Don Zimmerman, a veteran film editor who scored an Oscar nom for Coming Home and worked on dozens of other movies including Being There, The Prince of Tides, Night at the Museum and two Rocky sequels, died July 24 of acute myeloid leukemia at his Studio City home. He was 81.
American Cinema Editors, the group that gave him a Career Achievement Award in 2023, confirmed the news.
Born in 1944 and nicknamed “Big D,” Zimmerman joined the Air Force during the Vietnam War and began working odd jobs — Western Electric, gas stations, insurance — after his discharge. A friend recommended he try being an assistant in show business, which led first to working as a sound editor.
“Then Jimmy, the assistant friend of mine, was working with Hal Ashby,” Zimmerman said in a 2023 interview with ACE’s Cinema Editor magazine. “Hal had just moved from editor to a director by Norman Jewison, and they needed a second assistant editor. [Ashby] had his assistant move up to editing, and Jim was the first assistant. Jim said, ‘Let’s get Don to help as the second editor.’ That was my introduction to Ashby and the group.”
Zimmerman would work with the filmmaker on his 1971 cult hit Harold & Maude and several other movies including Bound for Glory, Shampoo and the Peter Sellers-led Being There. He scored a Best Film Editing Oscar nomination for his first solo credit, the 1978 post-Vietnam classic Coming Home, which also was nominated for Best Picture. That same year, Zimmerman edited another Best Picture Oscar nominee, Warren Beatty’s remake of Heaven Can Wait.
More than a decade later, Zimmerman was the film editor on a third Best Picture Oscar nominee, Barbra Streisand’s The Prince of Tides (1991).
He also served as film editor for other big-name directors including five films for Tom Shadyac (Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Liar Liar, Patch Adams, The Nutty Professor, Dragonfly), four for Dean Parisot (Galaxy Quest, Fun with Dick and Jane, Bill & Ted Face the Music, RED 2), three for Sylvester Stallone (Rocky III, Rocky IV and Staying Alive), along with Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum and its 2009 sequel), Arthur Hiller (Teachers), Doug Liman (Jumper), Norman Jewison (Best Friends), Brett Ratner (Rush Hour 3) and Barry Sonnenfeld (Men in Black 3, Nine Lives).
“I learned from these different people that I worked with that it’s mainly your gut,” Zimmerman said in the 2023 Cinema Editor interview. “Above all else, they always taught me to tell the truth. I was fortunate to work with [directors] that would always say, ‘Let me see your interpretation of it first.’”
His five children also have enjoyed careers in the entertainment industry. Sons Dan and Dean are ACE-member editors, Debi is a costumer, Dana works in postproduction and David — who assisted his dad for many years — and is VP of the streaming platform Evercast.
His family said in a statement that Zimmerman was “an incredible husband, father, friend and colleague, and we will miss him dearly. He loved his job so much he would often say he never felt like it was work. He was an artist — a creative, talented editor whose body of work has been cemented in the motion picture industry forever.”
Along with his children, Zimmerman is survived by his wife, Donna, and seven grandchildren.
