Oh, good. I hope so. Because I love Chris and I think I love his movies and I'm just so glad that people loved this one as much as they did.

You can read our review of Oppenheimer, here.

You can read our interview with Production Designer Ruth De Jong, here

You can read our interview with Makeup Department Head Luisa Abel, here

You can read our interview with Costume Designer Ellen Mirojnick, here

You can read our interview with Hair Department Head Jaime Leigh McIntosh, here