By Bonnie Barber

As the editor of Tough Guys Don't Dance, Deborah McDermott spends her days (and nights) staring at what looks like a microfilm machine, huddled over film-cutting equipment in the darkness of a Provincetown motel room.

With little time to spend on the set mingling with the cast and fellow crew members, and hours of watching scene after scene in an attempt to get just the right cut, this may seem like the least glamorous of all movie jobs.

But McDermott enjoys working out of the two-room Holiday Inn headquarters with assistant editor Kate McDonald and apprentice editors Aaron Weisblatt and Monique Montgomery-Luddy. She tried her hand at filmmaking while a student at the San Francisco Art Institute College, but realized that she didn't care for the production aspect of making a movie.

"There are so many elements to deal with on the set," McDermott said.  "Whereas in the cutting room you're just dealing with this. This is the fun part.  When you see it all come together.  It's magical."

Since deciding that editing was how she would make her mark on the film world, McDermott has worked her magic on such films as Raiders of the Lost Ark, Return of the Jedi, Amadeus, F/X and Howard the Duck.

What is so astounding about a film editor's job is the amount of time it takes to put a film together.  Considering that most movies average about two hours in length and take two or three months to film, it's staggering to think  that McDermott worked for 11 months editing Amadeus, and for a year on Return of the Jedi.

Probably the hardest thing to accept though, is when a movie turns out to be a box office clunker after months of hard work.  Such was the case with Howard the Duck, which vanished four days after its release.  McDermott, who worked on Howard the Duck with McDonald, her Tough Guys Don't Dance assistant, said, she wasn't too distraught over the seven months of hard work she put into that dud.

"It was still a great experience because the work was so hard,' she said,  describing the difficulties of making a "duck" realistically blend in with his human co-stars.

McDermott is having no problems making the characters in Tough Guys Don't Dance blend together.  She views the action on one screen, while a second screen to her left is frozen on the frame she wants to splice.  When she finds the spot where she wants to splice, she is a whirlwind of motion.  Her hands fly to the reel of film and yank it loose.  She cuts the number of frames she determines aren't needed, tapes the film back together, and winds it back on the reel.  These same actions are then repeated with the sound reel.  The whole process takes about 30 seconds.
"Her hands really fly, don't they," producer Tom Luddy said admiringly.

Having quick hands is a necessity for McDermott.  Unlike the other films where she had almost a year to complete her work, McDermott has 14 weeks to finish editing Tough Guys Don't Dance.  

After filming wraps on December 13, McDermott will begin to edit the film in New York in January.  Thus, the reason she has been hard at work in Provincetown almost since filming began.

Even with a jump on her editing, the production team is ahead of McDermott and her crew by about two and a half weeks.   "It might take one day to shoot a scene," McDermott said, "but it takes three days to edit it."

On Saturday she was editing a scene involving Timothy Madden (Ryan O'Neal) and Meeks Wardley Hilby III (John Bedford-Lloyd) that was filmed at Pepe's Wharf Restaurant.  "I try not to think about how far behind I am," she said.  "They're ahead of me, let's put it that way."

But by editing on location, McDermott at least has a seven-week jump on her work.  Although an editor traditionally doesn't begin working on a movie until filming has wrapped, McDermott said that trend has been changing in recent years.

"More and more they (studios) are not waiting until the end ot begin editing," she said, citing money and scheduling as two reasons.  "The sooner you can get the movie completed the better."

McDermott said the other advantage to having an editor on the set is that it makes life easier for the director. " Having an editor on the set is a great advantage," she said. "If the director is not sure if a scene goes together or not, he can aske me to assemble it to see if works."

Although director Norman Mailer has been busy on the set, he manages to find time now and then to come in and watch the editing process, McDermott said.   However, he gives most of his editing input when the crew watches the dailies.  "Norman will point out which performance he likes (out of all the takes that have been shot), what he wants played up or played down and how he wants the scene put together," McDermott said.  "But once we're in New York he'll be with me every day."

Before the crew of McDonald, Weisblatt, and McDermott leave for New York, she hopes to have put the first assembly (a rough cut) of the film together.  "it would be wonderful if we had the first assembly done," McDermott said.  "Then when we get to New York we can begin fine-cutting it."

Once the film has bene fine o second cut, then the sound editors come in and add the dialogue and special effects.  "We want to have the picture as close to finished as possible before the sound people come in to build their tracks," McDermott said.

All of these months of hard work and 12-hour-plus days for editors, cast and crew alike should be on your local movie screen next fall.