Hollywood Cut

In his forties,Winborne says he has spent more than 18 years in Hollywood.

Film critics might have given a mixed review to Teen Patti,which released on February 26,but there’s no denying that the film sports an international look. “My approach was very basic — lose the elements that get in the way of the story. Never let the audience get ahead of the movie. Keep them just behind you,” says Winborne,who did the final re-cut of the film.

The film is a taut suspense drama based on the theory of mathematical probability. While editor Kaushik Das focussed on editing the music,Winborne took care of the rest of the action. He says he also partly supervised the trimming of the songs. “This was to keep the attention on the story development. It was my American bias kicking in,” says Winborne. “I learnt much later how important lengthy songs were in Bollywood films”.

Though film director Leena Yadav kept a watchful eye,Winborne says he was given a free hand. Was it difficult to follow the Hindi dialogues? Winborne says he was given a subtitled script but soon dumped it. “I decided to focus on the characters. I let their inflections and intonations guide me. I could understand the emotion despite the language barrier. Words are only one part of an actor’s tool-kit,” he says,adding that he was “swayed by the performance of Amitabh Bachchan”.

Another favourite is Will Smith,on whose projects,Pursuit of Happyness and Seven Pounds,Winborne has worked ever since the Oscar in 2004 made him a Hollywood A-lister. Being an editor was never his childhood dream,since he belongs to a family of lawyers. “At a summer film programme at NYU,I found that I wanted to edit while my class-mates wanted to direct,” says Winborne,adding that he has also been a house painter.

Despite spending around half his life in Hollywood ,Winborne says that Bollywood made him realise that the film world could still spring a surprise. “Bollywood and Hollywood are like oranges and apples,” he says. “But give me another Hindi movie,and I’ll take it up in a heartbeat.”