Editing McCabe & Mrs. Miller (section)

==Production==
===Development===
''McCabe & Mrs. Miller'' is based on [[Edmund Naughton]]'s 1959 novel ''McCabe''. David Foster, one of the film's producers, had purchased the film rights to the novel in 1968; he'd learned of the novel while negotiating with Ellen Wright (the widow of novelist [[Richard Wright (author)|Richard Wright]]) over the rights to ''[[The Mandarins]]'', a novel by [[Simone de Beauvoir]]. Wright was acting as the agent for Naughton, who was then living in [[Paris]] and working for the ''[[International Herald Tribune]]''. With his partner, Mitchell Broward, Foster then negotiated a deal with the Fox studio for two films. By October, 1968, Foster had commissioned a screenplay from [[Ben Maddow]], a well-known poet and screenwriter.<ref name=McGilligan>{{cite book |last=McGilligan |first=Patrick |title=Robert Altman: Jumping Off the Cliff |pages=339 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6zzxOVHFL_oC&pg=PA339 |publisher=Macmillan |year=1989 |isbn=9780312304676 |oclc=18521062}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=The Cinema of Robert Altman: Hollywood Maverick |first=Robert |last=Niemi |publisher=Columbia University Press |date=2016 |isbn=9780231850865 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wG3lCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT66|page=66}}</ref><ref name=Dessem>{{cite web|title=The making and unmaking of ''McCabe & Mrs. Miller'' |first=Matthew |last=Dessem |work=The Dissolve |url=http://thedissolve.com/features/movie-of-the-week/774-the-making-and-unmaking-of-mccabe-mrs-miller/ |date=October 2, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161028083643/http://thedissolve.com/features/movie-of-the-week/774-the-making-and-unmaking-of-mccabe-mrs-miller/ |archive-date=October 28, 2016 |url-status=live }}</ref>

In 1969, Altman was in post-production on ''[[M*A*S*H (film)|M*A*S*H]]'' and snuck Foster into the screening; Foster liked the film and signed Altman to direct a film based on ''McCabe''. They agreed to wait until ''M*A*S*H'' became a box-office hit to take the pitch for ''McCabe'' to a studio for funding. A second screenplay – independent of Maddow's – was commissioned from Brian McKay, who completed it in only five weeks. A revised version of that screenplay dated July 1970 became the "shooting script" for the film.<ref name=Dessem /> Altman and McKay are listed in the film's credits as its screenwriters; Maddow went uncredited.

Altman offered the lead to [[Elliott Gould]] who turned it down to make ''I Love My Wife''. "Bob said, 'You're making the mistake of your life'," said Gould. "There was a part of me that was not developed at all and that had no real understanding about what the woman is. Bob wanted to cast [[Pat Quinn (American actress)|Patricia Quinn]] as Mrs. Miller, and I hadn't seen ''[[Alice's Restaurant (film)|Alice's Restaurant]]'' and I hadn't met her. I had some misconceptions because I wanted her to have the same relationship with Altman as I had. I recently watched ''Alice's Restaurant'' and she's great. Altman was so right."<ref name="hidden">{{cite web|url=https://hidden-films.com/2013/07/24/the-lesser-known-or-less-celebrated-films-of-elliott-gould-part-1/|website=Hidden Films|title=The Lesser Known (or Less Celebrated) Films of Elliott Gould (Part 1)|date=July 24, 2013}}</ref>

Foster called Warren Beatty in England, about the film; Beatty flew to [[New York City]] to see ''M*A*S*H'' and then flew to [[Los Angeles, California]] to sign for ''McCabe''.{{citation needed|date=October 2016}}

The film was originally called ''The Presbyterian Church Wager'', after a bet placed among the church's few attendees, about whether McCabe would survive his refusal of the offer to buy his property. Altman reported that an official in the [[Presbyterian Church]] called Warner Bros., to complain about having its church mentioned in a film about brothels and gambling. The complaint prompted a name change to ''John Mac Cabe'' but it was released as ''McCabe & Mrs. Miller''.{{citation needed|date=October 2016}}

===Filming===
{{more citations needed| section|date=June 2023}}
The film was shot in [[West Vancouver]]<ref>{{Cite web |date=2014-11-07 |title=Boot and fog: Robert Altman kept his distance from Old Hollywood |url=https://www.nsnews.com/local-arts/boot-and-fog-robert-altman-kept-his-distance-from-old-hollywood-2988645 |access-date=2023-06-03 |website=North Shore News |language=en}}</ref> and in [[Squamish, British Columbia|Squamish]], almost in sequential order, a rarity for film makers. The crew found a suitable location for the filming and built up the "set", as McCabe built up the town in the film. Mrs. Miller is brought into town on a [[Case Corporation|J. I. Case]] 80 HP [[steam engine]] from 1912; the steam engine is genuine and functioning and the crew used it to power the lumbermill after its arrival. Carpenters for the film were locals and young men from the United States, fleeing [[conscription]] into the [[Vietnam War]]; they were dressed in period costume and used tools of the period, so that they could go about their business in the background, while the plot advanced in the foreground.

