Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1151081
27 Q3 2019 / CINEMONTAGE by Peter Tonguette I n 2003, after sound editor, sound designer and re-recording mixer Ron Bochar, CAS, completed work on Mike Nichols' miniseries Angels in America, he felt good about what he and his sound colleagues had accomplished. He felt so good, in fact, that part of him wished he could simply call it a career. "At the end of it, I think every one of us said, 'OK, this should be the finish now. We should all be 80 years old having done this, so that we wouldn't have to do anything else,'" Bochar recalls. "That was pretty much how we all felt." Fortunately, he has continued to work in the industry, but hasn't changed his opinion of Angels in America, Nichols' richly imaginative interpretation of Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize- winning play about the AIDS epidemic in 1980s-era New York City. The two-part miniseries, which aired to widespread acclaim on HBO in December 2003, featured Al Pacino as the late real-life attorney Roy Cohn, whose infamous career included a stint in the employ of anti-Communist Senator Joseph McCarthy and who is widely rumored to have been gay. Patrick Wilson and Mary Louise Parker co-starred as a married couple whose relationship is beset with uncertainties, while Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson and Jeffrey Wright were featured in multiple roles — including the heavenly emissaries named in the title. The miniseries was edited by John Bloom, ACE, and Antonia Van Drimmelen. "It's the perfect film," Bochar reflects. "It had an amazing story, it had an amazing cast and it had sound opportunities galore." A native of Parma, Ohio — a suburb of Cleveland — Bochar began his journey to post-production far from the heavenly heights of Angels in America. In high school, he participated in a vocational television program in which students provided content to a local public broadcasting station. Encouraged to pursue a career in entertainment, the future sound editor and mixer attended Ithaca College in New York, where he studied film. "It was great hands-on stuff," he comments. "You basically did your whole show: You'd shoot it, you'd cut it, you'd have to do the sound on it and you'd have to mix it. We had very crude gear to do it, but it was fun." MY MOST MEMORABLE FILM Ron Bochar on 'Angels in America' Ron Bochar. Angels in America. HBO Films/Photofest