“Only Murders in the Building” Editor Matthew Barbato Blends on Season 4’s Complex Delights
Only Murders in the Building began as a cozy, non-sequitur-filled whodunit anchored by three immensely winning performances by Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez, and it’s never lost sight of that winning formula. Yet season over season, the series has become funnier, more ambitious, and more heartfelt, increasing the body count, laugh count, and guest star firepower while never losing sight of its chief pleasure: three lonely people who are impossibly, perfectly suited to become lifelong friends.
The wattage of the stars who rotate in and out of the series—including Meryl Streep, Nathan Lane, Tina Fey, Melissa McCarthy, and this past season, Eva Longoria, Zach Galifianakis, Eugene Levy, and Paul Rudd (again!)—could easily overpower a lesser creation and become a vehicle for glitzy cameos. Instead, OMITB effortlessly threads these superstars in and out of the various storylines while staying centered on the growing love (and co-dependence) of Charles-Haden Savage (Martin), Oliver Putnam (Short), and Mabel Mora (Gomez.)
Balancing the central trio, all these stars, and the murders that keep piling up season after season is not easy, despite the immense skill of the performers and the abundance of hilarious material created on set. Season four was especially tricky, incorporating a film-within-the-show, including found footage, and the first murder of someone close to the group, Charles’s longtime stunt double and best friend, Sazz Pataki (Jane Lynch, another major star who blends in perfectly). Editor Matthew Barbato was one of the key architects for keeping the peace between the series’ various elements and many moving pieces.
Barbato cut episode 3, “Two for the Road,” when Charlies, Oliver, and Mabel are paired off with the actors playing them in a movie being produced about their podcast (the movie is being produced by Bev Melon, naturally played by another perfectly cast star, Molly Shannon). Those actors are Levy, Galifianaksi, and Longoria playing themselves playing Charles, Oliver, and Mabel, respectively. In episode 6, “Blow-Up,” Barbato was tasked with structuring it as a found-footage film, which starts as a defense for innocent suspects and ends up being a murder documentary. In episode 9, “Escape From Planet Klongo,” Barbato began tying all the threads together as the gang gets closer to solving Sazz’s murder.
We spoke to Barbato about how he helped expand the world of Only Murders in the Building while never losing sight of the prickly, pervasively lovable trio at its center.
First things first—what was it like to get the initial call to join Only Murders in the Building in season one?
I was just an enormous Steve Martin fan as a kid. I listened to the records at home over and over again, I saw The Jerk in the theater, and I just loved everything Martin Short did. So it was really an exciting opportunity to work on a show with those two guys. I think because I had done two shows previous to this with big, talented people [Barbato has also edited Veep, The Good Place, and Lessons in Chemistry], I came in not quite as intimated as I might have been, which was nice so I could enjoy it a little bit more. It really was a highlight and a special opportunity to work on something with these guys.
What were your first impressions?
It was interesting in the first season when we started to work on it; you’re always trying to get your head around, ‘What is this show? What are the priorities?’ We’d discuss with the other editors that the show is these three things: a comedy, a mystery, and a character study about these three friends growing together. Balancing all of that was a little tricky, but we recognized that was the challenge. It’s been interesting to see how it’s developed over the course of four seasons because I think what’s happened is it’s still those things but amped up. That’s added more challenges to the balance.
What was it like to come back for season 4?
I couldn’t come back for seasons two and three, so I could only watch them as an audience member, and I was flabbergasted at how much bigger it got. I could see those three elements still being balanced, but it was creating this whole new thing that was getting bigger but maintaining its core value. I think that core value is their care for each other and those around them. Another balancing trick that the show does is the humor is based on slights and insults. Oliver constantly insults somebody, but there’s a foundation of love for one another, and these are lonely people who have been brought to get together. Once you’ve established that care they have for one another, and ultimately anybody who comes into their sphere who deserves it—even some people they think deserve it and turn out to be a murderer—you have the latitude to get away with some things.
Your first episode this season was episode 3, “Two for the Road,” which has our trio going off with the famous actors portraying them. Can you walk me through how you approached it?
