Karen Schmeer, the longtime Errol Morris editor who was hit and killed Friday night by a frenzied getaway driver, has been called “one of the greatest editors of her generation.” The industry professional, who edited "The Fog of War" and many other documentaries, was crossing W. 90th Street yesterday when she was struck down by a car fleeing from the police. Its driver and passengers had just robbed over-the-counter allergy medicine from a local CVS, and fled on foot from the scene of the accident with cops giving chase.
According to police, they tried to pull the Dodge Avenger sedan over at W. 86th and Amsterdam, but the driver sped on, hitting another car and then running straight in to Schmeer. One felon, who police were able to grab, has been charged with second-degree murder. The other two are still at large.
The 39-year-old—whose current project was a documentary about chess champ Bobby Fisher—died at the hospital. She’d edited a number of Morris’s documentaries from “Fast, Cheap and Out of Control” (a film he thought might be “completely uneditable”) to 2008’s “Standard Operating Procedure,” over which she clashed with the director. But according to the NY Times, Morris said she was a great editor “in part because she was difficult; she was opinionated; she brought a lot of her own ideas into the process.” Another colleague Greg Barker, director of “Sergio,” for which Schmeer took home an editing award at Sundance in 2009, added that “In a business full of huge egos — and believe me, she’s worked with a few of them — she was completely modest and incredibly self-effacing about her immense talent.”
