Editor Kirk Baxter Thrived on Mank’s Dialogue-Heavy Sequences

Netflix’s Mank marks editor Kirk Baxter’s fifth cinematic collaboration with director David Fincher. It’s a collaboration that proved extremely rewarding for the editor who received two Academy Awards for his work with Fincher — 2010’s The Social Network and 2011’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. In fact, Baxter and then co-editor Angus Wall achieved an incredibly rare feat with their Dragon Tattoo win given its lack of a Best Picture nomination.

That successful collaborative history with Fincher stems from Baxter’s willingness to accept feedback and push his work to be the best it can be.

“I don’t seek to be finished, and I remain curious with the material. I don’t work from a defensive standpoint. I don’t have this protectionist quality about the work I’ve done,” Baxter explained when ruminating on his partnership with Fincher. “I just show the work, and if he’s into it, he’s into it. If he’s got a way that he thinks it can be improved, then I’m into that. That’s the relationship. It’s a lot of back and forth, and I’m really comfortable doing it.”

When approaching Mank, Baxter embraced the unique differences that the 1930’s-set film would offer. Gone is the modern approach to storytelling from The Social Network, Dragon Tattoo, or their last collaboration, Gone Girl.

Instead, Baxter’s editing needed to highlight Mank’s heavy dialogue sequences. Based on the Jack Fincher screenplay, Mank offers the rapid fire, back-and-forth approach to dialogue that the greatest movies of Hollywood’s early decades featured, Citizen Kane among them.

The challenge to balance all of the dialogue-heavy sequences was something that appealed to Baxter the most.

“I feel really comfortable in complex dialogue scenes with a lot of people put in the same space, ones that have a lot of coverage, a lot of talking a lot of places to cut. The deeper and more complex it is, the more I enjoy it,” Baxter remarked.

When talking to an expert editor who handles the work of David Fincher, one of the first questions that springs to mind is how he handles Fincher’s love of multiple takes. Particularly given the dialogue-heavy nature of the script.

It’s a task that initially seems insurmountable, but Baxter takes it all in stride.

Baxter typically starts editing Fincher’s films on day two of production, and his initial approach involves an extensive amount of organization of the available footage. Generally, the right approach eventually materializes, maybe after Baxter takes three or four different approaches to the material. Louis B. Mayer’s birthday party sequence, in particular, could have been assembled any number of ways between focusing on individuals versus wider shots.

Baxter finds the best takes typically illuminates themselves with a close collaboration with Fincher.

“I also like showing David all these different paths and options, and he enjoys that very much as well. He’s fast to make choices, but it’s the sharing of how you came to a conclusion that, I think, takes the edge away,” Baxter shared. “He knows that you’ve churned the soil, that you’ve explored. Not just sending a cut which could make him wonder how I came to that conclusion. There’s a method of how I distill information with David to keep him in lockstep, so that we’re together on where we conclude.”

Unlike other members of the Mank below the line team, Baxter didn’t perform an extensive amount of research into films of the 1930s and 1940s when determining how to shape the film. That was something that initially surprised me, but as Baxter explained it, it makes perfect sense.

If he were to adhere to the editing rhythms of early Hollywood cinema, then he would have used a lot of master shots and a lot of 50/50 shots between actors delivering dialogue. But Fincher’s way of shooting mandates the more modern approach to editing. Fincher provides extensive coverage on any given scene — multiple perspectives or multiple angles.

The wealth of material begs for an editor to create the best take possible, generally flying in the face of classic editing styles.

“A lot of David’s dynamic of shooting is coverage, and when you got the coverage, you can dissect performance into using the best pieces,” Baxter explained. “You can dictate the pace. You can control the tempo. That’s the sport of editing. That’s the part that I love. That’s why I love working with Fincher because I’ve got all the tools to manipulate the f*** out of everything.”