Who I Am and Why I Do What I Do

When I was very young I wanted to see GODZILLA VS. THE SMOG MONSTER.

So I asked my Dad if he'd take me and he said sure, we'll go. But he didn't take me and the movie went away and when I told him he said to keep watch on the movie section of our local paper and he'd take me when it came back around.

But GODZILLA VS. THE SMOG MONSTER never did come back. I checked. Every day.

Pouring over those two page spreads, examining all the tiny hyperbolic advertisements, sparked my imagination like nothing had before.

Here began a lifelong obsession.

I've been Editing professionally now since just before I moved to New York from Cleveland, Ohio. Specifically, to 167 Avenue B off 10th Street, into a red brick building next door to a Jamaican dry goods store, directly across the street from the Life Cafe when RENT was just the looming threat at the end of the month. This was half a block north of Tompkins Square Park on Manhattan's Lower East Side, way the way back at the start of the 1990s.

The Life Cafe, setting for much of Broadway's RENT closed in 2012

An exciting chaotic time, 
no doubt, and a period which saw the rapid-fire rate of technological change outpacing even the wildfire of gentrification yet to come. The transformation the world of film and TV, specifically in the area of Editing, went through as analog became digital seems almost entirely science-fictional. 

Oscar nominated filmmaker Jim Klein 

I came up old school and learned by 
hand as the first wave of Independent Film began to form. After high school, I attended Wright State University and was integral in it's Motion Pictures Department becoming accredited. My first real gig was as Assistant Editor to my teacher and mentor, two time Academy Award nominated documentary filmmaker Jim Klein. It was a gift to work on what was his final shot-on-16MM feature LETTER TO THE NEXT GENERATION: KENT STATE 20 YEARS AFTER


Those days I spent in a tiny cinderblock editing room below the campus of Antioch College were invaluable and filled with plastic cores, rewinds, cutting blocks, razor blades and cardboard boxes, not to mention a multitude of notebooks filled to burst with discarded 16MM frames. Rarely more than three or four to a sequence, each linen of work print was taped meticulously to the page then dutifully catalogued for later. The latent edge numbers, printed microscopically along & below the sprocket holes, would be needed in the process of conforming the negative. An arduous, high stakes prospect, the memory of which still chills me. Let's move on.

These days, as a seasoned Film and TV Editor, 

I've developed a great passion for the craft and a very high level of skill which I've honed over years of truly gratifying experience. I have met the best people in the world doing what I do and I am a great fan of all genres of entertainment & information. My worst day on the job...  Honestly, nothing comes to mind because Editing really is my passion and working on anything, from commercial spots to feature films, is never less than interesting and most often a great joy.