After serving as the post-production intern on Oliver Stone's
JFK, editor Saar Klein's resume has grown to include
collaborations with some of the film industry's most celebrated
directors, including Terrence Malick on The Thin Red Line
and Cameron Crowe on Almost Famous. Most recently,
Klein teamed up with director Doug Liman to cut the eagerly
awaited The Bourne Identity, at theaters now.

We all started working together when we first got out of film school, and I've worked with many of the same people ever since. It's not so much about climbing over the wall to get into the film business; you just get a group of people and walk through the front gate together. And that makes it a lot easier than going one by one.

Performance-driven films suit One Hour Photo Editor

AVID] really does allow you to try a lot of different things and to experiment. However, I'm glad I have the discipline of film, where you work on a scene until it works. It's like practicing an instrument: you do it again and again until it works. It's not about slapping it together. Unfortunately, too many films are cut that way today.

Some people plan and scheme for years about how to
forge a career in the film business. For a lucky few, it's
almost a divine accident. Such is the case with editor Carol
Littleton, who has collaborated with high-profile
directors like Jonathan Demme, Robert Benton and Lawrence
Kasdan during her long career. Her latest picture, Demme's
The Truth About Charlie, cut in the French New Wave style,
gave her a new kind of freedom she says she'll take with her
in the future.

More than anyone, Dede taught me about structure and performance. It was like learning how to ride a bike. I was constantly falling off before. But now I could hold my balance and sail down the street… wheeee!

Attribute her success to tenacity and talent all you
want-but Claire Simpson will tell you it's
really all about luck! Just five years after getting her start
assisting legendary editor Dede Allen on 1981's Reds Simpson
was reciting her own Oscar acceptance speech for her work
on Oliver Stone's Platoon. With a filmography consisting
of more than a dozen films, including two further projects
with Stone (Salvador and Wall Street) and collaborations
with directors Robert Towne, Neil LaBute, Ridley Scott and
Tony Scott, Simpson has carved out a career that would make
most editors envious.

I'm always so impressed when I'm working with him in looping sessions with actors. Even if he can't get a certain reading, he'll never go up and tell the actor how to do it. He'll just move on rather than tell the actor how to do it, because he feels that that's a real violation.

The three-time Oscar
nominee (and winner for Raging Bull) Thelma
Schoonmaker gives us the lowdown on life in the trenches
with America's reigning master and their latest collaboration,
Gangs of New York.

One thing I learned in my very short career as an assistant was that there aren't too many editors prepared to give up the big chair without a fight, so you've got to make your own luck.

Scoring the gig as editor of the most highly touted cinema
musical in years didn't come easily to Martin Walsh, but it
was a cakewalk compared with the editing itself. In a film
with this much constant motion, the months of laboring through
the labyrinth of editorial decisions was literally mindboggling.
But with his first Oscar nomination to show for it, Walsh
now knows that it was all worthwhile.

Robert Duvall played both Adolph Eichmann and Stalin, yet he found in their characters a sense of humanity and created performances that weren't cliches.

Unlike Robert Duvall, his close collaborator, editor Stephen
Mack's career in feature films has not been what one would
call a prolific one. "I hope Assassination Tango
will receive some well deserved attention and that I'll be
recognized as a major feature film editor who happens to have
only a couple of credits in 33 years," Mack jokes about
his latest project, a film starring, written, produced and
directed by Duvall.

The one piece of advice that I would impart to anybody who is looking to be an editor or any other aspect of this business is always remember that making movies is about investigating all possibilities. You should always be open to different options. If you get focused into making something one way, you may not make the best film.

Though he's best-known as a frequent collaborator of Spike Lee, both as editor and producer, Samuel Pollard isn't afraid of wearing the hat of writer or director, either-or putting his money where his mouth is.

I am very respectful of the relationship between the director and the DP. I have never inserted myself into the discussion of the look of the film, but I have, of course, requested specific shots.

Having worked consistently with Michael Almereyda (on Happy
Here and Now and Hamlet) and Paul Schrader (including
Auto Focus and Light Sleeper), editor Kristina
Boden maintains an open mind when any new project comes
up-even after a very full decade of experience.

If someone wants to be an editor, I would tell them to cut anything and everything that they can-whether it's their parents' wedding videos or a music video for their friend's garage band. Just get in and cut as much as possible.

Every editor's career path is different. For Jeff Betancourt,
it all started with a phone call. Still a student when he was hired to cut his
first film, Miguel
Arteta's Star Maps, Betancourt has gone on to make quite a name for himself
in the indie film world, working again with Arteta on both Chuck & Buck and

The Good Girl. From the cutting room of the comedy Harold and Kumar
go to White
Castle, Betancourt spoke with MM about his career and The
United States of Leland.

