Oscar-winning editor Jim Clark's hilarious memoir offers valuable insights into an often overlooked aspect of cinema
Numerous directors and a fair number of cinematographers have written autobiographies, but although there are useful books on the art and craft and editing, the only memoir I've come across by a film editor is the eye-opening When the Shooting Stops... the Cutting Begins by Ralph Rosenblum, the New York editor who saved Mel Brooks's The Producers and Woody Allen's Annie Hall from catastrophe. It appeared in 1979, and towards the end of it Rosenblum says of his trade: "The profession selects in favour of caution, timidity, self-abnegation, tact, 'a diplomacy', says British editor James Clark, 'which would normally put us straight into parliament'." Now in retirement, Jim Clark has put aside his diplomacy to write a revealing, funny, devastatingly frank account of a lifetime spent editing film.
Unlike many people in films,...
Numerous directors and a fair number of cinematographers have written autobiographies, but although there are useful books on the art and craft and editing, the only memoir I've come across by a film editor is the eye-opening When the Shooting Stops... the Cutting Begins by Ralph Rosenblum, the New York editor who saved Mel Brooks's The Producers and Woody Allen's Annie Hall from catastrophe. It appeared in 1979, and towards the end of it Rosenblum says of his trade: "The profession selects in favour of caution, timidity, self-abnegation, tact, 'a diplomacy', says British editor James Clark, 'which would normally put us straight into parliament'." Now in retirement, Jim Clark has put aside his diplomacy to write a revealing, funny, devastatingly frank account of a lifetime spent editing film.
Unlike many people in films,...
- 7/28/2011
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
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