Stephen Mirrione

Academy Award-Winning Film Editor
Spiderhead, Traffic, The Revenant, Babel, 21 Grams, Birdman, The Hunger Games

Courtesy of Subject

Stephen Mirrione is an American film editor. He is best known for winning an Academy Award for his editing of the film Traffic (2000).

Mirrione was born in Santa Clara County, California. He attended Bellarmine College Preparatory and then the University of California, Santa Cruz, from which he received his bachelor's degree in 1991. He moved to Los Angeles and began a collaboration with Doug Liman, who was then a graduate student at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. Mirrione edited Liman's first feature films Getting In (1994), Swingers (1996), and Go (1999).

Mirrione has had a notable collaboration with director Steven Soderbergh. The two met when Soderbergh attended the opening of Go. About one year later, he asked Mirrione to edit Traffic (2000), which earned Mirrione an Oscar. Todd McCarthy characterized the effects of the camerawork and editing: "Soderbergh has given the film tremendous texture as well as a vibrant immediacy through constant handheld operating, mostly using available light, and manipulating the look both in shooting and in the lab. Stephen Mirrione's editing, which gives Traffic a beautifully modulated overall shape, is characterized on a moment-to-moment basis by jump cuts and jagged rhythms. Overall result is far too stylized to call the approach verite, but pic looks far more caught-on-the-run, and therefore far less staged than all but a few other American films."

Mirrione subsequently edited all three of the Ocean's films directed by Soderbergh and starring George Clooney (Ocean's Eleven (2001), Ocean's Twelve (2004), and Ocean's Thirteen (2007)), as well as The Informant! (2009) and Contagion (2011).

Mirrione won an American Cinema Editors "Eddie" Award in 2006 for his editing of Alejandro González Iñárritu's film Babel, for which he was also nominated for an Academy Award. He has been nominated four times for BAFTA Awards for editing Traffic, 21 Grams (also directed by Iñárritu – 2003), Good Night, and Good Luck (directed by George Clooney-2005), and for Babel.

Mirrione has been selected for membership in the American Cinema Editors.

Watch the trailer for Spiderhead, streaming now on Netflix.

This episode of The Pop Disciple Podcast is hosted by Paul Goldowitz.

Production, Editing, Mixing, Mastering | Paul Goldowitz
The Pop Disciple Podcast Theme and Outro Music | Paul Goldowitz

Special thanks to Stephen Mirrione.