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 29 kind of interesting. The editor who I worked with on Sophie's Choice brought me in to work with Frank Oz on the Muppets Take Manhattan [1984]. That was a lot of fun. And when we sat down to talk, Frank, who was the director, it was his first directorial feature, said to me, "You know, I want it to sound like a New York movie." So I said, "Great, you know, that's why you're here in New York." So I put together sounds. And again, keep in mind that I'm very aware of dialogue, and I'm very aware of music. So when you shine is when those elements are not happening, and you could take a little license and do certain sounds. So this one scene that takes place in the dead of night, Kermit the Frog is walking alone on a sidewalk in the middle of Manhattan by himself. His friends have kind of abandoned him. We have the sound of a manhole cover off in the distance being run over, so you hear this clunk, clunk. But it's done with distance, and it's very New York. Or, a distant subway going by, or that you can hear a bus or, you know, a different siren. But distant sirens are very ordinary, as far as I'm concerned, they work but there are other things that are very characteristic of New York. So I had that sound and we played the scene and Frank picked up on it, and he said, "Do you think the people of Idaho are gonna know what that is?" Now, he knew what it was and I said, "Well, I don't know, but it's a New York movie. It's happening in New York." If they don't know it, it's not in your face that somebody's going to say, "what was that?" But he had something to pick on and that was it. So it got a little hairy, and he's a very mild-mannered guy, but at one point I got very frustrated because he did this on a couple of things about "Do you think the people of Idaho are going to know?" I was like, "Really? I don't care if the people of Idaho know or don't know. This is something that's part of New York!" I overstepped my bounds. I didn't want to, but I was feeling my frustrations and I figured I needed to speak up or forever hold my peace. I learned. You learn. You make a mistake and you learn. I even did that with Ron Howard, as a matter of fact, on the first movie "And what I came to find out with most of these people is they don't know what we do as sound people. They don't really understand the kind of work that we do. I mean, they see picture, they see dailies, they hear the dialogue, but all the intricacies that we put into the film is not really understood by them. They don't get it..." Cinderella Man crew: Back row L-R: Editor Dan Hanley, editor Mike Hill, director Ron Howard, music editor Bill Bernstein, assistant music editor Mike Zainer. Middle row L-R: Sound effects editor Branka Mrkic-Tana, assistant ADR editor Angela Organ, ADR supervising editor Deborah Wallach, assistant sound editor Katherine Miller, first assistant editor Irene Kassow. Front row L-R: Re-recording mixer Tom Fleischman, second assistant editor Kent Blocher, sound effects editor Danny Pagan, supervising sound editor Chic Ciccolini, re-recording mixer Bob Chefalas.