Entertainment
‘One Battle After Another’s Ambitious Edit by Andy Jurgensen Sends Paul Thomas Anderson’s Film to the Oscars
Every great filmmaker will be the first to admit that it’s rarely a solo endeavor and that the strength of the story is served by the collaborators they are fortunate enough to have along for the ride. And in the most fortunate situations, they discover a collaborator who transforms struggle into triumph as they create an experience wholly unique, intentional, and entertaining. To say that Andy Jurgensen has been instrumental to the success of One Battle After Another and its auteur, Paul Thomas Anderson, is nothing less than an understatement. Ahead of Jurgensen’s first Academy Award nomination for Best Editing at this year’s ceremony, the fortuitous circumstances are not lost on him.
Jurgensen has worked with Anderson going back to his time as an editor’s assistant on movies like Inherent Vice and Phantom Thread. He became more involved in the filmmaker’s world through his editing work on musical projects with artists like Joanna Newsom, Haim, and Radiohead‘s Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood. Ever since a scheduling conflict opened the door to edit Licorice Pizza, Jurgensen has found himself among Anderson’s tight-knit group of collaborators on the verge of winning golden statues for their front-running film One Battle After Another, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Teyana Taylor, and Sean Penn.
For an editor with limited experience splicing feature-length projects on his own, it’s quite a feat for Jurgensen to come this close to glory among his Academy peers. With the awards ceremony just weeks away, Jurgensen sat with Collider to discuss his journey into Anderson’s inner circle, working on location to assemble this restless epic, and the secret weapon that is Maya Rudolph.
Andy Jurgensen and Paul Thomas Anderson’s First Projects Were With Music Legends
COLLIDER: Right before you jumped on, a Haim song came on. I was wondering if you edited [the music video] “Lost Track?” Because I couldn’t find the editing credit for that one.
ANDY JURGENSEN: Yeah, that was… I don’t want to say a scramble, but we were trying to figure out something for that. We had to put it together really quickly. And one of the things we wanted to, when we re-released Licorice Pizza in theaters — I think it was around the Oscars — we wanted to add this music video to it as a special thing. So… that was a rush to get it done. I remember, okay, we got to get it mixed so we can attach it to the DCP [theatrical file].
Luckily, it was very well contained and [Haim] is great. They like to go with the flow with anything and I think that’s why Paul likes to continue working with them, because they’re just so great. They’re part of the family now, you know? Because we’ve been doing their videos for so long, and then, of course, all three of them are in Licorice Pizza. It’s just nice seeing them at things, and it’s amazing to see their success too.
I want to go back to the beginning and how you started out as an assistant editor on Inherent Vice and then Phantom Thread. It was also around that time that you started editing music videos for Paul, especially a project with Radiohead and Thom [Yorke] and Jonny [Greenwood]. How did that transition happen?
JURGENSEN: Inherent Vice was the first… you know, his inner circle is very tight-knit and always has been. So I think he just was — I don’t want to say testing me, but it kind of was just getting my vibe. And then, because we do these music videos pretty quickly — and I think that’s the brilliance of them, to be honest — he doesn’t overlook them. We have to shoot it and turn it over really quickly. He just needed help to quickly, “see what this becomes.” The first ones we did were the Joanna Newsom videos, which were more experimental, if you remember that one.
He just wanted to play with what this could be, because they had shot a bunch of different things. He just called me, and he was like, “Hey, why don’t you come this weekend, and we’ll just use the Avid [editing system] that I’d already rented for [Phantom Thread]. Let’s see what we could do.” He maybe wanted a fresh set of eyes for it. Maybe he had seen the kind of things that I could do when I was an assistant editor, or things that I was bringing to the table.
I think it was just a way for us to work together. So it just kind of started on these smaller projects. I saw that through to the end and then the end of the projects got bigger and bigger and bigger. I remember we shot this Radiohead music video … that was a larger project that we got through. Then it just snowballed from there, and then we did this documentary, Junun, where he had all this footage that he had shot with Jonny in India. I was still an assistant editor. I was on some other movie, and I was coming in after work. We were working on it at night or on the weekends, and it was just fun… to see that evolve into the final product. I was able to pull so much information from the other editors that I had worked with, with Paul.
I was able to get that background knowledge and then put my own spin on it from my working with him on these music videos … You figure out your working relationship and a shorthand of how you communicate. At this point now, I almost know things that he’s going to gravitate towards, and he’s going to like, or I can just see even when he’s watching the footage. I can tell, “Okay, this is good or bad.” We’re not afraid to challenge each other, but we also know the sensibilities, especially with Paul being a director that has a vision. You want to be able to elevate that vision even higher.
