Walter Murch

In 1998, producer Rick Schmidlin chose Murch as his editor for the restoration of Orson Welles's Touch of Evil. Murch is the author of a popular book on film editing, In the Blink of an Eye, and is the subject of Michael Ondaatje's 2002 book The Conversations. Famed movie critic Roger Ebert called Murch "the most respected film editor and sound designer in the modern cinema." David Thomson calls Murch "the scholar, gentleman and superb craftsman of modern film", adding that in sound and editing, "he is now without a peer."

Walter Murch studied at USC School of Cinematic Arts, Johns Hopkins University and University of Southern California. The recorded working language is English, French and Italian. Places of work recorded in the authority are United States. Residence is recorded at Bolinas. Distinctions recorded are Academy Award for Best Film Editing and Academy Award for Best Sound.

• Name — Walter Murch • Birth Name — Walter Scott Murch • Born — 12 July 1943 • Birthplace — New York City, U.S. • Education — Johns Hopkins University USC School of Cinematic Arts • Occupation — * Film editor • director • writer • sound designer • Years Active — 1969–present • Father — Walter Tandy Murch • Children — 4

Murch was born in New York City, New York, the son of Katharine (née Scott) and Canadian-born painter Walter Tandy Murch (1907–1967). He is the grandson of Louise Tandy Murch, a music teacher who was the subject of the 1975 documentary film At 99: A Portrait of Louise Tandy Murch and of Mary Elizabeth MacCallum Scott, a Canadian physician, educator and Christian medical missionary, who with her husband Thomas Beckett Scott MD, established the Green Memorial Hospital in Manipay, Sri Lanka (then Ceylon). As a boy, he began to experiment with sound recording, taping unusual sounds and layering them into new combinations. He attended The Collegiate School, a private preparatory school in Manhattan, from 1949 to 1961. In the summer of 1961 he worked as a music librarian and production assistant at Riverside Church's newly founded radio station WRVR, now WLTW. He assisted with the July 29th 1961 live broadcast of a 12-hour folk music Hootenanny produced by Izzy Young. This featured, among many other acts, the first radio performance of the 20-year-old Bob Dylan. Murch then attended Johns Hopkins University from 1961 to 1965, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in the liberal arts. Murch spent the university school year 1963–1964 in Europe, studying Romance Languages and the History of Art in Italy at Perugia and in France at the Sorbonne. While at Johns Hopkins, he met future director/screenwriter Matthew Robbins, cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, and philosopher Andrew Feenberg, with whom he staged a number of happenings. In 1965, Murch and Robbins enrolled in the graduate program of the University of Southern California's Department of Cinema, encouraging Deschanel to follow them. There all three encountered, and became friends with, fellow students such as George Lucas, Hal Barwood, Robert Dalva, Willard Huyck, Don Glut and John Milius; all of these men would go on to be successful filmmakers. Not long after film school, in 1969, Murch and others joined Francis Ford Coppola and Lucas at American Zoetrope in San Francisco. Murch and his family settled in Bolinas, California, in 1972.

Murch started editing and mixing sound with Francis Ford Coppola's The Rain People (1969). Subsequently, he worked on George Lucas's THX 1138 and American Graffiti and Coppola's The Godfather before editing picture and mixing sound on Coppola's The Conversation, for which he received an Academy Award nomination in sound in 1974. Murch also mixed the sound for Coppola's The Godfather Part II which was released in 1974, the same year as The Conversation. He did picture editing and sound design work on Apocalypse Now, for which he won his first Academy Award in 1979 and he was also significantly involved in the re-editing work that resulted in the extended Apocalypse Now Redux in 2001. In 1985, he directed his only feature film, Return to Oz, which he co-wrote with Gill Dennis. After the film failed at the box office and displeased many critics with its dark and surreal imagery, he never directed another film. In 1988, Murch was one of the editors on The Unbearable Lightness of Being, directed by Philip Kaufman. Murch edits in a standing position, comparing the process of film editing to "conducting, brain surgery and short-order cooking" since all conductors, cooks, and surgeons stand when they work. In contrast, when writing, he does so lying down. His reason for this is that where editing film is an editorial process, the creative process of writing is opposite that, and so he lies down rather than sit or stand up, to separate his editing mind from his creating mind. Murch has written one book on film editing, In the Blink of an Eye (1995), which has been translated into many languages including Chinese, Italian, Hebrew, Spanish, French, German, Hungarian and Persian. His book describes many of his notable techniques used in his film editing. One of his most praised techniques he refers to as "the rule of six" referring to the six criteria in a film that he examines when making a cut. In his book, Murch also describes editing as more of a psychological practice with a goal of anticipating and controlling the thoughts of the audience. Before this, he wrote the foreword to Michel Chion's Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen (1994). He was also the subject of Michael Ondaatje's book The Conversations (2002), which consists of several conversations between Ondaatje and Murch; the book emerged from Murch's editing of The English Patient, which was based on Ondaatje's novel of the same name. In 2007, the documentary Murch premiered at the San Francisco International Film Festival, which centered on Murch and his thoughts on filmmaking. In 2012, Murch's translations of short stories by the Italian writer Curzio Malaparte were published as The Bird That Swallowed Its Cage.

Murch married Muriel Ann "Aggie" Slater at Riverside Church, New York City on August 6, 1965. Directly after marrying, the couple took a 6,000 mile motorcycle trip zig-zagging across the United States and Canada. They have four children and have lived in Bolinas, California since 1972.

• Year — Title — Editor — Sound — Writer — Director — Notes • 1998 — Touch of Evil — Originally released in 1958. Murch's restoration and re-edit was completed in 1998 for the film's forty-year anniversary re-release. • 2000 — The Dickson Experimental Sound Film — Originally released in 1894, Murch's restoration was completed in 2000. One of several attempts to marry the archival film's sound and picture. It was later shown to be incomplete and has since been re-synchronized by professional motion picture archivists. • 2001 — Apocalypse Now Redux — A re-edited version of Coppola's 1979 film with 49 minutes of deleted sequences added back into the film.

• Year — Title — Director — Editor — Notes • 2011 — Star Wars: The Clone Wars — Episode "The General" of Lucasfilm animated series • 2012 — Hemingway & Gellhorn — HBO Television movie, Phil Kaufman, director

The authorities additionally record the heading Walter Scott Murch. His recorded languages were English, French and Italian. He was the child of Walter Tandy Murch. One child is recorded: Beatrice Murch. Other recorded relations include Connie Angland, Mary Elizabeth MacCallum Scott, Louise Tandy Murch and Philip Slater.

Walter Murch is recorded with the occupation sound designer. Recorded with the occupation film director. Murch worked at United States. Recorded as having studied at USC School of Cinematic Arts, Johns Hopkins University and University of Southern California.