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49 S P R I N G Q 1 I S S U E I N M E M O R I A M ROBERT CLIFFORD "BOB" JONES MARCH 10, 1936 — FEBRUARY 24, 2021 Early in Hal Ashby's 1973 drama "The Last Detail," a trio of sailors share a meal. Petty Officers Buddusky (Jack Nich- olson) and Mulhall (Otis Young) are in the midst of the first leg of a trip during which they aim to combine business and pleasure. Officially, the two have drawn orders to accompany a young sailor, Sea- man Larry Meadows (Randy Quaid), to a naval prison in Maine, where the glum- faced young man is to serve an eight-year term for pilfering $40 from a polio contri- bution box. Unofficially, the three of them intend to take a good, long while to make their way to Maine, planning to raise a lot of hell along the way. In one of screenwriter Robert Towne's signature scenes, Buddusky, Mulhall, a n d M e a d ow s a re s e ate d i n a d i n e r. Cinematographer Michael Chapman's camera followed a waiter walking from the kitchen with their orders — Meadows has requested a cheeseburger with suffi- ciently melted cheese — and settled on a wide shot of the three in their booth as the plates are set down. But it was picture editor Robert C. Jones, ACE, who added the touches and transitions that brought the scene to sparkling life. Jones held on the wide shot even after Buddusky, nosily lifting up the bun on Meadows's burger, finds that his charge's cheese is unmelted. Buddusky summons the waiter: "Melt the cheese on this for the chief, would you?" After Buddusky sends the burger back, Jones cut for the first time in the scene to a medium shot of Meadows looking on hungrily at his chums as they chow down and ooh and aah over their food. Then comes a time jump: Just as Buddusky barks, "Hey, where these malts at?", Jones wittily dissolved to a head-on two-shot of Bud- dusky and Mulhall simultaneously taking one last gulp of their malts. The scene ends with a cut to a reverse angle on a now-satiated Meadows: "It's good," he says, holding up his burger. S u c h s i m p l e s t ro k e s o f e d i to r i a l invention were the hallmark of the films of Jones, who died on Feb. 1 at the age of 84. His survivors include his wife, Sylvia Hirsch Jones, and two daughters, picture editor Leslie Jones, ACE, and Hayley Sussman. A Los Angeles native, Jones was born into a post-production family: His father, Harmon Jones, was an accomplished editor, receiving an Oscar nomination for cutting Elia Kazan's "Gentleman's Agreement" (1947), before becoming a director. His son was himself nominated for three editing Oscars — for "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" (1963), along with Gene Fowler, Jr., ACE, and Frederic Knudtson, ACE, "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" (1967), and Ashby's "Bound for Glory" (1976), co-edited with Pembroke J. Herring — and took home a screen- writing Oscar, along with Waldo Salt and Nancy Dowd, for Ashby's "Coming Home" (1978). As an editor, Jones enjoyed multi-film collaborations with several important directors, including Stanley Kramer, Warren Beatty, and Arthur Hiller, but his most fruitful, and eclectic was with Ashby, for whom he edited "The Last Detail," "Shampoo" (1975), "Bound for Glory," and was among a consortium of editors on "Lookin' to Get Out" (1981). Having been tapped by Ashby to contrib- ute to work on the screenplay to "Coming Home," Jones also produced the shooting script used for the director's 1979 mas- terpiece "Being There." First and foremost, though, Jones was a gifted editor — praised for his speed and invention by his colleagues. "He was probably the fastest editor I ever worked with," picture editor Don Zimmerman, ACE, told CineMontage this week. Zimmerman served as an assistant editor under Jones on "Shampoo" and "Bound for Glory," but was bumped up to picture editor on the Jones-scripted "Coming Home" and "Being There." "He was just really brilliant and a great story- teller," Zimmerman said. "He really had an incredible mind. . . . He instilled in me a whole sense of how to do things." Jones's association with Ashby began on "The Last Detail." Film scholar Nick Dawson, the author of the acclaimed biography "Being Hal Ashby: Life of a Hollywood Rebel," said that Ashby was dissatisfied with the initial work done by P H O T O : J O N E S F A M I L Y