Andy Jurgensen Didn’t Expect To Edit Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘Licorice Pizza’
I was going to ask about developing that cinematic language that you have established, and especially going into your first major picture that you edited with Licorice Pizza. Was that a crazy transition knowing that this was a big project? Paul Thomas Anderson movies are all very unique. You have to hit that level.
JURGENSEN: I know. I got lucky in a sense. I had been working on things for a long time. But it was COVID and Dylan [Tichenor], who had edited Phantom Thread, was on another movie. Also, music is such a big part of that movie as well, so not that it’s a music video, but there’s a musicality to the movie because there are so many needle drops.
I felt a little apprehensive. Am I going to be able to do this? One Battle After Another was daunting just to read the script, “This is going to be a crazy, epic movie.” The last movie was so different than this. I’ve never cut a car chase before or anything like that. I had, as an assistant, worked on some action-y movies, but it’s daunting to think about.
One thing I like about him is that even though he has a bigger budget, he still has a scrappy mentality. It’s a pretty small, core group on set when we’re doing bigger action things. There’s all the stunt people and there are all sorts of background [actors], but he really likes to keep it small and tight when we have more intimate scenes, it’s not like a huge production.
He likes to do things scrappy because that’s how he’s always done it. But we still will do our daily screenings, which he’s been doing forever. But this time we can take the projector with us to all of our locations instead of a screening room and have the luxuries of that.
But we still can do the thing that we’ve been doing for him for like 25 years. For me, I’ve been with him 12 years. Even with advice, we were doing these daily screenings, and I was sitting there and taking notes. It was the exact same, even for this movie.
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You mentioned being on set, so you’re … basically assembling the movie as you’re as you’re making it.
JURGENSEN: Yeah, usually the editor’s on at the beginning assembling, sometimes it’s on location, but sometimes it’s just back in L.A. or wherever the cutting rooms are, and they’re just sending the footage, and you’re just plugging away. For us, it’s more that the screenings are so important. Just seeing everything big, any technical issues.
I’ve talked in other interviews about when Paul has music that he’s piping in, as we’re watching takes, ideas from Jonny or for needle drops, or we are getting a feel for what a scene could be — just the initial feeling of it. And I’m taking notes of which takes are the best, things that we like or don’t like. Then during the day when they’re shooting, I’m starting to assemble stuff digitally.
We also had a break during the shoot. We had a two or three-month break because we were waiting for Benicio [del Toro]. So we actually got to build a bunch of sequences together and get a feeling for the pace and holes. The whole prologue was done-ish [as well as] a bunch of stuff at the high school. It’s so nice to be able to work with the director for a couple months, really focusing on the edit, getting music in, and then you are like, okay, these are the pieces that we still need to shoot. It’s a nice luxury.
Andy Jurgensen Carefully Crafted ‘One Battle After Another’s Epic Car Chase
You briefly mentioned the car chase and how you’d never really done something like that. I wanted to ask you about that because it was like an anti-car chase scene. The way it’s put together is not like what you would see in The Italian Job or Fast and Furious movies. What was the challenge in that?
JURGENSEN: We didn’t have a storyboard, but he had a shot list of things that he wanted. We had done tests on the road with some of the rigs and took time to figure out, especially the point of view shots, so you could see where the roads go up and down and the cars appear and disappear. We had to figure out how that was going to work and how it was most effective. We’d done a little bit of tests and then, basically, they sat down the road and figured out what time of day they would shoot the exterior stuff so that it could all look like the same time. Then they shot the interiors later in the day … so they could pump some lights in.
The mirrors were such an important element, being able to look back and to have to see that. It was a Hitchcockian car chase. There’s always that element of looking in the mirror and seeing something in the distance and seeing it coming closer and closer. What I ended up doing was — as we were getting the dailies in, we were watching it on the big screen, but I was kind of building it digitally — select from all the different perspectives so that we could review what we had. And we knew we had the best bits, and then we actually went back to the road at the end of our time being at that location so we could get a few little things that we still missed or just heighten it.
It was a matter of just laying it out, organizing it properly, making sure we had all the right elements. It started out really long. There was a structure to it. So we knew, but I was finding the best pieces, and then I kept going through it and tightening. “Oh, I probably could use this shot, this can replace these three shots.” Of course, when the music comes in, and you start getting the sound design, you add more to it and you can tweak things. I don’t do this on a lot of scenes, but this is something where I was shaving like two frames off, three frames off the head of this, just to get it a little bit tighter. Just so it felt perfect. Especially with Jonny’s music too. It has a propulsive beat to it. So you have to be mindful of the musicality of the scene and how it’s relating to the music and the sound. I was making tweaks even during the final mix.