Episode three starts to really punctuate the themes of identity and the self, as well as reflection and doppelgangers, and it breaks the whole thing open. From my standpoint, it was enormously fun to be able to cut these three mini-episodes in episode three, with all of our guys going off with really funny people to solve this murder. It was like three funny mysteries in one that get all tied together. At first, you put the pieces together and see how they play, and as I’m feeling out the scenes between our main cast and our guest stars, they’re each hilarious and dynamic, and then you add Richard Kind to the mix. There are days when you’re editing and you’re struggling, and you’re not having fun, and you’re trying to figure something out, and then there are days when you’re cutting together Eugene Levy, Steve Martin, and Richard Kind, and you can’t really mess it up. Then you have to find the best version of it. Eva Longoria brings so much to it, Zach Galifianakis…the challenge for this episode was, for me, making the Zach and Oliver story poignant. Oliver has such bravado, but then he’s a real person with feelings, and he gets his feelings hurt. Martin Short is so good at playing these kinds of buffoons while integrating a level of real emotion at just the right amount and in just the way. So, he gave us all this great material and you can sit there and absorb and feel both sorry for him and also laugh at him, and that’s a real treat.
How about episode 6, “Blow-Up,” which centers on the documentary the Brothers Sisters are making about the gang?
I think this episode was one of the show’s most ambitious and challenging episodes. It was definitely one of the most fun to edit. Although OMITB is always ambitious, this is the only episode that needs to tell a standard story, with all of the emotion, jokes, and clues that audiences expect, but told through the perspective of characters we don’t know much about and that we actually consider suspects. Of course, in trying to create a ‘found footage’ documentary, our amazing director and DP, Jessica Wu and Kyle Wullschlegger, had to find ways to cover the scenes with limited angles. They put a lot of planning and prep into how they would shoot it, and there were many discussions about how we would approach the editing and what tricks we could use to adjust the pace and coverage. Once the footage started coming in, I found myself wanting to keep it as raw and (seemingly) unedited as possible so it would feel like it wasn’t manipulated too much. But at the same time, I was using every trick I could think of to make sure we had the best possible performances and pacing that I could get. That meant that every scene had many invisible edits in it, even if they felt like a single shot. Even some static camera angles have multiple edits in them to adjust the pace. This episode is particularly gratifying for me because it allowed me much more opportunity than usual to contribute ideas, stretch the show’s use of editing, and add jokes. Like when the drone drops into the courtyard, I just knew it had almost to hit Uma, so we added her ADR reaction in there and it makes me laugh every time. And I’ve been hoping someone would recognize the Blue Velvet homage I snuck in by using the curtain to open the episode, but with the Brothers Sisters twist of it being a glitter curtain. There’s lots of stuff like that that was fun to add.
You know where this is heading—take us home with your work on episode 9, “Escape From Planet Klongo.”
I co-edited this episode with my excellent long-time editing assistant and now editor in his own right, Jack Cunningham. This episode turned out to be trickier than we expected and is a really good example of how we balance the elements of comedy, investigation, and emotion on OMITB. There were several areas where we needed to sacrifice comedy beats to portray some emotional and mystery storylines best. For instance, as the penultimate episode leading up to a major reveal, we were trying to focus on the investigation and build it to have the driving energy that comes with solving a murder case, but we kept getting sidetracked by the story between Charles and Oliver. Those scenes were great but slowed things down and kept us from tracking the mystery. But, once we realized that the Charles and Oliver story was what the episode was about, it became much easier to see how it all fits together. We also needed to trim some humor to keep the thread of Charles’ anger alive from one scene to the next. And then, toward the end, once Charles and Oliver reconcile and Ron Howard miraculously walks in, we really did have to focus on the investigation and start to build the tension toward our climax. For a while it wasn’t working because there were a lot of very funny jokes packed into the exchanges of information. So we started to trim out the humor and keep things focused on the investigation and I think it built to a better climactic and threatening reveal.
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Featured image: ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING – “Escape From Planet Klongo” – Seeking a critical clue, Charles, Oliver & Mabel must infiltrate a film set to get the real “background” on why Sazz was killed. (Disney/Patrick Harbron) MARTIN SHORT, STEVE MARTIN, SELENA GOMEZ
