Film Editor Jennifer Lame on How Her Oppenheimer Experience With Christopher Nolan Was Unlike Any Other

If you don’t recognize Jennifer Lame’s voice, you’d certainly recognize her work. She’s the film editor behind some of Hollywood’s biggest movies of the last decade. Lame made a name for herself editing Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha, and catapulted to excellence as the editor on Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Ari Aster’s Hereditary, and Christopher Nolan’s Tenet.

Directors usually get most of the credit in Hollywood, but film editors are often the ones responsible for making a movie what it is. And Jennifer Lame is at the top of an elite list of female editors who are shaping Hollywood from behind the scenes.

Now, as the editor of Oppenheimer—her latest collaboration with director Christopher Nolan—Lame has earned her first ever Oscar nomination, for film editing. It’s one of Oppenheimer’s 13 Oscar nods, making the historical epic the most nominated film of the year. She’s also won a Critics Choice Award and a BAFTA for her work on Oppenheimer.

And in our conversation, she talks about what film editors see that others don’t, how she relates to visionary directors like Christopher Nolan, and our shared love of 1990s video stores.

Tune in every Thursday, and join us as we continue to explore the minds that shape our world. You can listen to the full episode here, but here are a handful of excerpts from our conversation, which have been condensed and edited for clarity.

On the thrill of a ’90s video store:

It was so fun with the video stores because you didn’t have that anxiety that I have when you turn on any of the platforms like Netflix or Hulu. I get exhaustion just thinking about what to pick, that I end up not picking anything. And there was something about like: your parents drop you off at the video store, you have 10 minutes to pick and then you’re leaving, and they don’t care. Like, that’s it. And if you don’t pick something, you don’t watch a movie that night. So I just found it thrilling. And you have to trust other people.

I didn’t really have friends that were like movie nerds as much as I was. So it was just kind of this like nerdy little place I could go and feel like I had fake movie friends

On how she was approached about Oppenheimer:

I had lunch with Chris and he said he was working on something. And then I had signed on to Wakanda Forever with Ryan Coogler. I did get a call from Chris and he was like, ‘Hey, come over to the house I have this project for you.” And so I read the script right before shooting. But then I wasn’t able to come on until after the shoot because I was on Wakanda Forever.

So all that to say, that I missed the shoot of Oppenheimer. But because Chris and I had done a film together previously, he was OK with that. So I came on the day they wrapped filming, which isn’t typical for an editor. Usually you’re on the whole shoot. That was scary because most editors don’t like doing that ’cause if you just think about it on a basic level, you’re just behind, right? I’m behind. I have to do the whole movie and they already shot it but it ended up being okay. Chris just gave me four weeks, I think, and he said, you know, ‘Watch all the footage. Try to cut as much as you can, but don’t stress.’

And I think taking that pressure off of that assembly that you’re supposed to have at the end of a shoot, I actually found it kind of freeing and it allowed me to just play around and just watch all the footage.

On how an editor’s vision is different from a director’s:

A director’s job is one of the hardest jobs obviously in my industry. You have so much in your brain, you’re dealing with so much, you’re making thousands of decisions a day. So I think in editor’s job is to keep your focus on the performances and the story during the shoot.

You know, like oftentimes for example, when I would work with Noah [Baumbach], he would call me kind of midday and at the end of the day and just talk through like: do you feel like we’re getting the right performances for the character? Because I am keeping track of the character, right?

He’s keeping track of that along with a thousand other decisions. And that’s all I’m keeping track of is: are we getting the performances to have this through line for this character? Do we need another take? Do we need a different reading?

Ao just really my focus is the performances, the story, are things cutting together rhythmically, does it feel right? You know, all that stuff that a director obviously is paying attention to, but he can’t focus just on that. I’m that part of their brain kind of that can just kind of let them know what’s going on. And then once we’re in the edit room, I’m just that collaborator to help continue that trajectory of finishing the movie and making the movie the best version it can be once it’s been shot.

It’s kind of like writing a book. An author of a book doesn’t wanna edit their own book. You need that person to kind of have that struggle with and relationship with, and a person who you vibe with that can be honest with you and that can work through problems and sit in a room with other people and then afterwards you talk through what happened

On how she learned she was nominated for an Oscar Best Film Editing for Oppenheimer:

I actually purposely slept through that whole announcement thing that morning, because I think leading up to it, you’re just like, ‘God, I really, it would be so amazing to get nominated for an Oscar.’ And then when it gets close to it, you’re like, ‘I don’t even wanna know.’

So you don’t even really wanna deal with it, or there’s so many mixed emotions with it. So I think I just slept through and tried to like get through my morning. I woke up around like seven A.M. I knew it was that morning and I tried to not look at my phone, and woke up with my two-year-old and went downstairs and saw my husband in the kitchen. He’s like, ‘you know, you got nominated for an Oscar, right?’ And I was like, ‘What?’

And of course I ran upstairs and grabbed my phone, but I really just tried not to focus on it ’cause the whole thing just felt so, it’s just so overwhelming, right? It’s like you can’t even imagine it.

That day, I remember I had a sinus infection. I was going to look for a neti pot. And I kept having to stop and being like, ‘You got nominated for an Oscar today.’

Write to Charlotte Alter at charlotte.alter@time.com.