THE 30TH ANNUAL SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL

     A few months before the second annual Sundance Film Festival -- held in January 1985 -- Joel and Ethan Coen, chain-smoking Camel lights in the tiny editing room I shared with sound designer Skip Lievsay, said in a very offhand manner, “Redford has this festival in Utah where you ski all day and watch movies all night.”  They mentioned it because BLOOD SIMPLE had been accepted to compete at this very odd venue. Lifelong schussmeisters from Minnesota, the Coens seemed more excited about the days than the nights.  For Skip and me, their announcement simply meant we had to be ready to mix the film’s sound in time for festival presentation.

     We were.  The boys skied, BLOOD SIMPLE won the Jury Prize… good times! Exciting times! Independent cinema was an embryo.

     Now, for better or worse, it’s a grownup. The festival has become a sales venue – a place where agents sell independently financed films to studios, large and small. There’s a Fred Segal franchise at the foot of Park City’s chairlift.  In a town where drinking was illegal, after-screening parties are now sponsored by booze manufacturers.  A tiny room in a tiny cabin, miles from Park City, can be more expensive than a suite in a trendy New York hotel.

     What hasn’t changed, though, is the fact that it’s incredibly exciting to have a film in competition at the festival.  So I’m very excited, again this year, indeed.

     INFINITELY POLAR BEAR, written and directed by Maya Forbes, which I edited, has its worldwide premiere on January 18th, during opening weekend of the 30th annual Sundance Film Festival.  It was delightful working with Maya on the film.

     I met her about a year ago – a few months before the start of principal photography – after reading and falling in love with her screenplay and “mission statement.”  The script tells the tale of a manic-depressive father who, in the early 1980’s, becomes the primary caretaker of his two young daughters.  He must rise to the daunting task of raising the girls regardless of his mental illness.

     What I loved about the mission statement was Maya’s clear intention to make comedy an essential part of the film’s overall tone.  It would be too easy and probably too dark, she said, to focus on how bleak the narrative of a mentally ill father could be.

     While cutting the film, I was reminded of an interview with cinematographer Gordon Willis that appeared in Premiere Magazine many years ago. Gordon, with whom I was privileged to work on MANHATTAN and STARDUST MEMORIES, said that an essential part of his job was reminding the director of her/his original goals.  A given location might make it impossible to shoot what had been planned, for instance, but Gordon had to find alternatives that were in sync with the director’s vision.

    And so, in the POLAR BEAR cutting room, as we shaped scenes in which authentic and beautiful performances by Mark Ruffalo and Zoe Saldana captured the seriousness of the father’s situation, I found myself -- along with Maya – mining material to enhance the lighter tone originally intended.

     I think we pulled it off.  At least well enough to be one of the 16 films selected, from more than 12,000 submissions, to compete for the jury prize at the 30th annual Sundance Film Festival.

     Sundance is my favorite of all the galas, because it’s still, basically, a Mecca for motion picture lovers.  Over the years – having edited seven “official Sundance selections” -- I’ve met film fanatics from all over the world who trek to frigid Park City just to see what’s fresh and new and non-formulaic in contemporary American cinema. The marketplace notwithstanding, most people attend Sundance just to enjoy themselves at the movies.  It reminds me of what rock musicians love about playing far-flung venues:  audiences don’t come, as they might in Los Angeles or New York, to “be impressed.” They come to have a great time. I know that this year, once again, they will.

A NEW INTERVIEW WITH OLIVER STONE PART I: JFK AND THE UNKNOWN HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

     In early September, noting that nearly fifty years have passed since President Kennedy's assassination, I sat down with Oliver Stone to discuss his masterpiece, JFK.  My first question for the esteemed filmmaker was rather broad.

     “The president was murdered in Dallas half a century ago,” I said, “and it's been 22 years since JFK was released. Yet the film remains pertinent to our lives. What - in the world and in the film - accounts for its ongoing immediacy and power?”

