John Ottman, divides his time between a MIDI board, mixing console and editing bay.

Composer John Ottman is also an editor (ACE), fulfilling that role on Bohemian Rhapsody, which has no underscore. But to a degree that could definitely be described as extreme, visuals and music placement are entwined in this film. The result is highly imaginative, and Ottman deserves a lot of credit for both the cutting and sound design. “I always do my own sound design when I cut a film,” Ottman told MaxTheTrax, explaining that it’s “taken to another level” by the sound professionals — in this case supervising sound editor John Warhurst and music and sound mixer Paul Massey, who worked their magic at London’s Twickenham Studios.

Ottman has had a lengthy creative collaboration with Bohemian Rhapsody director Bryan Singer that began when the two were students at USC. Ottman’s edited and scored Singer’s directorial debut, the 1993 indie thriller Public Access, which marked Ottman’s own professional debut. Budgeted at $250,000, that straight-to-video release was impressive enough to get Singer hired for the $6 million noirish suspense caper The Usual Suspects,  which earned $23 million at the US box office and Oscars for the film’s star Kevin Spacey and screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie. Ottman went on to edit and compose scores for the director’s X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) and X:Men Days of Future Past (2014), as well as Jack the Giant Slayer (2013) and Valkyrie (2008)  and Superman Returns (2006), X Men 2 (2003) and Apt Pupil (1998).  “When I agree to edit a film for Bryan I also score the film,” Ottman says. “We kind of joke that that’s my consolation prize.”

For directors including Ben Stiller and Shane Black Ottman served solely as composer for films The Cable Guy and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. He has also scored films including Non-stop and Orphan for director Jaume Collet-Serra, a European transplant to the Hollywood mainstream. Ottman is BAFTA-winning film editor, and has been recognized for his music achievements with a Primetime Emmy nomination for the pilot score on ABC’s reboot of Fantasy Island and an International Film Music Critics nomination for 2016’s The Nice Guys (starring Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling).

Growing up in San Jose, California, Ottman describes himself as a “total nerd” who loved Star Trek, classical music and film scores. He played the clarinet but his main love was movies and his parents garage became his studio. A film major, he went on to direct Urban Legends: Final Cut. Released in 2000, the low-budget teen slasher film was a hit; made for $14 million grossed $39 million worldwide. In the whirlwind of Bohemian Rhapsody’s first week of release, John Ottman took time before heading off to Hawaii to talk to MaxTheTrax editor in chief Paula Parisi about how music supports visual storytelling in the film, which debuted Nov. 2 and is shaping up as a big success for Twentieth Century Fox. 

MaxTheTrax: There’s no underscore on this film, but as an editor who is also a composer, you must have had quite an impact on how the music was woven in.

John Ottman: I was supposed to write the score, although when I read the script I was thinking to myself this isn’t a film that should have a score. And once we were well into the editing it just felt like it would be wrong to try to make this a conventional filmgoing experience with underscore. So I removed my composer credit from the title sequence that I designed. [Laughs]. In lieu of score I used snippets of opera, for instance, because I knew Freddie listened to opera. It made it more intelligent. Or I would use separate tracks that Queen provided to me to score the scene. For instance, the diagnosis when Freddie goes to the doctor, we used “Who Wants to Live Forever,” which I extended to the next sequence by removing the vocal and just using the orchestra.

MaxTheTrax: Well, you certainly did have a lot of Queen music. They recorded more than a dozen albums.

John Ottman:  Exactly. Even as a composer, my mantra has always been if you don’t need to score it don’t. I think things are overscored today, and it’s almost as if when things are overscored it implies a lack of confidence in the movie itself. In this case, it helped that I’m a composer too, because when I designed the concert sequences and so forth I was able to do it as a composer would, and an editor, with both brains. Inevitably there was no way I could play the concerts at full length. And here I’ve got [Queen lead guitarist and contributing songwriter] Brian May on the project, and was afraid he would come in and shoot me for any editing of the music. So he would come in every so often and take a look. A lot of the fill on the songs is guitar solo, so that would be a place to do some cutting. But he was fine with it. He understood it was a movie and we had to take things out.

MaxTheTrax: The funny thing is, you don’t really notice it. The editing was that good. You enjoy the songs while they last and then move on to the next thing, never feeling ‘Oh, that was an abrupt end. I wanted to hear the rest.’ There was some very nice segueing, too, where scenes overlap.

John Ottman:  I did use a scene that we shot that didn’t make it into the movie and integrated it into the montage for “Another One Bites the Dust.”  That montage shows Freddie on the seedier side of the gay life, so I used some footage of him walking through a very sexually charged nightclub.

MaxTheTrax: Oh, the leather bar. So that snippet was shot as a full scene?

John Ottman:  Right.

A full scene of Mercury (played by Rami Malek) in a leather bar was filmed but only partially used. (Photo: Alex Bailey / 20th Century Fox)

MaxTheTrax: What I meant was like that scene where they’re in the studio writing “We Will Rock You,” doing the stomp-stomp-clap. Then you cut away to them performing it in concert, but it jumps back to some very brief glimpses of them in the studio. So the situations overlap. You used that device a couple of times, and I thought it was really cool, getting the audience to sort of experience the two things simultaneously. It toggles the viewer from one thing to another — the inspiration for the song and the gargantuan thing it ultimately became.

John Ottman: As amazing as Queen’s music is, I found If I just played the concerts straight it didn’t really maximize the fun and the emotional resonance. Because once you light the fuse and you’re telling a narrative story you have to keep telling that story. You can’t just pause the narrative to go to a concert without making the concert itself be a part of the story. So I felt that each concert had to tell a little narrative on its own. The one you mentioned is about Brian May wanting to get the audience more involved in the music. “Fat Bottom Girls” is about Queen taking America by storm and Freddie at the gas station questioning his sexuality.

