Picking Apart the Pickwick Triplets With “Only Murders in the Building” Emmy-Nom’d Editors Shelly Westerman and Payton Koch
Only Murders in the Building editors Shelly Westerman, ACE and Payton Koch were nominated for Emmys this year for Outstanding Picture Editing For A Single-Camera Comedy Series for the eighth episode of season three, “Sitzprobe,” with pressure mounting on the show-within-the-show on a critical rehearsal day. It’s one of the funniest episodes in a very, very funny series, with Steven Martin in peak neuroses mode while Meryl Streep, guest starring this season as the mysterious Loretta Durkin, delivers yet another classic Meryl Streep performance.
While the Emmy win ultimately went to editor Joanna Naugle for shepherding the year’s most singularly upsetting displays of a domestic disturbance in The Bear’s episode “Fishes,” Westerman and Koch can rest assured they delivered a tour de force performance in stringing together a huge amount of insanely delicious performances.
In an interview with The Credits, they discuss how they got started and how they put together the tongue-twister-filled “Which of the Pickwick Triplets Did It?” Steve Martin patter song in the Season Three Finale.
How did you get started as an editor?
Shelly Westerman: I started with a career at the Federal Reserve. I worked in computer operations for over 11 years, but I always had this urge to work in film. My parents were film nuts. I grew up with movies. I had a few friends who were working in editing. With my love of movies and photography and my ability to do computers, it was a natural fit. I was working at the Federal Reserve in Atlanta and knew I had to get to New York or Los Angeles to be serious about a career, so I transferred to the Fed in New York and then just joined every organization I could, including Film Independent. I volunteered at film festivals and made those connections. Someone told me where to intern at a post-production house in New York, so I took a leave of absence from work. I was in my mid-30s and interned for like six or seven weeks, learned some film skills, and someone offered me a job for $300 a week. I took it, turned in my notice to the Fed, and started my career on a very cool independent movie called Velvet Goldmine. We were holding 35mm film in our hands, cutting and slicing and cementing. So, I built my community in New York and then ended up transferring to L.A. in 2009.
Payton Koch: I always wanted to be an editor. Like Shelly, I was the computer guy in my family and always the tech kid. My grandpa is a producer. His name is Hawk Koch. So, I was immersed in the film industry as a child. I was on set sometimes and was always fascinated by it. I was always playing on iMovie and making little montages or little short films in my backyard. Then, as I approached college, I knew I wanted to go to Chapman, where I studied editing. Right when I graduated, I got a P.A. job on American Horror Story in the Ryan Murphy world. That’s when I met Shelly on my first day, and we both worked in that world for about five years or so. I climbed the ranks there as a PA, then became an apprentice editor, then an assistant, and then Shelly’s assistant. When Shelly got hired to cut on season two of Murders, she said, ”If you come with me as my assistant, we’ll cut everything together. Let’s get you co-editor credit, and we’ll see what happens.” So, I said, “Sign me up, no question.” We cut every single scene together, and I learned so much. She gave me the opportunity to show what I’m capable of and form a relationship with our producer, John Hoffman. I’ve been cutting my own episodes on season three, and then we just finished season four.
What are the qualities that make somebody a good editor?
SW: It’s being present in the world. Someone told me early on, “To be the best editor, go to the opera, dance performances, read books, watch movies, and then be very present in the world.” I’m always listening and looking at everything around me. I was at a cafe last week, and this woman was sitting outside. She walked back and forth a few times, and she had these wide sandals that were making a slapping sound on the sidewalk. I was fascinated with it. And I know I’ll use that in something at some point. It’s just being aware of everything around you, taking it all in, and trying to work from that place of instinct.
PK: Yeah, I totally agree. And I think it’s just a deep understanding of being human. At the core of it, we’re storytellers. Regardless of the technique or the software, it’s a human story. You want to come from a place of authenticity. Shelly talked about being out there, experiencing the world, absorbing it all, and taking it all in that transfers into the work because the way we work is feeling-based. It’s not necessarily “We need to go here because of X, Y, Z,” the technique. It’s when you feel you want to see that, or “I want to be with this character on this line.” That’s what’s so beautiful about this art form: we do get to be technical, but at the root, we all experience human life.
And Meryl Streep joined the cast in Season Three. Don’t you want to keep every shot of her?