     Mr. Stone responded:  “There’s the film, on one hand and, on the other, Kennedy’s reputation. Mainstream American media have for the most part depicted him a ‘minor president’ who wasn’t in office long enough to make a difference. Lyndon Johnson, in that narrative, came in and fulfilled JFK’s vision with the Civil Rights Act and so forth, and basically continued his policies. I vehemently disagreed with this view back in the nineties and I continue to disagree with it as I’ve deepened my own awareness in the last five years while working on THE UNTOLD HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. In Part 6, ‘Kennedy to the Brink,’ (co-writer) Peter Kuznick and I show JFK to be a great president.  Not a near-great or glamorous one, but a great, great one who, next to Franklin Roosevelt, effected the biggest change in the U.S. government and its attitude toward the world.”

     UNTOLD HISTORY is a documentary series directed by Mr. Stone for Showtime and broadcast in 2012.  On October 15^th, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment will release all ten episodes, along with hours of previously unaired material, on Blu-ray.  The high quality of these one hour shows – from “World War II” to  “Bush & Obama: The Age of Terror” – place them squarely in a tradition of excellent nonfiction films made by the best fiction directors. Martin Scorsese’s THE LAST WALTZ, MY VOYAGE TO ITALY, NO DIRECTION HOME and LIVING IN THE MATERIAL WORLD epitomize this tradition today. But decades before Mr. Scorsese, such renowned storytellers as David Lean, Carol Reed, John Ford, John Huston and Frank Capra crafted superb fact-based motion pictures.

     Mr. Stone’s program is a direct descendent of Mr. Capra’s Second World War series, WHY WE FIGHT.  Using voice-over narration, newsreel footage, clips from feature films, re-enactments, maps (some of them produced by the Disney Studios in the 1940’s), and original as well as classical music, UNTOLD HISTORY pays homage to Frank Capra.  Early episodes feature clips from WHY WE FIGHT itself, MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON and Sergei Eisenstein’s ALEXANDER NEVSKY, which Mr. Capra “quoted” in his two-part “The Battle of Russia” (1944).

     The Showtime series is thus stylistically conservative, in marked contrast to  motion pictures like THE DOORS, NATURAL BORN KILLERS and, especially, JFK, in which the director exhibited groundbreaking technical virtuosity.  But a mainstream, even old-fashioned approach suits UNTOLD HISTORY.  Partly because of the show’s Capra-esque feeling, Oliver Stone’s love of country comes across clearly. Not a jingoistic patriotism or love based on “American exceptionalism.” But a love of ideals like FDR’s “Four Freedoms” (freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear) and of heroic figures like FDR’s progressive vice president, Henry Wallace (1941-1945), and, of course, President Kennedy.

     Which brings us back to Oliver Stone’s reflections on the 35^th chief executive.  “As we show in UNTOLD HISTORY,” said Mr. Stone, “Kennedy was, at first, a typical cold warrior.  From 1952 to 1960, when Eisenhower’s budgeting cycle was complete, there was a huge build-up of hydrogen bombs, and JFK supported it. He continued to do so early in his own presidency. But he changed after the Bay of Pigs debacle and even more so after the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, when the world teetered on the brink of nuclear war. He changed radically.”

     Thus, the director said, “Everyone today owes the simple fact that they’re alive to JFK. Because the situation created during the Cold War -- with first strike nuclear capability over the Soviets and the ’brinksmanship’ policies of Allen Dulles and Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950’s -- made the US overwhelmingly armed, shockingly aggressive toward the USSR and willing to use those first-strike capabilities to destroy the Soviet Union and communist China forever.

     “(Air Force Chief of Staff) Curtis LeMay and other generals were ready to go whole hog, urging the president and Secretary of Defense McNamara to bomb Cuban missile sites. If you’ve seen DOCTOR STRANGELOVE, you know the scenario. Bombing Cuba would have resulted in the end of life as we know it. And Kennedy understood that.”

     The president expressed his view of nuclear war concisely but dramatically in a September 1961 address to the U.N. General Assembly, excerpted in episode 6 of UNTOLD HISTORY:  “Today, (everyone) must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable.  Every man, woman and child lives under the sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident, or miscalculation, or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.”

