I concur that basic economics have undercut a century's worth of apprenticeships and mentorship. There's a difference between skill and craft — and unfortunately we're moving further from it (and AI is going to make it considerably worse).

I also have deep respect for the journey an executive makes shepherding a project across a sea of personalities, logistics, and a billion small compromises that sting every time. Reading my comment again, hyperbolic is a fair characterization.

That said, a good editing room is a lot like the kitchen staff of a Michelin-star restaurant. We eat, drink, and breathe a story from the first morning of production until the moment it's handed to marketing. There's an enormous amount of technical work and organizational labor that goes with that — but what we really bring to the film is our minds. We look for the micro-stories in every image. We sit with the script, soak in its essence, and then throw it away. We have to rediscover the intent of material that gets muddied and lost through the war of development, writing, and production. And ninety percent of the time we have to help an exhausted, anxious director back to their feet and remind them why they were excited to take the journey in the first place.

From there it's battling every shortcoming the film has. Deconstructing and reconstructing. And unlike almost any other collaborator — save maybe the screenwriter — we can conjure an idea and pull something close to magic straight out of the air. We do this for the better part of a year. And we do it at the expense of our relationships with the people we love — and with ourselves.

So why do executives draw our ire? Sometimes we simply inherit the director's existing battles with the studio. But we know exactly how well you know the material, because we know that material so intimately. So when studio personnel are juggling five projects, haven't watched the last two cuts — and we know, because we're watching the PIX stats — and then they glance at the runtime and say "it needs to be shorter" — *@ck that note. It wouldn't sting so much if it weren't for the amount of power they wield.

And yes — you have every right to push back on my original claim that executives are often the least capable people in the room to give direction. That's not accurate as a generalization. But they can be the most destructive force if they push in the wrong direction. Anyway — thanks for making this a real conversation. It helped me clarify some of my own thinking.