Robert Hoffman began his film career while studying in the Graduate Program of the USC School of Cinematic Arts, where he received an MFA in Production.  While at USC, he worked as an assistant editor for an independent film company; after graduating, he continued assistant editing as well as working as a post-production supervisor.

Hoffman met director/writer Terry Zwigoff while supervising the post-production of "Ghost World," and they became fast friends.  Hoffman made an "uncredited contribution" to the editing of that acclaimed dark teen comedy, and his formal career as an editor was launched, working with Zwigoff as editor of his subsequent features, “Bad Santa” and “Art School Confidential.”  After they finished the “Bad Santa” theatrical edit, he and Zwigoff created a director’s cut of the film, which was honored by Roger Ebert at his Overlooked Film Festival where it received its first (and quite enthusiastic) public screening.   Hoffman also worked with Zwigoff editing previously unused footage for the Criterion Collection’s release of the celebrated documentaries, “Crumb” and “Louie Bluie.”  And, speaking of unused footage, they also created a TV version of “Bad Santa” that features some of the wildest TV replacement dialogue ever recorded. Recently, they collaborated on Zwigoff's Amazon pilot "Budding Prospects," as well as editing a live music performance that featured Zwigoff and R.  Crumb from a London venue in 2019.

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Hoffman's recent credits include Paramount/MTV's "3 Months," (the film and the music video), the Blumhouse/Amazon film, "The Manor," the mental health drama, "Broken Diamonds"; the teen comedy “Speech & Debate”; Sony’s dark comedy “Home Sweet Hell”; Lionsgate’s family drama “Grace Unplugged”; the romantic-comedy “Syrup”; the comedy-drama “Norman”; the factual Boston crime-drama “What Doesn’t Kill You”; the Showtime family drama "Fathers and Sons”; and the nonlinear romantic underworld saga “The Air I Breathe.”

 

Hoffman has been a frequent presence at the Sundance film festival with the coming-of-age 1980s period drama “Skateland,“ Jane Weinstock’s romantic, female-driven comedy-drama "Easy," the Daniel Barnz family drama “Phoebe in Wonderland,” and the aforementioned “Art School Confidential,” which premiered at the festival in 2006.