     With that perspective, Kennedy stood up to the military brass.  Oliver Stone explained: “Kennedy -- and UNTOLD HISTORY goes into detail about this -- actively resisted the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CIA.  Eisenhower weighed in heavily in favor of going into Cuba, to attack them and the Soviets. So for Kennedy to say no to the CIA at the Bay of Pigs was enormous.  To say no during the missile crisis was enormous. To say no to the Joint Chiefs of Staff when they wanted to invade Laos, was enormous.”  Kennedy’s leadership – his fearlessness and forcefulness in the face of nearly rabid, united opposition -- changed the course of human events.

     What emerges, then, from Oliver Stone’s UNTOLD HISTORY and from his dialogue about JFK is not a rehash of Howard Zinn’s PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, which focused on historic contributions of “common” people rather than high ranking officials.  Nor is the Showtime series steeped in leftist paradigms one might expect from a supporter of Bolivarian socialism. Absent, too, are revelations of conspiracies behind earthshaking phenomena. Underlying UNTOLD HISTORY, instead, is a kind of “great man” theory of history.

     The theory, popularized by Thomas Carlyle in the 19^th century, holds that highly influential individual contribute to change by utilizing their special skills or power. But Oliver Stone’s take on this worldview is not that the actions of great historical players are fated or predictable. As Jon Wiener wrote in The Nation, UNTOLD HISTORY’s thesis is that “at many pivotal moments… history could have taken a radically different course.  The missed opportunities, the roads not taken – these are Stone’s central themes, which he argues with energy, passion and a mountain of evidence.”

     Therein lies the “untold history.” Mainstream texts usually present Henry Wallace, for instance, as a marginal third party candidate in the 1948 presidential race. The Showtime series, on the other hand, maintains that had Wallace won the Democratic nomination for a second vice presidential term in 1944 – which he almost did -- he would have become president in 1945. As a student of Buddhism, Mr. Wallace certainly wouldn’t have dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And the cold war and arms race might not have ensued.

     Similarly, conventional history texts hold that President Truman’s use of nuclear weapons against Japan ended World War II expeditiously.  The attacks are portrayed as wise, even humane.  But THE UNTOLD HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES reminds us that Generals Eisenhower and MacArthur, along with many of the scientists who developed the bomb, opposed Truman. They felt his decision was unwise and inhumane.  Hundreds of thousands of lives would have been saved if the generals and scientists had held sway.

     In the series’ final episode, Oliver Stone argues that if George W. Bush had heeded a CIA brief entitled “Bin Ladn Determined to Strike in U.S.,” delivered to him 36 days before the 9/11 attacks, the world would be very different today.

      And in episode 6, the writers assert that if JFK hadn’t been assassinated in November1963, he would have withdrawn all troops from Vietnam and negotiated an end to the cold war. Which brings us back, once more, to my chat with the writer/director about President Kennedy. 

     “JFK’s position on Vietnam is much misunderstood,” he said. “He never sent combat advisors there, although that was recommended repeatedly; he sent non-combat advisors instead.  In fact, he tried to keep a distance from the Vietnamese conflict. In the end, when Kennedy issued National Security Action Memorandum 263, proposing the recall of troops, he made it clear to his closest advisors that if he won the election against Goldwater in 1964, he would with withdraw entirely from Vietnam. 

     “He was also moving toward the end of the Cold War with Khrushchev.  They signed a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963, of which he was most proud.  He tried to end the space race, proposing that the US and the USSR work together on a piloted mission to the moon.  He was attempting, through a secret emissary, to normalize relations with Cuba.  On every front, Kennedy would have been a great second term president.

