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Mo Henry
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Mo Henry
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Maureen Ann Henry (April 19, 1956 – January 14, 2024) was an American film negative cutter whose works included Jaws, Apocalypse Now Redux, L.A. Confidential, and The Big Lebowski.[2]

Key Information

Career

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Henry was a fourth-generation descendant from a family of negative film cutters. During the 1920s, Henry's paternal aunt emigrated from Ireland where she first worked at Deluxe Laboratories, which was later acquired by 20th Century Fox. She passed on her knowledge of the trade to Henry's father Mike and his brothers.[3] Mike Henry, who had served as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's chief negative cutter, would in turn teach his daughter.[4] After Mo had graduated from high school, Henry's father had heard that Universal Studios was looking for union negative cutters as none were available. He recommended his daughter for the job, and the first feature film she worked on was Steven Spielberg's blockbuster Jaws in 1975. She later worked at several television studios including Quinn Martin Productions on a number of episodic television shows throughout the 1970s, including The Waltons, Eight Is Enough, Cagney & Lacey and M*A*S*H.[5]

By the 1980s, having always wanted to be an interior designer, Henry decided to become a real estate agent in Beverly Hills, California. "I loved houses and designs and thought real estate would put me in all these great houses," Henry stated.[5] She soon returned to Hollywood, only this time serving as a production assistant for a commercial production company. She worked her way up to production coordinator but had to quit when she became pregnant with her son. Eventually, her cousin invited her back to resume working at Universal Studios' negative cutting department.[5] Before long, she was contacted by fellow negative cutter Donah Bassett, in which she joined her firm D. Bassett & Associates.[5] In 1992, she became the owner of D. Bassett & Associates; from there, she began working more closely with filmmakers and getting more involved in the movies she was cutting.[6]

In 2018, she was interviewed about her work on Orson Welles's final film, The Other Side of the Wind, in the documentary short A Final Cut for Orson.[7][8]

Death

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Henry died of complications from liver failure in Los Angeles, on January 14, 2024, at the age of 67.[9]

References

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Mo Henry

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''Mo Henry'' is an American film negative cutter known for her meticulous work on many iconic and high-profile motion pictures over four decades. Maureen “Mo” Henry (April 19, 1956 – January 14, 2024) was widely regarded as one of the most admired and respected figures in Hollywood's post-production community. Born in Los Angeles, she specialized in negative cutting, the precise process of conforming original camera negative to match the final edited version of a film, enabling the creation of accurate release prints. Henry worked on films including Jaws, Apocalypse Now Redux, L.A. Confidential, Starship Troopers, The Fifth Element, The Matrix, and Orson Welles' The Other Side of the Wind, often managing teams on large-scale productions. Her professionalism, integrity, and pleasant demeanor earned her praise as a giant in the field, with peers noting her critical role in preserving the integrity of original film elements for some of the most successful movies of recent decades. She died of complications from liver failure at age 67.

Early life

Family heritage in negative cutting

Mo Henry came from a family with a multi-generational tradition in the specialized film laboratory craft of negative cutting. Her father, Mike Henry, served as chief negative cutter at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where he oversaw the handling and preparation of original camera negatives for editing and printing during the studio's classic era. This familial connection to the profession provided her with early exposure to the technical precision required in matching and assembling film elements by hand. Her paternal aunt emigrated from Ireland in the 1920s and found work at the film laboratory that later evolved into Deluxe Laboratories, closely associated with 20th Century Fox, contributing to the family's deep roots in Hollywood's laboratory infrastructure. Mo Henry learned the trade directly from her father, absorbing the meticulous skills of negative cutting through hands-on training in the family environment before entering the industry herself. Born in 1956 in Los Angeles, she grew up immersed in this heritage of film craftsmanship.

Birth and upbringing in Los Angeles

Maureen “Mo” Henry was born on April 19, 1956, in Los Angeles, California. She lived her entire life in Los Angeles, making the city her lifelong home. Henry grew up in Hollywood, immersed in the film industry environment from an early age due to her family's deep ties to negative cutting, which was a family business spanning her parents, uncles, and cousins. This background placed her within the post-production world of Hollywood throughout her childhood and youth.

