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The Man With The
SHEARS
GENTLE reader, shed a tear for the poor film cutter. There are charitable souls in Hollywood who can be induced to admit that perhaps Benedict Arnold was not understood, that the Kaiser had his good points, that Grover Bergdoll might have enlisted if he hadn't suffered from flat feet or that maybe Doheny owed Fall that hundred thousand. But never yet has been discovered in screenland's capitol one who has had a kind word for the ' chap who cuts the pictures.
The cutter is about as popular as an umpire who has just called a third strike in the last of the ninth with the bases full and the home team a run behind.
If you would know what chance a cutter — any cutter — has of winning a popularity contest, ask the star, whose close-ups have been pared down to endurable length. Ask the director, whose orgy-scene has been made censor-proof. Or ask, if you have taken the precaution of stopping your ears with cotton, the little extra girl who acted and acted and acted, only to find herself cut entirely out of the pictuix-. Just ask them!
But though he will probably never be presented with an elegant stem-winding watch with a hunting scene engraved on the case as a testimonial of esteem from his grateful co-workers of the Artists' Union, the cutter is responsible for much of the success of pictures that you, the public, consider good. And many of the bad ones would have been a whole lot worse if it had not been for the cutter and his trusty shears.
During the weeks that a picture is being shot, the carefree cutter flits about the lot with a dolce jar niente air; he toils not, neither does he spin. But when the last reel of film is turned over to the cutting department, then does the cutter emulate the little busy bee and by his industry maketh the ant to look like unto the sluggard, for he toileth by day and by night and union hours are as naught. For many, many of the producer's dollars are tied up in those rolls of film, and the sooner the picture is released and begins bringing back a portion of those dollars, the sooner the producer will lose that haunted look and take an interest in his meals once more.
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