A PTA script is going to balance levity and intention masterfully. And you’re that final touch in combining these elements. What is your philosophy when it comes to those moments and making sure one doesn’t outweigh the other?
JURGENSEN: I think it goes back to Paul’s sensibility and just knowing his movies, that it is always a little bit of a mix of genres. There always is humor in all of his movies. Phantom Thread is kind of a comedy, really — demented and all — and it’s a relationship, but there’s comedy elements too. So he always likes to lean into humor whenever he can. Everything’s so serious nowadays, it seems like. [Humor] is more effective to get a message across. It feels more real when you add some levity to it because that’s how we all live our lives.
If it was intense the entire time for two-and-a-half hours, it would just be exhausting. He knows, structurally, it has to build to something and then there has to be relief. There has to be a spot where the audience can take a breath for a second and come down from the high, so then you can build it up again, and then you can come down from that high again and then build up for the final sequence. It just makes it more exciting, it makes it more. You don’t know where it’s going to go. So, just having these moments, like the Christmas Adventurers scenes, act as these… the camera’s not moving. We’re just looking at close-ups. We can rest for a second, and then we can start to build up again. We had test screenings around the country. It was important to see how the tonal shifts worked and make sure people were still laughing and people were still getting it, and also find out where we could push the humor further. There were some good things that came out of the screenings because we were able to.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘One Battle After Another’ Was a Hugely Collaborative Experience
What was the sequence that you were most satisfied to crack? When you figured it out, and you were just like, “Oh, this is beautiful.”
JURGENSEN: The DNA test sequence is the one area that we did the most work in. The River Hill [chase scene] obviously took a lot of time, but that was always like that, and we were just tweaking and getting it perfect. But the DNA test, the way we saw it, it was a lot longer. So they are just sitting there waiting for the results. And they had their banter back and forth. For a while, it was its own scene that lasted a really long time, which was effective in one way. It’s scary. There’s the comedy elements too.
I don’t know, something wasn’t right. Actually, there was no music there too. So it was… it was a weird feel. What we ended up doing was trying to go through and really pare it down to its essentials. And then, using these cutaways of Danvers and D’Andra, where he’s like interrogating her. We [threw] that scene away for a while and weren’t using it. But we ended up bringing it back so we could reshape the DNA test. We even moved lines around in different orders, from how it was shot, to make it more of a tit-for-tat thing. Then we added this music from Jonny that has a military feel, and it’s like a ticking clock — so you can feel there’s something at stake.
Propulsive, but not in the same way as one of the chase scenes, but more as just creating tension. It took a lot of versions to figure that out and just to get it right. Luckily, I think we figured it out. I think we did. It just had to be substantial enough, but it couldn’t be too long because you’re so far into the movie at that point. It’s all leading up to the two of them meeting. So it’s got to be important and strong, but you can’t just glaze over it either.
You talk about these screenings and how it’s a close family, working with Jonny on the score a lot and the same actors who are involved. When you do those screenings and you’re getting feedback, who do you find a lot of really good feedback from other than from Paul?
JURGENSEN: That’s a really good question. Maya [Rudolph, Anderson’s partner], for sure. She’s always there in some of the early screenings. Especially for some of the humor. Paul has a set of friends and also our crew, like [director of photography Michael Baumann], our producers, everyone. It’s interesting.
Some directors… they hold things so close to them and they’re like, “No, my producer’s not going to see it until 10 weeks after.” Obviously we need enough time to make sure it’s decent. But Sara [Murphy], our producer, will come over and we’ll just say, “Okay, here’s half of the movie,” or, “Here’s sections.” And, of course, the actors are coming over at some points and they’re giving their input. It’s a combination of people that will be honest with us and are trusted, but then we also bring in people who don’t know anything. That’s nice too. That gives a nice objective point of of what things are confusing.
It’s a process and Paul’s been doing this for 30 years, so he has his way of doing it, and I’m not going to change that. You mentioned Jonny. I think Jonny is one of the first people we show the movie to as well, because he’s actually sending us music during production. Obviously, he’s reading the script and having discussions with Paul, and we’ll sometimes send him dailies of raw footage so he can get an idea of certain things. But he’s still in London. Paul really trusts him on just how things are working, especially when we cut in some of his songs. They just have a really good, creative relationship, and Jonny’s so unreal. He’s such an amazing musician. They have a similar sensibility of how they’re creative, because Jonny’s unconventional as well as Paul. They work well together.
One Battle After Another
- Release Date
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September 26, 2025
- Runtime
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162 minutes
- Director
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Paul Thomas Anderson
- Writers
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Paul Thomas Anderson, Thomas Pynchon