TOM CROSS
Tom Cross is an American television and film editor. He began his career in 1997 as an assistant editor, contributing to such diverse projects as We Own the Night (2007), Crazy Heart (2009), The Switch (2010), and the Primetime Emmy Award-winning drama series Deadwood. He came to worldwide prominence in 2015 when he won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Editing, BAFTA Award for Best Editing, and Academy Award for Best Editing (among other honors) for his work on the acclaimed film Whiplash (2014). He has cited The Wild Bunch (1969) and The French Connection (1971) as influences on the editing of this film, and reunited with writer/director Damien Chazelle on the musical romantic comedy La La Land (2016). (More from Wikipedia)
The above headline took my breath away when I first noticed it a few months ago on NBCNews.com: “This Oscar Winner Has the Most Supportive Wife Ever”. The wife in question is Holly Ramos, one of my Facebook friends as a result of this series of Under Appreciated Rock Band posts; and she was the bandleader in the UARB with the shortest name (Fur) coming at the end of the longest post (June 2013).
Holly Ramos had tipped off her Facebook friends that her husband Tom Cross was up for an Oscar for Film Editing, and I had my eyes open during the 2015 Oscar ceremonies. It might be my imagination, but I think I remember a flash of a few seconds toward that part of the crowd when I saw Holly reacting to the announcement of the winner. In his acceptance speech, Tom Cross thanked, among others, his wife Holly Ramos and their two children.
These great quotes are given in the piece on NBCNews.com, as taken from comments Holly Ramos had written on her blog before the Oscars that year: “‘This is being called the whitest Oscars ever. Tom Cross is half Asian,’ she wrote. ‘Represent, Tom Cross, represent!!’
“She also called her husband, ‘genuinely humble, gracious, kind and savvy’.
“‘Tom is so hard working and focused,’ Ramos wrote. ‘He worked in a video store in High School and knew he wanted to work in film his whole life. He has never done anything else.’”
The Oscar for Film Editing was awarded to Tom Cross for his work in Whiplash; J. K. Simmons won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in this film, where he played a sadistic instructor at a prestigious music conservatory. Cross has been nominated numerous times for many different awards for his film editing work, including a second nomination for an Oscar for La La Land (2016). Cross speaks of the technical aspects of his work on Whiplash (again as quoted on NBCNews.com): “‘The sync [to the music] was close but not perfect,’ Cross said. ‘We couldn’t alter the soundtrack and couldn’t slow or speed up the music; that would have been immediately obvious. I needed to line the pictures up, manually, for every drum hit. The most precise way was with jump cuts and to take out frames. And this had to be imperceptible.’”
(Year 9 Review)
