Biography for
Walter Murch More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

12 July 1943, New York City, New York, USA

Birth Name

Walter Scott Murch

Mini Biography

Walter Murch has been editing sound in Hollywood since starting on Francis Ford Coppola's film The Rain People (1969). He edited sound on American Graffiti (1973) and The Godfather: Part II (1974), won his first Academy Award nomination for The Conversation (1974), won his first Oscar for Apocalypse Now (1979), and won an unprecedented double Oscar for sound and film editing for his work on The English Patient (1996). Most recently he helped reconstruct Touch of Evil (1958) to Orson Welles' original notes, and edited The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999). Mr. Murch was, along with George Lucas and Francis Coppola, a founding member of northern California cinema. Mr. Murch has directed -- Return to Oz (1985) -- and longs to do so again, but as an editor and sound man he is one of the few universally acknowledged masters in his field. For his work on the film "Apocolypse Now", Walter coined the term "Sound Designer", and along with colleagues such as Ben Burtt, helped to elevate the art and impact of film sound to a new level.

IMDb Mini Biography By: Harry Caul

Spouse

Aggie Murch

(6 August 1965 - present) 4 children

Trivia

He believes in editing while standing up.

Murch is a beekeeper and he makes his own honey.

Introduced Hollywood to the idea of editing films on the non-linear Mac based program Final Cut Pro rather than the Avid. Since then, has gone back to Avid Media Composer.

Father of Walter Slater Murch, Carrie Angland and Connie Angland. Also has a daughter named Beatrice Murch.

To date (2009), only artist ever to win Oscars for both film editing and sound engineering on a single film (The English Patient (1996)).

Personal Quotes

Life is one big pre-lap...

[about the opening scene of Apocalypse Now (1979):] "You're looking at a character whose head is enveloped in flames, and then at slow-motion helicopter blades slicing through his body, superimposed upon a whirling ceiling fan, and strange sounds and music intermingling from different sources; you're probably aware you're watching a film, not an imitation of real life. Even dreams, despite their odd surreality, don't look quite like that. Inevitably, the superimposed images in Apocalypse Now betray a self-consciousness because they come at the very beginning and are intended to expose and explore Willard's inner state of mind. If there had been no resonance between that scene and the film as a whole, the opening would have been a meaningless exercise, empty virtuosity."

[on 'Film Editing']: You have to have the personality that enjoys that... It's almost like making little pieces of jewelry. That patience of the individual shots and how they're crafted together... but at the same time, you have to have an appreciation for the larger picture and how these shots fit into the larger picture of the scene and then how the scene fits into the larger picture of the sequence and how the sequence fits together with the larger picture of the whole work and then how the work fits together with society. So it's boxes within boxes within boxes.