Show the rough cut every week or two to a bunch of people who haven't read the script. Then listen to their feedback about what isn't working and what isn't clear. It may be painful to hear the critiques, but get over it. Then take all the info back to the edit room and figure out what to do.

He's a veteran of such indie classics as Laws of Gravity and Star Maps.
But sometimes, locked away in the cutting room, unaware of the outside world
and surrounded by fiction and fantasy, Tom McArdle says "you do whatever you
can to keep things feeling real." Here he discusses his latest project, Tom McCarthy's
critically acclaimed The Station Agent.

If I'm lucky enough to choose, and I am at the moment, I'm going to choose what I like. That just sort of makes sense.

One might have a tough time envisioning a path to Hollywood from a Connecticut
department store, but that's exactly where editor Steve Rosenblum's
improbable career began. With 20 years and more than a dozen feature films
under his belt, Rosenblum's latest effort, The Last Samurai, is about
to hit theaters. He recently spoke with MM about his longtime
collaboration with director Edward Zwick and the nature of what he calls
"musical storytelling."

When you first put an assembly together, you put in everything the director shot. You don't try to give it too much shape yet. Then, you attack it in the second cut. So, it's like a first draft of someone's writing.

Just weeks before scoring her second Oscar for Best Editing for The Aviator, editing legend Thelma Schoonmaker made time for a group of film fans--and an MM writer--at Seattle's Scarecrow Video to discuss her craft, collaborations with Scorsese and what it's like to have spent countless hours with the likes of Jake La Motta, Max Cady, Henry Hill and Bill the Butcher.

Nothing is done until it's done. If you're satisfied with something, look at it again.

hen it comes to the craft of motion picture editing, Norman
Hollyn is one of the masters. In addition to his work in the editing
room (both as a sound and film editor), Hollyn's found an entirely separate career
teaching the dos and don'ts of his job. A current professor of film editing as
USC, Hollyn has also taken to the classrooms of UCLA and the American Film Institute—as
well as penned the book The Film Editing Room Handbook: How To Manage The
Near Chaos of the Cutting Room (the title says it all).

This month's Editing "Best Of" includes
thoughts and quotes from some of our most acclaimed editor
interviews: Steve Rosenblum (The Last Samurai),
Tom McArdle (The Station Agent), Jeff Betancourt
(The United States of Leland), Kristina Boden (Auto
Focus), Stephen Mack (Assassination Tango),
Martin Walsh (Chicago), Thelma Schoonmaker (Gangs
of New York), Carol Littleton (E.T.), Jeffrey
Ford (Shattered Glass), Dody Dorn (Memento),
Tim Squyres (Hulk), Mary Sweeney (Mulholland
Drive) and Anne Coates (Lawrence of Arabia)

Let the eyes guide you. People are watching the eyes of a character. Eyes are also a link to subtext. You can create your own visual conversation between characters as they have [a different] one on the surface.

While he considers himself a composer, it’s hard to ignore John Ottman’s achievements in film editing. But he edits only for director Bryan Singer, whom he met at USC Film School. Ottman has cut all Singer’s films—except for X-Men (due to a scheduling conflict)—including The Usual Suspects, Apt Pupil, X2 and the upcoming Superman Returns.

Start it as soon as you can and be as thorough as possible before you ever even think about shooting. Any problems before production will only be magnified-and more expensive-to solve once production starts.

USC, UCLA and NYU may still get most of the glory. But when it comes to producing some truly talented—and independent-minded—teams of moviemakers, BYU is giving even the top film schools a run for their money. Following in the footsteps of Neil LaBute and Aaron Eckhart, writer-director Jared Hess and producer-editor Jeremy Coon have taken their collaboration from the mountains of Park City, Utah to theaters across America with this summer’s Napoleon Dynamite.

Film editing is a grueling process. There's no glamour in spending months at a time shut up in a dark room with a director who's spent years struggling to bring their story to the light of day. An aspiring editor has to be realistic about what the process entails: Does the minutiae of editing work actually inspire you? Are you content to rake through countless hours of footage and piece it together into a coherent story? For me, this meticulous, rigorous form of problem-solving is the reward in itself. I get tremendous satisfaction being in the editing room, looking at the same footage over and over-and seeing something different every time.

Fresh off the Sundance screening of Joey Lauren Adams’ Come Early Morning, Meg Reticker’s latest editorial effort and ninth Park City premiere, she sat down with MM to talk about her editorial philosophy, what attracts her to the indie side of the business and why it pays to enjoy the process.

If you're lucky to be cutting the film while they're still shooting, and you feel like you're missing a shot that would help you to make a scene or transition better, go and ask the director for it. Nine times out of 10, they'll be glad you did. Cutaways and establishing shots are usually the first things to get scratched off of the day's shot list as time grinds down, but if you really feel you need something, go for it.