Ross Lincoln is a Deadline contributor.

Argo continued its winning streak tonight at the 63rd annual ACE Eddie Awards nabbing Best Edited Feature Film – Dramatic, with the nod going to editor William Goldenberg. Silver Linings Playbook took Best Edited Feature – Comedy or Musical and Brave won Best Edited Animated Feature. Brave editors Nick Smith and Robert Grahamjones spent five years working on the Pixar pic, which is also up for the Academy Award for Best Animated Film. “Some people think we’re censors and a lot of people think films are shot in the camera but they’re not”, Smith told Deadline before the awards ceremony, “so it means a lot to be honored by people who actually know what we’re doing”. Goldenberg nabbed the BAFTA on Sunday and was nominated tonight for Argo and Zero Dark Thirty (with Dylan Tichenor). He is Oscar-nominated for both films as well. Goldenberg spoke with Deadline shortly after his win. “I spend most of my life in a dark room, so I’m not used to [awards shows]”, he quipped, “so I was only moderately terrified and not completely terrified like I was at the BAFTAs”. Other winners included Searching For Sugar Man – Best Edited Documentary Feature, and HBO’s Hemingway & Gellhorn – Best Edited Miniseries or Motion Picture For Television. Breaking Bad: Dead Freight won Best Edited One-Hour Series for Commercial Television and The Newsroom: “We Just Decided To (Pilot) took the Non-Commercial TV nod.

The American Cinema Editors event honored the best in film, television, and documentary editing in nine categories. Actor and comedian David Cross emceed the evening, cracking jokes about everything from Breaking Bad spoilers to Sofia Vergara to his own bad movies: “I was in three Alvin And The Chipmunks movies!” (“You’re killing it”, Spielberg was overheard backstage saying to Cross.) Four time Oscar- and ACE-nominated Richard Marks, A.C.E. (Broadcast News, As Good As It Gets) and Emmy-nominated Larry Silk, A.C.E. (Pumping Iron, American Dream) were honored with lifetime career achievement awards for their work, while Steven Spielberg was presented with the ACE Golden Eddie Filmmaker of the Year award. In his acceptance speech, Spielberg said “editing and directing are almost interchangeable” to explain the impact on his development. “I’ve always looked at the editing room as the safe haven of second chances… Editors, everybody here: You are my heroes”. The complete list of winners follows:

BEST EDITED FEATURE FILM (DRAMATIC):

Argo

William Goldenberg, A.C.E.

Backstage Goldenberg spoke to Deadline about his double duty on ACE and Oscar nominated Argo and Zero Dark Thirty, which share more coincidences in common than their editor. “All The President’s Men was an influential movie for both films – for both the look and feel of the CIA”, he revealed.

BEST EDITED FEATURE FILM (COMEDY OR MUSICAL):

Silver Linings Playbook

Jay Cassidy, A.C.E. & Crispin Struthers

Oscar nominated director David O. Russell was in attendance to honor his editors. “We had many versions of Bradley Cooper’s performance”, he told Deadline as the awards began, acknowledging Cassidy and Struthers’ contributions on the tonally tricky Silver Linings Playbook. “There’s more bipolar and there’s less bipolar – how much is too much? It’s a process. You shoot the movie and you think you’re done but you have to make the movie again in the edit room – and again and again and again”.

BEST EDITED ANIMATED FEATURE FILM:

Brave

Nicolas C. Smith, A.C.E. and Robert Grahamjones A.C.E.

Smith and Grahamjones both came to the animation world from live-action editing; Grahamjones has been with Pixar for 14 years and worked on the editing teams for Toy Story 2, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and Up.

BEST EDITED DOCUMENTARY (FEATURE):

Searching For Sugar Man

Malik Bendjelloul

Career Achievement

Larry Silk, A.C.E.

“The editing process to me, it’s such a joy, it’s so much fun”, Silk said in his acceptance speech. Very briefly overcome with emotion, he closed by celebrating his family being there with him, and said “this is just the greatest moment of my life”.

Career Achievement Award

Richard Marks, A.C.E.

Marks gave presenters Kenneth Turan and Alexander Payne a giant hug, then read from his speech he’d rewritten 15 times, “in the spirit of a film never being finished, only abandoned” thanking his mentor, the late Dede Allen, who inspired him to share his knowledge with a new generation of filmmakers as an educator at UCLA. (Payne took his class 24 years ago and recently began teaching film himself.) Marks also thanked frequent collaborator James L. Brooks and the late Nora Ephron.

ACE Filmmaker of the Year

Steven Spielberg

In his speech, Spielberg said when he first started, he spent a lot of time hanging out with editors in television to learn about making films. On one occasion, a legal television show his editor friends worked on had a big name guest star who kept forgetting his lines. “The actor was saying stuff like ‘I’m sorry’, ‘fuck me’, ‘oh shit’, Spielberg said, expressing amazement at how the editors of the show in question managed to construct the actor’s monologue from the correct parts of his numerous takes.

Spielberg later added “editing and directing are almost interchangeable” to explain the impact on his development. “I’ve always looked at the editing room as the safe haven of second chances… Editors, everybody here: You are my heroes”.

Spielberg later spoke backstage of his longstanding relationship with his Lincoln editor Michael Kahn. “Mike and I are brothers”, he told Deadline. “I have three younger sisters but Michael became my brother the day we met. We found we’re simpatico. I go to the editing room and I feel like I’m going home again. I’m very devoted to all the editors who taught me so much, starting with Ed Abroms, Frank Morriss, Verna Fields, Carol Littleton… but it was Mike and I that had the longest relationship and I feel our careers are joined at the hip”.

BEST EDITED DOCUMENTARY (TELEVISION):

American Masters – Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune

Pamela Scott Arnold

BEST EDITED HALF-HOUR SERIES FOR TELEVISION:

Nurse Jackie: “Handle Your Scandal”

Gary Levy

BEST EDITED ONE-HOUR SERIES FOR COMMERCIAL TELEVISION:

Breaking Bad: “Dead Freight”

Skip Macdonald A.C.E.

BEST EDITED ONE-HOUR SERIES FOR NON-COMMERCIAL TELEVISION:

The Newsroom: “We Just Decided To (Pilot)”

Anne McCabe, A.C.E.

BEST EDITED MINISERIES OR MOTION PICTURE FOR TELEVISION:

Hemingway & Gellhorn

Walter Murch, A.C.E.

Murch was in Berlin and unable to attend, but Hemingway & Gellhorn executive producer Trish Hofmann accepted on his behalf.

BEST EDITED NON-SCRIPTED SERIES:

Frozen Planet: “Ends Of The Earth”

Andy Netley & Sharon Gillooly

STUDENT COMPETITION

Michael Smith – AFI

Related: 63rd ACE Awards Nominations

Deadline’s Jen Yamato contributed to this story.