Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1491103
Transformers Mike Piotrowski, who worked with me as a boom man on several films is now mixing, as is George Flores who had been a utility with me. Kevin Cerchiai didn't go onto mixing, but has trained and influenced many people. So, we all have this zone, this range, where we affect and impact people in ways that we don't always know. When I met you on Any Given Sunday, I know there was something about you that made me think, "This guy is good. This guy knows exactly what needs to be done." And I had absolute faith in you. And there are people that I have worked with in the past that are just at the top of their game and that you could go anywhere with them. Do you have someone that you consider a mentor? I could give you a long list of mixers that I have looked at, and I have looked at their work and would love to have talked to them about it. You know? At the BBC, it was Dixie Deane, John Lunn, Ian Burns, and Arthur McClintock, they were all working in different areas of sound, whether it be TV drama, music, or sports. All are very different, but they taught me different skills and influenced me in a way they are probably unaware of. Once I came out here, you're on your own, you're figuring it out on your own, but whose work that I would look and that I would listen to, you know? I can remember watching Wind and I wanted to sit down and talk to Drew Kunin because I had no idea how he got such great production tracks on that film. When I saw Hal Ashby's Being There, I loved that film and would have loved to have talked to Jeff Wexler. And I now know Jeff Wexler through the CAS and through living in LA. When you talk about mentors, it's almost like they are influencing you in a subliminal way, because all their work has influenced me through the course of the last 40 years. Like Jim Alexander doing the sound for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and my now knowing that he did Clint Eastwood movies and some of the early Dirty Harry movies that I was so crazy for. Bill Kaplan, working on Back to the Future and Tony Scott movies. I mean, I can tell you with Top Gun, I remember the theatre and who I went to see it with in Belfast in '86! And I remember walking out of that theatre saying, "I want to work on those types of movies. I want to work for that guy, Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer," never knowing what the future would hold. But it held the fact that I was going to work for Simpson-Bruckheimer on the first Bad Boys. Give us some parting words on what the CAS Career Achievement Award means to you, the CAS and our craft? I've been doing sound since 1981. I've been working in features since about 1991. I count Christopher Columbus as the first one. Here in 2023, if I look at the length and breadth of the type of films that I've done over the course of the last almost 30-plus years, there's been interesting choices and films that I've certainly been proud of. But to be acknowledged at this point in my career by an organization such as the Cinema Audio Society, an organization that I joined over 20 years ago which has recognized people whose work has influenced me, and now to be one of those people, is just such an honor. And looking at that reel, looking at those clips, your life just flashes before you and you can't quite believe, "Wow, there's almost 30 years there." So, to have this award from my peers in this organization and to now have been a member of it for 20-plus years, I can't thank the organization enough. I still can't quite believe that I'm at this point in my career to be considered for such an honor. So, thank you very much to the CAS for this moment. Filming Last Days in the Desert