Casey Brooks has edited six feature films over the past 10 years, including the just-released romantic comedy "Something From Tiffany's." Yet, during a recent Zoom conversation, he said that editing "was never a path I was considering."
A holiday release from Amazon Studios, "Tiffany's," which is set in motion by a mix-up in holiday gifts, earned kudos from The New York Times for "a winning setup" and "clever rom-com engineering" by the director, Daryl Wein.
"It was my first big-budget film," said Mr. Brooks, "and definitely the most family-friendly movie I've done." He'd edited a previous film, "Buffaloed," with Zoey Deutch, the star of "Something From Tiffany's," so "we had that connection. She's such a force, such a pro actor," he said, "even though she's only 28. When I think of myself in my 20s, I wasn't at that stage of accomplishment."
Mr. Brooks, who was born and raised in East Hampton, has been obsessed with film and photography ever since he can remember. At 13, he learned how to process and print photographs; afterward, as a Christmas present, his father renovated a darkroom in the family's basement.
After graduating from East Hampton High School, where he took photography classes, he attended the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. "I was more film-focused than photography-focused, but toward the end of college you realize that you need a lot of friends and money to make films. Now, you can do incredible things with the iPhone, but the technology was still a little iffy in the early 2000s."
He went to work in the city for Andrew Zuckerman, a commercial photographer. Helping his boss make videos, and shooting and editing behind-the-scenes footage in the studio, "shot me into the editing world."
At that time his wife's brother, Tom Bean, was producing and directing "Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself," a documentary on the writer and co-founder of The Paris Review whose later accounts of taking part in professional sporting events became widely known.
"Tom had been working with an editor, but they still had a ways to go, and he asked me to edit it." Mr. Brooks shared editing credit for the film, which became part of the American Masters series on PBS. "That took a year," he said. "When you're doing a documentary, you get so immersed in someone's life that you become a de facto biographer."
Meanwhile, his next big project, a career-maker, was taking shape. The year was 2009, when three good friends -- Gillian Robespierre, Karen Maine, and Mr. Brooks's wife, Anna Bean -- wrote a script for a short film about a recently dumped, unemployed woman who decides to terminate her pregnancy from a one-night stand.
Ms. Robespierre told a Times reporter that the film was a reaction against previous movies about unwanted pregnancies that ended in changes of heart and uplifting births. "They just didn't feel true," she said.
She uploaded the 23-minute drama, titled "Obvious Child," to the online platform Vimeo, where it was watched by more than 40,000 people. Inspired by the response, she went on to write a full-length screenplay with Ms. Maine and Elisabeth Holm. The money for the low-budget production came from grants, private equity, and a Kickstarter campaign, among others.
Mr. Brooks and Ms. Robespierre had met on their first day at the School of Visual Arts and remained close friends. "I got to edit 'Obvious Child' because I was the only one who had experience and was willing to work for no money, which was important." He edited the film on a laptop in his kitchen.
The filmmakers had little expectations for it, he said, "but it went to Sundance, and it was one of those Cinderella stories. People loved it." It was picked up by the independent film distributor A24, and went on to earn positive reviews and more than three times its $1 million production budget.
"Obvious Child," which has had unusual longevity, led to some of Mr. Brooks's subsequent feature-editing jobs, including "Landline," also directed by Ms. Robespierre; "Brittany Runs a Marathon," "Buffaloed," and "Something From Tiffany's."
Typically, his work begins when filming starts. Each day's footage (the "dailies") is given to him the following morning. "I do a rough cut and show it to the director, just so they know if it's working or it isn't. I'm doing whatever I can to see the speed bumps ahead and get away from them. And seeing the dailies helps with the whole editing process."
But the narrative features are only part of his story. In 2015, Mr. Brooks was hired to edit "AKA Lonely," a 10-minute documentary about Antonio (Lonely) Gutierrez Farias, who grew up in the United States, became a gang member as a teenager, went to prison, and was eventually deported to Mexico.
Arriving in that country without friends or family, and appalled by the violence of the Michoacan drug cartels, he joined the Grupo de Autodefensa, a self-defense group that opposed the cartels. "That was an intense story," Mr. Brooks said.
Editing a documentary is very different from a narrative feature, he explained. "With a documentary you have more leash, because there are so many different paths you can go to. You can build the puzzle a hundred different ways and flip it upside down and do it over again. Whereas in a narrative, things are pretty much locked in" by the script.
Mr. Brooks has also worked in television. Between 2019 and 2021, he edited 54 episodes of "Desus & Mero," an award-winning late-night comedy series on Showtime. Editing that show was "a lot of fun," he said, but he jumped a couple of years later to "Life & Beth," on Hulu, at the urging of its creator and star, Amy Schumer. He edited four of the first 10 episodes, and is about to start the second season.
"Amy is wonderful, that's why I'm going back," he said. "She gets all the best people."
Other ongoing projects include some driven by his personal life. Every year since 2012, he has filmed his family, friends, travels, and the East End landscape, in chronological order, and edited each year's footage "super quick. I finished 2022 on New Year's Day 2023."
"I just make them for myself and maybe for a couple of friends," Mr. Brooks said, acknowledging the influence of the diary films of the underground-film icon Jonas Mekas. But "the nature stuff is more my Terrence Malick side."
And then there's the music. "Dark Drive," available on Soundcloud, consists of 10 tracks featuring his voice, his guitar, and his compositions. With friends, he founded Balene, a band that has performed around the city and recorded the album "A Phantom Sea" in his parents' East Hampton living room.
Mr. Brooks recently worked on "Scrambled," a comedy feature about a broke, single millennial who unleashes a crisis when she freezes her eggs. After that, he edited two episodes of "Up Here," an adult musical comedy coming out on Hulu in March.
"I was busy last year," he said, putting it mildly.
