Jim Lyons
died on Thursday in New York.
If you didn’t know Jim personally and just recognize his name from movie credits, then you most probably remember him as an editor. His credits include four films by Todd Haynes –
Poison,
Safe,
Velvet Goldmine and
Far from Heaven – as well as
Spring Forward,
The Virgin Suicides, and
Silver Lake Life. Most recently, he was the co-editor of
A Walk into the Sea: The Danny Williams Story. The latter, a documentary by Esther Robinson about her uncle’s relationship with Andy Warhol and The Factory, won the Teddy at Berlin this year and receives its U.S. premiere at Tribeca this month. He was also an AIDS activist and educator.
But Jim did many other things – he wrote, acted and had plans to direct – and his great contribution to our world of film lay in his contributions not to any one of these fields but rather across them. Jim was an artist, even when he was editing someone else’s material, and he brought an artist’s sensibility, temperament and questioning to everything he did. Whether it was playing the artist David Wojnarowicz in Steve McLean’s
Postcards from America or Billy Name in Mary Harron’s
I Shot Andy Warhol, or co-writing the story for
Velvet Goldmine, Jim's work questioned the social codes and roles that act to define us while also finding the elements of beauty in the spaces in between.
A few years ago Filmmaker ran a piece in which we asked people to tell us what was inspiring them in their work. Jim’s response, excerpted below, is a good illustration of the range and passion of his interests:
"Punk rock and Michel Foucault. I’m writing a script about Foucault’s life and how it intersected with the San Francisco underground sex and music scenes of the early ‘80s while he was teaching at Berkeley. Foucault insisted that philosophical ideas had real-life consequences, something I rarely see addressed in independent movies. He wrote about power and how its best trick was to make itself seem normal and inevitable. He believed that new pleasures and identities and ways of living were always possible because freedom was there for the taking. Unfortunately, they came together during Reagan’s ‘80s, which was the beginning of the national nightmare we are living today."
I worked with Jim twice – he cut two films Robin O’Hara and I produced,
First Love, Last Rites, and
The Chateau, both directed by Jesse Peretz. Before I hired him on the first one, I called another producer who had worked with him. He told me not to expect a facile technician who would whip out 20 different versions of a scene on the Avid in an afternoon. “What you have to understand about working with Jim,” he told me, “is that sometimes he’ll need to leave the editing room in the afternoon for an hour and walk around the block a few times. But when he comes back, he’ll come back with a great idea that will really improve the movie.”
In the end, that’s what I’ll remember most about working with Jim: his passion for the world of ideas. He was always about discovering the meanings that could be teased out of a cut, a shot, an ordering of scenes or an inflection in an actor’s line of dialogue. I think Jim gave me the best understanding of the goals of editing when he paraphrased one day Roland Barthes’
S/Z. “Editing,” he said, “is all about when and how you ask the question and when and how you answer it.” Elsewhere, he talked about his admiration of Yasujiro Ozu and his belief in the power of silence in cinema ("The less you say in film the better," Jim wrote) and cited Virginia Woolf as an inspiration on his work. Her writing showed, he felt, that "moments of being could embody whole lives if looked at closely and honestly enough."
In the last couple of years Jim slowed down his work editing other people’s movies and started to plan his own projects. He was going to make a short he had received funding for from the Creative Capital Foundation. It was titled
A Short Film about Andy Warhol, and, if I remember correctly, would take the viewer between two moments, one with Warhol at a Factory party and the other, an interior moment with Warhol alone in a taxi on the way home from a social engagement. In its two glimpses, the film depicted Warhol as an icon and as a person, recognizing his status as the former while wondering what it was like for him as the latter. In his grant application, Lyons hoped the project would be "experimental in both film and subject matter, political in intent, poetic in effect." I thought it was a lovely script and I couldn’t wait to see what Jim was going to do with it. That film, the Foucault/punk rock movie, and, most importantly, his overriding intelligence, personal sensitivity and sense of engagement… Our world is diminished now that Jim and his work are no longer a part of it.
His familly is requesting that, in lieu of flowers, donations to the James K. Lyons Memorial Fund, 47 Davis Road, Port Washington, NY 11050, would be gratefully appreciated.
# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/15/2007 04:29:00 PM
Comments (17)
Thank you. That was beautifully written.
#
posted by L S Pan @ 4/15/2007 9:02 PM
He was the first editor I ever looked up to. He was my friend. I'll miss you, Jim.
#
posted by @ 4/16/2007 7:09 AM
This is a HUGE loss. I really think Lyons and most editors are the unsung heroes of meaning creation in cinema, and Lyons teased meaning and drama out of every frame. He was one of my personal heroes.
#
posted by @ 4/16/2007 10:43 AM
i remember when christine vachon called me to meet with the hot guy from "poison" and i had just seen the movie and was praying that she was talking about jim...when he walked in the office i fell in love...he was the most beautiful man. om shanti jim be with god.
