Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1544300
32 M PS E . O R G SSS: Right, as a supervisor, you're cutting. Did you ever get hired as an editor with another supervisor that you would work underneath? MM: I just did a month ago. SSS: You were hired as a sound editor? MM: Yes. It was a joy! SSS: You weren't supervising? MM: No. I love doing that. I am happy to be cutting. I love being in my editing room, alone with the movie and just being set free to be creative without all the pressure and phone calls a supervisor often has to endure. I just get to edit and have fun and go home at night and not obsess. It's really a blast. SSS: Can you think of a failure that changed the direction of your career, that you were going one way, and suddenly it changed, and then you went another way instead? Has there ever been anything like that? MM: I'll tell you a fun Ann Mangini story that's kind of related to failure that also changed my life. In 2014, I got a call late on a Friday night asking me to come to Sydney to work on Mad Max: Fury Road. I hadn't liked Thunderdome, the previous incarnation of the Mad Max movies. I thought if Fury Road is going to be like that, I didn't want to do it. I put my hand over the phone to ask my wife her thoughts, hoping that she would be the excuse to say, "No thank you." I asked, "Hey, honey, they want me to go to Australia" and she replied, "You're going." I uncovered the phone and said, "Thank you. I'll see you on Monday." Talk about changing my life forever. That was my first Oscar, introduced me to George Miller, that was a whole massive arc in my career that I could have easily screwed up, but thanks to Ann… SSS: They already had a sound supervisor. MM: They had two sound supervisors, and that was part of the challenge. Both, individually, were insanely creative people doing really good work. The problem was there wasn't a supervisor of the supervisors. One was bringing great stuff; the other was bringing great stuff, independent of each other, and it all crashed at the mix stage. Our mixers (Chris Jenkins and Gregg Rudloff) couldn't make sense of this plethora of material, and they needed somebody to sort it all out. So, my first job was really triage, wading through hundreds of tracks, finding the diamonds in the rough. SSS: And how did they find you? Was Gregg your reason why? MM: Gregg and Chris recommended me. I was one of three people they recommended. I don't know for sure, but I think I was the first one to say yes … and they were desperate and on a timeline. SSS: Wow, it was all because of Ann. George Miller, Chris Jenkins, Mark Mangini, Gregg Rudloff, David White (front) c. 2015 David White, Mark Mangini c. 2016.