Bill Pankow, ACE
Bill Pankow has enjoyed a long collaboration with renowned director Brian De Palma, beginning as an associate editor on the films Dressed to Kill and Scarface. Pankow graduated to editor on Body Double and continued his affiliation with De Palma on such films as The Untouchables, Casualties of War, Carlito's Way, Redacted, and Femme Fatale, for which he received the Seattle Film Critics Best Editing award for 2002. Bill has also collaborated with Charles Stone III on his films Drumline, Paid In Full and Mr. 3000 and with Jean Francois Richet on Assault On Precinct 13.
Bill Pankow, ACE, has worked in the editing room since graduating from NYU Film School in 1974. Born and raised in New York City, he attended Fordham Preparatory High School in the Bronx and spent two years at Fordham University before transferring to NYU Film school. His first few years in editing were spent in various apprentice and assistant positions in commercial, film and sound cutting rooms. He started working as Academy Award-winning editor Jerry Greenberg’s assistant in 1978 on Kramer vs. Kramer, and subsequently became his associate editor on Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill and Scarface. Pankow graduated to editor on De Palma’s 1984 thriller Body Double, and continued his affiliation with the filmmaker on The Untouchables, Casualties of War, Bonfire of the Vanities, Carlito’s Way, Snake Eyes, and Femme Fatale; for which he received the Seattle Film Critics’ “ Best Editing” award for 2002. He subsequently collaborated with Mr. De Palma on The Black Dahlia and Redacted, named best film of 2008 by France’s Cahiers du Cinema. Currently they are working together on Brian De Palma’s most recent project Domino.
Pankow has also worked with such noted filmmakers as Abel Ferrara The Funeral and R’Xmas, Robert Benton Still of the Night and Paul Schrader The Comfort of Strangers. Other feature credits include Parents, Money Train, Whispers in the Dark and Once in the Life, for actor/director Laurence Fishburne. He has edited films for acclaimed Hong Kong filmmakers Tsui Hark Double Team and Ringo Lam Maximum Risk. Director Charles Stone worked with Bill on three of his feature films; Paid in Full, Drumline, and Mr. 3000. In 2007 Bill shared editing credit on Sony BMG’s Feel the Noise and also worked on the film Day Zero.
His 2004 collaboration with Jean Francois Richet Assault on Precinct 13, continued in 2008 with Mesrine and Public Enemy No.1, for which Bill was nominated for a 2009 César award for best editing by the Academie des Arts et Techniques du Cinema. Bill first met director Gary Winick when he edited Sweet Nothing and later worked with him on The Tic Code and Letters To Juliet. After this he went on to edit the thriller Trespass directed by Joel Schumacher. His collaboration with Dan Algrant on Greetings From Tim Buckley continued a relationship that began when Bill edited Mr. Algrant’s first theatrical feature film, the critically-acclaimed Naked in New York.
Other projects include Fox Searchlight’s The East with director Zal Batmanglij, The Harvest for director John McNaughton ,“ Let’s Be Cops”, an action comedy for 20th Century Fox, Max directed by Boaz Yakin and American Ultra on which he collaborated with director Nima Nourizadeh. Gifted directed by Marc Webb is the most recent feature film in his credit list.
Bill’s television work includes Tales from the Dark Side, the highly regarded FOX series Tribeca, The Equalizer, and the HBO feature Undefeated for actor/director John Leguizamo. Prior to that film he was the supervising editor on the Emmy Award winning HBO miniseries The Corner, for which he received an American Cinema Editors Eddie Award nomination, later rejoining David Simon to edit an episode of the HBO series Treme, Season 4, entitled “Dippermouth Blues”. His most recent television project was the Nat Geo series Mars.
Bill is an Adjunct Professor of Advanced Editing at New York University’s Kanbar Institute of Film and Television, as well has having been a guest lecturer at Bard, CCNY and Manhattan Edit Workshop.
PODCAST: An Evening with Film Editor Bill Pankow: Manhattan Edit Workshop's Artist in Residence Series