"I often say that editing found me," says Kevin Tent, "because I had no idea what editing was."
A lifelong movie lover, Tent went to film school with the intention of becoming a director. On the side, he began cutting his friends' short films. "Then I got a job editing, and I realized I really liked it." Tent worked on "cheeseball" education videos, which led to low-budget horror films. "And I remember going, 'You know what? I thought I would be a director, but now I think I'll try to be the best editor I can be and see how that goes.' I committed. And then, I met Alexander."
Alexander is two-time Oscar-winning filmmaker Alexander Payne. Tent has been Payne's go-to editor since his directorial debut, Citizen Ruth (1996), and has cut all eight of the features that Payne's directed. "It's one of those things you hope happens, that you meet a director and that you click and you work on a movie that hits — and that happened, which was a miracle."
Tent received his first Oscar nomination for Best Film Editing for 2011's The Descendants. Payne and Tent's latest collaboration is The Holdovers, starring Paul Giamatti as a curmudgeonly teacher at a 1970s boarding school.
At the 96th Oscars, The Holdovers is nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture, and Tent is once again nominated for Best Film Editing.
"I really had no film education or anything like that, so working with Alexander has always been daunting. Especially when I first started working with him, he would ask me about films: 'Had I seen Kurosawa's High and Low? And I'm like, 'No, I never saw a Kurosawa film before in my life,'" Tent recalls. "So, I had to do a lot of catching up on my own. But I did. I would start watching movies to just try to catch up with him. He's a great teacher of cinema, so I watched a lot of movies because of him."
Below, Tent shares with A.frame five of his all-time favorite films, including the Oscar-winning musical masterpiece that first introduced Tent to the magic of editing.
Directed by: Bob Fosse | Edited by: Alan Heim
I saw All That Jazz when I was young, and there's a scene with an editor in it, Alan Heim, who I now know and who's amazing. The producer comes in and watches a recut of the movie, and he says, 'You made it better. How did you make it better?' I remember as a kid going, 'What happened there? What'd that guy do?'
I had this vague notion that I wanted to work in movies. So, I dropped out of college, and I came to California, and went to film school. And I started editing, and I really liked it.
Directed by: Roman Polanski | Edited by: Sam O'Steen
I love Chinatown. I moved to L.A. when I was 20, and it's so much about Los Angeles. I love the history of what it's telling about Los Angeles, and I love the feel of the movie. It's such a romantic movie. And I just love the score. That's one of my all-time favorites, I'd have to say.
Directed by: Peter Bogdanovich | Edited by: Verna Fields
Paper Moon is one of the all-time great ones. The characters. The acting is so good. And it's sweet and funny and a great little character piece. It's a great movie.
Directed by: Sergio Leone | Edited by: Nino Baragli
It's another '70s movie, and again, I love the score. When we go on road trips and drive through the desert, we play that score. It's the best thing to drive to. The story is epic, and it seems to be a realistic take on the Wild West and how brutal it was and all those shenanigans that went on there. I love all that stuff about the building of the railroads. And there's good antiheroes in it. It's got it all going on. I think the fact that it was a Spaghetti Western is so fantastic too. And I want to mention The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. I'm not an expert on the Civil War — I'm certainly aware of it and know a lot about it — but they really capture that [time period] in a very authentic way.
Directed by: Peter Bogdanovich | Edited by: Verna Fields
We have a family favorite that my son grew up on and that we still love watching, which is What's Up, Doc? My son was at that age where he still liked Disney movies and stuff like that, but he was ready for a little more sophisticated humor. It's like slapstick, broad 1940s comedy, but it's such a good family movie. We still love watching it, and my son still loves that movie, and now he's a young man. My young nephew, I just gave him a list of movies to watch and that was one of them.
