Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1521235
54 M PS E . O R G up, explaining how he frantically needed to work and would say anything to make that happen. Eddy softened but laid out the law: no union membership, no union work. Avram called the Editors Guild eight seconds later and made an appointment for the next day with the union's director. But when he got there, only the assistant managing director was in the office, and he didn't know anything about the meeting. That young man was David Miller, about to save Avram's marriage and his entire film career with the words, "Okay, this is pilot season, and the census is low, especially in sound. If you can work for a union shop for 30 days, you're in." Avram returned to Eddy's garage, reclaimed his job, and called Tina, asking her to think about moving to LA. The next week, Tina joined Avram in the San Fernando Valley to look for an apartment. Moving on from Eddy's garage, Avram found his next job at Gomillion Sound in the heart of old Hollywood. Gomillion Sound specialized in TV shows and low-budget "B" movies and housed editors such as Richard Anderson, Steve Purvis, and Andy Patterson. The work here was grueling, and with Tina preparing for the move in a few weeks, Avram needed a better job, more secure and better paying. He heard Lorimar was looking for more sound editors as the fall TV season was just turning over to post. Victor Garnier was managing the Lorimar sound editorial back then, along with Dick Kupper on the Warners lot, back then called The Burbank Studios. Lorimar was the premier TV episodic provider at the time. Producing The Waltons, Eight Is Enough, and Dallas. The company would go on to produce Knotts Landing, Falcon Crest, The Hogan Family, Perfect Strangers, and more. This was where the action was and Avram was hired, working from one series to another with industry pay scale and benefits. While things had started to turn in the right direction, Avram would have yet another obstacle to navigate. Tina had become gravely ill and was admitted to Mount Sinai Hospital. Avram flew back to New York, visited Tina daily, and when discharged, Avram set her up in their friend's guest room. Needing to get back to Lorimar, Avram and Tina decided it was best for her to return to her home country, Germany, and rest there for full recovery. It took two months before Tina felt well enough to join Avram in LA. It was 1978, Avram found himself amidst a shifting landscape where the old guard, who had secured their positions when sound editors were still splicing optical tracks, conflicted with the new wave of sound professionals who were graduating from film schools. For some of the veterans, sound editing was merely a job—a means to pay a mortgage. They approached their work with a factory-like mentality, punching in and out. This lax attitude toward work, enabled by the security of union tenure, led to widespread abuse of privileges. The studios, unable to fire entrenched union members, and recognizing the need for reform, shifted their sound work to independent sound companies. And so, by the '80s, start-ups like Soundelux, Sounddogs, and Weddington Productions were getting the studio post jobs for the most prestigious films. Avram at Soundelux in the '80s.