Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1316380
62 I M PS E . O R G sound effects, and they knew the Warner Bros. scream—which the three nicknamed "Wilhelm" after a character that screamed when he was hit by an arrow in his leg in Charge at Feather River (1953) (believed to be the third film the scream appeared in). The trio of friends started sneaking Wilhelm into a few of their student productions at USC, including a medieval short The Crimson Blade (having literally stolen the scream from the Judy Garland version of A Star Is Born [1954] where it is actually completely "in the clear" in one scene). When Ben began work on Star Wars, he took several trips to the various movie studios' sound libraries to collect sounds that he might possibly use to create the creature voices, gadgets, and vehicles in the film. But he had an ulterior motive … to conduct a bit of his own research into some of the sounds that he'd been listening to all these years. While at Warner Bros., Ben found the library master of the Wilhelm. He and Richard Anderson began to use it as a kind of "personal sound signature" over the course of their professional sound careers, finding a place for it in many of the movies they worked on. Richard used it in Hollywood Boulevard (1976), the first film directed by Joe Dante (who would become a fan of the scream as well). Ben used it in Star Wars for a falling stormtrooper. When he and Richard worked together on Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Richard made sure to include two Wilhelms during the truck chase that he edited. Richard used it again soon after in Poltergeist (1982). Their friend Rick Mitchell used it in The Swamp Thing (1982). And of course, Ben made sure it was in The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Return of the Jedi (1983), and all the Indiana Jones films. In the late eighties, I was very lucky to join Richard Anderson, Mark Mangini, and Stephen Flick at their sound editing company as their librarian. I. Was. In. HEAVEN. One of the reasons I believe they hired me was that I already knew their films very well, having listened to many of them incessantly. I discovered that their sound library, which, at the time, was on quarter- inch reel-to-reel tape, was also in chronological order of the films they had done. I could almost guess what tape a particular sound was on just by looking at the shelf. One of the jobs as a sound librarian was to help the sound editors pull sounds from the library as needed. So, naturally, whenever I had an "appropriate opportunity," I suggested some of my favorite sound effects … most aggressively of which was the Wilhelm Scream. It usually wasn't too difficult, since we were all sound-geeks who appreciated the history behind it. And of course, Richard was part of the original "club" who re- discovered the scream. The other sound supervisors, including Mark Mangini and the late George Simpson, played along. I was grateful that they'd regularly summon me to the editing room or dub stage when the scream went in. I watched it make it into Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), Batman Returns (1992), The Fifth Element (1997), Dante's Peak (1997), Planet of the Apes (2001), The Majestic (2001), Just Visiting (2001), Agent Cody Banks (2003), A Man Apart (2003), Tears of the Sun (2003), Madagascar (2005), and many more. On A Goofy Movie (1995), my first real sound design credit with David Stone as the supervisor, we managed to convince director Kevin Lima and picture editor Greg Perler to have a Wilhelm in the middle of one of the film's big musical numbers. Greg would later call me to get the scream into another film he cut, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005), as well as his next film with Kevin—Enchanted (2007). The directors we worked with would occasionally get into the game too. Joe Dante, having been there at the start, was happy to include it in almost all of his films. I was thrilled to be a part of many of them, including Gremlins 2 (1990), Matinee (1993), The Second Civil War (1997), Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003). (In The Burbs (1989), however, an imitation of the Wilhelm performed by Ben Burtt that was originally recorded for More American Graffiti [1979] was used for when the Klopeks crash an ambulance.) In Joe's film Small Soldiers (1998) where action figures come alive and attack people, I tried to convince everyone to only use Wilhelm when each of the action- figures met their demise—which I thought made sense because of the limited audio on the embedded chip in each of the toys. We weren't able to do it completely throughout the film, but there are a LOT of Wilhelms in the film. When Joe signed my one-sheet for the film, he inscribed it to "Captain Wilhelm." Another director who was thrilled to learn about the history of the scream was Quentin Tarantino. Geoff Rubay was the sound effects supervisor on his first film, Reservoir Dogs (1992), and made sure Wilhelm had a prominent place. Quentin is a huge film fan, and when Geoff and I told him the scream's history, he was delighted. One weekend during the mix for the film on our little dub stage, I was working in my office getting caught up on a few things. I had a small black & white TV in my room at the time, and would often turn on one of the local station's "weekend afternoon classic movie." Imagine my surprise when I turned on the TV to find Distant Drums, Wilhelm's first movie! I immediately told Quentin—who called a break in the mix so the crew could huddle around my TV. "THAT SCREAM IS IN MY MOVIE!" he shouted with glee when it came on. Later, Wilhelm would appear in his films Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) and in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019). Meanwhile, back at the ranch… Skywalker, that is … the people there that were in on the tradition