‘How To Blow Up A Pipeline’ Editor Daniel Garber on Cutting to Maximize Tension and Character Development

When Independent Spirit Awards nominee Daniel Garber was asked by director Daniel Goldhaber to edit How To Blow Up A Pipeline, the film’s topic–a small group of climate crusaders seeking to shed explosive light on the subject of global warming–was a feature, not a bug. The film is one of the most radical motion pictures to be released last year, but it’s also bold enough to ask the toughest of tough questions: “What is the value of commerce compared to lives?”

Garber, who also edited Goldhaber’s first film Cam (seek it out), was drawn to the film’s subject matter (based on a non-fiction book by Andreas Malm), which is wrapped inside of a thriller that also makes significant time to go into each of the crew’s lives and motivations, while delivering the goods in terms of tension and drama. Garber’s sharp and incisive cutting helps the film manage its present day/flashback structure with unusual finesse. The push/pull of the film’s competing tensions (action/character study) plays out over a tight 100 minutes that are not only entertaining, but incredibly thought-provoking.

In our conversation, Daniel talks about how he edited the film’s back and forth nature (pushing the tension, and then reeling it back), while also discussing the film’s fascinating approach to the use of music in relation to the edit.

Awards Daily: How to Blow Up a Pipeline is a pretty radical project. I remember when I saw it and reviewed it, I was surprised by how strongly it held to its convictions. It doesn’t soften at the end. Were you drawn to the material for that reason, or did it give you pause?

Daniel Garber: I think it’s impossible to avoid the ‘whoa’ factor. It’s definitely an attention grabbing sort of subject, but I was definitely drawn to the material in part because climate change is a reality that many people my age are really concerned about, and many people younger than me have just grown up with it as their reality for their entire lives. I think that there is this kind of frustration building among many people around what to do about climate change and a lot of the incremental progress, and attempting to put our faith in the institutions that are supposed to protect us has ultimately led to a lot of disappointment for a lot of people.

When Jordan Sjol, one of the writers of the film, first came across the book How to Blow Up a Pipeline, he recommended it to Daniel Goldhaber, the director, who recommended it in turn to me and to Ariela (Barer), the other writer and star of the film. I just devoured the book in an afternoon because I was so riveted. I think part of what was so compelling about it to me was that it made a really interesting historical case for why these tactics actually could succeed and how we can draw a moral distinction between harming people and inflicting damage on infrastructure. And those are two very different things. The climate crisis affects humans across the globe and the tactics that Andreas (Malm) is advocating for are mostly focused on property. It’s a really rousing call to get us to question why we accord such value to property, when the stakes are human life across the globe. 

Awards Daily: I interviewed Ethan Hawke a few years ago for The Good Lord Bird in which he played John Brown, the famous abolitionist. The general consensus around John Brown was that he was somewhat of a crazy person. I asked Ethan about what it’s like to be in this crazy person’s head and he replied (paraphrased) if you think about it, slavery is insanity and sometimes the only response to insanity is something of a similar extreme. Does that kind of resonate with you in regards to the film? 

Daniel Garber: Yeah, absolutely. I don’t know about sanity or insanity. I feel like the way we organize society may seem insane at times, when taken in the aggregate, but I think it emerges from a lot of people’s individual decisions and deeply entrenched culture. Fossil fuels brought us a lot of things that people liked, and a lot of people are very attached to many of the things that fossil fuels have done to improve their lives. I think it’s very difficult for people to imagine a world that doesn’t involve fossil fuels, where we use alternative energy. So, it may seem like a form of insanity to question the fundamental underpinnings of our economy right now, but I think that that’s something that we absolutely need to do. I think that part of the point of storytelling is to expand people’s imagination, to get them to question the way that things are, and basically to draw attention to the way that all of these things are historically contingent. The way that we’ve chosen to organize things is based on a series of historical developments. It’s not like nature has forced us to organize society in this way. I think it’s very interesting that Ethan would talk about things in that way. Of course, he also was in First Reformed, which is an incredible and radical film. I think that that was also one of the chief inspirations for us, going into this project.