      “He’s the only American president since Roosevelt to give a speech about the Soviet Union – at American University – paying homage to their sacrifices during World War II. He said that what happened to the Soviet Union was the equivalent of the United States being blown up from Chicago to New York. He empathized. He understood suffering because he had suffered his whole life. His brother was killed in the war, he was injured, and he behaved honorably in combat. That’s why men with three and four stars on their shoulders didn’t intimidate Kennedy - the guys who were telling him to go to war with the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

     I became aware of the American University speech while watching JFK.  In a clip from the 1963 speech shown in that film, President Kennedy humanized the Soviet people in a manner unheard of at the time. He said that the U.S. wanted peace, but “not a Pax Americana,” because at our core, we were the same as the Russians.  “We all breath the same air,” he said, “we all want the best futures for our children, and we are all mortal.”

     Oliver Stone added, “Kennedy was the last American president who really stood for peace.”  Which, Kevin Costner’s character in JFK (Jim Garrison) slowly realizes, “made him a threat to the establishment.”  In the 1991 feature, this becomes motive for murder. A strong case is made that there was a conspiracy behind the killing and a cover-up of the crime. The Warren Commission Report is thoroughly discredited.  But in THE UNTOLD HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, Mr. Stone’s voice-over narration simply states that the public found “unconvincing” the commission’s conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, killed the president.

     This isn’t to say that the director has any less conviction that a conspiracy lay behind the president’s murder than he had when JFK was released.  He made such a powerful a case in 1991 that Congress created the Assassination Records Review Board to continue collection and declassification of material related to the killing. And Mr. Stone still argues persuasively on the subjects of conspiracy and cover-up.

     In a few weeks, Part II of my interview with Oliver Stone continues with a discussion of the Kennedy assassination and Mr. Stone’s amazing film on the subject.

My Dad

     My father - Irving Miller - passed away on July 23d at 90 years of age.  I’ll miss him. He loved movies, and his passion for them was infectious and inspiring. Even as he neared the end, I could distract him with conversations about great pictures we’d seen together. Among his favorites were LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, early Brando films and anything in which James Cagney appeared.

     I never tired of hearing about Cagney entertaining GIs aboard the ship on which dad -- a World War II vet -- sailed to Europe after enlisting in the army.  The great star sang, danced and palled around with the troops, keeping spirits high and creating lasting memories. One afternoon, shortly after I started working in the industry, I saw Mr. Cagney walking to a screening room at Technicolor Laboratories to watch dailies of his cameo performance in RAGTIME. Lab employees lined the hallway to applaud the legend and I welled up, recalling my father’s stories; I couldn’t wait to tell him about my star sighting.     

     But mostly I enjoyed his anecdotes. In addition to tales of James Cagney, there were yarns from childhood about whole days spent in grand movie palaces under the “el” in Jamaica, Queens.  These spectacular theatres -- the Loew’s Valencia, the RKO Alden, the Merrick – had twinkling stars in the ceilings, ornate balconies, eye-popping chandeliers. Dad would arrive early with a cousin or a friend to watch, one after the other, a stage show, a newsreel, a B feature, promotional events for local businesses, “previews of coming attractions” and, finally, the A feature. Occasionally, he’d repeat the cycle.

     During my own childhood, holidays were marked by movies on television: YANKEE DOODLE DANDY on July 4^th and MIRACLE ON THIRTY-FOURTH STREET after Macys’ Thanksgiving parade. IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE was standard fare for Christmas, EASTER PARADE for its day.

     Of course, there were non-holiday favorites as well.  Among them was DEAD END, which reminded my father of the Broadway play on which it was based. The production meant a lot to him because, like William Wyler’s film adaptation, it featured his Jamaica neighbor Billy Halop, along with other “Dead End Kids” Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall.  (Michael Curtiz’ ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES hit a casting trifecta for my family: Billy Halop, Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney.)

     But my father loved stage actors who became Hollywood celebrities even if they weren’t from the neighborhood.  I had thought Busby Berkley’s THEY MADE ME A CRIMINAL, featuring the Dead End Kids and John Garfield, was in dad’s pantheon because of Halop.  But as we watched BODY AND SOUL or THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE, he would speak, lovingly and with awe, about seeing Garfield in a Group Theatre production of Clifford Odets’ AWAKE AND SING. He was only twelve at the time and the actor was then known as Julius Garfinkle; watching the play made him a fan for life.

