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59 F A L L Q 3 I S S U E I N M E M O R I A M children. His older sister Mona survives him. When Bud was about 10, the family relocated to Salinas, Cal. From an early age, he had his sights set on a life of excitement. "His sister said that he wanted to quit s c h o o l a n d b e c o m e a ra c e c a r d r i v e r," Coldsnow-Smith said. "He was very much of a daredevil. He raced his motorcycles. He raced cars." Eventually, Bud moved to Los Angeles, where he met and married his first wife, Judy Mulconery. Her uncle had connections in the motion picture business, which, in turn, led to Bud gaining employment at Four Star Television. Smith began as an apprentice editor. "When he got introduced to filmmak- ing, that's exactly what he wanted to do," Coldsnow-Smith said. "Bud moved up very quickly." In the 1960s, Smith found his way to David L. Wolper Productions, where he first encountered Friedkin while the two were working on television documentaries. Their projects included "Pro Football: Mayhem on a Sunday Afternoon" (1965), on which Smith served as an assistant editor; and "The Bold Men" (1965), which Smith edited. "Bud Smith edited the football mon- tages as though we were covering a war," Friedkin wrote, referring to the pro football documentary, in his 2013 autobiography, "The Friedkin Connection." In a statement, picture editor Darrin Navarro, ACE, who later served as Fried- kin's editor on such films as "Bug" (2006) and "Killer Joe" (2011), highlighted Smith's early work with Friedkin. "One of the great things about working with a director in the early stages of their career, especially if you also happen to be in the early stages of your own, is being able to develop your artistic voice alongside theirs," Navarro said. "[Smith and Friedkin] were both energized by the various new waves of cinema happening around the world and were trying to bring that energy to the films they were making. . . . They had formed a bond through the process, and it showed up like fireworks when they reunited later on much bigger films like 'The Exorcist' and 'Sorcerer.'" Around the time that he first worked with Friedkin, Smith also fell into the film- making circle of noted independent director Robert Downey Sr. "Putney Swope" (1969), "Pound" (1970), and "Greaser's Palace" (1972) were among the original and innova- tive films Smith edited for Downey Sr. "They worked together, and they were friends until Sr. died," Coldsnow-Smith said. "They were always the best of friends." Th e n , i n 1 9 72 , Fr i e d k i n re - e n te re d Smith's life and career in a big way: The di- rector — who had, by then, won an Oscar for directing "The French Connection" — over- saw a team of four editors for his follow-up, the horror classic "The Exorcist." Friedkin gave Smith the responsibility of cutting the intense, premonitory opening sequence in Iraq, when Father Lankester Merrin (Max von Sydow), having traveled to the country for an archaeological dig, locates a notably ominous talisman amid otherwise unre- markable ruins. A l t h o u g h F r i e d k i n h a d g a i n e d t h e re p u ta t i o n o f b e i n g a d e m a n d i n g a n d unpredictable personality, the director worked well with the more even-keeled, unflappable Smith. "Nothing really ruffled his feathers that much," Coldsnow-Smith said. "He was easy to get along with, and everybody who worked with him, worked with him for a long time." Under the tutelage of Smith, his longtime assistant editors Ned Humphreys and Jere Huggins advanced to become edi- tors themselves. "They had fun, but you had to do your work," Coldsnow-Smith said. "Bud always wa n te d to b e i n co n t ro l o f h i s e d i t i n g room, and if someone tried to take over, it didn't work." No production likely tested Smith's talent and character more than Friedkin's 1977 film "Sorcerer," which, in harrowing terms, tells of the efforts of a quartet of present-day outlaws (Roy Scheider, Bruno Cremer, Francisco Rabal, and Amidou) whose straitened circumstances have led them to agree to convey volatile dynamite by truck in a South American village. One legendary sequence shows the truck negoti- ating a perilously rotting suspension bridge amid unceasing rainfall. Smith breathlessly cuts between views of the truck as it teeters: wide shots of the overall action, tight shots of the wheels, close-ups of Scheider at the wheel. On location in the Dominican Republic, Smith worked on KEMs that were being run using generators, but by the time the production returned to Hollywood, the film was emerging as the masterpiece it is now widely acknowledged to be. "Bud Smith and I started editing 'Sor- cerer,' and it was coming together well," Friedkin wrote in his book. "All the prob- lems of the shoot melted away in the cutting room, and there was enough coverage to pace it any way we chose." Such was the depth of his involvement in the making of "Sorcerer," Smith received credit as both second-unit director and associate producer. "He wanted to be a director," Coldsnow- Smith said. "He did second-unit, he would go scouting for locations. Billy gave him the opportunity to do all this stuff, but Bud was very good at what he did." Smith ultimately directed his own fea- ture film: 1988's "Johnny Be Good," starring Anthony Michael Hall, Robert Downey Jr., and a young Uma Thurman. It was his sole credit as a director. E v e n o n Fr i e d k i n p ro d u c t i o n s l e ss treacherous than "Sorcerer," Smith often found himself at the center of the action: For example, on Friedkin's charming, relatively innocuous heist comedy "The Brink's Job" (1978), the cutting room reels of workprint we re s to l e n f ro m t h e c u tt i n g ro o m by masked robbers. "The assistant editor, Ned Humphreys, was pistol-whipped, and the editor, Bud Smith, was told to hand over all the exposed reels to the robbers," Friedkin wrote. "Later a call came into the production off ice, demanding a $1 million ransom for the return of the film, and the Boston police were alerted." F r i e d k i n a d d e d : " N o o n e w a s e v e r c a u g h t , a n d w e s i m p l y r e p r i n t e d