As a result of this, 20th Century dropped out of the making of the film a month before shooting. And Miramax, Harvey Weinstein came in. Saul [Zaentz] was putting in a lot of his own money. So he didn't need the full support of a studio on it. But he did need extra support. And that's what Miramax was able to provide. I don't know all of the ins and the outs of the financing of it. But it was a delicate thing that could have easily collapsed at the last minute, even though we were all in Italy, getting ready to shoot the film.

And at the time, I was ignorant of a lot of this going on. I only learned about it later. And I had proposed to Anthony and Saul that on this film, 'Let's use digital editing equipment.' At that time, the only real option, as far as I was concerned, was the Avid. There were a number of other systems that were around. But I thought it might be good on this film to try it. And the answer came back that they didn't want to use it because Anthony had asked some of his friends in London, who had experience with it. And they said, 'Don't do it because it allows for too much studio interference. If you work in work print, there's only one copy of the work print. And that's it. And it's very difficult to get hold of that work print, and do things with it, without the knowledge of the... cooperation of the director. Whereas, when things are digital, it's easy to just clone a bunch of information, and ship it to the studio. And then, they do stuff with it. Don't do it', they said to Anthony. So Anthony said, 'No, I want to stay with film.' So we began shooting English Patient on film. And I was editing it on the KEM editing machine that I used on First Knight, just a few months previous. And everything was fine. It was a very slight disappointment on my part. Slight because it meant I would have to learn... Even though I was proposing it, I would have to learn the [Avid] system. I'd used it on some music videos, and some special effects sections of other films. But I hadn't really engaged with it on a deep level.