     Dad also liked seeing stars in person, offstage.  I took my parents to The Russian Tea Room for dinner once, and we sat next to Joan Fontaine.  As good as the food and pepper-flavored vodka tasted, seeing Ms. Fontaine was the high point of our meal.  Afterwards, we laughed about how her dancing in DAMSEL IN DISTRESS was not up to the standard set by Ginger Rogers for co-star Fred Astaire, and we all agreed that her Oscar-winning performance in Alfred Hitchcock’s REBECCA was perfect.

     Hitchcock was one of the Miller family’s favorite directors. While my father had no interest in abstractions such as Andrew Sarris’s “auteur theory” he was, practically speaking, an “auteurist.”  He wouldn’t miss a film by Hitch and chatted enthusiastically about such great ones as THE LADY VANISHES, THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS, DIAL M FOR MURDER, REAR WINDOW and VERTIGO, even as we watched them on tv.  Dad pointed out the director’s use “The Merry Widow Waltz” when SHADOW OF A DOUBT aired, and suggested, as LIFEBOAT unspooled, that the Tallulah Bankhead/William Bendix kiss was the best in all of cinema.  (Talking while movies played in our living room was perfectly acceptable; the assumption was that I’d see the good ones again and again. No wonder that viewing a film many times, as editors must, always seemed normal to me!)

     Dad also saw Hitchcock pictures on the big screen. I was too young to be taken to see PSYCHO and the film was (correctly) believed to be “too gruesome” for mom, but I vaguely remember my father coming home, both shaken and enthralled, after seeing it at the Parsons Theatre in Kew Garden Hills, Queens.  A couple of years later, he saw THE BIRDS at the same venue and was affected the same way.

     But Alfred Hitchcock wasn’t the only auteur my father liked.  Michael Curtiz was another, even if dad didn’t know his name.  Curtiz’ YANKEE DOODLE DANDY, ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES and CASABLANCA were all “must watch” movies when they aired.  Dad would grin ear to ear during Cagney’s dance numbers and well up during Bogey’s “hill of beans” speech – every time.

     William Wyler made his mark in our home with DEAD END, THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES and BEN-HUR.  Elia Kazan’s GENTLEMAN’S AGREEMENT, ON THE WATERFRONT, A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, A FACE IN THE CROWD and SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS were greatly admired as well.

     While unaware that Sarris considered The Marx Brothers auteurs even though they didn’t direct (and probably unaware of Sarris himself), my dad was a big fan of theirs as well. His favorite set piece in any movie was the stateroom scene in A NIGHT AT THE OPERA.  And what a brilliant bit it is, with Groucho, Harpo and Chico at their best and staging on which Buster Keaton consulted!

      Another fond memory of that film, for me, is “Alone,” a romantic duet sung by Kitty Carlyle and Alan Jones as the Marx Brothers’ ship sets sail.  Later in the movie, Harpo reprises the song with his magical mixture of grace and comedy.  And dad used to play it on the piano!  My cousin Barbara told me recently that at age 5 she’d sit at her Uncle Irv’s feet and ask him to play a piece he’d written, over and over and over.  (Yes, this dry cleaning supplies salesman wrote a very sweet song!)  The number I requested repeatedly was “Alone.”

     Dad’s love of music was as infectious and inspiring as his love of cinema. While his refusal to listen to anything recorded after the 1940’s could be maddening, his passion for opera, swing and show tunes affected me deeply as a moviegoer and as a filmmaker.  The emotional wallop packed by the intermezzo from “Cavaleria Rusticana” in RAGING BULL was magnified tenfold because I associated it with my father.  So, too, with “Rhapsody in Blue” and the entire soundtrack of MANHATTAN, as well as all the great songs in SWING KIDS!

     Most moving to me, though, was this: despite the fact that my dad didn’t listen to new music, he did go to see new movies, and he never missed one of mine.  Even when driving to the cinema became an ordeal, as it is for any nonagenarian, he’d go opening weekend. And he always had kind words to say – often out of proportion to the actual quality of the work. So… as I said earlier, I’ll miss him.

