Lame noted that she doesn’t take just any editing job, she takes the ones she feels she can really handle well. When it comes to modern genre movies, Lame admitted that she’s not a fan. It seems that Lame assumed Ari Aster, in making a modern horror movie, might be a ghost and monster enthusiast, eager to delve into the more ghoulish aspects of the genre. Lame seemed startled to learn that Aster was actually a bigger fan of modern, downbeat indie dramas, including 2016’s “Manchester by the Sea” (which Lame worked on with writer/director Kenneth Lonergan). She explained:
“I tried to get out of ‘Hereditary,’ because I was like, ‘I don’t know genre. I don’t like modern-day horror movies. I like old horror movies. I love Hitchcock and old suspenseful dramas, but I don’t want to do this.’ Then he called me and he talked about Mike Leigh and his love of Mike Leigh and Bergman, and he loved ‘Manchester by the Sea’ and he loves Kenny. And I was like, ‘Oh.’ He’s like, ‘I’m not trying to make a horror movie. I’m trying to make a great f***ing movie that happens to deal with horror, about a family that’s f***ed up.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, I can do that.'”
While several of Lame’s films have fantastical elements — “Wakanda,” “Hereditary,” and “Tenet” all feature broad genre conceits — most of her work has been on grounded, intense dramas (she also worked on Sebastián Silva’s “Tyrel,” Shaka King’s “Judas and the Black Messiah,” and Andrew Dominik’s controversial “Blonde”). It seems if a director can communicate to their crew and to the audience that their genre film is about something more than its fantasy, then Lame will happily get on board.