‘Disclaimer' Editor Adam Gough on His Shorthand With Alfonso Cuarón: ‘We Don't Need to Talk Much'

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7 hours ago

When Alfonso Cuarón stepped into the world of series to direct AppleTV+'s 'Disclaimer,' he called on Adam Gough to assemble and cut the series.
The two had previously worked together on 'Children of Men,' with Gough serving as an apprentice editor. In 2018, the two joined forces again to co-edit the Netflix film, 'Roma.' Through it all, they had developed a shorthand where minimal communication was key to their collaboration.
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'Disclaimer' is based on the novel of the same name by Renée Knight. It follows acclaimed journalist Catherine Ravenscroft, played by Cate Blanchett, who receives a novel from an unknown author. She is horrified to realize she is now the main character in a story that exposes her darkest secrets and forces her to confront her past. Sacha Baron Cohen plays her husband, Robert, and Kodi Smit-McPhee plays their son Nicholas.
As the series straddles a non-linear structure, going between present, telling Catherine's story, Steven's story (Kevin Kline's) and flashbacks. Gough found episode 5 to be the most compelling. 'It's where we introduce Nicholas' perspective. This is when the entrapment of the catfishing kicks in with this Instagram sequence between Steven and Nicholas.' He adds, 'This is also where we start cutting between two perspectives.'
Previously, every scene had been a standalone perspective. In finding the editorial rhythm, Gough says it took a moment because the show's cinematographers, Bruno Delbonnel and Emmanuel Lubezki, offered him different styles. 'But we're in the same time, same lighting, so we've got the sun going behind clouds in one scene, and we back out again to the other character, and they had this beautifully complicated lighting arrangement, which I can't get my head around, but was always having to keep that in mind.'
As the Instagram sequence was scripted, Gough explains, it was 15 pages of script. Delbonnel and Lubezki shot every perspective. 'We had options to go to any character at that moment. So when Nicholas and Stephen were talking, we had both sides of the conversation.' That allowed him to increase tension and speed up interaction between the two as the messages were being sent. It also allowed Gough to jump to cuts and closeups with the actors to get reactions because 'we wanted to avoid using the graphic overlays, that has kind of become a little bit like a cliché.'
In editing the finale, once again, everything Gough needed was in the script. This episode reveals what really happened to Catherine and what needed to be changed editorially.
The episode flips the narrative on its head when Catherine gets to tell her side of the story. This is no longer a story of a woman who supposedly seduced a younger man and let him drown when he saved her son, it turns out, Jonathan, the young man, sexually assaulted her.
Says Gough, 'We start introducing jump cuts and making it very rough, and the sound there wasn't important. We play into memory.' In his first assembly for the episode, Gough says as the flashbacks return to Italy, the voices are lowered and muffled. 'That story structure was always based on Catherine's perspective from that kitchen; you always still felt present in her story.'
In cutting the assault sequence, Gough knew it was going 'to be absolutely horrendous and horrible.' The question was how long did he hold on Catherine's face? Gough admits, 'It was difficult to cut and something that I really appreciate working with Alfonso. When we can hit these heavy moments, we have the beautiful shorthand where we don't need to talk much. We can do very minimal communication.' Gough recalls cutting the birth sequence in 'Roma.' He says, 'It was pretty much just a session of looking at each other, head nods, very minimal answers, just very serious. We want to get through this once and do it right.'
By the series ending, when Catherine is back at the house with Nicholas, Gough notes, 'It's brighter and more relaxed, and this build-up of Nicholas still not knowing. It's that crescendo of moments of completing his story, and that he is the heart of 'Disclaimer' as well.' He adds, 'I love that long push in the track that they do in at the end, and we go to white. It was knowing we'd gotten to a place of definitive punctuation at the end. For me, it was that final breath to settle any answers or doubts.'
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