"I think editors don't get a lot written about them because it's not easy to explain what we do. It's what we feel. An instinct. You have that flair and that instinct-I guess you're born with it. It's a fact that assistants can't learn, really, until they're actually editing because then they're suddenly faced with, "Why does one cut on a particular frame?" You have a whole heap of frames in every cut! Some instinct tells you. It must be something in you as a person."
Editor Anne V. Coates


March is Women's History Month, so in this newsletter I'm highlighting the work of film editor Anne V. Coates. Coates was born in England in 1925. She worked her way up in the industry, cutting her first film in 1954, "The Pickwick Papers". Coates won an Oscar for cutting David Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962). Her other credits include "The Elephant Man" (1980), "In the Line of Fire" (1993), and "Erin Brockovich" (2000). She also edited "Fifty Shades of Grey" in 2015.

Now 91 years old, Coates has entered semi-retirement. Not because she has lost her intellectual faculties or her passion for film; the physical demands of the job have begun to bother her. Coates received an honorary Oscar in 2017 for her amazing work over the span of 60+ years. You can see clips of the ceremony on Youtube. In her acceptance speech, Coates stated how much she loved editing and that she was happy her daughter Emma, also a film editor, is continuing the family tradition.

To learn more about editing and Coates, you can check out Gabriella Oldham's book "First Cut: Conversations with Film Editors". The quote at the top of the newsletter is from Oldham's intervies with Anne V. Coates.



Here's the latest article from the Drama Movies site at BellaOnline.com.

Yellow Sky Film Review
Gregory Peck plays a bad man redeemed by love in this powerful Western set in 1867, from "A Star is Born" director William Wellman.

http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art30823.asp

Please visit dramamovies.bellaonline.com for even more great content about Drama Movies.

To participate in free, fun online discussions, this site has a community forum all about Drama Movies located here -

http://forums.bellaonline.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=postlist&Board=153


Angela K. Peterson, Drama Movies Editor
http://dramamovies.bellaonline.com

One of hundreds of sites at BellaOnline.com