PK: Yes, it’s true. My first episode of season three was episode three, when she did the song. That was my first solo editing venture away from Shelly, and I was so intimidated going into it just because I knew this was like the first musical number of the season, and it was Meryl Streep, and she was in so much of the episode. As I was getting the dailies, she hadn’t shot yet. So all her stuff was coming at the end. I was doing the whole episode, and I was just waiting for Meryl, waiting for Meryl, and then it was like, “Bam. Here’s all her scenes.” You are so captivated watching the dailies that you don’t need to cut the scene.
SW: When Payton showed me his first draft of “Look for the Light,” I was sobbing. I couldn’t take it. It was so good. Because of what he did, and it was Meryl, because it was his first solo episode, and it was like, oh, my God. It was just stunning. I had a scene in a later episode. She’s on stage and about to sing, and the cops are coming. And she starts to sing, and she stops and goes, oh, no, that’s not right. I thought it was real, and I was like, “Oh, no, somebody screwed up on stage.” Steve and Marty had the same reaction. It’s so truthful. But that was her performance. And she just loves acting with Marty. Some of the scenes get really long because they just keep going. It’s like, “Okay, well, I need to cut this down to a 30-minute show.”
Only Murders in the Building is a particular challenge because it’s not a comedy, mystery, romance, or musical. It’s all of those things together and a little bit heightened, but not too much! How do you keep the tone consistent?
PK: It starts in the writers’ room, truthfully. The writers do such a great job at keeping the story intertwined throughout the ups and downs of the drama, the comedy, and the mystery. It’s so well-balanced in the script, which makes it all the better when we go into it. But it is just like a fine line between where you’re keeping that suspense going if we’re tracking the killer or the mystery. You have to be careful. When you have the whole episode, and you watch it, you take a step back, and then you’re able to see, “Oh no, here, I need to lay into the comedy a bit more. We need to lighten this up a little bit so that it’s not so much emotional drama the whole episode.” because we are a comedy show at the heart.
SW: We do a lot of meetings early on. We’ll get the script and then have a tone meeting. The department heads are all there, and we’ll discuss it. And then we’ll have a production meeting as well. And then a table read. The table reads are the most informative, and Zoom has really helped with that process. A lot of homework happens beforehand, but also a lot of balancing creatively and collaboratively. It’s a lot of checking each other, being open to collaboration and notes from each other, and incorporating what everyone sees as funny or emotional.
Paul Rudd was clearly having a blast playing an awful person for a change.
SW: Such a blast. He’s become great friends with the showrunner, and I think he was already friends with Marty. And I remember at the end of Season Two when he did his big scene, he said, “I’m in a room with Steve, Marty, Andrea Martin. I don’t know that it gets any better than this. This is the height of my comedy career.”
We have to talk about the triplet song. I don’t know who had a harder job, the person singing it, or the person editing that incredible scene.
SW: Or the people writing the song. Oh, my goodness. The lyrics are crazy. They have a fabulous music team. Ian Eisendrath is their musical producer. You get the script, and you see the split screens with that song, and you’re like, oh no! Those screens are tricky. We had great directors, Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, who I actually had been their assistant editor in New York back in the day on a film called The Nanny Diaries. To reconnect with them now in L.A., as their editor gave us a shorthand immediately. Bob had a plan early on, which was brilliant because he had an editing background to map it out with title cards before we shot so that we could figure out how to frame the images and what we wanted to see. So we, all of us, Payton and I, our assistant, Diana Hiatt, and Jamie Clark, dug in as a team and started to create the sequence with title cards, and then Diama had the great idea to color-code them for character, so you could see what character was moving across the screen. So they had a map of where they were going. Four scenes were going on simultaneously while Steve Martin was doing the song. We would get the footage piece by piece, then start plugging it into our little squares and continue refining it. We could plug stuff in and say, “Okay, this works, this is good, we can go to this one or swap that one.”
PK: Because of the shorthand teamwork with Shelly, pulling off that sequence was so much easier than it could have been, and it just came out so great. And people are so impressed with how Steve performed it, which we are too, watching him in the dailies do that was so amazing,
Featured image: Only Murders in the Building — “Sitzprobe” – Episode 308 — On the day of the show’s most critical rehearsal, the pressure mounts. A familiar official returns to upend the case, Loretta’s complex past threatens to upend all else and Charles must finally sing his number without losing his marbles. Jonathan (Jason Veasey) and Charles (Steve Martin), shown. (Photo by: Patrick Harbron/Hulu)
