Quentin Tarantino's longtime editor, Sally Menke, was found dead in Los Angeles. She was 56, and the cause of death is still under investigation. She apparently went out last night to walk her dog and never came home. The Police are seeing whether or not the heat was a factor, apparently the temperature reached 113 degrees yesterday.
I was going to say she worked with Tarantino on all of his hits, but she worked with him on everything he has put out. She was like what Verna Fields was to Steven Spielberg or what Thelma Schoonmaker is to Martin Scorcese. They worked very closely together, and apparently had a great working relationship. (And I don't know if this is exactly a trend, but there could be a piece in there about great directors working with talented, female editors). She was nominated for two academy awards for Inglorious Basterds and Pulp Fiction. She won the Hollywood Film Award for Editor of the Year in 2004, as well as the San Diego Film Critics Society Award for Best Editing for Kill Bill Volume 1.And she has been nominated for all sorts of other awards. And, I am quite sure Tarantino will find someone else talented to work with, but it must be hard on a personal and professional level to find someone after working so closely with one person for the past 16-17 years.
That being said, R.I.P. Sally, you were amazing.
On a sidenote (there's always a sidenote), just reading about her, I found she had a hand in a movie that I absolutely loved in the 7th grade. Her first editing job was on the live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie.
I don't know what it was about this movie, but when it was in the theatres, I saw it 7 times! No joke, I must have been an idiot, I was so into this movie. (And maybe I watched it on video or something later, but I probably haven't watched it, for good reason, a whole lot since then. (Sam Rockwell has an early role as a bad guy in to too! One of the Foot Clan!)
The only other movie since I have seen 7 times in the movie theater? An actual classic, one of the movies Sally Menke was nominated for for an Academy Award: Pulp Fiction, of course:
I hope thats a good representation of just a bit of her work (on Pulp Fiction, not TMNT)
Probably, besides my Dad, one of the things that really got me interested in movies really.
-K
Man, that's sad. I've actually never heard of her but I must say I'm a fan of her work as I've really enjoyed just about all of Tarantino's films (save "Jackie Brown": that just never did anything for me).
ReplyDeleteAnd your comment about seeing TMNT seven times in the theater was awesome. I don't think I've ever seen a film more than three times in the theater myself (oddly enough, I believe that movie was "Pulp Fiction" for me as well) and the fact that you saw TMNT that many times is absolutely amazing. I remember seeing it in the theater as a bunch of friends and I went to see it for my birthday. Good stuff. Oh, and is it just me, or was Casey Jones way more prevalent in that movie than he was in the cartoon? When I saw the movie, I was like "who the hell is this guy?". Then all of a sudden, he appeared in a cartoon or two. They just had to have a love interest for April now didn't they?
-M