The crew ran buried hoses throughout the town, placed so they could create the appearance of rain. Since the city of [[Vancouver]] generally receives a great deal of rain, it was usually only necessary to turn on the hoses to make scenes shot on the rare days when it didn't rain, to match those shot on days when it did.

It began snowing near the end of shooting, when the church fire and the standoff were the only scenes left. Beatty did not want to start shooting in the snow, as it was financially risky to do so: to preserve continuity, the rest of the film would have to be shot in snow. Altman countered that since those were the only scenes left to film, it was best to start since there was nothing else to do. The "standoff" scene—which is in fact more a "cat and mouse" scene involving shooting one's enemy in the back—and its concurrent church fire scene, were shot over nine days. The heavy snow, with the exception of a few "fill-in" patches on the ground, was genuine; the crew members built snowmen and had snowball fights between takes.

The film, especially the final scene, is atypical of the western genre. The showdown between a reluctant protagonist and his enemies takes place ungracefully in the snow during the early hours, rather than at "high noon". Instead of hiding indoors and watching the battle unfold outside, the townsfolk are bustling in the streets and largely unaware of the gunfight taking place in their midst. For a distinctive look, Altman and Zsigmond chose to "[[Flashing (cinematography)|flash]]"<ref>{{Cite web |last=Tong |first=Allan |date=2014-08-12 |title=Old, Faded Pictures: Vilmos Zsigmond on McCabe & Mrs. Miller {{!}} Filmmaker Magazine |url=https://filmmakermagazine.com/87150-old-faded-pictures-vilmos-zsigmond-on-mccabe-mrs-miller/ |access-date=2023-06-04 |website=Filmmaker Magazine {{!}} Publication with a focus on independent film, offering articles, links, and resources. |language=en-US}}</ref> (pre-fog) the film negative before its eventual exposure, as well as use a number of filters on the cameras, rather than manipulate the film in post-production; in this way the studio could not force him to change the film's look to something less distinctive.

=== Editing ===
The editing of ''McCabe & Mrs. Miller'' took much longer than its filming. Altman and Lou Lombardo, the editor and second unit director, spent nine months editing the film in North Vancouver, close to the location of the filming itself.<ref>{{cite book |last=Plecki |first=Gerard |title=Robert Altman |page=[https://archive.org/details/robertaltman0000plec/page/41 41] |publisher=Twayne |year=1985 |isbn=9780805793031 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/robertaltman0000plec/page/41 }} No online access.</ref> The editing was an innovation in its time because the principal storyline about John McCabe and Constance Miller occupies relatively little of the film's running time, especially in the first half of the film. [[Pauline Kael]] emphasized this in her 1971 review of the film. She wrote,

<blockquote>The classical story is only a thread in the story that Altman is telling ... The people who drop in and out of the place—a primitive mining town—are not just background for McCabe and Mrs. Miller; McCabe and Mrs. Miller are simply the two most interesting people in the town, and we catch their stories in glimpses, as they interact with the other characters and each other ... Lives are picked up and let go, and the sense of how little we know about them becomes part of the texture; we generally know little about the characters in movies, but since we're assured that that little is all we need to know, and thus all there is to know, we're not bothered by it. Here we seem to be witnesses to a vision of the past ...<ref name=Kael>{{cite book |title=The Age of Movies: Selected Writings of Pauline Kael |first=Pauline |last=Kael |publisher=Library of America |date=2011 |editor1-first=Sanford |editor1-last=Schwartz|isbn=9781598531718 |chapter=Pipe Dream |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tkShTL84MrcC&pg=PT429}} Reprinting of Kael's 1971 review ({{cite magazine |last=Kael |first=Pauline |magazine=The New Yorker |date=July 3, 1971 |title=The Current Cinema: Pipe Dream |page=40}}).</ref></blockquote>

This aspect of the film's editing also carried through into the film's unusual sound editing, which can blend many conversations and noises and does not emphasize the principal characters. In his textbook on film production, Bruce Mamer wrote,

<blockquote>Robert Altman was famous for using this style of layered dialogue cutting. The frontier barroom scene that opens his ''McCabe & Mrs. Miller'' (Louis Lombardo, editor) has snippets of conversations underlying the foreground action.<ref name=Mamer>{{cite book |title=Film Production Technique: Creating the Accomplished Image |last=Mamer |first=Bruce |page=393 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HwfxlkeYgMQC&pg=PA393 |publisher=Cengage Learning |year=2008 |isbn=9780495411161|edition=Fifth }}</ref></blockquote>

Ken Dancyger describes the effect in terms of its undermining of dialogue as an element in the film,