ROGER EBERT (1942-2013), REST IN PEACE

     Two days before his death, Roger Ebert wrote that he was about to take “a leave of presence.” He will be greatly missed. The depth of his passion for film and filmmakers made terms like “reviewer” or “critic” inapplicable; he was more of an advocate for movies he loved. And while he was an exceptional and witty wordsmith, he seldom seemed to revel in his own cleverness or profundity. The pictures came first.

     In 1967, along with The New Yorker's Pauline Kael, Ebert -- in his first year at The Chicago Sun-Times -- helped rescue Arthur Penn’s BONNIE AND CLYDE, writing a rave review after The New York Times and Newsweek savaged the film. Readers ignored the stodgier critics and came around. Now, of course, Penn’s movie is considered a classic, as well as a paradigm of modern film editing.

     A year later, Ebert went to bat for Sam Peckinpah’s THE WILD BUNCH, reviewing it twice! The first time, he called it, “an important act of filmmaking” and said it “presents violence in such definitive (indeed, even excessive) terms that it becomes, paradoxically, a statement against violence and a reaction to it.” The second time, he watched it with a paying crowd and mused that its hyperrealism and excess made viewers aware that they were watching a motion picture. As self-reflexive cinema, the critic wrote, it called into question cheering for traditional Western heroes played by the likes of Gary Cooper, John Wayne and Hopalong Cassidy.

     For such insightful and impassioned writing, Roger Ebert received the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1978. But he became truly famous reviewing films on television with colleague Gene Siskel, first on PBS’ “Sneak Previews” (also in 1978) and, subsequently, on “At The Movies.” Tuning in to Siskel and Ebert’s debates exposed audiences to the joys of discussing what they’d seen at the multiplex. Quentin Tarantino’s dialogue between Clarence and Alabama, early in TRUE ROMANCE, may be a lasting tribute to “At The Movies”:

Clarence: ...after I see a movie, I like to get a piece of pie and talk about it. It’s sort of a tradition I have. Do you like to get a piece of pie after you see a good movie?

Alabama: Yeah, I love to get pie after a movie. 

Clarence: Would like to go get some pie with me? Alabama: Yeah, I'd love some pie.

     Ebert consistently argued for accepting a motion picture on its own terms. “When you ask a friend if HELLBOY is any good,” he wrote, “you’re not asking if it’s any good compared to MYSTIC RIVER, you’re asking if it’s any good compared to THE PUNISHER.” Thus he didn’t expect ANACONDA to be CITIZEN KANE.

     Unlike most American critics, Roger Ebert had experience in the trenches of Hollywood. He wrote the cult classic BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, directed by Russ Meyer, as well as Meyer’s BENEATH THE VALLEY OF THE SUPERVIXENS and UP!. So, to a degree, Ebert was an “industry insider.” This enabled him to love filmmakers, not envy them. And the feeling was mutual. Werner Herzog dedicated his 2008 film ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD to Roger Ebert. And in 2009, the Directors Guild of America made him an honorary life member.

     I was privileged to begin an occasional email relationship with Ebert when I started this blog. His response to the first post he liked was a pithy: “tweeted it.” More often, when he didn’t like a post, he simply didn’t tweet it. (He was so economical a writer, I told myself, he could say “meh” in less than one word.) When discussing a particular film, or baseball, on the other hand, he was more effusive.

     Roger Ebert was one of a kind: an American cineaste. Gone much too soon. Rest in peace. 

The 63d Annual A.C.E. Eddie Awards

     The annual A.C.E. Eddie Awards dinner reminds me of the Passover Seder.  Each year, when Jewish families celebrate the exodus of Hebrew slaves from Egypt, the youngest child asks, “Why is this night different from all other nights?”  (Ritual requires that four answers be given; these responses, each including the words “on this night,” have paradoxically become known as “the four questions.”) 

     Like Passover repasts, Eddie Awards ceremonies mark a divergence from the norm.  On this night, editors get together with a thousand peers to honor excellence in a craft that’s usually unnoticed or misunderstood, even by fellow filmmakers.  On this night, editors bask in the limelight.  On this night actors and directors seem to feel privileged just to be in the company of editors.  On this night editors receive full recognition for their work, even as co-writers and co-creators of performance.

