Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1535880
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S 55 Randy Thom On which project/projects did you collaborate with David Lynch and what was your role? I worked with David on Wild at Heart. I was the sound designer and supervising mixer. How did you meet Lynch for the first time? I met David the first time when he spoke at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley after a screening of Eraserhead. My girlfriend worked there, and we took him out to dinner. We had been told that he didn't like fancy restaurants, so we took him to a dive. I think that was in 1978. Ten or 11 years later, I got a call from Duwayne Dunham, who I knew from when he was working as an assistant, then an editor on some George Lucas films. He was now cutting Wild at Heart (WAH) or David. Duwayne told me that Alan Splet had decided he wasn't going to work on WAH because it was too violent, and Duwayne was recommending me to David as a replacement for Alan. I think the darkness of Blue Velvet had been tough for Alan to deal with. I flew down to LA and met with David at one of his favorite eating establishments, Bob's Big Boy in Burbank. It was obvious that he didn't remember meeting me before, which didn't surprise me. After a pretty brief chat, he told me that he wanted me to supervise the sound for WAH. I remember getting the impression that David was at least a little pissed-off at Alan for abandoning him, but I know that David never lost affection and respect for Alan. Lynch had a truly unique sense of sound and sonic storytelling in movies. How would you describe his approach to sound? David appreciated the beauty in darkness, literal darkness, and metaphoric darkness. I'm told that the only text on his gravestone other than his name is "Night Blooming Jasmine." He found humor in dark themes too. I think that was a big difference between him and Alan. Alan was really into the positive side of things, at least that was my impression. In terms of sound style, David was definitely into things that sounded dangerous, eerie, or odd in a given context. And as I mentioned, also things what were darkly funny, like the sound of the Bobby Peru character in WAH peeing, as Lula hears him from the adjacent room. David wanted it to sound almost like a firehose. What was it like to collaborate with him? Did he talk very eloquently about sound, did he outline a lot of his sonic ideas in the script or how did he communicate his ideas? I wouldn't say that David was eloquent when he talked about sound, at least not in an academic sense, but everything he said about sound was deeply heartfelt and honest. He encouraged experimentation more than almost any director I've worked with. He knew that being good at what you do doesn't guarantee that what you produce at first will be the best you can do. He believed that we discover what is right by being in the middle of the process and while you are doing it. I once asked him what he thought of the claim that Hitchcock knew exactly how long every shot in his film was going to be before he shot it. David's answer: "Randy, how do you spell bullshit?" David was very much a believer in improvisation in every aspect of filmmaking, including sound. He played, like a child, and he expected his collaborators to do the same. We improvised the mix of WAH. David didn't want any premixing, so we didn't do any. Imagine that! And we didn't have an automated console! I only recently stopped having nightmares about difficulty punching-in! Which moment or moments that you've created with Lynch are you the most proud of? The opening fight scene in WAH sticks in my head. It was the first thing I tackled, and one of the big reasons Alan didn't want to work on the film. The Nick Cage character beats another guy to death. I went all out on it, super exaggerated but still somehow believable. It was the first thing I played for David, as a kind of proof of concept for my approach to the movie. When the sequence was over, David turned