Myron Kerstein loves drama, and he loves musicals. The Oscar-nominated editor has such a gift for bringing us along into the rhythms of a director’s vision. With the film adaptations he’s cut, he’s tapped into the exuberance of someone with a gift for writing music, the verve and sounds of the streets of Washington Heights, and he’s let us soar in the skies of the merry young land of Oz. With Wicked: For Good, he gets to lean into something much darker and even deeper. Friendships may be tested, but a love that changes you is one that you will remember forever.
Kerstein and I spoke the week that Wicked: For Good debuted in theaters, and we began our conversation talking about how the reaction of the first film (released in November of 2024) set the bar very high for the continuation of the story of Glinda, Elphaba, and the Land of Oz. I noted that every time I see an artist speak about working on the Jon M. Chu adaptation, they speak about making the biggest, most ambitious musical they possibly could. It’s something that wasn’t lost on Kerstein, a frequent collaborator with the director.
“I grew up in the ’80s watching films like Star Wars, Jaws, and E.T. [the Extra-Terrestrial], and, for me, that was the golden age of cinema,” Kerstein says. “Of course, the real golden age goes back decades before that, but these blockbusters had such an influence on me and they were so part of the culture. Jon and I like to make things that define the time capsule of this moment. When we worked on Crazy Rich Asians, there was something very unique to that. Wicked was already a huge thing before the movies came along–it’s so relevant to so many people. I admire Jon for wanting to make films that remind us of our childhood and that have meaning and reflection to them. I’m so psyched that not only do we get to make really great films, but people seem to be really responding to the work in a way that is different for a lot of craftspeople.”
There has been much chatter over the decision to expand the Stephen Schwartz musical into two distinct parts with each film serving the first and second act of the stage musical. We have never seen a musicl given so much room to breathe or space to explore the emotional beats of the characters. The editor speaks very confidently that they made the right decision.
“With one movie, we were given real estate in order to connect a little bit more emotionally,” he says. “I think everything is in the DNA of the Broadway show, but now we can just make it sing. Because it’s a film, we can move around more in the Ozdust Ballroom to see how awkward it is to be bullied or alone. When we’re in “For Good,” we can really tap the brakes and feel the pain and agony of two best friends saying goodbye to each other or thinking they may never hold each other again. To be able to see that on their faces and feel that yearning and pain in that moment is something that, I think, we could only do if we had that room to explore and expand on the story. It would’ve been totally different if it wasn’t split. When people say that they want one movie, they don’t. This is a saga.”
He went on to explain that that freedom allows for the variety of ways the musical numbers can embrace the material. We feel the hard turn when Elphaba feels nowhere to go in “No Good Deed.” We swoon when she and Fiyero lift into the sky before their night of passion in “As Long As You’re Mine.”
“I love that we are able to play with different rhythms,” Kerstein says. “I love melodrama and I love a slow burn, and I love that some people have said that the first act of the second film feels a bit like a political drama. We are sitting in the pain and the misery of these characters, especially Nessarose and Boq. With the editing, I wanted to break things a little bit, to be honest with you. Just try to break your expectations of what a musical should be before we sucker punch you with the emotion.”
Balancing Glinda and Elphaba is one of the more remarkable elements of both of Chu’s films. When only one is on screen, we think about the other or how the other will react to what their other friend is feeling and thinking. In For Good, that is most surprisingly seen in the sequence where Glinda’s wedding to Fiyero is ruined and Elphaba discovers The Wizard’s imprisonment of the animals of Oz. Glinda’s hall is filled with light as Elphaba descends into darkness.
“Balancing both Glinda and Elphaba was always the goal,” he says. “Their relationship is our compass. We all love the spectacle and the world building, but, at the end of the day, it’s about them finding their friendship. When we only have one character as the focus of the scene, we always want to get back to the other one. In the wedding scene, we see Oz at its most delightful as we intercut with Elphaba in the secret prison. It wasn’t scripted like that, so I wanted to find clever ways to keep them “in the same frame” when they weren’t to keep that balance. There was so much discussion about how to end this movie: do we end on Elphaba walking away with Fiyero as they do in the Broadway show? Or maybe we should end on Glinda getting closer to having magic–maybe we end on their faces? We knew we had “the whisper shot” in our arsenal, but we just didn’t know where that would land. It’s not about one person or the other–it’s about both of them.”
When I first heard the reactions to For Good, people kept saying that there is one shot of Ariana Grande’s face that you will not believe. After her wedding is destroyed and Fiyero holds The Wizard captive and then escapes, Madame Morrible and His Ozness ponder what they should to get Elphaba’s attention once again. Glinda suggests that they start a rumor about Nessarose to nab her attention, but Chu keeps the camera close to Grande’s face. He does this several times throughout For Good. In “Thank Goodness,” we look to see how she covers those cracks, but she’s emotionally bare and distraught after the wedding. Sometimes an editor knows that they need to hold to wring out the drama.
“One phrase that we kept talking about was ‘dream big’ but there was another one, and that was, ‘restraint'” Kerstein says. “We had the best visual effects in the business, and they could’ve created any shot in the world for us. We could do a helicopter shot of Munchkinland while Glinda sings “Thank Goodness” or we could cut wide as Elphaba sings “No Good Deed” and flies over Oz. But restraint implies that if a character is connecting with us, why do we need to go away. With Glinda/Ariana Grande, we can see the pain in the scene where she sees Fiyero and Elphaba together after her wedding has been destroyed. When she is listening to Madame Morrible and The Wizard in the background, she is in so much distress, and you’re not going to cut away from that. Ari is giving the performance of a lifetime, and I wasn’t going to cut. I had the coverage to cut back to Morrible and The Wizard, but Ari was so involved and so in character that I wanted everyone to see every ounce of it. I love challenging the audience in ways that feel uncomfortable.”
Wicked: For Good is in theaters now.
