Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1470109
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S I 27 when I told him the story about me feeling myself up. The expression on his face was, you know ... and of course, Sean Albertson got a kick out of it because he knows me, we worked together on many movies. So, I did my piece and he seemed okay. He didn't say I had the job, but on my way back, I'm on the 405 freeway and stuck in traffic because of the typical daytime traffic in LA, and I get a call from Tommy. Tommy was always big on pulling these jokes, you know, pulling a fast one. So he starts out by saying, "Sh*t, what did you do?" I said, "Like what?" He kind of played it up for a little while and I said, "Tommy? Tell me what's up?" So he said, "Well, they called me, and they said they don't want to see any more supervisors. They just made the decision. It seems that they want you." So I said, "Oh, man, that's great! But you know, I'm still on this other job..." "That doesn't matter," he said, "we'll make sure that you're covered. You just show up and be there for them when they need you. And then everything else will get done." SS: Were you on another movie at this time? CC: Yeah, I was finishing up on The Da Vinci Code. SS: Oh, good God! CC: Yeah, and that was involved because with the M&E of The Da Vinci Code, they wanted masters with the foreign languages separated, so that they had the choice of using them if they wanted. SS: What movies were you working on that took you from analog to digital? CC: In the mid-'90s, we started to move in that direction. So we were using workstations and using Tascam DA 88's to record our sound onto and then mix with it. But again, there was a lot of issues because it took time for the Tascam to kick in. It wasn't until we got into hard drives that were big enough to store that material, and that didn't come until the mid-2000s for us, like when we did A Beautiful Mind [2001], and The Missing [2003], and when we did Cinderella Man, that was all digital. My friend Lou, who I love, we go way back together, he bought himself a Pro Tools but it was a Sound Tools. It was the very first of its kind. It was very limited in terms of what it could do, but it was good for background so he would do backgrounds with the Sound Tools, and then transfer onto stock, onto mag. I mean, I've done the full gamut as I'm sure you have as well? SS: I was on the movie Street Fighter, half the movie was digital and half the movie was film. Dialogue was digital, sound effects was film, Foley was film, backgrounds were digital, everything was mixed digitally. Alien Nation was another one that crossed digitally from film to digital. So everybody has their movie that they worked on that crossed that bridge, and either you survived or you retired. CC: Right. And a lot of people did say it's not for me. Which was sad, because it really is just a tool like a Moviola you just have to know how to work with it. And the more you do, the better you get at it. SS: You come from the school of having it done as a very certain way, as opposed to giving out a lot of choices. CC: To me, less is more. I mean, that's always been my MO. A lot of people now are going in with multiple samples. In other words, they feel that rather than making the decision in the cutting room, we'll make it at the mix. So instead of having four or five elements, you got 30 elements. You know, let's try this. Let's try that. Now, if the director is pulling for it, if the director is calling for it, that's one thing, but if it's just because "Then, in 1970, I decided to head west and experience what it was like to be in Los Angeles. I was 20-years old and figured, what the heck, you know?" Chic & Tom McCarthy. NY sound crew on the TV miniseries The Corner [2002].