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.

Duddleston has collaborated with some of the independent world's most well-known names, including Gus Van Sant and Lisa Cholodenko. Here, Duddleston speaks with MM about the misconceptions of the profession, how to play the industry game and how it all started with Revenge of the Nerds.

Don't over cut. If a project goes on too long in post it gets a smell on it that won't go away.

From rap music to survivalists, bullet-proof clothing to porn conventions, you name it and moviemaker Chris Tellefsen has probably edited it. Fresh off the success of Capote, and finishing up James Foley’s Perfect Stranger, MM talked to Tellefsen about his place in the independent film movement and why less is always more.

If you're not too tired, it can clear your mind and get some frustrations out. You also won't feel so bad about sitting in front of a computer screen all day long!

Making movies aside, the most important job of any film school student is to forge strong relationships in the business, so that once they’re out in the “real world,” finding a place in the industry won’t be such a daunting task. At this year’s Cannes Film Festival, 50 film school students were lucky enough to get a little networking help from one of the biggest names in the moviemaking software business when Adobe paired them up with some of the biggest names in the world of editing—for a week-long celebration of all things editing.

You have to choose your battles, so to speak, when doing lower budget films.

There's something to be said for being in the right place at the right time. Barbara Tulliver made her move to the cutting room quite by chance, starting in commercials and eventually assisting directors David Mamet and Milos Forman in the late '80s. When Mamet's regular editor was unavailable to work on Homicide, he offered Tulliver the job. Since then, she's edited a steady stream of films for the prolific director, including last year's State and Main and this year's Heist.

He will talk me through the rushes when we're having screenings at the end of the day but it's either pretty self explanatory; when you look at the material you can see what he's intending.

Though she went to film school to become a director in her own right (which she has accomplished with Me, Myself, I), it was while still in school that Pip Karmel began her collaboration with director Scott Hicks. Since then, she's returned to the editing chair twice -- both times for Hicks -- first to cut Shine, and now for his latest film, Hearts In Atlantis.

You have the courage of your convictions. When you're editing you have to make thousands of decisions every day and if you dither over them all the time, you'll never get anything done.

During her more than 50 years in the craft, editor Anne Coates has been a collaborator and ally to many of the world's finest directors including Sidney Lumet, David Lynch, Milos Forman and Steven Soderbergh. Currently on the set of Adrian Lyne's Unfaithful, she talks with MM about her fairytale beginnings with The Red Shoes.

I like to put myself in the position of the audience, because they don't know any of that stuff anyway.

For the past two decades, editor Chris Lebenzon has been averaging about one feature per year, working alongside such directors as Tim Burton, Michael Bay and Tony Scott with such films as Ed Wood, Crimson Tide and Pearl Harbor to his credit. This summer, Lebenzon's most recent work can be seen in Planet of the Apes.

Though he's earned a name for himself working on big-budget action flicks like Rocky V, On Deadly Ground, Showdown in Little Tokyo and Die Hard 2, Robert Ferretti has proven his versatility by being the creative force in the editing room for such off-beat independent fare as Dwight Yoakam's South of Heaven, West of Hell and Timothy Rhys' Men in Scoring Position.

Hudsucker gets mooned, but Bitter does better.

Unlike Pualine Kael, our indomintable reviewer agrees to sit through another Olive Stone extravaganza.

Reviews of The Piano and Carlito's Way.