<blockquote>Many characters speak simultaneously, and we are aware of the discreteness of their conversations, but as their comments bleed into those of others, the effect is to undermine the dialogue. The scene moves dialogue from the informational status it usually occupies to the category of noise. Language becomes a sound effect. When we do hear the dialogue, it is the speaker who is important rather than what is being said.<ref name=Dancyger>{{cite book |title=The Technique of Film and Video Editing: History, Theory, and Practice |last=Dancyger |first=Ken |year=2010 |publisher=Focal Press |page=283 |isbn=9780240813974 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=m20GrX-ZmmoC&pg=PA283|edition=Fifth }}</ref></blockquote>

Similarly, Jay Beck writes

<blockquote>''McCabe & Mrs. Miller'' represents the full-scale launch of the practice of overlapping dialogue in Altman's cinema. The visual and acoustic strategies in the film avoid foregrounding the main characters in the narrative and the audience has to work to follow the story, or stories, as they unfold.<ref name=Beck>{{cite book |last=Beck |first=Jay |chapter=Atlman's Sound Aesthetics in the 1970s |page=191 |editor1-first=Adrian |editor1-last=Danks |title=A Companion to Robert Altman |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |date=2015 |isbn=9781118288900 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2rr7CAAAQBAJ&pg=PA191}}</ref></blockquote>

=== Leonard Cohen's songs ===
Other than the music occurring in the ordinary life of Presbyterian Church, the only music for the film is from three songs composed and performed by [[Leonard Cohen]], a Canadian poet who had released his first album of songs in 1967. Their importance is emphasized by Scott Tobias, who wrote in 2014 that "The film is unimaginable to me without the Cohen songs, which function as these mournful interstitials that unify the entire movie."<ref>{{cite web |title=McCabe & Mrs. Miller: profound pessimism and Leonard Cohen kindness |first1=Keith |last1=Phipps |first2=Scott |last2=Tobias |work=The Dissolve |url=http://thedissolve.com/features/movie-of-the-week/772-mccabe-mrs-miller-profound-pessimism-and-leonard-c/ |date=September 30, 2014}}</ref>

Altman had liked Cohen's debut album, ''[[Songs of Leonard Cohen]]'' (1967), immensely, buying additional copies of it after wearing out each vinyl record. He had then forgotten about the album. A few years later, Altman visited Paris, just after finishing shooting ''McCabe & Mrs. Miller'', and rediscovered Cohen's album. He had Lou Lombardo, the film's editor, use the music to maintain a rhythm for the film (in effect using it as a "temp" track). He later said, "I think the reason they worked was because those lyrics were etched in my subconscious, so when I shot the scenes I fitted them to the songs, as if they were written for them."<ref name=Altman>{{cite book |title=Altman on Altman |editor1-first=David |editor1-last=Thompson |publisher=Faber and Faber |location=London |date=2006}} Cited in {{cite news |work=The Buffalo Film Seminars |title=Robert Altman: McCabe & Mrs. Miller |date=March 4, 2008 |volume=XVI |issue=8 |last1=Christian |first1=Diane |last2=Jackson |first2=Bruce |url=http://csac.buffalo.edu/mccabe.pdf }}</ref>

Altman didn't expect to be able to procure rights for Cohen's music since ''McCabe'' was a [[Warner Brothers]] film and Cohen's album was released through [[Columbia Records]]. He called Cohen, expecting to trade off his recent success with ''[[M*A*S*H (film)|M*A*S*H]]'', but found that Cohen had no knowledge of it. Instead, Cohen had loved Altman's less popular follow-up film ''[[Brewster McCloud]]''. Cohen arranged for his record company to license the music cheaply, even writing into the contract that sales of that album after the release of ''McCabe'' would turn some of the royalties to Altman (an arrangement which at the time was quite unusual).<ref>{{cite book |title=Robert Altman's Soundtracks: Film, Music, and Sound from M*A*S*H to a Prairie Home Companion |first=Gayle Sherwood |last=Magee |page=61 ff |publisher=Oxford University Press |date=2014 |isbn=9780199915965 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MlBjBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA61}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=The Cinema of Robert Altman: Hollywood Maverick |first=Robert |last=Niemi |publisher=Columbia University Press |date=2016 |isbn=9780231850865 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wG3lCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT70|page=170}}</ref> The three Cohen songs used in the film were "The Stranger Song", "Sisters of Mercy" and "Winter Lady". They were released together on a 7-inch single in France in 1971, and other European countries during 1972.<ref>{{cite web|last=Ehrenstein |first=David |author-link=David Ehrenstein |title=McCabe and Mrs. Miller, USA 1971 |url=http://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/mccabe.html |editor1-first=Jarkko |editor1-last=Arjatsalo |work=The Leonard Cohen Files |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160329150414/http://leonardcohenfiles.com/mccabe.html |archive-date=2016-03-29 |url-status=dead }} Undated review from [[CDNow]] reproduced on a fan website.</ref>