
“It’s Wonderful to Aim for the Poetic”: Editor Julian Hart on Never Get Busted

Never Get Busted documents a decorated narcotics officer in Texas turn toward libertarianism as he aims to expose police misconduct and helps drug users slip under the radar. The docuseries, more than five years in the making, takes its name from the YouTube channel of its subject, Barry Cooper.
Never Get Busted will screen at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival as part of the episodic pilot showcase. Below, editor Julian Hart extols the benefits that split screens had on his projects and shares what he has learned working for a diverse assortment of projects.
See all responses to our annual Sundance editor interviews here.
Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job?
Hart: Producer John Battsek, who I worked with on The Deepest Breath (Sundance 2023), sent me the pitch deck for Never Get Busted. As an editor, I’m always looking for great stories but also for variety in the types of stories I’m telling. Never Get Busted was funny, wild and utterly unlike anything I’d worked on before. John introduced me to director David Ngo and producer Erin Williams-Weir. We discussed the project via Zoom, hit it off and away we went.
Filmmaker: In terms of advancing your film from its earliest assembly to your final cut, what were your goals as an editor? What elements of the film did you want to enhance, or preserve, or tease out or totally reshape?
Hart: There were a lot of moving parts and directions in which the story could go. My instinct was to keep the focus on Barry’s unique experiences and character. This meant being judicious with the many story strands and when to use them. The goal was to hook the audience with Barry’s larger than life character and get them rooting for both Barry the conservative anti-drug cop and then Barry the weed-smoking libertarian.
Filmmaker: How did you achieve these goals? What types of editing techniques, or processes, or feedback screenings allowed this work to occur?
Hart: Split screens became a thematic device. Barry and some of the other contributors were brilliant mimics and naturally re-lived conversations verbatim. That gave me the idea of using split screens as if the phone conversations were taking place and the interviewees were really talking to one another. I shared cuts with David and Erin regularly via Dropbox, and we discussed over Zoom, and then towards the end of the edit they came to London.
Filmmaker: As an editor, how did you come up in the business, and what influences have affected your work?
Hart: I studied film at university in England for three years, which, in time honored tradition, qualified me to make the tea as a runner in a post-production house in London! I worked my way up, talking myself into my first editing job in the late ’90s. As an editor, you can only cut what you are offered, so my CV is varied, which I see as a strength, in that it exposes you to a breadth of challenges. Now, I am lucky enough to be offered some great projects.
My influences aren’t confined to film. They can be art, music, poetry, prose; anything that makes you feel and offers an interesting method for doing so. I cut both drama and documentary, but my influences for one often affect the other. Episode one of FX’s 2022 drama series The Bear was a reference for Never Get Busted despite the subject matter and genre being entirely different. In the episode there is a montage that uses an intercut of a video game for dramatic purposes. It gave me an idea for a comedic storytelling opportunity. In terms of drama editors, I’m a huge fan of Joe Walker. In Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival, Joe’s juxtaposition of images of memories and visions was akin to poetry. Films are prose by necessity, but when the opportunity arises it’s wonderful to aim for the poetic, where you can make those emotional leaps.
Filmmaker: What editing system did you use, and why?
Hart: Avid Media Composer has always been my first choice. Overall, the editing tools are straightforward and intuitive. It has a reliable media management structure that makes ingesting and sharing swathes of rushes over the internet easy, which was crucial on this project, as I edited from home and my wonderful assistant Brody King was based with David and Erin in Australia.
Filmmaker: What was the most difficult scene to cut and why? And how did you do it?
Hart: Probably the montage of Barry’s early success as a police officer making drug busts. There was a lot of information we wanted to get across in the most entertaining way possible. Split screens allowed more information to hit the screen at any one point, but also trebled the workload with options!
Filmmaker: Finally, now that the process is over, what new meanings has the film taken on for you? What did you discover in the footage that you might not have seen initially, and how does your final understanding of the film differ from the understanding that you began with?
Hart: I would not say the meaning of the film changed for me in any fundamental way. David, Erin, the producers and I were on the same page in terms of what we wanted to achieve. If my understanding of the film were to change it would be in how others react to it. I’m keen to find out the audience reacts at the Sundance Film Festival to the unique world of Barry Cooper.