Salute to Dan the Film Man

I like Zazu Pitts. Not a great beauty, but a heckuva funny physically comedic actress. And that voice!

Thanks for the background on film editing, MPPPPPP.

'Way back in the dark ages of the early 1970s, I worked for several months at a television station. My "office" was the mailroom, next to the film room, and Dan, the head of the department, knew film.

Did I mention I'd worked in film since as a kid I first used Dad's old 16mm camera? (With single-shot for animation! Lord, I wish I hadn't lost all my childhdood films!). I appreciated what went into splicing celluloid.

I got to do a little work in the film room. Just finding old splices for the pros to fix. I did nothing that went on-air.

Dan's "editing" work was likewise mostly mundane, often just involved putting the film back together after some previous station (usually our sister station) had butchered it up, but he also took great pride creating commercial breaks that didn't interrupt a scene, or if he had to cut for length to take out relatively innocuous moments.

Dan would sometimes point out to me on the movieola how, say, Hitchcock would transition from one scene to another and how he would lead the eye. Wonderful lessons. And I was being paid to get them!

Thanks, Dan G, wherever in heaven you are now.