Edgar Burcksen, Emmy-Winning ‘Young Indiana Jones’ Film Editor, Dies at 76

Mike Barnes
·2 min read
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Edgar Burcksen, who handled visual effects for The Hunt for Red October and Die Hard 2 and won an Emmy for editing the pilot for The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, has died. He was 76.

Burcksen died Sunday in Los Angeles of complications from a heart attack, Innovative Artists announced.

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Born in Holland in 1947, Burcksen started his career editing features in Amsterdam. He moved to San Francisco to work for Colossal Pictures, where he collaborated on music videos for the Grateful Dead and Thomas Dolby and on commercials for Disney, Levi’s and other companies.

He joined George Lucas’ ILM, served as the effects editor on the 1990 films The Hunt for Red October and Die Hard 2 and became an expert in the use of the nonlinear editing system known as the EditDroid, a precursor to the Avid.

Lucas then tasked him with handling postproduction on the 1992-93 ABC series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, and he received his Emmy for his work on “The Curse of the Jackal” pilot.

Burcksen also edited the Jeroen Krabbé-directed feature Left Luggage (1998) and such documentary projects as the Kevin Costner 1995 miniseries 500 Nations, the Oscar-nominated Colors Straight Up (1997), Darfur Now (2007) and Hollywood Banker (2014).

Burcksen received the Golden Calf at the Nederlands Film Festival in 1985 and the Robert Wise Award from the American Cinema Editors in 2011. He also was a longtime writer and editor-in-chief of ACE’s CinemaEditor magazine.

Plus, he taught film editing at the Academy of Art University of San Francisco and was fluent in Dutch, English, German and French.

Burcksen, a longtime member of the Westwood-based Velo Club La Grange, was an ultramarathon cyclist who completed 25 double centuries — riding 200 miles in one day — over a 10-year period. He edited The Gift, a 2006 documentary about his club that was founded in 1968.

Survivors include his wife of 50 years, Jana, and their children, Branko and Romaika.

“Edgar was one of the most generous people I have ever encountered. I worked, cycled and socialized with him for over 30 years,” Bill Birrell, former senior vp and G.M. of Sony Pictures Imageworks, said in a statement.

“For a friend, no favor was too much to ask. For a filmmaker, no revision or additional task would be refused. For his cycling club, he’d volunteer for any event. And for his family, he would move heaven and earth — or appliances, or build a kitchen or a roof over a horse barn.

“He seemed to have boundless energy. Often he worked on two projects at the same time, racking up 16- to 18-hour days. Still, he made time to write and edit CinemaEditor magazine, ride his bike, be his own handyman as well as dedicated family man.”

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