American Cinema Editors (ACE) has named two-time Oscar®-winning filmmaker Ang Lee as recipient of the ACE Golden Eddie Filmmaker of the Year award. He will be presented with the honor at the 76th Annual ACE Eddie Awards taking place Friday, February 27, at UCLA’s Royce Hall, where winners will also be announced in 14 competitive categories recognizing the best film editing achievements of the year in film and television. Kim Larson, managing director and head of YouTube’s Creator and Gaming team, will be accepting YouTube’s previously announced ACE Visionary Award, and Emmy winning editor/director Arthur Forney, ACE, and Oscar® nominated editor Robert Leighton will receive ACE Career Achievement awards.
Lee joins a group of Golden Eddie award recipients including Jon M. Chu, John Waters, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Spike Lee, Quentin Tarantino, Kathleen Kennedy, Christopher Nolan, Lauren Shuler Donner, Guillermo del Toro, Steven Spielberg, Vince Gilligan, Alexander Payne, J.J. Abrams, Nancy Meyers, Martin Scorsese, Norman Jewison, Robert Zemeckis, George Lucas, and the Sundance Institute.
“Ang Lee’s exploration of our most closely held emotions has ignited an international passion for cinema for over 30 years”, said ACE president Sabrina Plisco, ACE. “The breadth of his filmography is unparalleled, ranging from the intimate and boundary-breaking romance of Brokeback Mountain, to the epic drama of Life of Pi and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, to even the pre-MCU Marvel film Hulk.”
This year’s ACE Visionary Award recognizes Larson and YouTube’s profound impact on visual storytelling as a whole, the importance of digital content and spaces in the evolving media landscape, and ACE’s ongoing work to support creatives of all kinds across both traditional and digital spaces. The recognition is given in the spirit of previous honors bestowed upon pioneering companies such as Avid, and celebrates YouTube and Larson’s role in empowering a global generation of visual storytellers.
“Kim Larson was the natural choice to represent YouTube in our inaugural year recognizing creator content,” Plisco went on to say. “She has played a key role in the growth of digital entertainment, supports creators at the highest level, and helps elevate independent voices shaping modern storytelling.
“This year’s Career Achievement Award honorees are equally exemplary,” Plisco noted. “Arthur Forney, ACE, was the backbone of postproduction at Dick Wolf’s Wolf Entertainment for more than 30 years, overseeing landmark series including Law & Order. Robert Leighton shepherded the editing room for American icon Rob Reiner across 15 films–including When Harry Met Sally, A Few Good Men, and This is Spinal Tap–shaping some of the most enduring works in modern cinema.”
Past recipients of the ACE Career Achievement Award are editors including Maysie Hoy, ACE, Paul Hirsch, ACE, Lynne Willingham, ACE, Don Zimmerman, ACE, Lillian Benson, ACE, Richard Chew, ACE, Alan Heim, ACE, Tina Hirsch, ACE, Thelma Schoonmaker, ACE, Janet Ashikaga, ACE, Craig McKay, ACE, Jerrold L. Ludwig, ACE, Mark Goldblatt, ACE, and Leon Ortiz-Gil, ACE, among many others.
Nominations for the 76th Annual ACE Eddie Awards will be announced on January 27.
Ang Lee
Lee was born in Pingtung County, Taiwan. The son of a high school principal with traditional ideas about education, Lee chose to study theater in Taiwan and later in the United States. He went on to get an M.F.A. in Film Production at NYU. In 1990, Lee made his first feature, Pushing Hands. His films include The Wedding Banquet (Golden Bear, Berlin Film Festival), Eat Drink Man Woman, Sense and Sensibility (Golden Bear), The Ice Storm, Ride with the Devil, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Oscar, Best Foreign Film), Hulk, Brokeback Mountain (Golden Lion, Venice Film Festival and Oscar, Best Director), Lust, Caution (Golden Lion), Taking Woodstock, Life of Pi (Oscar, Best Director), Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, and Gemini Man. He lives in New York with his wife.
Kim Larson
As a managing director and head of YouTube’s Creator and Gaming team, Larson is responsible for managing the growth of the largest, most influential creators on the platform. This includes the critical ecosystem of companies that surround creators including service providers, talent partners, game publishers and influencer marketing agencies. In her previous roles at Google, she launched the Google BrandLab, an immersive strategy experience designed for top advertisers to develop their YouTube strategy. She went on to manage the global brand services function which included creative effectiveness, media measurement, and consumer insights. Her team pioneered the use of machine learning to build data-driven creative best practices for YouTube ads.
Larson joined Google in 2012 with 20+ years experience leading marketing teams at the intersection of technology and brand at Nike, Jamba Juice, and Prophet. Larson holds a BS in Neuroscience from Vanderbilt University and an MBA from the University of Virginia. Kim serves on the Creator Board for the IAB, on the Advisory Board for Women in Games International, is an executive member and judge for the Webbys as part of the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences (IADAS) and previously served on the Board of Directors for the Effies.
Arthur Forney, ACE
Forney spent over 30 years as the heart and soul of Wolf Entertainment postproduction. Forney oversaw all post activities for Wolf’s extensive slate of long running series such as the iconic Law & Order – branded series, the OneChicago franchise, CBS’ FBI franchise and many more.
Forney was also a frequent director of the Wolf series. He began directing in 1994 and has since directed numerous episodes of New York Undercover, Law & Order, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders and FBI, as well as Wolf’s Chicago-based series.
With more than 30 years in the television industry, Forney began his career in postproduction at Warner Bros. Working on independent films early on, Forney landed at Universal where he served as an editor on the hit CBS series Magnum, P.I. and joined Wolf in 1987, working as an editor with Wolf on Gideon Oliver, Cristine Cromwell, Nasty Boys and Law & Order (which premiered on NBC in 1990).
Forney is a member of ACE (American Cinema Editors), the Director’s Guild of America and the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.
Robert Leighton
Best known for his longstanding partnership with director Reiner, Leighton garnered his first Academy Award® nomination and ACE Eddie Award nomination for his stellar work on the Tom Cruise topliner, A Few Good Men.
Born in London, Leighton worked as an assistant editor at the BBC before moving to the U.S. to pursue his editorial career. He and Reiner first teamed up on the rock music mockumentary, This Is Spinal Tap, and the duo went on to collaborate on 15 feature films including such enduring classics as Stand by Me, The Princess Bride and When Harry Met Sally.
Leighton has also enjoyed a lasting and fruitful relationship with writer/director/composer Christopher Guest, and their artistic partnership has flourished on For Your Consideration, A Mighty Wind and the Golden Globe®-nominated Best in Show, which nabbed Leighton his second ACE Eddie nomination for Best Editing.
A Dog’s Purpose is Leighton’s first collaboration with Lasse Hallstrom. Leighton came to this project directly from editing Nancy Meyers’ film, The Intern, starring Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway. Immediately prior to that he worked with Jon Favreau on Chef and Christopher Guest on his television series, Family Tree, for HBO and BBC. Before that he edited the magician-heist thriller, Now You See Me, a Kurtzman/Orci Paper Products production, starring Jesse Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson and People Like Us, the feature directing debut for Alex Kurtzman, starring Chris Pine and Elizabeth Banks, also a DreamWorks production. Other prominent feature credits include Ron Shelton’s iconic Bull Durham, The Bucket List starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, Peter Chelsom’s Shall We Dance, and Misery, The American President and Ghosts of Mississippi for Rob Reiner.