#
posted by @ 4/16/2007 11:54 AM
I feel so sad about this. I only met Jim a few times, but each time I felt I was in the presence of someone who understood great secrets. Last fall I heard Jim speak on a panel in Woodstock and my friends and I thought we were very lucky. Jim was so passionate about this work. I wish there would be more.
#
posted by Michael Taylor @ 4/16/2007 2:13 PM
Jim was one my closest friends and the single greatest influence to my editing career. I was so honored to have been a part of his life and I will miss him dearly. I love you Jim.
#
posted by @ 4/16/2007 3:39 PM
I knew him only in passing. I thought he would just keep going, and that I would see him around. I still can see him as a young guy in film school, lurching over the film equipment room counter, long awkward body, shoulders hunched. A project he imagined in school: a fiction film about Anna Freud. The Foucault film would have been fascinating. I admired his work and his effort. A great smile, genuine warmth. Godspeed Jim. Om mani padme hum. Shantih, shantih, shantih.
#
posted by @ 4/16/2007 10:27 PM
I can't believe this news. Jim was an artist, a collaborator and a force of nature. I was lucky to have sat with him for one project and always wished I could find an excuse to call him again. Your presence in this world will be missed, as your arrival in whatever world comes next for you will be celebrated. Love to his family by blood and his family by passion.
#
posted by BethBlogs @ 4/16/2007 11:57 PM
Jim, you were a beautiful man: gentle, effortlessly philosophical, sexy, loving, passionate. You taught me so much about storytelling -- challenged me about how to think, whether it be character, politics, music or love. I feel so very lucky to have started off my career with you at my side; you were one of my first true mentors. You have showed me what real strength in this world is, fighting for your life for all these years with so much dignity. I love you, Jim. I will miss you.
#
posted by Jesse @ 4/17/2007 9:16 AM
The sensitivity and intelligence that this tribute captures, and to which so many of his friends and acquaintances have alluded in these comments, is palpable and invigorating in all of the movies he worked on. For those of us who never met Jim personally but profited from his artistry—I include myself as well as my students, since I often teach the films he helped to create—Jim will also be deeply missed, but even more deeply remembered. My gratitude for his work and his example are immense, and lasting.
#
posted by Nick Davis @ 4/17/2007 2:35 PM
Jim edited my film Ghostlight. Working with him was a gift that I will always cherish. He was an immensely talented and beautiful person.
#
posted by Chris @ 4/18/2007 10:22 AM
Your encouragement is a permanent source of inspiration. Your creative spirit has never left.
The landscape will never be the same.
Thank you Jim, with love and peace.
#
posted by @ 4/18/2007 4:12 PM
Great respect for this independent filmmaker.
There is a reference to him on the new 'A Wiki for Film'
http://www.filmcommunity.org
#
posted by @ 4/21/2007 7:12 AM
Jim's viewpoint and candor were always refreshing, and his commitment to process had a devilish enthusiasm. Whether screening an ancient 16mm copy of Jean Jenet’s, “Un Chant d'Amour” or deconstructing Roland Barthes essay on Greta Garbo’s face, his methods were curious and his curiosity endless.
I hope to share some of Jim’s insight through the lectures he gave at the Motion Picture Editors Guild. Though only a fraction of the man in person, Jim’s take on the craft of editing is full of vitality, humor and honesty.
With the belief that anything you do can be elevated to an art form, Jim’s life was his art, both in the way he lived it and how fully he shared from it.
Please visit http://www.mewshop.com to hear Jim speak, and see video from his events.
#
posted by Josh Apter @ 4/25/2007 2:24 PM
BON VOYAGE, JIM. BILLY NAME
#
posted by billyname @ 5/24/2007 10:53 AM
my heart is broken -- broken more. so many dead. i know i am melancholic, but how can one not be. i guess, spread JL's love, compassion, and dedication.
adieu (to-g-d),
robt
#
posted by robt ™ @ 6/19/2007 3:51 PM
I'm not sure why I just Googled Jim. It's been almost 8 years since I spoke to him.
I met Jim when I was a tough, butch, confused young woman in NYC. I had an obsession with getting into the film business, and by miraculous forces ended up in the editing room with Jim.
I loved him. How could I not? He was smart, thoughtful, pensive, brooding, drop dead gorgeous and philosophical. I came alive in the editing room and breathed for nothing other than to be there, learning how to splice, listening to him and Todd talk through scenes, delving into our philosophies of life, love, existence.
We became very close for a short time. But he was vital to me for a long time in a way I don't think he ever knew, and that I probably never could express.
Jim, I know you are still thinking out of the box, looking askance at common wisdom and dreaming up cool projects to work on.
Love you forever - Eileen Schreiber
#
posted by Eileen @ 10/06/2007 10:45 PM
