Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1535880
about what I'm working on but with looming scary deadlines. Some dreams as fun and intoxicating as your first beer, some as awful as a skateboard with metal wheels. It's no longer high school dreams with forgotten locker combinations and being discovered naked on campus, it's now trying to find my hidden editing room while being pursued by sound assistants demonic and angelic. In my waking working life, I had pretty much conquered all career- based anxiety. This is evidently where I had stuffed it all where it waited to attack me in my leisure years. Now in my 70s, most of my parts still work but my tinnitus is sometimes so loud that I swear people sitting next to me can hear it. Memories are naturally starting to fade. Facts, names, and incidents which used to be easily accessed are now getting shy and hide in the dark corners of my mind. It seems that the harder I search for something in that dark, messy attic that is my brain the more difficult it is to find. Like love, the harder you chase it, the more elusive it becomes. The other night I sat up in bed and shouted Burt Mustin! A name I had been trying to remember for an entire day without resorting to IMDb. A name any self-respecting film buff or TV addict should know. It came to me out of nowhere from some cobwebby closet in my head. Gus the Fireman on Leave It to Beaver was played by Burt Mustin not Bert Remsen! I was so proud. Sometimes stopping the search and just relaxing brings the memory out of the shadows. Sometimes. Maybe it's not age related at all, but instead some kind of ugly long COVID thing that won't let go. I don't know, it doesn't really matter. It's there and it is what it is. Heavy sigh… I bring up this memory stuff because I figure I should write about the secret Wilhelm before the details have faded. It was done in conspiratorial hushed voices with the wonderful, weird, and impertinent mixer Bob Beemer. Our Wilhelm was a dolphin. I tell the story with his approval and encouragement. A few years ago (coulda been 10, oulda been 15, I have no time sense anymore), I was contacted, by a writer from Buzzfeed, Cracked, or one of those other list-making trivia sites asking about the dolphin. The writer had noticed a dolphin sound at inappropriate moments in a couple of films. He checked the credits and saw that fellow editor Dino DiMuro and I were common denominators on those films. Dino, a talented sound guy, musician and writer had previously written for them. The writer called him, and Dino put the writer in touch with me. The writer wanted to know the backstory. I politely declined. What Bob and I saw as fun might not sit well with prospective employers. At the time, I was still concerned about future employment and thought it wise to keep my mouth shut. When and where to tell the story? The when is now. Bob and I are both retired, and the tale can now be told. I reached out to him and like me he has no fear, no longer worries about his next gig and is okay with naming names. We are beyond being blacklisted. Quoting Mel Gibson's fictionalized version of a dying William Wallace, "FREEDOM!" The where had to be somewhere readers would get it. There's Cinemontage but I don't know anyone there and let's face it, they are pretty humorless and just a tad too self-reverential. One more "we tell the story with sound" interview and I'll follow Peg Entwistle off that "H" in the Hollywood Sign. There's the IATSE magazine but I really only read that one for the obituaries to see if anybody I know has passed away. These days someone often has. Forget Mix magazine, they will only take an article if you work C The Proposal crew, they never saw that red fox coming.