The Editing Process and the Scenes That Got Deleted
“Easy, easy, easy.”
That’s how Debra Chiate describes her experience editing Clueless, an endeavor that, according to Chiate, took roughly eight months and began while production was still under way. Chiate, who previously worked with Amy Heckerling on a short film when Heckerling was studying at the American Film Institute, as well as both of the Look Who’s Talking movies, says she was cutting scenes and “keeping up pretty much to camera” as filming chugged along. She then worked alongside Heckerling to shape the movie as a whole once production wrapped. It all went so well, she says, because she and Heckerling share a common sensibility.
“We think similarly,” Chiate says in a New York accent nearly as thick as her collaborator’s. “We’re both musically driven. We have the same taste in a lot of things.”
Chiate and Heckerling also agreed that for a breezy comedy like Clueless to work, it needed to be properly paced. That meant condensing some scenes and losing others. No hugely significant plot points, conversations, or events were removed, but some “scenelets,” as Heckerling calls them, did wind up on the cutting room floor.
Amy Heckerling, writer-director: For this movie, I had all the material that I wanted. I didn’t have a lot of extra stuff. It was all very, “Here it is, now let’s put it together.” The only variable was the timing and spacing for voice work, which we wouldn’t have until the very end.
Debra Chiate, editor: I knew how much [Amy] shot. I knew what she wanted. The challenges were structuring it. The challenges were keeping all the characters alive.
Amy Heckerling: We never really had a sense of how it was going to work until [Alicia Silverstone’s voice-over] came in because it was such a nutty thing. Her voice: we were recording, even during mixing. Right up until the very end.
[Before Silverstone’s voice-over], it was always with my voice, so it never felt like you were transported into it. It always felt like a work in progress. . . . That version was very wacky. I wish I had a copy of that. Because you’d see this beautiful young blond girl and you hear this low-class, older female speaking in Val speak.
Debra Chiate: There was a point where we watched about a reel of cut footage once it was assembled in some kind of order. I think Twink was there, and Amy, and we watched it. And I think we just thought: Okay. We’re onto something here. I didn’t know. But it just had a feeling that it stayed on this very fine line of not being over-the-top and not being, I don’t know what the word is—it just stayed on that fence, you know, the tone of it.
What happened when Amy came in was she shortened a lot of the scenes but didn’t lose the essence of anything. So it felt like things went more shortened, yet better and tighter, and moved on. Every scene made [sure] the next scene was there for a reason. . . . I know there were a few scenes we took out. Nothing off the top of my head where I thought, That’s too bad we have to lose that.
The most significant of the “lost” scenes took place in the girls’ bathroom at Bronson Alcott High and featured a conversation between Cher, Amber, and Dionne in which Sassy magazine was referenced. A snippet of it was included in the movie’s trailer.
Amy Heckerling: There was one little scene where the girls are in the bathroom and Cher says, “What do you think of Christian?” And they’re all looking in the mirror and putting on makeup.
Debra Chiate: I think Scott Rudin really liked that scene. I don’t know if that’s the one where Amber says, “Shuffle the cards and deal.”
Amy Heckerling: Amber says something snotty and she’s got a big hairdo. And Alicia goes, “I missed this month’s Sassy. Is big hair back?”
Debra Chiate: There’s a scene where they’re outside, yeah: “Where should we go get yogurt? Which yogurt store is better?” That didn’t stay very long.
Amy Heckerling: When Josh is teaching her how to drive they go by Dionne’s house and [Cher] says, “Oh, let me off here instead of”—I didn’t continue it, but he lets her off there and she’s with Dionne and Murray. They’re going to go get frozen yogurt and they’re arguing about whether they should go to Humphrey’s. There’s one place where they blend in the toppings and another place where the toppings go on top. And they’re having an argument about which is better . . . and Murray thinks toppings are wack, that he wanted them blended. It was a little ending to that other scene to keep [Dionne and Murray] alive, doing their silly stuff.
Another scene slated for inclusion very early in the film featured Cher picking oranges and joking with a gardener who works at the house.
Amy Heckerling: Oh, that was just her getting up during the day when you see her with the maid and they’re making orange juice. I had a little bit more of a conversation between those two and she went out for one second and was tossing an orange back and forth with the gardener. I just wanted to show that she has fun in her house with the people that work there.
Debra Chiate: I think Amy wanted to emphasize the fact that you’re in Southern California, and what are things that are Southern California that are great? That you can just go outside and pick an orange off a tree.
A telephone conversation between Cher and Elton—described in the shorthand of the shooting schedule as “Cher talks to Elton on the phone” and “Elton is brought into Cher’s scheme”—was also ditched because it wasn’t crucial to the plot.
Debra Chiate: There was a scene where she’s making a healthy smoothie talking to Elton on the phone.
Amy Heckerling: She was trying to recruit all her friends to help with putting the teachers together. So that was a conversation where she would be telling somebody what to do . . . it wasn’t necessary because just seeing her do what she does with Dionne seemed to be enough.
Also nixed: a brief scene of Cher standing in line at the DMV prior to going out on the road with the Messiah of said DMV.
Amy Heckerling: It [was] probably to establish it was the DMV and driving. But I think I probably, ultimately, figured out that you would get that from the test.
Perhaps the most difficult moment for Heckerling to cut was a portion of the skate park scene that originally featured a young school newspaper reporter. The actor who played that budding journalist? Mollie Israel, Heckerling’s daughter.
Amy Heckerling: The movie cuts out when [Tai and Travis] wave to each other and Cher knows that things are going to be good. She knows Tai won’t be thinking about Josh anymore. I had a scene where there’s a kid from a junior high, a newspaper reporter, who’s from her school paper interviewing him. [Travis] was very sweet with the little kid, and then the girls come over and we see that, you know, Brittany is very touched by that. They talk and Cher leaves and she knows that those two are going to be together. I felt like the moment—the information was conveyed by the looks between [Tai and Travis].
My daughter was not at all happy with me. She was adorable and Breckin was adorable with her. Sometimes you have to take out stuff that you like, or stuff with your relatives, because the information is conveyed in a more visual way and it’s enough.
Heckerling may have (briefly) upset her daughter. But, according to Chiate, the filmmaker’s parents were pretty happy with the initial cut of the movie.
Debra Chiate: Sitting down and screening it [for the first time], I’m sure it was for Amy. She probably had her parents there or something, a few people. In my head, I think her mother or father said, “Now, that’s a good movie.” It just got the seal of approval, you know, pretty quick.
Amy Heckerling: Yeah, that’s unusual. Usually they’re the ones with the most notes. My mother especially.