Awards Daily: Really? Can you tell me a little bit more about that? 

Daniel Garber: I guess I shouldn’t say too much as somebody who’s not one of the three writers on the film, but I think there’s a growing genre of films that are dealing with the climate crisis and the sense of hopelessness in the face of what seems like certain doom. First Reformed was just such an incredible look at one man’s reckoning with his own values and what his individual actions have to do with this larger picture. I mean obviously in so many ways, like stylistically and in terms of genre, it’s so different, but I think that at its core it’s such an inspiring film. 

Awards Daily: Being a person who was born in an Eastern Kentucky coal mining town, my family, my ancestors were and are very tied to the fossil fuels. I’ve lost family members to black lung at ages far too young. You’re right, it is very hard for people to see past the way that we’ve always lived to another possibility.

Daniel Garber: And that really speaks to the human toll of all of this. This is an extractive industry that requires the labor of many people, and people pay very dearly for our ability to keep the lights on in the way that we’ve chosen to.

Awards Daily: The film is clearly a thriller, but it’s a thriller that will take you to the brink of the next big thing that’s going to happen, and then cut away and flashback to develop character. It’s hard to do that and not lose the flow and the pulse of the film. How did you try to manage that process with director Daniel Goldhaber?

Daniel Garber: You’re absolutely right. It was an incredibly difficult process to get that exactly right. I do have to give a lot of credit to all three of our writers who did such an incredible job of incorporating the flashback structure into the script itself. That was something that was already part of the architecture of the film beforehand. I remember reading the script and thinking, there’s a significant chance, I didn’t think it was certain, but I think that there’s a non-zero chance that this just isn’t going to work, that this structure is going to be something that we’ll have to fundamentally rethink. Maybe the flashbacks are in the wrong order. Maybe some of them will need to be combined. Maybe something will move to the beginning. And I really had no idea, because there were just so many different moving parts. Even though this entire operation was pulled off like a heist, quite rapidly, the writers had thought through all of these decisions so carefully. The exact moments the flashbacks come, and the information that you’re given in each of those flashbacks, was so carefully calibrated even before they started shooting.

Of course, that was stuff that we continued to refine through the course of the edit, but I think that they really set us up for success in that way. The heart of the film is the people. The heart of the film is all these individual people’s reasons for engaging in this struggle, and the larger political ideas that we’re trying to bring in from Malm’s book. But, you can’t just tell people that that’s what the movie is about right off the bat. The thriller is almost like a Trojan horse–a way of getting people excited. At the moment when they really most want to have an answer to the question of what’s going to happen next, are they going to pull it off, are they going to get caught, that’s when you pull them back from the edge and give them even more depth to the characters. That actually helps, going forward, with feeling the stakes as the main action in the present tense continues. Getting the exact balance, like making sure that we weren’t overstaying our welcome in the flashbacks, and that we were actually building tension effectively into the flashbacks, was one of the main tasks of the edit and something that we worked through pretty exhaustively. 

Awards Daily: It would be easier to have made this film in a way where everybody’s reasonings for wanting to blow up the pipeline are fairly homogenous, but while they are related, they are also very specific. For one person, it’s more about his land. For other characters, it’s about health. And then one character is kind of an academic. They’re all concerned about the same thing, but how they’re coming at it is a little bit different.  Can you talk about editing the film to make sure each perspective was shown? 

Daniel Garber: In some ways, it wasn’t so hard because this is just such an incredible cast. These are all such gifted actors, and they come from such wildly different backgrounds–both in their personal lives and in terms of their training as well. Jayme Lawson, for instance, is a Juilliard trained actor. She’s incredibly precise. Then Lukas Gage is like this bolt of energy and entropy where he was ad libbing a ton of the time and I used a lot of his improvisations in the film. Forrest Goodluck, meanwhile, was bringing so much of his personal experience to the film. When they shot in North Dakota, it was actually at Forrest’s request, because he has family connections to the place that they were shooting. Everybody was bringing completely different approaches to acting and elements of themselves to it. In that way, the editing process was in so many ways about trying to bring out the sort of innate characteristics of their performances.

