University Calendar
Meet "Star Wars" Editor Paul Hirsch
After graduating from Columbia he began to pursue a career in editing. In the late 1960s, while editing trailers in NYC, he was introduced to Brian De Palma. Their collaboration has yielded eleven feature films.
In 1978, he won the Academy Award for Best Film Editing for his work on Star Wars. He was also the first person to win the Saturn Award for Best Editing twice, first for Star Wars in 1977 and then Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol in 2011.
He has edited over 35 feature films, including The Empire Strikes Back,[ Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Mission: Impossible, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Footloose, Carrie, Falling Down, Phantom of the Paradise, Obsession, Blow Out, The Secret of My Success, Steel Magnolias and Ray, for which he received a second Academy Award nomination in 2005 and the American Cinema Editors' award for Best Edited Feature Film (Comedy or Musical). He has also worked with Duncan Jones on Source Code and Warcraft.
STAR WARS: A New Hope is available on Disney+ with subscription or for rent on YouTube for $4.
PLANES, TRAINS, & AUTOMOBILES is available for rent on YouTube for $2 and on Hulu and Starz with Starz subscription.