Dody Dorn

In 2012, the Motion Picture Editors Guild listed Memento as the fourteenth best-edited film of all time based on a survey of its membership.

In 1986, she started her own sound company, Sonic Kitchen, but with time, got more and more disenchanted and distracted with the daily business grind. Dorn had begun to lose interest and was compelled to get back to her passion—feature film picture editing. It was the editing of the unusual documentary cult film SICK: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist and Memento which brought Dody Dorn’s picture editing to the attention of the rest of the world. She has since continued to work with director Christopher Nolan on several films and has repeatedly worked with noted film director, Ridley Scott. In addition to her credited editing on Scott’s films, Dorn worked on the 2003 DVD releases of Alien (the “Director’s Cut”). Dorn was selected for membership in the American Cinema Editors.

Dorn was born into a film industry family, her father having worked as a set designer and film producer. Dorn attended Hollywood High School and it was there that she decided to pursue a career as a math teacher. A fateful job working behind the scenes at a movie sound stage led her towards working in the film industry. Dorn appeared in two films as an actress (including a nude “Archbishop” in the 1976 satire TunnelVision) before moving behind the camera. She worked her way up the food chain (working as a production assistant, script supervisor, assistant location manager, and several other freelance jobs) eventually attaining the position of assistant film editor which she held until 1982. Finding it unusually difficult to move up to picture editing, Dorn made a lateral move to sound editing. Her work as a sound editor on James Cameron’s The Abyss (1989) won the Golden Reel Award and was nominated for a best sound Academy Award.

Dody Jane Dorn (born April 20, 1955) is an American film and sound editor, best known for working with director Christopher Nolan on several films including Memento (2000). Dorn was nominated for the Academy Award for Memento, which Variety described as a “…beautifully structured puzzle…” that “…deconstructs time and space with Einstein-caliber dexterity in the service of a delectably disturbing tale of revenge … Dody Dorn’s editing is top-notch as pic — scripted, acted and lensed with precision — smoothly toggles back and forth between sequences in B&W and in color.”