Career

Entry into the industry and early work

Mo Henry entered the film industry in 1975 at Universal Studios after her father, a union negative cutter, recommended her for a position when the studio needed additional union members and the union had exhausted its roster. She began on the night shift from 7:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m., initially learning to break down film and working in opticals to minimize the impact of potential early mistakes. Her father assigned her to her first feature film, Jaws (1975), noting at the time that the production appeared troubled and might end up as a television release if errors occurred. After leaving Universal, Henry transitioned to Quinn Martin Productions and subsequently worked across various television production companies and labs, including CFI and Lorimar. During the late 1970s and into the early 1980s, she focused primarily on episodic television, with approximately 90 percent of her work in that format. Her credits from this period include negative cutting on series such as The Waltons, Eight Is Enough, Cagney & Lacey, and MAS*H, the latter of which she particularly enjoyed due to its half-hour format featuring long takes and fewer cuts per reel. She occasionally contributed to features during this time, such as handling a reel or two on The Empire Strikes Back (1980) for another cutter. This early phase of her career, spanning 1975 through the early 1980s, established her foundation in negative cutting through a combination of family influence and hands-on experience in both feature and television post-production.

Hiatus from film and other pursuits

In the early to mid-1980s, Mo Henry left her work in negative cutting after growing tired of the profession she had entered in her late teens. She pursued a new direction as a real estate agent in Beverly Hills, motivated by her longstanding interest in interior design and houses. “I loved houses and designs and thought real estate would put me in all these great houses,” she later explained, reflecting on her original post-high school aspiration to enter interior design before family ties drew her into the film lab trade. Ultimately, she found the realities of real estate did not align with her expectations. During this period away from negative cutting, Henry transitioned into production roles in television commercials, beginning as a production assistant for a commercial production company and advancing to production coordinator. This work represented a shift to other pursuits outside her earlier specialized craft in film laboratory services.

Return to negative cutting

After a hiatus from negative cutting, during which she explored opportunities in real estate and later worked as a production assistant and coordinator in commercial production, Mo Henry was invited back to Universal Studios' negative cutting department by her cousin, who was then running the department. This return was prompted by the impending loss of her family's health insurance coverage. Shortly after resuming work at Universal, Henry began receiving calls from legendary negative cutter Donah Bassett, who persistently recruited her to join D. Bassett & Associates. Despite initial reluctance due to Bassett's reputation for being difficult, Henry agreed to try the position after Bassett assured her of better treatment. Upon joining D. Bassett & Associates, Henry transitioned to cutting feature films exclusively, facing a steeper learning curve that involved high-pressure deadlines, multiple language tracks, complex elements such as interpositives and internegatives, integration with Avid and Lightworks workflows, constant recuts, massive visual effects, and studio as well as filmmaker politics. This shift marked her move toward working more closely with filmmakers on their projects.

Ownership of D. Bassett & Associates

After returning to negative cutting and joining D. Bassett & Associates, Mo Henry purchased the company from founder Donah Bassett in 1995, just three months after being hired there. The purchase followed a direct offer from Bassett during a lunch meeting, where she presented Henry with the business proposal. As owner, Henry assumed leadership of the facility and guided its operations for the subsequent decades. Under her ownership, D. Bassett & Associates earned a reputation as one of the most respected negative cutting facilities in Hollywood, recognized particularly as the last union negative cutting company in North America. Henry managed a skilled team of cutters and maintained high-profile relationships with directors and studios that continued to rely on traditional film processes. Despite the industry's broad transition to digital production and finishing, which drastically reduced demand for negative cutting, Henry sustained the company's operations well into the 2010s and 2020s. The facility remained active with select feature film work—including recent projects for Christopher Nolan—and performed extensive archiving services for major studios such as Warner Bros. and Sony, preserving elements from film-originated movies for future use. Henry herself expressed surprise at the business's longevity, noting in 2015 that she had once anticipated a rapid end to negative cutting but found ongoing demand from filmmakers committed to celluloid.

