SOURCE: Ondaatje, Michael, and Brian D. Johnson. “‘A Sort of Improvisation Happens.’” Maclean's 115, no. 36 (9 September 2002): 40-1.

In the following interview, Ondaatje discusses his decision to profile film editor Walter Murch in The Conversations, drawing comparisons between the processes of film editing and fiction writing.

Canadian Author Michael Ondaatje is an avid film buff. And as he watched his novel The English Patient being adapted for the screen, he became fascinated with the mind of the movie's Oscar-winning editor. Walter Murch has edited sound or images for directors such as George Lucas (American Graffiti), Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather I-III, The Conversation, Apocalpyse Now) and Orson Welles (the posthumous director's cut of Touch of Evil). Ondaatje's new book, The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film, is a dialogue between an author and an editor about the creative process. In this conversation about The Conversations, Ondaatje talks...