Legendary Film Editor Anne V. Coates Was a Pioneer Not Just for for Women, But Her Entire Industry

Legendary film editor Anne V. Coates has passed away at the age of 92. Editors don’t typically receive the same sort of celebrity recognition as directors or writers, but even if you don’t know Coates’ name, you most definitely know her work.

In her six-plus decades working in Hollywood, she edited more than 50 films, including Lawrence of Arabia, The Elephant Man, Out of Sight, and, recently, 50 Shades of Grey. (By the way, she said in a recent interview that she “tried to make Fifty Shades a little more sexy,” but got pushback because it sounded like she was veering into NC-17 territory. Specifically, she told the LA Times, “I would have had her trussed up like a suitcase and hoisted to the ceiling. I tried and tried to get that in. They used to laugh at me. Generally speaking, their kissing was a little lukewarm.”)

She was nominated for five Academy Awards and won one (plus an honorary Oscar last year), for Lawrence of Arabia. That was the film that firmly established Coates as the legend she was. She not only reportedly worked with more than 30 miles of film footage to craft the 4-hour film, but you may have seen this GIF flooding your Twitter feed today:

That might just look like a cool smash cut today, but at the time, it was revolutionary.

In that same interview with the LA Times (read the whole thing here, it’s fantastic), Coates is asked why there aren’t as many female directors as there used to be. She answered, “I have thought about this. Did the men squeeze them out, as the job became more important and better paid? Editors weren’t that important in those early days. They mostly cut the negative.”

Coates was most definitely one of the editors that changed the profession.

She’s said that she got into editing as a road to directing, but that by the time she started getting offers from studios and agents, she was committed to her family.

As a director, the film stands still if you’re not there. As an editor, if my children were ill I could go in an hour late and no one would even know as long as I was up-to-date. I don’t think I hardly missed a dance thing or a swim thing for the children. I found that being an editor and a mom worked very well. There are lots of directors who are moms, but for me I couldn’t have coped with both very well. I had to turn down some really good films. When Franco Zeffirelli offered me “Romeo and Juliet” he wanted me to pack up and be there the next day. Well, if you’ve got three children in school and a husband, you can’t do that.

(via The Hollywood Reporter, image: ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images)

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Vivian Kane

Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.

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