MaxTheTrax: That’s interesting. It’s probably why this film feels so different from a lot of music movies. As a story it really holds its own. Had you ever done a concert film?

John Ottman: Not a concert film, but I sort of have a reputation for montage. As with Bohemian Rhapsody, I use it to propel the story in a creative and economical way. Which is really what montages are – a way to get a story point across without having to do it in real time. For a biopic, which is such a difficult thing to do because of the expanse of someone’s life – and in this case also the band’s life – I had to find ways to be cohesive but jump time and still be satisfying emotionally. Something’s always gotta give in a biopic. You can never please everyone. Speaking of which, one of the miracles of the movie that people don’t seem to realize, or give credit for, is this is a PG-13 film that really is probably one of the gayest movies you can do as a mainstream film. And I think it succeeds, miraculously. It gets slammed for not being gay enough, or being seedy enough, but one of the reasons for the movie was to help a new audience discover Queen. Just like Queen itself wanted audience participation with their music, the filmmakers, including myself, wanted to bring a new generation in, and the only way to do that was to make it PG-13. So it was sort of a catch 22, in a way. How do you tell Freddie’s story but make it for everybody? At the end of the day this film is a celebration of Freddie.

MaxTheTrax: I do agree it succeeded on that level. After seeing the movie I read the reviews retrospectively and heard the criticisms and was surprised. I found it realistic, and very gay. The darker elements were suggested in a way that was quite artful. Not everything has to be explicit and hit viewers over the head. Freddie Mercury came across as a complex human being. To distill him to just “the gay guy” would seem to sell him short.

John Ottman: We could have gone really dark, but it would have been a different movie, and it wouldn’t have been as accessible. A lot of the people we wanted to reach wouldn’t have been able to see it [if it was rated R].

MaxTheTrax: And I don’t think it would have been as true to the character. I mean, I don’t know much about Freddie Mercury. I’m intrigued to learn more. But he seems funny and flirty and flamboyant. Sweet. Not entirely dark.

John Ottman: He had a pretty lascivious lifestyle. It was ‘80s – lots of drugs, lots of sex parties.  But we implied that.

MaxTheTrax: But didn’t you also imply that he was sweet and shy and loved his cats?

John Ottman: Yes. He was very intelligent. One of his favorite games was Scrabble.

MaxTheTrax: Ha-ha, not the Devil’s Triangle? So this movie was more innocent than the one that will eventually be made about the Supreme Court? [Laughs]

John Ottman: Yeah, right [laughs]. He loved opera and Shakespeare and was very artistic and had a lot to do with the creative direction of the band, obviously.

MaxTheTrax: So tragic that he died so young, at 45, and the world is deprived of whatever other music he would have gone on to make. Well, Mozart died at 34. Some would argue it’s better to burn bright.

The filmmakers recreated Queen’s landmark Live Aid performance at Wembley Stadium. (Photo: Alex Bailey / 20th Century Fox).

John Ottman: That’s why the Live Aid sequence is so emotional. Everyone knows what his destiny became. It’s sort of a massive swan song.

MaxTheTrax: I was surprised in seeing the film to realize that he never really came out. Because I wasn’t a Queen fan – wasn’t really paying attention to them during the ’80s – but I knew Freddie Mercury was gay. I thought it was public knowledge.

John Ottman: That’s what the press conference scene was all about.

MaxTheTrax: I love that scene, how you implied he was high with the woozy effects. How was that achieved?

John Ottman: Very little post effects. The director of photography [Newton Thomas Sigal, ASC] did a bunch of distorted shots using a lens effect. So it was baked in. Then I had the task of taking a shitload of straightforward question-and-answer, a lot of improv with the actors at the press conference, and design a sequence with the distorted shots and have it get into his headspace. My favorite moment was when a reporter says, “I just want to know, are you parents proud of you?” and I echoed out “proud of you.” Just little things that make me happy and maybe create a little profundity. That was a scene I felt sure the studio was going to blow it apart with a shotgun and make super-short. The fact that that sequence survived, as an editor makes me very happy.

MaxTheTrax: You mention echoing. Did you do some sound editing as well?

John Ottman: Well, I always do my own sound design when I cut a film. Then it’s taken to another level in the final mix. But I internally can do echo effects, and you find sound libraries for scenes. There wasn’t a whole lot beyond audience and some birds and cows in the countryside, the rain.

MaxTheTrax: The sequence where they’re recording in the barn is fun.

John Ottman: Yes, it survived pretty much intact. After a year of test screenings and executive meetings I thought for sure a bazooka would be pointed at it, but it survived, which made me very happy. It was built from a lot of improv among the actors. A lot of it was nonsensical and in the editing room I had to try to make sense of it. But in the end, I think it really put you there.

MaxTheTrax: The Live Aid scenes, too, really put moviegoers into that stadium.

John Ottman: Yeah, and Fox spent a good amount of money into completing the full 20-minute Live Aid set that is going to be released as an extended version. They did the visual effects and so forth, and I think I read that they plan to add it to the DVD, which is really great. That Live Aid scene was tough, because there was such gravitas put on it as the climax of the movie. It had to work. It was the thing that kept me up at night for a year. But there were little bits and pieces that were cut out of it over time, because the movie could only be so long. So they’re going to build it out and add the extra song, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love,” which wasn’t in the movie. Full versions, which is great, because some of Rami Malek’s best gyrations got cut out.