     And so, on this night - February 16, 2013 - it was delightful to see 1,000 esteemed colleagues at the Beverly Hilton Hotel celebrating nominees for and winners of A.C.E.’s highest honor.  Mingling with such editing luminaries as Alan Heim (NETWORK, ALL THAT JAZZ), Bob Leighton (THIS IS SPINAL TAP, A FEW GOOD MEN), Dody Dorn (MEMENTO, INSOMNIA), Mary Jo Markey and Marianne Brandon (STAR TREK, SUPER 8), Steve Rivkin (PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN: CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL, AVATAR), Kevin Tent (ELECTION, THE DESCENDANTS) and so many others, I felt both humbled and at home.  At home with filmmakers who understand what it means to combine several takes in order to create one well-performed line of dialogue!  Who know how, oddly enough, a film might improve as a whole when a good or even great scene is deleted to accelerate its pace.  Who know, as Paul Hirsch (STAR WARS, RAY) once told me, “The difference between a good cut and a bad one is a twenty-fourth of a second.”

     All of the above-named editors have found themselves in the limelight at one time or another, with Academy or Eddie Award recognition.  And this year, I found myself sharing the limelight, as co-presenter of the trophy for Best Edited Documentary with Josh Radnor (HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER, LIBERAL ARTS).  Arriving at the Hilton, I was invited by A.C.E.’s Marika Ellis, event planner extraordinaire, to walk the red carpet.  The irony of an editor smiling for paparazzi and fielding questions from journalists was palpable.

     But I truly enjoyed sharing the insights that those queries elicited.  Asked to name one quality that was essential to good editing, I recalled a moment from early in my career.  The producers of a tiny movie I was cutting showed a rough assembly to Jerry Greenberg (KRAMER VS. KRAMER, THE UNTOUCHABLES).  He commented that the work “showed some sensitivity.”  Sensitivity?  This, I thought, from the editor of such testosterone-fueled pictures as THE FRENCH CONNECTION and THE TAKING OF PELHAM 1-2-3!  What he meant, I learned, was that editors had to allow themselves to be moved by the raw material – by what was authentic, or beautiful, funny or sad - and that, regardless of literal matches or mismatches of action, good cutting mandated that the deeply affecting pieces of film make their way into the cut.

     The notion of sensitivity recurred, putting me in the spotlight once more, as the award presentations began.  Jon Voight (MIDNIGHT COWBOY, COMING HOME), with whom I’d worked on ANACONDA, took the stage to announce the nominees for Best Edited Student Film.  He’d asked me backstage if he could share a story about the snake movie, which he proceeded to do.  From the wings, I heard him recount that, in a shot where the enormous ophidian had spit him out at Jennifer Lopez’s feet, he winked at the camera, but no one on set had seen it.  I did see it, of course.  And, sensing that the wink was a key to finding ANACONDA’s arch tone, I used it.  The moment wound up in the final cut as a signal to the audience that, yes, it was okay to laugh at the movie.

     So… this night was different because a four-time Oscar nominee and one-time winner for Best Actor led the way in shifting focus away from thespians and directors, onto editors.   The celebration of “invisible artists” by those with high profiles continued when the winner of last year’s Golden Eddie, director Alexander Payne (ABOUT SCHMIDT, SIDEWAYS), co-presented a Career Achievement Eddie to Richard Marks (APOCALYPSE NOW, TERMS OF ENDEARMENT).

     In a callback to his hilarious yet touching Golden Eddie acceptance speech, Alexander Payne overemphasized the American Cinema Editors acronym when referring to Richard Marks, A.C.E. as he had when praising his longtime collaborator, Kevin Tent, A.C.E.  (Kevin was 2012’s winner for Best Edited Feature, Payne’s THE DESCENDANTS.)  The director spoke almost reverently of Marks, his former film instructor at UCLA.  It was wonderful for a roomful of cutters to hear Alexander Payne state unequivocally that he’d learned most of what he knows about filmmaking from one of our own.

