"The New Bad News": Missing Jim Lyons

(Photo: Richard Cohen via indieWIRE)

As has been reported elsewhere over the last few days, editor/actor James Lyons passed away April 12 in New York after a protracted battle with cancer. He was 46. Lyons, who cut nearly all of Todd Haynes' films along with work by Sofia Coppola, Jesse Peretz and Tom Gilroy, also had a featured role in the prison segment of Haynes' Poison as well as parts in I Shot Andy Warhol and Postcards From America. I never knew him, but those who did loved him, and their remembrances are starting to trickle into a memorial page set up today by indieWIRE. Among them is John Cameron Mitchell:

Friends in their early middle-age huddle in the cafeteria talking about the new bad news. ... His head is a rotting fruit on a stalk, the oxygen mask like a candy dish on his face. But he's still all there. Still Jim. Responding to the nurse with his funny Long Island Jewish shrugs. "Do you want more pain medicine?" Shrug, like "Meh." He wants to be lucid. "Agitated? Do you want Ativan?" Another shrug, like " What's the point, doll? I'm dying." John and I didn't know what to say. We can't understand his words, only the shrugs, which make us laugh. We don't know if we should.

It's all quite touching; read the rest here, along with notes from Strand Releasing chief Marcus Hu, HDNet producers Joana Vicente and Jason Kliot and critic Amy Taubin among others. Your own comments are welcome as well. Producer/Filmmaker Magazine editor Scott Macaulay has more on his blog here. A memorial visitation will be held today in Port Washington.

Posted at April 17, 2007 10:50 AM