Quentin Tarantino and editor Sally Menke at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, February 18, 2007. Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images. As most film enthusiasts undoubtedly know by now, Oscar-nominated editor Sally Menke was found dead in Los Angeles’s sprawling Griffith Park yesterday, after going for a hike Monday at the height of the city’s record-breaking heat wave. Although Menke’s passing is foremost a tragedy for her family and loved ones, it is also an incomparable loss for cinema. She cut for directors such as Oliver Stone (Heaven and Earth) and Billy Bob Thornton (All the Pretty Horses), and every child of the 90s owes her an infinite debt for giving Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles the pacing necessary to harness their deficit-starved attentions. However, Menke will be remembered most vividly for her unusually intimate collaboration with Quentin Tarantino. Having cut every single one of the auteur-savant’s films, Menke established a partnership with Tarantino that will go down as one of the great editor-director combinations in American cinema, taking its place beside those of Steven Spielberg and Michael Kahn, and Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker. Tarantino fans will undoubtedly feel that painful loss when they are exposed to a film not edited by Menke, and that loss will serve as a reminder that editors are the great unsung heroes of all our favorite films.

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