Gerald B. Greenberg

Gerald Bernard "Jerry" Greenberg (July 29, 1936 – December 22, 2017) was an American film editor with more than 40 feature film credits. Greenberg received both the Academy Award for Best Film Editing and the BAFTA Award for Best Editing for the film The French Connection. In the 1980s, he edited five films with director Brian De Palma.

Greenberg began his career as an assistant to Dede Allen on the film America America (1963), directed by Elia Kazan. She helped develop the careers of several editors known as "Dede's boys", and Greenberg was the first.

Greenberg was Allen's assistant again on Bonnie and Clyde (1967), which was directed by Arthur Penn. The editing of the ambush scene in this film in which Bonnie and Clyde are killed has been very influential, and Allen credited Greenberg with its actual "cutting". Greenberg was the associate editor for Alice's Restaurant (1969), again directed by Penn and edited by Allen. By that time Greenberg's independent editing career had commenced with Bye Bye Braverman (1968), which was directed by Sidney Lumet. Greenberg later co-edited Penn's The Missouri Breaks (1976) with Allen and Stephen A. Rotter.

Early career A native of New York, as a youth, Greenberg learned to edit music and began familiarizing himself with the moviola, splicers, synchronizers and recorders.

The car chase sequence in The French Connection has been called "the finest example of montage editing since Battleship Potemkin (1925)"; this early film, directed and edited by Sergei Eisenstein, was seminal in the development of film editing. Greenberg won the Academy Award for Best Film Editing and the BAFTA Award for Best Editing for the film. In 2012, The French Connection was selected as the tenth best edited film of all time in a listing compiled by the Motion Picture Editors Guild.

Apocalypse Now (1979) Francis Ford Coppola produced, directed, and co-wrote Apocalypse Now, which was released in 1979. Filming had taken over a year in 1976 and 1977. Editing took place over two years prior to its release, and involved several editors; the supervising editor was Richard Marks, another of "Dede's boys". Greenberg described his own role in an interview with Vincent LoBrutto. The film is now remembered as one of the most important to have emerged from American involvement in the long Vietnam War that had ended in 1975. Writing in 1999, critic Roger Ebert said "Apocalypse Now is the best Vietnam film, one of the greatest of all films, because it pushes beyond the others, into the dark places of the soul. It is not about war so much as about how war reveals truths we would be happy never to discover". In the 2012 critics' poll conducted by the British Sight & Sound magazine, Apocalypse Now was rated the fourteenth best film ever made. The editing of Apocalypse Now was rated third best of all films in the 2012 listing of the Motion Picture Editors Guild.

Honors and influence Greenberg won the Oscar and the BAFTA awards for The French Connection (1971), and was nominated for the ACE Eddie. With his co-editors, he was nominated again for the Oscar, BAFTA, and Eddie for Apocalypse Now (1979). In the same year, he was nominated for the Oscar and BAFTA for Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), which was the first of his two films with director Robert Benton.

Greenberg has been elected to membership in the American Cinema Editors, and in 2015 that organization honored him with its Career Achievement Award. Writing after the ceremony at which Greenberg received the Career Achievement Ward, Ross Lincoln and Erik Pedersen said, "if editing is the most important part of completing a film, he is one of the most quantifiably influential people in the past 40 years." On the 2012 list of "best edited films of all time", Greenberg worked on three of the top ten: Bonnie and Clyde, The French Connection, and Apocalypse Now.

Death Greenberg died on December 22, 2017, at the age of 81 Partial filmography (editor) This filmography of feature films is based on the listing at the Internet Movie Database.

+ Additional crew Year Film Director Role Notes1967 Bonnie and ClydeArthur PennAssistant editor

+ Music department Year Film Director Role1965 A Thousand ClownsFred CoeMusic editor

+ Producer Year Film Director Credit1973 The Seven-UpsPhilip D'AntoniAssociate producer

+ Thanks Year Film Director Role1987 SpaceballsMel BrooksThe producer wishes to give special thanks to

Direct-to-video films

+ Editor Year Film Director2010 PrivilegedJonah Salander

Shorts

+ Editor Year Film Director1982 The Stereo Demonstration FilmAndy Aaron

+ Thanks Year Film Director Role1985 Double NegativeSam IrvinSpecial thanks

TV movies

+ Sound department Year Film Director Role1964 Carol for Another ChristmasJoseph L. MankiewiczSound effects editor

TV series

TV specials

+ Thanks Year Title Role2018 90th Academy AwardsIn memoriam