Then there is this incredible thing that happens too when you put all of these young and charismatic people together in a room. The ensemble, as a whole, starts to develop its own voice and at certain times it felt like there was a limit to what could be done in direction. They really just started to move as an entity. And that was true in both the action scenes, where the blocking emerged organically from where everybody started at the beginning of the scene, and everybody knowing what their jobs were, and then also in a lot of the dialogue scenes. For instance, there’s this conversation about terrorism that happens late at night where everybody’s sort of debating, like, is what we’re doing terrorism? There’s just this incredible vivacity to all of that that comes from all of their individual perspectives that they’re just committing 100%.

Awards Daily: This is a movie about running out of time on two levels. The story is about how much time they have to complete the task. Everything has to be precise. And then it’s also, of course, about running out of time as human existence? Were you thinking in your head that pacing has to match this sort of tension, to consistently be at this level of anxiety? 

Daniel Garber: That’s a great point. That sort of speaks to what was so appealing at the outset, too, about using a heist thriller as the genre conceit for the film, because there is always this sense of urgency and so many things that can go wrong. And it’s always about collective action. It’s about a bunch of people coming together to do something under time constraints. In a way, that sort of genre conceit so perfectly mirrors what’s happening in the world as a whole. I don’t know that I was thinking about that moment to moment while editing the film, but I do think that the demands of the genre and getting people as engaged as possible so that we can also do the character development work that I was talking about, was always our guiding principle. Like, how can we maximize the tension throughout the film? 

Awards Daily: In your editing, you seem to emphasize what I would call sharp cutting over flashiness. The cuts are right on point, but they aren’t trying to tell you how movie-like they are.

Daniel Garber: I love how you put that. I always struggle to talk about this aspect of my work, but I think that’s sort of how I like to approach things. I don’t try to be flashy in the editing because, and maybe this comes from my background in doing documentary as well, but the sense is that I’m really trying to watch the images carefully. I think that if you do less in the edit and basically try to bring out what is fundamentally interesting, gauging, tension building, compelling about performances within the frame, you’re ultimately going to do more to serve the story by doing less sometimes than by trying to really rapidly draw attention to the role of the editor in the process. A lot of it was just about getting the timing right and very carefully just choosing the moments where it felt like the images were kind of leaping off the screen. 

Awards Daily: For me, and probably for a lot of people, the real pulse-pounding sequence is the attaching of the bomb to the pipeline and the strap breaking. All of that has to be done in such a way that it feels frantic, almost confusing, but not alienating.

Daniel Garber: It’s really tough to strike the exact right balance because actually sometimes what’s necessary is to withhold information to leave people a little bit confused. Not knowing where the next threat is coming from or not knowing where certain members of the party are can sometimes be a real source of concern and anxiety for the audience. I think that a lot of what I was discovering was that it’s much more about foregrounding people’s emotional responses to what’s happening than actually making sure that the audience literally understands every single second what’s happening. That scene where disaster strikes and injury comes for one of the members of the party was one of the most difficult scenes, and that is actually a place where you’re basically trying to withhold information from the audience. You want to know what has happened, has anyone actually been injured, what is this going to mean for the rest of the operation? And that leads you directly into this flashback that prevents you from getting the answer that you so badly want. That’s actually kind of a perfect encapsulation of the sort of delicate balancing act that we were doing.

Awards Daily: You have a cut to a shot glass with a little bit of liquor in it, jiggling. That cut has to be precise and held for just the right amount of time to carry out the effect.

Daniel Garber: The whole idea behind that was creating a sense of the action sort of rippling outward. The sense that this is a moment that is going to be felt by other people. Maybe not in this moment, or it may not immediately burst onto the news, but that it is something that is going to grab attention, and creating a sense of uncertainty around how people are going to react to it. Is this going to be a bad thing for the crew, basically? Getting that cut exactly right was a little bit delicate because there’s kind of a pause there too. It’s not an action that happens immediately, but you’re allowed to have this moment of suspense. It’s like you’re in free fall, waiting for something to happen. And then the thing that happens is actually relatively subtle. I found that very compelling in a way that’s sort of ineffable. I’m often going for that cut where the audience really wants something and they’re surprised by what they find on the other end.

