Interview: Pamela Martin Discusses the Importance of the Cut in Battle of the Sexes

Pamela Martin is no stranger to editing films set in the world of sports. She worked with David O. Russell in The Fighter. In the case of Battle of The Sexes, she worked with directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris not only to achieve a perfect cut of their film but also to capture best way to condense the legendary tennis battle between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs in 1973. Martin first watched the match itself, which lasted only three rounds with King winning in straight sets, and she edited the original footage down to hit all the highlights and key points while creating tension and drama. This early test edit of the real match would help Martin work with directors to create the perfect climactic set piece for their film.

We also talk about the importance of the opening sequence and how turning individual scenes into a montage worked surprisingly well to create a better flow for the film.

Read our conversation about the importance of the editor’s cut.

Where do you begin with discussions in terms of getting across the vision that Jon and Val wanted?

We talked about Robert Altman as a filmmaker and I rewatched Nashville. They wanted that feeling of being “dropped into the time.” They wanted it to feel like you were there and experiencing it at the time and it feels naturalistic that way. Robert Altman’s films had that quality.

Take the scene when the women sign the contracts for one dollar. There’s always something going on in the background and the foreground and you could choose to focus on any area, but the world around it feels alive. When she goes outside the glass, we hear what’s still going on in that crazy room. It was an informed stylistic choice. It really helped to look at Nashville.

We also talked about the political context of the film. We also watched D. A. Pennebaker’s Town Bloody Hall. It’s a documentary with Norman Mailer and some feminists on stage in New York City talking about feminism from different perspectives. In an early cut of the film, we opened with some clips of that film to set the stage for where the world was in that time. Ultimately, that didn’t end up in the film. That helped frame the context of what was happening in the world.

You mentioned the opening and cutting that clip from the opening. Talk about the choices that were made instead.

That was tough. A lot of scenes got moved around. It always had that impressionistic tennis playing at the very beginning. That was always the beginning of the film. There’s a scene that was meant to be way up the front of the film that ended up in the middle. There were a lot of scenes that got reordered and it was one of the toughest things in the film. We had to set up a lot of characters and had to set the story up quickly. We had to have enough of the character development to understand who these people were. We struggled a lot with how much you needed and how much you didn’t need.

Between that and the final match in terms of getting it right, that was the most challenging.

You also had to juggle the stories to care about them and following their arc throughout the film was like having to keep a few balls in the air.

The cut of the final game was important. Break down that process.

The match itself in the script was a few pages long and it was missing a few details of the actual match and I knew from cutting a sports film before that the event itself had to tell its own story and be substantial. What I did was I took the original match a month before they filmed and Jon and Val asked me to cut a ten-minute version of the match to inform what it could be.

For me, it was an exercise in how I was going to do the time transitions and when do you start jumping in time? How do you build energy that’s not as exciting as some other sports might be to watch?

First, I sat down with the tennis consultant Vince Spadea who was also Steve’s double in the film. I watched the entire 09:36 match with him and we talked about the drama within the match and what it meant when you break someone’s serve and why it’s important. With the hand cramp, that was never in the script, but that was also an important moment where the audience might think is it gamesmanship or does he really have a hand cramp. Both.

Rosie Casals and Howard Cosell made references to this as well. Howard was already scripted to be in the film. When I heard the match, I could not believe what was coming out of his mouth so between Gene, Howard, and Rosie they were having their own battle, so that was fascinating. When I put together this ten minute version, I used the real commentary throughout and I used it to build the excitement towards the end of the match. I also put temp music in.

What was great was that Jon and Val saw the potential. I pulled all the best plays in tennis because I actually play tennis myself so I know what it looks like. I built the story in this piece and they used it to inform themselves of what they were going to film.

It was great because that gave us this roadmap so Val and Jon could take the drama off the court moments that didn’t exist in the script, but they could also choreograph those amazing tennis points and film them.

They choreographed a lot and there was some free play and it was this large undertaking to put it together because I had to make these ridiculous charts about who was serving, who was on the left side, who was on the right, is Bobby wearing the jacket, is he not? Often it was a hunt where we needed Billie to win a point but she was on the near side, and she needed to be on the left side. It was tough and I went through every shot that they filmed.

All the tennis was shot at the end of the shoot. I spoke to Jon and Val and warned them that this could take weeks to put together. They said to me that I had already figured most of it out already in the cut and that was the jumping off point. It was a relief that I had done that ahead of time. I actually had the audio bed and the structure of how I initially wanted to put it together. We fine-tuned from there.

What you also managed to do with that cut was create tension as if we were there watching that game.

Yes. One of the best dramatic moments in that entire match is after the hand cramp she starts losing a lot of points. The commentators think he might have got that hand cramp to throw her off, and clearly she’s thrown and she loses her rhythm. Nicolas Britell’s score comes down as they go into that long point and you think she’s going to lose it because he gets this amazing return, but she reaches it and wins.

For me, it’s such a great dramatic moment during the match and those moments are created editorially.

We also had to decide when Priscilla returns and when to bring her into the fold, and how to show the others. Late in the game, we decided to cut to all our favorite chauvinists as she smashes each ball.

You’re cutting the game to create tension, combining that with the score and dialogue. What is that like for you?

They all work together. When I cut it, I cut it with temp sound effects. Nicholas moved into the editorial suite at a good time and it was very much back and forth. The score helps support the drama so much. Some of it is trial and error. That moment I mentioned where the music needed to come down and to keep the suspense that was an example of that. As the picture changed, Nicholas also worked to craft his score to support that. It was a dance together.

What about the technology? How has that changed to help you with what you do?

The technology overall makes my job easier. If I need to fix something or create a split screen that you don’t even know exist because I like the foreground but not the background, that’s very easy to do these days.

The match itself, because it takes so long to do those shots, we had to hand it over very early because it was months to get it to where it needed to be. It was a lower budget movie and so we had to be conscious and not go crazy about getting it where it needed to be with stuff that wasn’t going to end up being in the movie. We really had to be budget conscious and we also had to create the whole Astrodome.

I really also like the montage of the girls training.

Those were all written as separate scenes and were not written as a montage. The same with the radio station, that was not originally a montage. For a time, at the beginning, we tried to put Ted Tingling’s first scene in the montage, but we took it out of that. When those scenes went into a montage it really helped the film become more cohesive.

Some of the material in the training montage was shot for a completely different part of the film. There’s footage of Bobby in the locker room saying women belong in the kitchen, well that was to come before the Margaret Court match. Some of his commentary in that montage was all from the crazy locker room rant intended for another part of the film. They’re really fun and brought things to life.

One of my personal favorites is when Larry finds the bra in the hotel room, but there was some dialogue in the scene and you saw in the mirror that she saw him. She knew that he knew, and we felt it was better not to say much at all because they both acted it out so well and it was more uncomfortable to not verbalize it and just have this awkwardness while he’s wrapping her knee.

The performances were so strong we were able to scale back on some of the dialogue.

It’s amazing to see what she did for tennis and women especially with women’s tennis today. Her legacy and what she did.

Yes. In terms of the intention of the film, it’s so timely. I’m a woman. We have a lot of women on the crew. One of the directors is a woman and we all know men still make more money.

My son went to watch the film with his friends and they came home and he asked if women make the same as men now. He could not believe that the answer was no. It seems so long ago.

It felt timely and important and after the election which was quite depressing to some of us. It was very empowering to go back to work and have this feminist gem to work on. It felt like we were doing something meaningful.

Her story is one that needed to be told.

Exactly. Her story is at the crux of the feeling behind making it. Being able to find your voice, to make a difference and be who you are.