By Angelina Tang
After 24 long years, Mr. Belling has announced that he will be going back to Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, to start editing movies and TV series again after the close of the 2023-2024 school year. He has stated that the resolution of the Hollywood strikes in late 2023 was the final push of inspiration he needed to make this career jump back to film.
Mr. Belling will be an assistant editor to Schrödinger (2028), a full-length feature film about Irish physicist Erwin Schrödinger and his academic and personal endeavors. The film will be written, directed, and produced by Christopher Nolan, the producer of Oppenheimer—the 2023 success that this new movie will be styled similarly to. According to Mr. Belling’s insider report, Schrödinger will involve non-linear storytelling touching upon his Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment, his contributions to quantum theory, his struggle to find a stable job thanks to his insistence that he live with his wife and mistress together, and his late-age relationships with minors, setting up an unreliable narrator in the style of Lolita’s Humbert Humbert.
Schrödinger’s “political incorrectness,” which resulted in Trinity College of Dublin to rename a theater originally named after him, is a statement of sorts for the film industry. It’s proof that a film can recognize and praise a historical figure for his impact on history, but not condone everything he did, nor outright frame him as a good person–a step further from covering Oppenheimer’s act of creating the atomic bomb, an already morally ambiguous act.
Also, while the Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment will be illustrated in the movie, it is notable that the experiment was never physically produced and Schrödinger never intended for it to be done. As such, no cats will be harmed in the making of the movie.
Regarding his feelings about going back to the movie industry, Mr. Belling seems quite pleased. “I can’t believe how many years I wasted in education,” he says. “I feel like I’m finally going home again.” We will miss Mr. Belling but we wish him the best in his future endeavors!
