If Eric Zumbrunnen is any indication, maybe there's something to be said for avoiding film school. Don't bother with USC or NYU, just absorb all the TV you can as a kid and then get a job in a movie theater. And when you're ready, find some friends and offer to cut their films. Of course, it helps if those friends are Lance Acord and Spike Jonze.

His work with Acord on the timeless Adidas campaign ("Laila") alone would put him at the top of his craft. But Jonze and Zumbrunnen have been going strong for more than a decade, with collaborations on everything from :30s to features. From Ikea "Lamp" to Adaptation, with stops in between for shorts, iconic music videos (like Fatboy Slim, "Weapon of Choice", featuring a balletic Christopher Walken) and even a documentary gem, Amarillo By Morning (about suburban Texas teens with dreams of bull-riding glory).

But quantifying what an editor brings to the equation is one of those intangibles - unless you're Walter Murch - so we decided to go to the source. We caught the busy Zumbrunnen while he was posting a Gap spot with Jonze, after which he'll concentrate on the launch of Final Cut's LA digs, where he recently moved from SpotWelders, and then hopefully gear up for his next feature (yes, with Spike), Where the Wild Things Are, based on the beloved children's book by Maurice Sendak.

How did you and Spike hook up?

I was a freelance editor doing music videos, and I'd been called on a few things for him and hadn't been available, and then I got called on some PSAs in 1994. Since then I've done almost everything he's done.

The editor-director relationship is so important. How did you guys know you clicked?

I did that one job with him and had fun. I guess he liked it enough to call me again, and it just kept happening. We have a similar sense of humor and a lot of common interests as far as music and things go. We seemed to get along really well and 11 years later it's still going.

You've done everything with him from docs to features. How does the process change for you?

It's no different. It's still me getting something together, and then him looking at it, getting notes, doing changes...just collaborating until it's done.

Do you take in all the footage and do an assembly before he gets involved?

Most of the time that's what he wants. He would rather see something cut. Before we did Being John Malkovich, I asked him if we should we sit down and go through the whole movie and talk about his intention for each scene or whether I should just go with what's on the film and work from there. We decided to go for plan B. And then on Adaptation I said, 'Okay, should we do it the other way this time?' And he said no, which was good because I think it's important for the editor to be the objective viewer since I'm not tied to anything - I don't remember the actor being difficult, or the crew cracking up at that one take. For me it's just how it looks on the screen, which is much more important.