kick me off so they could work." By the end of the production, he had
become accomplished at using a Lightworks machine and spliced a two
and a half minute segment that remained in the released version.
Legacy was canceled early in 1999. Although Teese had gained editing
experience and skill, his knowledge was based on the Lightworks system,
whereas most editors use Avid. His next jobs were as an office and set PA
on such projects as Cherry Falls and The Contender. While working on the
TV movie Cupid and Cate, Teese received a call from Martin Jones, who
runs Tim Reid's New Millennium studio, where a film called Nothin' 2
Lose was being edited. "They hired a guy named George Kelly, who cut
commercials locally. He knew how to use an Avid, but fortunately for me,
the machine at New Millennium was Lightworks. I got the job because I
knew how to use the machine." Teese spent the next four months cutting
the movie, finishing up in February 2000.
While working on Nothin' 2 Lose, Ridley Scott and some of his crew
were in town scouting locations for Hannibal and visited New Millennium.
Teese seized the opportunity to introduce himself to executive producer
Branko Lustig and they talked briefly. He submitted his résumé to work
on the film and two months later he received a call from Wesley Sewell,
the associate editor. "I talked with him for about 20 minutes and he asked
me to come down to the office. I did and we talked about 45 minutes. At
the end, he just looked at me and said, `Okay.' I asked, `Do I have the job?'
He said, `Yeah, that's why I had
you come down here.'"
One day he asked Sewell
why he had hired him, and
was told that people had said
"we have this guy in town and
you've got to hire him." Teese
assumed it was because he
was a good apprentice. He
later learned "they didn't want
to bring an apprentice from
out of town and have to pay
per diem and housing. I was
the only one in the union, so
they said, `You've got to hire
him.' That's how I got the job:
I was the only guy in town."
Working on Hannibal, he got
to watch the great editor Pietro Scalia at work. "It was like film school.
Every day I'm sitting there in dailies with Ridley Scott and Pietro Scalia.
What do you like
least about your job?
"There is nothing that
I don't like about my
job."--Rex Teese
What do you love most
about your job?
"What I like most about my job is that I've
been fortunate to work for several legends of
filmmaking: Ridley Scott, and the editor I
now work for, Pietro Scalia. I've met and
worked with some of the greatest guys in
film."--Rex Teese
VOICES OF
EXPERIENCE
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