Notable projects and collaborations

Mo Henry worked as a negative cutter on over 300 films during her career, contributing to numerous high-profile productions across decades. She maintained a long-term collaboration with director Robert Rodriguez, handling negative cutting duties on all of his films starting early in his career, including initial pro bono work that developed into an ongoing partnership. Her credits encompass a range of acclaimed and commercially successful films, including her first feature Jaws (1975), Apocalypse Now Redux, L.A. Confidential (1997), The Big Lebowski (1998), The Matrix (1999), Starship Troopers (1997), The Fifth Element (1997), and Eight Legged Freaks (2002). Among her most notable contributions was performing the final negative cutting on Orson Welles' long-unfinished The Other Side of the Wind (2018), a uniquely complex task described as unlike any other in her extensive body of work. She also worked on projects such as Pacific Rim (2013) and Nights in Rodanthe (2008), reflecting her continued involvement in major studio releases.

Craft and legacy

Expertise as a negative cutter

Mo Henry was widely regarded as one of the most skilled and trusted negative cutters in Hollywood, renowned for her extreme accuracy and ability to handle complex, high-pressure situations in the assembly of film negatives. Her role involved personally splicing and conforming the original 35mm camera negative to match the editor's final cut list, often incorporating last-minute changes, recuts, massive visual effects elements, multiple-language soundtracks, interpositives, internegatives, overlays, and other intricate demands. Directors and editors frequently insisted that she personally handle their projects, reflecting her reputation for unmatched precision and reliability on demanding feature films. Henry continued to practice traditional analog negative cutting techniques long after much of the industry shifted to digital intermediate workflows, maintaining hands-on work with physical film elements even when the final product would be digitally finished. This dedication to the craft, combined with her ability to manage intense pressure and complex technical challenges, established her as a giant in the post-production community and one of the most admired negative cutters in the field. As owner of D. Bassett & Associates, which she described as the last union negative cutting company in North America, she upheld these standards at a professional level that sustained the specialized service for select filmmakers.

Impact during the digital transition

Mo Henry persisted with traditional analog negative cutting long after the film industry's broad shift to digital intermediates and workflows beginning in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Her company remained one of the very few—if not the only—still performing full traditional negative cutting on original camera negative in Los Angeles, handling a small number of projects annually primarily for archival purposes at major studios and for filmmakers committed to finishing on film. This dedication allowed her to continue practicing the craft into the 2010s and 2020s, even as digital processes had largely supplanted analog methods for new productions. Henry was widely regarded as one of the last great negative cutters, a status that underscored her role in preserving an increasingly rare skill amid technological change. Colleagues described her as an essential technician whose meticulous approach was irreplaceable for certain projects, with one tribute calling her work comparable to that of medieval craftsmen who labored over fine details with extraordinary care. Her expertise proved vital for film preservation and restoration efforts requiring precise analog reassembly of original elements. She reassembled extensive mixed-format footage for the 2018 completion and release of Orson Welles' The Other Side of the Wind, organizing 241,494 feet of 35mm and 112,129 feet of 16mm material from the 1970s into key number order for scanning and restoration. Henry also contributed analog cutting to archival recuts such as Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now: Redux, where she worked directly on the original negative to incorporate additional footage. Through these projects and her broader commitment to archival standards, Henry upheld the integrity and precision of traditional negative cutting in an era dominated by digital tools, earning praise for safeguarding the craft's high standards and ensuring the survival of analog techniques for future restoration needs.

Personal life

Maureen “Mo” Henry lived her entire life in Los Angeles. She was a fourth-generation negative cutter in her family. Her aunt emigrated from Ireland in the 1920s and began cutting negatives for Fox Studios. Her father, Mike Henry, was chief negative cutter at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Henry is survived by her son, Logan Henry, who also became a negative cutter and was hired by his mother; as well as a sister, Sue, and a brother, Pat.

Death and tributes

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