“What if Cinema had been invented 100 years earlier?� asks editor extraordinaire Walter Murch.
Photo D.W. Leitner

What if Cinema had been invented 100 years earlier, in 1789 not 1889?

Who would ask such a question?

If you’ve read his ontological discourse on editing, In the Blink of an Eye, or novelist Michael Ondaatje’s book The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film, you know the answer to the second question. (Ondaatje also wroteThe English Patient.)

Walter Murch is many things: poet-philosopher of the Moviola and lately Final Cut Pro, the guy who coined “sound designer,� recipient of two Oscars for sound mixing and one for editing for the likes of The Conversation, American Graffiti, Julia, Apocalypse Now, The Godfather (parts II and III), The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Ghost, The English Patient, The Talented Mr. Ripley, and Cold Mountain. more