About Episode

Billy Goldenberg is the Oscar-winning film editor of such films as Detroit, Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, The Imitation Game, several of the Transformers films, the National Treasure franchise, and many more. He’s done numerous collaborations with Michael Mann, Ben Affleck, Michael Bay, and he even won his Oscar the same year that his mentor Michael Kahn was nominated (if you’re not familiar with Michael Kahn, he’s Steven Spielberg’s longtime editor and collaborator). Needless to say, Billy Goldenberg knows a thing or two about what it takes to be successful in Hollywood.

Sure, it’s easy to look at someone’s career like Billy’s from the outside and think, “Yeah it’s amazing what he’s done with his career, but c’mon, the guy was Michael Kahn’s assistant editor…there’s no way I’m going to be able to be as successful as he was!” there are actually fundamental steps you can extract from anyone’s career journey and apply to your own, and Billy is no different.

In this episode rather than chatting about the ins-and-outs of film editing, Billy and I walk through his path from the beginning to where he is now and break down some of the lesser known skills necessary to be successful in any creative field where you collaborate with others on a regular basis.

We discuss how important it is to respect the job you currently have and do great work at it while also being honest about what you want to do next, how honest you really should when giving your thoughts and feedback to producers and directors, the editor as the psychologist of filmmaking, and what it takes to move forwards given how demanding your current job probably already is, just to name a few examples.