It’s a strange thing to find out that David Finfer, the Oscar-nominated editor of The Fugitive was your wife’s godfather, but that’s what happened today. I knew that my mother-in-law had been close with David Finfer for more than forty years, but the godfather to her daughter bit? I just found that out today.
What’s so fascinating to me about Finfer’s career is how his most notable achievement (The Fugitive) was not at all the kind of film he was known for prior to editing one of the biggest hits of 1993. Finfer made his name editing the first four films of Albert Brooks (Real Life to Defending Your Life). The type of comedy that Brooks is known for is often borne out of awkwardness and discomfort. There are punchlines, of course, but there is a willingness to let the comedy linger, and not to give in to conventional comic beats.
Finfer was masterful at creating just the right cuts for this very particular filmmaker. Brooks’ movies are sometimes compared to the work of Woody Allen, but while they often share a similar feel, Finfer and Brooks’ work together helped create something entirely different from Allen’s. Both filmmakers were great at delivering a sort of self-effacing comedic style on film, but Brooks’ films tended to have a desperate quality that set his films apart. While Brooks’ specific personality was the linchpin upon which the films were made, I don’t believe that Brooks would have been as successful without an editor who understood, on an almost alchemical level, exactly what Brooks was trying to achieve.
Real Life, Modern Romance, Lost in America, and Defending Your Life are all near-classic to full-on classics of a comedic genre that I believe created the modern space we have for humor that is both funny and uncomfortable. It’s hard to imagine Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, or faux-documentary sitcoms like The Office and Parks and Recreation without the films of Albert Brooks.
While I know most film fanatics probably prefer Lost in America or Modern Romance, Defending Your Life was always my favorite of the four films Brooks and Finfer made together. Not only is it uproariously funny, but the editing is so seamless you barely notice it was edited at all. The flow of the film is so perfect, the cuts so elegant, that it all looked so easy on screen.
But to pull off magic, you have to work hard on your potions—I’m sure Brooks and Finfer worked very hard to get the balance just right for the type of comedy they were attempting. The degree of difficulty on an Albert Brooks film strikes me as pretty high. In editing Brooks himself, in terms of performance, the editor has to make Brooks both appealing and wince-inducing, often at the same time. And while Brooks’ first post-Finfer follow up film, Mother, was terrific, that would be the last great film of Brooks’ career (thus far) as a director. Perhaps the editor of his first four films was missed.
That Finfer would go from offbeat comedy editing to The Fugitive may seem an odd jump on the surface. But, to my mind, the editing of The Fugitive is the very best thing about the film—it is so crisp, so wonderfully old school and effective despite not being flashy. Finfer made this remake of a television show crackle on screen without an abundance of VFX or trickery. I wish filmmakers like Michael Bay, Zack Snyder, and any number of action-film directors would have taken more notice of Finfer’s work with Harrison Ford and director Andrew Davis. The more real an action scene feels, the more connected we are as an audience to the stakes of the film.
After The Fugitive, Finfer didn’t get the career bounce one might have expected after editing one of the most successful films of the nineties (and garnering an Oscar nomination for it). But Hollywood is a funny business, and somehow, Finfer’s best credit after The Fugitive was Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion—a film beloved by many, but not exactly on the level of Finfer’s previous work.
In recent years, while Finfer’s health was declining, I always hoped he would be well enough to take an interview with me. Sadly, that was never the case. I never got to meet my wife’s godfather, but today I have spoken to a number of people in my extended family, and all of them, without fail, used the word “sweet” to describe him.
While I mourn with my family today for a kind man who elevated his craft to art, I will salve my regret of never getting that interview with the knowledge that his work on film lives forever (or at least as long as this planet is inhabitable). And my, was his work ever wonderful.
David Finfer died on April 3, 2023. He was 80 years old.
