I’m sorry that we keep rhapsodising on this – no pun intended – but I consider it a matter of profound civilisational import: Bohemian Rhapsody, whether or not you thought it was a good movie, absolutely did not deserve the Oscar for Best Editing. Come now. We should all be able to agree on that, and if we can’t then this whole ‘democracy’ thing is officially shot.
Well, it turns out that the editor himself is mildly embarrassed by at least some of the movie. And by ‘some’, we do indeed mean the clip that went viral just before the Oscars:
People, actual fucking people, are watching scene after scene like this and are saying “bruuuh! best. movie. of. the. year”?
This is objectively bad. Someone with no idea about editing will notice it. My brain is on fire thinking that this is an OSCAR NOMINATED MOVIE! FUCK! pic.twitter.com/QVDCxe2iaf— Pramit (@pramitheus) January 26, 2019
In an interview with The Washington Post, editor John Ottman was shown the clip and asked what he reckoned about it. “Oh, my God! Wow,” Ottman responded. “I didn’t know about that, but I know why that’s out there.”
He went on to clarify that the bizarre cuts in this scene are because it was part of the shots done by Dexter Fletcher after the departure of credited director Bryan Singer.
It was one of the scenes shot by Fletcher in the post-Singer home stretch. Fletcher mostly picked up Freddie’s relationship moments, along with the origination of “We Will Rock You” and “Another One Bites the Dust.” But the story line also got reordered a bit, and dialogue in the original meeting between the band and manager John Reid no longer made sense.
Basically, he says that while the new director slowed down a lot of the earlier scenes because of positive audience feedback, they didn’t do it with this one. As per the Post:
Ottman was under pressure to make the film’s first act move swiftly, but test audiences never got bored and actually wanted more of the band’s early days. So he went back and slowed those scenes down and let them breathe more — but he didn’t have time to do so with that meeting.
Ottman says that if they ever do an extended cut, he’d fix that scene. “Whenever I see it, I want to put a bag over my head.”
“Because that’s not my aesthetic. If there’s ever an extended version of the film where I can put a couple scenes back, I will recut that scene!”
There you go. He hates it too.
