How Jay Kelly Was Shaped in the Edit, According to Co-Editor Rachel Durance

Dec 17, 2025 - 12:15

rachel durance interview editing netflix movie jay kelly

Picture Credit: Netflix

Jay Kelly isn’t a romantic Hollywood movie. There is glitz and glamour, but it’s mostly smoke and mirrors in Noah Baumbach’s film. The titular character – a movie star played by George Clooney – doesn’t shine as bright off-screen. Life isn’t as grand as the movies.

Which is one of the fun ironies of Jay Kelly – a movie at odds, like its lead. There are dreamy sequences, lavish locations, wining and dining in Italy. Is it beauty or manufactured? The question of living a life of authenticity is one of the central questions of the film, which was co-edited by Rachel Durance.

It’s a movie that’s largely in character, scale, and even dialogue – all of which Durance handles with grace. Recently, she spoke with What’s On Netflix about crafting some of Jay Kelly’s finest scenes.

Were you involved in pre-production? When it came to Jay Kelly’s opening one-shot showing Jay on the set, did you and Noah have conversations about what would and wouldn’t work?

Yes, definitely. I was part of the rehearsal period, so they rehearsed for quite a while on that scene. And then during the shoot, I would sort of get the video tap of the take and then watch it in my edit suite and come back and give notes. Then I would work with the choreographer to speed it up or slow it down, or wherever it needed to be.

It was just sort of making sure that there were no pauses. The script was so clear as to what it should be with lots of overlapping, you’re not really sure what’s going on, and then obviously once you get to George, it slows down.

Picture via Rachel Durance’s Website

How satisfying was it seeing it come together?

Amazing. It was quite a process because they started off with slightly different blocking and then it changed. It wasn’t like 30 [takes] of the exact same scene, but it was really cool how they did it because the writing that comes up is actually on a glass sheet, and the smoke shows you what it is. It’s real smoke they used.

There’s a big contrast between that opening shot, showing Jay performing, to the first time we see him alone in the trailer. Does George Clooney act a lot for the edit? Does he give a lot of options?

He does, yeah. There were quite a few takes of that in his trailer on his own. He does quite a few different things. I think also because he’s a director, he knows what you’re going to need, what you’re not going to need. So he does give a lot of variations, and then obviously he and Noah talk it through.

You want to linger on it enough so you get a feeling that something else is at play here, or Jay is going through something, but you’re not sure what it is.

When Jay meets his old acting school frenemy, Timothy (Billy Crudup), it’s just tension building up at a bar between them. How’d you want to control that escalation?

They were both incredible, but it was just about building it. The way Billy did it, it’s like something’s afoot, but you’re not really sure what it is. Jay’s kind of oblivious to it. He’s just like, “Oh, it’s so nice to reconnect.” And then he just sort of hits it with, “I can’t stand you.” We build up this thing, and then it’s really quick cutting at the end as he’s getting up to leave. It was just about building that sort of surprise element.

That was my favorite scene to cut. There’s nothing better than just having a dialogue scene with two incredible actors. That’s just a dream. It was all on the page. I think I laughed out loud when I read Timothy reading a menu. Just a genius way to do that.

The train ride plays as Jay Kelly, basically, entering purgatory. How long is he on the train for?

Quite a while.

How was finding the right pace for that chapter?

Yeah, that was shot quite early on in the shoot. They built an entire sort of train set, so the way that they shot was with these cranes, they would shoot one side of the coverage one day, and then they’d shoot the other side of the coverage the next day.

It was quite tricky in terms of putting it together that way because I didn’t have anything to cut back to until the next day. I would just have to go through and pick the best bits.

But yeah, he’s on it for quite a while, but also it’s one of those great sequences with throwbacks to Preston Sturges and Hitchcock, all of those kinds of movies.

Like Celebrities on a Train.

Yeah. It’s where he really starts to unravel and sets it up for the ending. The memories are coming more frequently. Also, when he’s on the train, that moment of him just being quite introspective about being around people again, because he just hasn’t been doing that.

It’s also to do with the pacing of the story, right? Because he has these memories within that sequence. It’s quite a tricky one to pace because you’re in the present day, and then you go into the past. The emotions of the film have to almost sneak up on you with these memories. You are not really sure how you’re supposed to feel about it.

It almost feels like Noah Baumbach’s Christmas Carol. When Kelly experiences his past, how present did he want to make Jay Kelly in those sequences?

With every single one of those scenes, we shot it with him and without him.

Why’s that?

Just in case we were to not have him at all. Those scenes with him watching are editorially quite tricky, especially the audition scene, because I think those two young actors are amazing, and you are actually really invested in that story. It was very trial and error as to when we went to him, and the most immediate moment felt as soon as he had decided to ask if he could audition.

It is just all about thinking of it in terms of the emotion of it—, which part of that would he feel the most guilty about? And that felt like a good place to have him in. And then, obviously, we switched to older Timothy (Billy Crudup) at the end of that, which was always scripted, but again, we had the option to not do it if we wanted to.

What about Jay and his daughter, Jess (Riley Keough), in the woods? What was your reaction to that scene?

Riley is just phenomenal. It was quite an easy thing to put together in a way because she’s just so heartbreaking in that scene again. No visual effects there. She was literally hiding behind a tree. You just don’t see that. I think it was a genius idea because if she’s just on the phone, you just would never have that same feeling from it. It’s also the emotional crux of the film – his daughters.

Anyway, it’s a heartbreaking scene. I remember when I got the rushes, I was just like, I had to go for a walk, I needed a break. I was like, oh, this is heavy.

Where did you begin with the Jay Kelly montage shown at the end of the film?

Obviously, his films are so iconic, but Noah didn’t want stuff that was too iconic, like Batman. Very early on it was kind of like, okay, no Batman. I sort of went through his filmography, and just the main thing we wanted to do was showcase a movie star, because they don’t really exist anymore in the same way that George Clooney’s movie stardom is. That’s what we wanted to show. And then I built a few different versions, and then the shoot started. Once we had a general idea of the clips we wanted to put in, a trailer editor came on, made it, and finished it off. Basically, the shoot was starting, and I was having to cut scenes.

What was Clooney’s reaction to it?

Noah and I spoke about wanting to make sure he didn’t see it until we shot it on the day. His reaction in the movie is the first take where he watched it for the first time. It’s in the movie—the first take of that reaction. Anytime there’s a cut to him watching, that’s all the first take.

That poses a very Jay Kelly question: is that George Clooney’s honest reaction or the character’s honest reaction?

No, it’s true. It was kind of amazing watching the take when I got it. It was like he was Jay, and then other moments he felt like George, but it was amazing. And then that final line, that’s from that first take. Devastating.