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time was a sound effects editor up in
the bay area.
SL: Yes!
GR: I hired him because I like him.
He's a great guy, he's a talented guy,
but also, he directed Hardware Wars!
SL: Which is the most brilliant Star
Wars parody ever.
GR: Now what I was thinking was
wouldn't it be great if I had the guy
who did Hardware Wars cutting
sound for Spaceballs? Because we
could have some fun with it!
There were several moments, but
the one I remember—Dark Helmet
is going through a door, and the
space door hits his helmet, and it
gets stuck in the door. And he fights
with the door and pushes it open.
So I put in this sort of
… something like that. And, Mel
Brooks—bless his heart, I love him,
says—and I knew what he was
saying, but this is how he said it—he
stopped, and said, "I don't want that
sound in the movie. Because you
are the wall. And I throw the ball of
comedy against you." So what he was
saying, and I got this lesson early
on—and it made Ernie Fosselius have
to do more serious work—and he
was right—the sound could not be
funny. The sound had to be serious.
So it had to reflect Ben's work in Star
Wars and could not be comical into
itself.
I had such fun working with Mel
Brooks. He was as funny, or funnier,
in-person than the film was. He was
just fun to be with. I don't remember
the guy's name, the music editor
[Eugene Marks] on Spaceballs who
was quiet—very nice, but very quiet.
And Mel Brooks would bring in a
big plate of cinnamon rolls every
morning for the crew. And he'd
place them down, and we'd all get
our cinnamon roll, and this nice nice
nice music editor would reach for
his—and Mel would go "NO! NOT
YOU!!!" And the guy would (put up
his hands) and he would back off and
never eat a cinnamon roll all day!
Cracked me up.
SL: Wow.
Let's talk a little bit about Terminator 2.
How did that fall into your lap?
GR: You know, I don't know… I was
such a youngin' then. I didn't have a
lot of credits. I do think a lot of my
early career was movies that couldn't
get Ben Burtt!
SL: Yes—I remember in
Midge's documentary you said that also.
(Midge Costin's brilliant Making Waves
which I HIGHLY RECOMMEND.)
GR: Yeah. I'm sure that's a lot of
it. The other thing was Terminator
2 was a big job for ILM so, as
a company, we try to do this—
especially in those days—a lot of
films would be with ILM doing the
visual effects, and Skywalker doing
the sound. And it made sense.
So, I don't know… Again, I was
lucky to be at a company that had
a good reputation, and somehow I
lucked out and got that one. That
was such a learning experience for
me. Because it was a huge action
film, and the thing I learned in that
movie more than anything else,
was less is more. Which is a lesson
everyone learns in everything. But
in action movie sound jobs, you just
think, "when I add the 500th effect,
this is going to be the greatest scene
ever!"
SL:
GR: James Cameron was really
really good at weeding everything
out, in the mix. Just taking it out.
It's remarkable—it was remarkable
to me then, like—you have the
semi-truck chase in the canal, or
something like that—and you look
at it, to this day, you say, "This is a
big big scene! This is a big sounding
scene!" And it's big because it's got
as little sound in it as you can get
away with. That's what makes it big.
So each sound has its moment. And
you can have a lot of sounds, but
generally in scenes like that, having
lots of sounds sequentially is more
effective than having them in parallel.
So—"This is the focus! This is the
focus! This is the focus!" Changing
the focus and guiding the attention
of the audience. Then, the sound—
maybe a handful of sounds, or just
one sound—it reads really well, and
it reads as powerful. And that is not
a lesson I would have learned on
my own. That was Jim Cameron's
Photo: Courtesy Gary Rydstrom
