Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1504731
50 M PS E . O R G
and we've been dreaming about this
scene for decades. We always saw
this as operatic. It would be driven
by music. And I couldn't wait to see
this scene come to life. I'm afraid
we're going to have to take out
almost everything you've prepared."
If you listen to that scene, the
sound effects are very very muted,
and it's not a big, exciting, sort of
Death Star attack scene. And he
apologized profusely. "I'm so sorry
I forgot to tell you about this, but
this is something I just want to do
in this scene." And then the rest of
the movie happened as it normally
does. Perhaps, as an olive branch,
Luc gave back. At the end of the
movie, when they finally figure out
the crystals, and the little statues,
and Korben Dallas finally says, "I
love you" to Leeloo, the lights light
up, and the beam goes up to the
planet, and the big thing explodes—
all of that is sound design. There
was a masterful music cue from
Eric Serra, and Luc said, "This just
captures the moment perfectly!"
Big and bold and really beautiful
stuff. I have to give a shout-out,
by the way, that John Fasal had a
HUGE part in the designing of the
air cars and especially Korbin Dallas'
taxi sounds. I went back-and-forth
a number of times to get those
sounds right—but that really was his
baby.
SL: That's great. John Fasal is one
of the geniuses of the craft. I'm so
glad they gave him an achievement
award a few years ago.
MM: Yeah. He really earned it.
SL: I hope to sit down with him
soon to talk.
Moving on… We were very
fortunate to work with several
first-time directors. One of my
favorites was Steven Soderbergh.
I remember on his film Kafka,
you spent a couple weeks in
Prague with the production … and
suddenly one morning. there were
two dozen DAT tapes on my desk!
MM: When Kafka came along,
Steven asked me to be the sound
designer. That was a great honor.
And we got to implement all these
progressive ideas that we'd been
talking about with directors I'd
work with much later—very early in
my career, in 1990. He sent me to
Prague to be part of the first unit,
and I'd be recording sound effects
in the field as they shot the film.
While Paul Ledford (the production
mixer) was capturing sync sound,
I'm off doing wagons and horses. We
were designing for months during
the edit. It was all that progressive
approach to sound that we had been
complaining that nobody ever did,
and now we had the opportunity to
do it. That would yield a really lovely
track in Kafka.
SL: One of the neat things I
discovered, when I started to work
with you, not too long before Kafka,
was all the great animals you
recorded. For Gremlins I think...
MM: …And for a film called Baby:
Secret of the Lost Legend for the
dinosaurs.
SL: Right. You built this really
amazing original animal library. But
still, every so often, an opportunity
arises to record new animals. I
wanted to talk specifically about
Mr. Popper's Penguins.
MM: