By Cristian Salazar
NEW YORK (AP) --An award-winning film editor who worked on many of Errol Morris’ documentaries, including “The Fog of War,” was struck and killed by a getaway car speeding from a Manhattan drugstore robbery, police and her mother said on Saturday.
Karen Schmeer was crossing Broadway at West 90th Street on the Upper West Side on Friday when she was struck by a car driven by two suspects in the theft of over-the-counter medication from a CVS drugstore a few blocks away, police said.
Her mother, Eleanor DuBois Schmeer, confirmed the film editor’s death. Schmeer was an editor for Morris’ documentaries as well as other works, including “Sergio,” which won a best-editing award last year at the Sundance Film Festival. The movie is about Sergio de Mello, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights killed in a 2003 explosion at U.N. headquarters in Iraq.
“She was just extremely loved by many, many friends,” said Schmeer’s mother, from her home in Portland, Ore., where her daughter was born.
Morris wrote on his Twitter feed that Schmeer’s death was a “senseless tragedy.”
Lt. John Grimpel said the driver of the car has been arrested on a murder charge shortly after Friday’s crash. Schmeer was pronounced dead at St. Luke’s Hospital.
On Saturday, police were still looking for a passenger who fled from the car as well as a third suspect.
Although Schmeer’s last listed address was in Boston, her mother said she was living in an apartment on the Upper West Side when she was killed.
In addition to editing Morris’ Academy Award-winning documentary film, “The Fog of War,” which profiled former Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara, Schmeer worked as editor on many of his other films. She also was an editor for “Sketches of Frank Gehry,” directed by Sydney Pollack.
Jennifer Kent On Why Her Feature Directing Debut, “The Babadook,” Continues To Haunt Us
"The Babadook," when it was released 10 years ago, didn't seem to portend a cultural sensation.
It was the first film by a little-known Australian filmmaker, Jennifer Kent. It had that strange name. On opening weekend, it played in two theaters.
But with time, the long shadows of "The Babadook" continued to envelop moviegoers. Its rerelease this weekend in theaters, a decade later, is less of a reminder of a sleeper 2014 indie hit than it is a chance to revisit a horror milestone that continues to cast a dark spell.
Not many small-budget, first-feature films can be fairly said to have shifted cinema but Kent's directorial debut may be one of them. It was at the nexus of that much-debated term "elevated horror." But regardless of that label, it helped kicked off a wave of challenging, filmmaker-driven genre movies like "It Follows," "Get Out" and "Hereditary."
Kent, 55, has watched all of this — and those many "Babadook" memes — unfold over the years with a mix of elation and confusion. Her film was inspired in part by the death of her father, and its horror elements likewise arise out of the suppression of emotions. A single mother (Essie Davis) is struggling with raising her young son (Noah Wiseman) years after the tragic death of her husband. A figure from a pop-up children's book begins to appear. As things grow more intense, his name is drawn out in three chilling syllables — "Bah-Bah-Doooook" — an incantation of unprocessed grief.
Kent recently spoke from her native Australia to reflect on the origins and continuing life of "The Babadook."
Q: Given that you didn't set out to in any way "change" horror, how have you regarded the unique afterlife of "The... Read More