Well-Shot and Needs Editing | Scanners

In the 1970s and 1980s you always heard people compliment "the beautiful cinematography," but not so much anymore. (I don't know if this had anything to do with David Watkin's magnificent 1986 Oscar speech for "Out of Africa," but I'd like to think so.) It was the kind of thing someone could substitute for not saying anything at all: "Well, I noticed something about the movie: some of the pictures were pretty!"

Now it's "well-shot," which means absolutely nothing -- or, rather, could mean absolutely anything -- except, maybe, "not well-shot." It's almost the same as clichéd small talk about the weather: "Nice day," "Hot enough for you?," "It's not the heat it's the humidity"... Actually, no, those things have more meaning than "well-shot." Anyway, it's one of those things lazy critics habitually throw into the final paragraph of their reviews, which Richard T. Jameson (of Straight Shooting and other venues) has summarized as: "There was also photography and music." A local semi-reviewer recently invoked the phrase with regard to the shaky-cam work in "The Hunger Games." He didn't like the movie... "but it was well-shot." Which means... what? The focus-puller was doing his job? What, exactly, was "well" about the way it was shot?

RTJ has also proposed that "well-shot" deserves its own "Mystery Men"-type superhero: "I am The Shooter. I shoot well."

One of my critical companions reported another overheard, all-purpose numbskull observation made by an exiting moviegoer (I don't remember what film they'd just seen -- "Prometheus," maybe?): "Hmmm. Needs editing." Yeah. Needs gaffing, too. OK we know people think that they're saying they wish the movie had been shorter (though "It could lose about half an hour," is almost as vague and obnoxious), but I can't think of another context in which the term "editing" is misused to mean, simply, "truncating." I wish these people would simply own their boredom: They mean to say they got impatient with the movie. Whenever I hear "needs editing," I'm tempted to say: "Really? Where?" But, really, where would that get me, besides maybe injured or dead? (Also, if you've ever seen the original Ladd Company release of "Once Upon a Time in America," you'll know that the 139-minute version is infinitely longer than Sergio Leone's 229-minute cut. A 245-minute cut, reportedly the closest to Leone's original version, screened recently at Cannes. It may prove to be the shortest yet. All it needed was editing.)

Anyway, it became a running gag (and it's still running). After a devastating episode of "Mad Men," a friend poured his heart into an e-mail and then concluded: "But it was well-shot."

My goal for this post is to help the terms "well-shot" and "needs editing" go viral. Yes -- you, too, can talk just like a lousy film critic! See how many ways you can use them. When standing in line at the grocery store, perhaps: "Needs editing." Or when looking at a sunset: "Well shot!" Go ahead. Try it. And tell your friends...