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 85 of date, undervalued, and many just died. "The idea is to die young as late as possible." —Ashley Montagu (British-American anthropologist) I'd like to share this story about how an elephant learns not to run away when tied up. As a baby, she is secured by being chained to a railroad tie. As a baby, she can't move it—the railroad tie is too heavy. She tries to move but she quickly learns that she isn't big enough or strong enough to move the railroad tie. So, she resigns to her place. As she grows, she still has muscle memory and the BELIEF that she can NEVER move it. She doesn't realize that she is a big, strong, and heavy elephant who could easily move the railroad tie but SHE DOESN'T THINK SHE CAN! She's still thinking she's a little elephant with no strength. Why am I sharing this story? For one reason, to stop limiting your potential and your thinking, no matter what age you are! For another, we need to see that those who came before us CAN teach us how to break free of limited thinking and actions. If she can see it, she can BE it. "Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act." —Truman Capote I am so thankful that I was able to join the union when I did. I really had no idea of all the benefits to being a union member back then other than to get good-paying jobs on great movies. I'm so grateful for the union. The union was one of the first to offer the same health benefits to same-sex partners as they did to married couples. "Domestic partnerships" they were called before gay marriage was legalized. When I was teaching at Video Symphony, UCLA, USC, and AFI, I saw signs in the 1990s and 2000s that it was getting a lot harder for all these students to get into the union and get union work. They worked on nonunion shows and films to gain experience, as most of us did. Then the union changed some of its entry requirements so that it would be easier to join the union. I know Carol Littleton (film editor on E.T. and President of the union) worked really hard to open up the union to young editors. "I'm at an age when my back goes out more than I do." —Phyllis Diller My mother, for example (Kay Rose, the first woman to win an Oscar for sound editing, for those of you who may not know), retired in 1996. She was not one to learn digital editing and on her last film, she co-supervised with a digital supervisor. She edited on mag film, the way she had always done, while the other supervisor edited on Pro Tools. She never made that leap to digital. I saw it happening to her. She was being edged our of her life-long career because analog editing was like driving a Model-T when Ford Mustangs came out. By the way, when she retired, she was 74, older than I am now. I think this is what happens— we know what we know and it's very hard to keep up with newer "Getting old is like climbing a mountain; you get a little out of breath, but the view is much better." —Ingrid Bergman When I was kind of forced to retire at age 61, I had accrued 40 years of union work and more than 80,000 hours. Yikes! I say forced because, at that point, maybe people thought or believed that I was too old to work? I don't know exactly. The business was changing, yet again. More editors were forming companies and freelance editors, like me, weren't getting as much work. I noticed that the offers of work were slowing down, and I was about to run out of my bank of health hours for the first time in my career. I saw the writing on the wall and though I asked to be a part of a new sound company, made up of editors I had worked with in the past, that didn't happen. I saw an ad in Variety of their bright, shiny male faces and figured they would like to have a woman editor or two. So, I contacted them, got a tour of the new place and asked if they would hire me! They said, "That's great. We'd love to have you, but we can't guarantee you any work." So, I decided, "Time to retire." For me, I saw it as a chance to do more directing and writing in addition to working on friends' and colleagues' films for sound editing. I was also teaching post-production sound at colleges and universities, so it wasn't like I wasn't going to be doing anything. My friends and family have said, "You retired but you're busier than ever!" But for many editors (and other career paths), people didn't cultivate any other interests in their lives so when they retired, a lot of them were bored, they felt out