Quentin Tarantino's Academy Award-nominated film editor Sally Menke has been found dead in a canyon in Los Angeles, after going missing during a hike. Reports suggest that smog and unseasonable heat are understood to have played a factor in her death.
Born in New York in 1953, Menke graduated from the NYU Film program at the Tisch School of the Arts and her feature work included Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles before she began collaborating with tarantino on his 1992 film Reservoir Dogs. The partnership continued with her Oscar-niminated work on Pulp Fiction, and Jackie Brown, Kill Bill Volumes 1 & 2, Grindhouse: Death Proof, and Menke received her second Oscar nomination for Tarantino's most recent effort, Inglourious Basterds, Menke also received numerous BAFTA and other nominations and recognitions in the past 15 years.
Menke discussed her relationship with Tarantino in a piece she wrote for The Guardian last year. She said she first “met Quentin when was interviewing for an editor – a cheap one”.
“Quentin is the same now as he was then,” she wrote.” He's encyclopaedic, passionate, electrifying. We just clicked creatively. Editing is all about intuiting the tone of a scene and you have to chime with the director. It's a rare, intense sort of a relationship and if it ain't broke, you wouldn't want to fix it. We've built up such trust that now he gives me the dailies and I put 'em together and there's little interference.”
See below a compile of outtakes from Inglourious Basterds, in which cast and crew send salutations to the editor trawling through the footage.
Friars Club executive director Michael Gyure expressed his "deep sadness for Mr. Tarantino's loss", in a statement.
