Posted in: Horror, Interview, Movies, New Line Cinema, Warner Bros | Tagged: Brett W. Bachman, companion, Josh Ethier, New Line Cinema, Warner Bros

Companion Editors on Synergy & Post-Strike Changes in Dark Comedy

Companion editors Brett W. Bachman and Josh Ethier spoke to Bleeding Cool about adapting to director Drew Hancock's changes on Companion.

Editors Brett W. Bachman and Josh Ethier have a wealth of experience working on horror, thrillers, and dark comedies to help bring writer and director Drew Hancock's vision to life in Warner Bros & New Line's Companion. The film follows a couple (Sophie Thatcher and Jack Quaid) on a weekend getaway with friends at a remote cabin, which unravels into chaos after a revelation that one of the guests is a companion robot. Bachman and Ethier spoke to Bleeding Cool about their familiarity with the film's producers, how it had farcical elements like a Coen Brothers project, and how Ethier took over editing to help complete the film.

Companion Editors Brett W. Bachman and Josh Ethier on Bringing Drew Hancock's Dark Comedy Sci-Fi to Life

Bleeding Cool: How did you both get involved with 'Companion?'

Bachman: I have a relationship with the producers (J.D Lifshitz and Ralph Margules). We both do. I came onboard a movie that they did called 'The Vigil' (2019) several years ago, and Josh was on their first-ever film, I believe.

Ethier: Their first film, 'Contracted' (2013), was probably about 12 years ago, so I also knew the guys.

Bachman: They sent me a script and asked me to meet with Drew. I was interested in it, and I chatted with him after reading the script, which was one of my favorite things I've read recently. It was original, full of twists and turns, and entertaining, and the meeting with Drew went well. I got a sense of the vibe and the tone he was looking for, and we were up and running within a month or two after that.

What was it like helping bring Drew's vision to the screen, and how do you describe working with him creatively compared to other directors?

Bachman: When Drew and I first talked about 'Companion,' one of the things that surprised me about the script was how funny it was. It was buoyant, fun, and entertaining, and one of the things I love to do when I come on board a project is to chat with the director about their intent, like "What are you looking for an audience to feel? What are the themes you're looking to explore and communicate?" One of the first things I asked Drew to talk to me about was the movie's tone like, "How silly is this thing?"

[Drew] said, "On a scale from 0 to 10, I imagine this movie is like a -100 on the silliness scale," which I thought was quite surprising given how fun the script was. We entered production and Drew had a vision for the movie that was controlled. I don't know if "cold" is the right word because it has farcical elements throughout the plot, but he is thinking of something dry, like an early Coen brothers' work. As we were getting into footage with Harvey Guillén and Rupert Friend, and you get someone with as much charisma as Jack and Sophie, we sensed that the performances wanted to go a little bit bigger and a bit lighter.

I found myself restraining a little bit of these in this initial slide into something that's a little bit more, for lack of a better word, "fun" and trying to find something that's a little bit more precise, more procedural, and a little bit more science fiction. What would you call it? A traditional science fiction tone. It wasn't until we got shut down for the strike. We were interrupted for a few weeks; we took some time away from the project, and Drew called me up. Once it was clear the strike was going to come to an end, we were coming back to the project.

[Drew] was like, "I've been showing the movie to a lot of people. When you come back, I want to explore a different avenue for the movie, something that's a bit lusher and a bit more naturally tongue-in-cheek, but it allows itself to have more fun. We could make things a bit broader. We can lean into a lot more of the humorous elements we're getting on set we're skimming away from and want the audience to have a good time with it." That opened the door for a lot of possibilities and performances we hadn't been exploring previously. We reconfigured the entire idea of what the score of the movie was going to be, and we brought on a great music supervisor, Rob Lowry, who began to entertain these ideas of 1960s love songs that would counter a lot of the darkness and a lot more of the aggressive tonal components in the film to lift everything.
That was a fun and invigorating process because it allowed the movie to do something different because the footage didn't necessarily communicate off the bat, but having these possibilities to explore things with music and sound effects brought a new layer to the movie I had started to investigate. I had to leave about six weeks through the set for the director's cut for paternity leave. My wife ended up having twins, and that's when Josh came aboard; he came up with this fun, exciting process where he began to continue to explore these fun discoveries from a tall perspective, but also from a structural perspective.

Ethier: When Brett had to take his paternity leave, I clicked immediately with Drew. We both had a good knowledge of films, and it was an enjoyable experience sitting there talking about movies in the editing room. Thankfully, Brett and he had done so much work trying to establish the tone of the film and how it was talking to the audience. I continued that when Brett took off to have his boys, and I was having fun. It was also fun for Drew because he had a new editor and a whole new department head in there who hadn't been part of the conversation earlier on. I wasn't sure what they had done or what avenues they had tried. He was open to me giving any ideas and trying anything I had. Most of the time, we chipped away at what Brett and he discovered, which was the voice of the movie with this dry humor and a lot of thrilling and funny elements around it. The film has its specific voice, which was prominent even in those early cuts I saw.

Bachman: Drew was an ideal collaborator in the sense he talked to most of the writers and most department heads. You're looking for someone who has that clarity of vision and a strong sense of what they want the movie to be in this career, this passion. There's discipline, but he's an open collaborator, so he welcomes feedback. He's the best ideas kind of win guy, and the room was playful and collaborative. Every single day felt like we were on the verge of discovering something, whether it be different needle drops, intercuts, making montages, or removing scenes. It was an open process I wish to recreate in all my future movies.

Ethier: It was never stressful. It was always ideas driving things forward, and whoever had the best idea, would pursue it as far as we could to make sure we were making the best movie possible.

Companion, which also stars Lukas Gage and Megan Suri, is currently in theaters.

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