Awards Daily: And then you of course cut to the face of Jake Weary, who has to maintain a certain level of composure, and nail that moment, that glass jiggling, you have to go from that to his face and we have to buy that he could hold that expression, which is a testament to the performance as much as anything. 

Daniel Garber: Jake is an incredible actor too. And I think that his performance as Dwayne is one of the things that really holds that section of the movie together. Heist movies always have this third act that is about seeing if you can actually get away with it. Only the first couple of parts of the movie are about actually pulling off whatever the heist is, the rest of it is whether they are going to get caught or not. That immediately becomes such a tense scene because it raises this question. He’s among all of these people who have no idea what’s going on. They are going to find out pretty soon what he’s been up to and what’s going to happen to him.

Awards Daily: As I was watching the movie, the score reminded me almost of a John Carpenter film. Can you talk about editing to that score, because it’s also a tension raiser, the way it works.

Daniel Garber: I’m so glad you asked about this because my collaboration with our composer Gavin Brivik is one of my favorite aspects of the movie. Gavin is an incredibly talented composer and someone I’ve worked with before because he also scored Daniel Goldhaber’s first feature Cam, which I edited. Gavin is really constantly pushing himself in as many ways as possible. Daniel is also really skilled at bringing out of Gavin the most he can possibly give. In this case, Gavin actually went down to New Mexico where they were shooting and took a bunch of samples of various materials around set, like banging on oil drums and recording the desert. A lot of those samples made their way into the score. He was listening to a lot of very synth heavy scores. I don’t know specifically if he was listening to John Carpenter’s scores, but that would totally make sense.

I know that he was listening to some Tangerine Dream, for instance. I think Michael Mann’s movies were, in general, such a big inspiration for us. So Gavin was kind of finding ways to combine these more artificial synthy elements with these instruments that he essentially created from all of the samples that he recorded, and just made this sort of organic really pulse-pounding kind of score. One of the great things about working with Gavin is that he was able to come on so early that I could send him sequences and he could send over ideas pretty shortly thereafter. Eventually I was cutting pretty tightly to the music, which is a really rare gift. Not everybody gets to work with the composer from basically day one of the edit. Gavin also pulled off some really incredible feats. The beginning of day two in present tense in the movie, there’s this incredible 11 minute cue that he constructed. To have that amount of continuous music for 11 minutes and have it not get boring or feel repetitive and feel so perfectly tied to the editing is just such an incredible feat on his part. 

Awards Daily: It’s funny that you mentioned Michael Mann, because I watched Thief about three weeks ago, for maybe the 20th time, which Tangerine Dream scored. I actually was going to ask if Mann was an inspiration, but I thought I might have just been projecting my love for his work onto yours. (Laughs)

Daniel Garber: Not at all. I actually watched Thief repeatedly when I was in the early days of the edit. I find that a lot of the time at the very beginning of editing anything, I just have a couple of weeks where I’m banging my head against the wall. And I’m like, how does anyone ever do this job? And then things start to flow. But one of the things that I use to help dislodge my creative block there was just watching the opening of Thief on repeat. It was very helpful. 

Awards Daily: You and Daniel have worked together before. This project quietly built steam and has gotten a lot of attention. This feels like it could become a calling card for you going forward. One, are you and Daniel thinking about working together again? And two, do you feel a certain opening of doors happening for you?

Daniel Garber: Well, I would love to work with Daniel again. He’s an old friend and somebody I basically learned to make movies with, so I think that we’ll always have this very special bond. In terms of opening doors, it’s interesting because I emerged from editing this film into a strike and then I was working on a documentary. I’ve actually sort of had my sights focused elsewhere, but I’m hoping that going into 2024, this will have some momentum. I would love to do another fiction film, especially something that has this kind of combination of entertainment value and real world stakes.