John Grover, James Bond Editor, Dies At 87

John Grover, the British film editor who worked on six James Bond films and contributed to Stanley Kubrick’s '2001: A Space Odyssey', has died aged 87.
Grover passed away Monday at his home in Buckinghamshire, England, following a short illness, his son Tim told The Hollywood Reporter.
Grover was the film editor on 'For Your Eyes Only' (1981), 'The Living Daylights' (1987) and 'Licence to Kill' (1989), while also helping assemble 'The Spy Who Loved Me' (1977), 'Moonraker' (1979) and 'Octopussy' (1983).
A longtime vice chairman of the British Film Editors, Grover received the organisation’s Lifetime Achievement Award in April.
His career also included work on The Wild Geese (1978), The Sea Wolves (1980), The Final Option (1982), Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce (1985), the 1984 NBC miniseries The First Olympics and Jim Henson’s Labyrinth (1986), which he described as his favourite film.
Early in his career, Grover worked as an uncredited assistant editor for Robert Wise on The Haunting (1963), David Lean on Doctor Zhivago (1965), John Frankenheimer on Grand Prix (1966), Kubrick on 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Herbert Ross on Goodbye, Mr Chips (1969).
At a 2016 editing conference, Grover spoke candidly about his experience working with Kubrick, calling the director a perfectionist.
“I spent six months of my life with that idiot,” Grover said, adding, “Although he was a supposedly good filmmaker, he was mad. He’d kill the artist by [saying] keep going again and again and again.”
Grover also offered a blunt assessment of the acclaimed science-fiction film.
“I think [2001 is] a load of rubbish; it’s the most boring, long, stretched-out [film]. I mean, OK, it was very clever [with its] use of original music, which we had to get back from Germany, ‘The Blue Danube’ and all that. It’s very ahead of its time; what we were doing in imagination actually happened, and the space stations are now up there,” he said.
One of the film’s most distinctive sound elements was the heavy breathing heard during scenes involving astronauts Dave Bowman and Frank Poole.
Michael Benson wrote in his 2018 book Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece that Grover accompanied editorial assistant David de Wilde to record Kubrick, who was battling a head cold.
Grover, however, said he was the one who performed the breathing.
“All I did was breathing for six months,” he said, adding, “[Kubrick] wanted it done with the helmet… He’d sit right at the front … with a notebook, and you’d run the sequence, and he’d be writing, and he’d come back and say, ‘OK, John, very good, do it again.’ You had to watch [the film] pretending you were doing exercises and straining and moving things.”
A spokesperson for the British editors guild said: “Both Stanley K. and John Grover were recorded for the ‘heavy breathing’ — and it is thought that the recording of John was the one used for the film.”
The breaths were recorded simultaneously on two rolls of 35mm film in 10-minute takes, allowing Grover to cut between them when removing ambient noise.
Grover later worked on Moonraker as assembly editor alongside John Glen. The production involved around 800,000 feet of film, and the final cut took 10 months to complete, finishing the day before the premiere.
For The Spy Who Loved Me, Grover edited the pre-credit sequence that ends with Roger Moore skiing down a mountain and parachuting from a cliff. The shoot was delayed by 10 days because of severe weather before the stunt could be filmed during a brief 15-minute break in the conditions.
Grover also incorporated a music box he had received while working on Doctor Zhivago. It played “Lara’s Theme” in The Spy Who Loved Me and was used by Barbara Bach’s character, Anya Amasova. Composer Maurice Jarre received royalties for the brief use of the leitmotif.
Born on October 24, 1938, in Barnet, Middlesex, England, Grover served in National Service as a teenager. He later joined MGM Studios as a numbering boy, earning 6 pounds 10 shillings a week. His uncle was the studio’s supervising editor.
Grover remembered David Lean as an opinionated but collaborative filmmaker. “He’d say, ‘Get everybody in here, let’s have a look at this, what do you think?’ he recalled, adding, 'He’d listen to you, provided you had an answer.”
Grover also recalled a technical mishap during the 70mm Los Angeles premiere of Doctor Zhivago, when a gearbox in the projection booth exploded during the first reel changeover, plunging the screen into darkness for eight minutes.
During The Living Daylights, Grover and Peter Davies co-edited Timothy Dalton’s debut as James Bond. A work print containing dialogue sequences was leaked and circulated on VHS, leading Grover to be questioned by producer Albert Broccoli and associate producer Tom Pevsner.
“That was really frightening,” he remembered in 2018, adding, “Of course we were the No. 1 suspects; we were in the cutting rooms, we were the only one who had access to it.”
Grover said he had marked individual frames with identifiable symbols whenever sections of the film were sent out, allowing the production to trace the leaked material to a trailer company in New York.
Grover is survived by his wife of 62 years, Jenny; son Tim; daughter Camilla; five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
After retiring, Grover reflected on the formula behind the Bond films.
“Bad language was unacceptable, but some violence and sexual innuendo was OK,” he said, adding, “Family entertainment was their motto. Grandparents could always take their grandchildren to see the films to enjoy them together.”
Roger Moore was Grover’s favourite Bond actor, while his favourite 007 sequence was the car and circus-train chase in Octopussy.
“For God’s sake, we got on those pictures, and for nine months I basically would never go home,” he said, adding, “So you had to have a good family behind you.” (ANI)