      And how could an aspiring filmmaker not learn from Richard Marks, A.C.E.?  His credits include LITTLE BIG MAN, SERPICO, THE GODFATHER: PART II and APOCALYPSE NOW!, ST. ELMO’S FIRE and PRETTY IN PINK, BROADCAST NEWS and AS GOOD AS IT GETS, DICK TRACY,  SAY ANYTHING, YOU’VE GOT MAIL, JULIA AND JULIA and more.  Obviously, American Cinema Editors doesn’t mess around when giving a career achievement award.  

     During Marks’ acceptance speech, which he re-edited right down to the wire, he, too, mentioned sensitivity as an important attribute for cutters.  He said that as a student, Alexander Payne was “performance sensitive.”  That same quality in Richard Marks himself is what makes his films he so vibrant.  “Although I always try to protect the original intentions of the script,” he says, “a film has a life of its own and it evolves.”

     Documentaries, as a rule, are made without a script.  So on this night, legendary non-fiction editor, Larry Silk (MARJOE, PUMPING IRON) was acknowledged for career achievement in shaping compelling stories from hundreds of hours of film on each project.  Doc icon Barbara Kopple (HARLAN COUNTY, U.S.A.; MY GENERATION), presenting Silk with his trophy, talked about how honored she felt when he agreed to edit her Woody Allen piece, WILD MAN BLUES.  And who wouldn’t have been?  His work – on the CBS series THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (with Walter Cronkite), JOHNNY CASH! THE MAN AND HIS MUSIC, the aforementioned MARJOE and PUMPING IRON, and so many other projects – has always been groundbreaking.  Speaking of their collaboration, Kopple shared her awe as she watched Silk whittle her raw material down from hundreds of hours to fifteen hours, to five and, finally, to an hour and forty-five riveting minutes. 

     And on this night, 2013 Golden Eddie-recipient Steven Spielberg (JAWS, LINCOLN and everything in between), exuding a kind of humility borne of true greatness, also acknowledged editors as storytellers and close collaborators.  He spun a wonderful yarn about being on the Universal lot as a wide-eyed 19 year old, watching a television editor work with abysmal dailies of a courtroom summation.  The lead actor couldn’t remember two consecutive lines, spewing expletives more often than scripted dialogue.  So the cutter tossed out visuals of the star floundering.  He then deleted all flubs and swearing from the sound track, creating a serviceable audio version of the previously mangled monologue.  Next he strung together shots from throughout the show that illustrated the speech he’d rescued, creating an effective summation montage to go along with the salvaged performance.  Spielberg was duly amazed.  Always the gifted raconteur, however, he finished his story with a twist: the network hated the editor’s solution and reshot the scene as scripted.

     But the esteemed director moved easily from irony to love and gratitude.  Of his three decades-long collaboration with Michael Kahn, A.C.E., he simply said, “Without you, I wouldn’t be standing here tonight.”  His remarks about the cutting room itself – that it’s a “safe haven” in which you can try anything with your film in the utmost privacy – bespoke a profound understanding and appreciation of the process of editing.  And illustrating the kind of family-like closeness that develops in post-production, Spielberg said he’s been following the editing career of Michael Kahn’s former assistant, Billy Goldenberg, who, minutes later, won the Eddie for Best Edited Feature Film (Dramatic), for ARGO.

     The Passover Seder ends with a dessert known as the afikomen.  My Eddie Award dinner afikomen was presenting the Best Edited Television Documentary statuette to Pamela Arnold for AMERICAN MASTERS “PHIL OCHS: THERE BUT FOR FORTUNE.”  Pam and I started our editing careers together in New York, cutting “after school specials.”  At the time, I’m not sure we even knew Eddies existed.

     Of course, I congratulate all the award winners and nominees.  They should be extremely proud of their excellent work.  As should Jenni McCormick (a force of nature), Marika Ellis and Tami Flannery, producers of the 63d Annual Eddie Awards.