Charles Olivier on Editing Surviving Ohio State for HBO

What does an editor owe the men whose stories no one wanted to hear?

That was the weight Charles Olivier carried into Surviving Ohio State, the HBO documentary from Oscar winner Eva Orner about decades of abuse by a team doctor in Ohio State's athletic programs. As Charles says, the stories weren't new. They were out there. The heartbreak, as he puts it, was that "hundreds into thousands of men" were ignored, mocked or pushed aside, and then rejected when they came forward.

In Episode 270, Christian sits down with Charles, the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning editor of The Jinx, The Redeem Team and Magic and Bird, from his home in France. He came onto the film as "fresh eyes" after a first cut, pitched his outline to the whole team on Zoom, and saw his job the way he sees every job: "you're kind of a midwife" to the director. He grew up in Texas in the same years these athletes were wrestling, played football, and has two little boys. Of all his films, he says, "this is really the one that I want my sons to watch."

Charles talks about how he got here: getting sick in film school and staying in New York, apprenticing for Sam Pollard, and cutting the Jackie Robinson story in Ezra Edelman's Brooklyn Dodgers film for HBO. "I'm not like a sports guy, which is the genius of it all," he says. For him it was always about the relationships. He builds a film the way a composer builds a symphony, "trying to sculpt emotion and engagement, tone and response over time," and he anchored this one in two wrestlers, Dan and Mike, so a number too big to grasp would still feel human. He also shares what it's like to get notes, and YouTube clips, from George Clooney.

WATCH THE FILM: Surviving Ohio State premiered on HBO on June 17, 2025, and streams on HBO Max.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• What it means to be hired as "fresh eyes" on a film that's already been cut
• Why Charles thinks of an editor as a midwife to the director
• How a film school illness and an apprenticeship with Sam Pollard started his career
• Why not being a sports guy helped him cut sports documentaries
• What Ezra Edelman taught him about what viewers remember
• How symphonic form shapes the structure of his films
• How to keep more than a thousand victims from becoming just a number
• Why he writes down his own first reactions to the footage
• What notes from George Clooney and Grant Heslov were like
• Why watching a cut with someone else wakes you up to it

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Who edited Surviving Ohio State?

Charles Olivier edited Surviving Ohio State, the 2025 HBO documentary directed by Eva Orner. He tells Christian he came in as "fresh eyes" after the film had already been cut once for HBO. The producers spent a summer interviewing editors, and he won the job by writing up an outline, pitching it to the whole team on Zoom, and talking at length with Eva about the story she wanted to tell.

What is Surviving Ohio State about?

Surviving Ohio State is about male athletes, mostly wrestlers, who were abused by a team doctor at Ohio State through the 1970s, 80s and 90s. Charles Olivier says the film is less about the doctor than about the betrayal that followed, when the men came forward and were ignored or rejected. It is based on Jon Wertheim's 2020 Sports Illustrated story, premiered at Tribeca in June 2025 and aired on HBO June 17, 2025.

How does music influence documentary editing?

Charles Olivier, who has a background in music composition, structures documentaries more like classical symphonies than three-act stories. He says symphonic form does what a film does: it sculpts emotion and engagement, tone and response over time. For Surviving Ohio State, he wanted one theme that felt warm and intimate and another that felt vast, cold and unstoppable, the men facing off with institutions.

What was it like working with George Clooney?

Charles Olivier says George Clooney, who produced Surviving Ohio State with Grant Heslov, was very polite and "a really lovely guy." Clooney's notes were about emotion, while Heslov's were about logic and arcs, so the notes sometimes contradicted each other. Clooney also sent YouTube clips he had found himself, and when one didn't fit, he agreed it didn't work.

DOCUVIEW DEJA VIEW PICK

• Fyre (2019), directed by Chris Smith, on Netflix. Charles's pick, about the failed Fyre music festival. Two documentaries on the same event came out within days of each other, and he recommends this one for how well it's put together. Watch it with the structure in mind.

See every guest pick on the DocuView Deja View page.

SPONSORED BY VIRGIL FILMS ENTERTAINMENT

With over 25 years of distribution experience, Virgil Films works with every major platform directly, with deals from standard distribution to service deals. Learn more at virgilfilms.com.

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ABOUT THE GUEST

Charles Olivier is an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning editor and writer with more than 20 years in film, television and audio. His credits include Deadline, the History Channel series 10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America, Brooklyn Dodgers: Ghosts of Flatbush and Magic and Bird: A Courtship of Rivals (Peabody Award) with Ezra Edelman, The Redeem Team (Emmy, 2023), and HBO's The Jinx: Part Two, for which he was Emmy-nominated for picture editing in 2024. He has worked with HBO, Netflix, PBS and Amazon, and divides his time between France, New York and Los Angeles. Charles on IMDb

More from Charles: In a Deep Dive, Christian follows one idea from this conversation, why viewers forget most of a film and remember the human moments: Why Viewers Forget 90% of Your Film.

ABOUT DOCUMENTARY FIRST

Documentary First is a weekly podcast about the people behind documentaries and how the work changed them. Host Christian Taylor, director of the award-winning The Girl Who Wore Freedom, talks with filmmakers, distributors, entertainment lawyers, actors and more, from Ken Burns and PBS American Masters creator Susan Lacy to first-timers, across nearly 300 conversations. Each week brings one of two formats: a long-form conversation with the people behind films for HBO, Netflix, PBS and independent film, or The Deep Dive, where Christian takes one insight from a recent conversation and follows it wherever it leads. Listen Notes ranks the show in the top 5% of all podcasts worldwide. New episodes every week.

RESOURCES MENTIONED

• Surviving Ohio State at Tribeca
• Charles on editing the film: Post Magazine