Editing As Music Walter Murch Interview
Walter Scott Murch is one of the most influential figures in film history, a figure whose profound knowledge of sound, picture, and editing often remains overshadowed by his enormous impact.
Born in New York City, Murch entered the world of cinema not as a studio product, but as a product of a rich artistic upbringing. His family was steeped in the arts, including his father, painter Walter Tandy Murch, and his grandmother, Louise Tandy Murch, a music teacher whose life inspired the 1986 film “At 99.”
Murch pursued formal studies in Italy and France, studying Romance Languages and the History of Art at Perugia and the Sorbonne. This foundation allowed him to approach the moving picture not just as a craft, but as an intersection of language, structure, and aesthetics.
His journey into filmmaking began through graduate studies at UCLA, where he quickly assembled a legendary network of future giants. Among his collaborators were screenwriter-producer John Milius, the writing team for “American Graffiti” and “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” Philip Kaufman, George Lucas, and Francis Ford Coppola.
These filmmakers formed the defiant, brilliant splinter of the Bay Area production scene, a creative hub spanning San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, and Marin County. This community birthed iconic entities like Lucasfilm, Pixar, and American Zoetrope, demonstrating a collective desire to make personal art accessible within the commercial system.
Over the decades, Murch served as an invaluable editor, shaping some of cinema’s most celebrated works. He handled key projects such as Lucas’ debut “THX 1138,” Coppola’s “The Conversation,” “Apocalypse Now,” and the entire “Godfather” trilogy. His work also included landmark films like Fred Zinnemann’s “Julia,” Jerry Zucker’s “Ghost,” and Anthony Minghella’s “The English Patient” and “Cold Mountain.”
Murch’s unique skill lay in his deep understanding of aural manipulation and visual storytelling. He acted as a kind of “one-stop shopping” collaborator for filmmakers with an adventurous, all-encompassing aesthetic, exemplified by the sound design in “The Conversation” and “Apocalypse Now,” where music and sound effects often told the story as powerfully as the images themselves.
Beyond his editing, Murch is a profound teacher, sharing his knowledge through plainspoken books on editing technique, history, and style, influencing generations of filmmakers and movie enthusiasts.
The complexity of the editing room, Murch noted, is
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