Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1122868
40 S P R I N G 2 0 1 9 C A S Q U A R T E R L Y professors had connections to the entertainment industry— which was mostly in Hollywood. I switched my major to cinema and had a lot of exposure making industrials and documentaries, where I had to shoot, edit, do sound, etc., myself. Did you go to New York City after graduation? I actually ended up working for this production company in Buffalo that made all these industrials. This is the 1970s, so we shot on film for companies like hospitals with topics like "How to Put an IV In"; informative and educational things like that. How long were you there? About six months. While it was good practice and there were some interesting gigs, at that age, I couldn't see spending my life there working on that type of content. So I moved to NYC. Where did you go in NYC? I connected with a guy who made movie trailers, Michael Spolan. He was a great guy but said, "Sorry, I don't have any work where I'd need you right now." I looked for work in the city for about six weeks, made some contacts but couldn't find any. I decided to move to LA and see what I could find there. You'd assume there would be more opportunities at that time in LA. Yes. I drove to LA and stayed with some friends for a little. While I was looking for a new place to stay, my car got stolen! To be in Los Angeles without a car, as we all know, isn't going to work. So, in a fit of frustration, I headed back to Ohio. However, while I'm in the air flying home to Ohio, one of the contacts I made in NYC called my parents' house, which was the contact number I gave. My mom picks me up and says, "There's this company in New York called Madison Films that wants to offer you a job." So I took the insurance payment on the car and moved back to NYC. That is nuts! The timing is incredible. I started with Madison Films, but Michael, the trailer maker that I met earlier, called and said his assistant moved on to something else and he had an opening. So, I started working for Michael in 1980. Now, he was the kind of guy who would cut these wonderful trailers and, at the end of the day, say, "Alright, now you finish it," and leave! And I would be there going, "What?" He'd tell me to finish them, add some sound, show him what I could do. Then he'd come in the next morning, give me feedback, and we'd have to get them ready for the mix. They're telling a story in a couple minutes visually and aurally. Did you have experience with trailers? No! And I hadn't done sound editing on that level. With trailers, you have to try different things and see what works in the context of the film's narrative. Baptism by fire! It really was. Michael had a relationship with (director) George Romero, doing some of his trailers. George was hired to direct the movie adaptation of Stephen King's Creepshow and he hired Michael as the lead picture editor. As a result, I became an assistant editor on it. That was my first ties with someone in the entertainment industry outside of trailers and my first feature. So, your first film credit is as an assistant picture editor? How did you get into the sound side of things? Once the picture editing was done, Michael went back to New York; we were working in Pittsburgh where George is from. George asked if I'd stick around to cut sound and get it ready for the mix. I did and that helped me to make more contacts. Did you go back to working on trailers after working on the feature? Michael was scaling back from working in the industry, so I went out to find some work. I found some jobs cutting sound, supervising Foley, and took a job at another trailer house so that I could get into the union. My intent was to be a picture editor but I realized that I was being paid to do sound work, I was in the union as a sound editor, I wasn't getting a lot of picture offers, and my wife and I were thinking of starting a family. So I made a "sound choice," shall we say to focus on sound. Do you feel like your picture editing background helped you adapt to working in sound? Yes. I decided to approach sound as a picture editor approaches their editing. In the early '80s, sound was often under the picture department and was often considered "cleanup" work. This could be seen in my being hired to cut sound for the Creepshow project even though I didn't really have a lot of experience in that area. I wanted to present what I thought would be the best sound for a particular project and not just involve the picture editor but involve the director as a picture editor would. While there were other sound professionals using this approach, it wasn't really common. How did you land your first job as a supervising sound editor? It was for a film directed by Alan Pakula called Orphans. I had worked with the picture editor, Evan Lottman, and he knew me as the "Foley guy." The sound budget for Orphans was a little lower, even though it was still union. Alan called and said, "Do you think you can do this?" Now, I had never cut dialogue for a film or done anything beyond some Foley and sound effects work but I said, "Sure, I do it all the time!" The key was that I surrounded myself with professionals who would teach you as well. My re-recording mixer was Lee Dichter, so that totally blew my mind. Moving ahead some years, you went on to help find the facility C5, Inc. What influenced that? Skip Lievsay CAS, Bruce Pross, Phil Stockton, and myself started the company 30 years ago this May because we wanted to get into digital editing systems but no facilities in town wanted to invest in that technology. We'd record Foley directly into a Synclavier Post Pro and cut sound effects on the Synclavier. We'd still do dialogue on mag because the digital