madrobins | Grace. And its Opposite.

If you're not a noise junkie you were very likely in the kitchen getting more popcorn during the Sound Mixing presentation at the Academy Awards. I'm married to a noise junkie--a former professional noise junkie (former recording engineer with a statuette to prove it--an Emmy) so I get to hear some things that otherwise wouldn't catch my ear. One of the nominees in the Sound Mixing category was a guy named Kevin O'Connell, who has been celebrated in the press as the "Susan Lucci" of the technical awards. This was his eighteenth or nineteeth nomination for an Oscar (tm), and he hasn't won once. He lost this year, too. And during the backstage interviews someone asked the winners about O'Connell. It's a long clip; you need to wait through almost five minutes, until the winners are asked if they have anything they'd like to say to their multiply-nominated colleague. Michael Minkler steps up with the most ungracious speech imaginable about the defeated nominee, suggesting that O'Connell had bid to win by sympathy and that he wasn't much of a mixer, and should find a new line of work. The minute he'd finished up his co-winners, Bob Beemer and Willie Burton, immediately leapt in to say gracious things about O'Connell's work, distancing themselves from Minkler's ungraciousness.

I am informed by the household noise junkie that no one he knows in the Sound biz is particularly surprised by Minkler's behavior, but I'm always surprised by what people will say when there are cameras rolling. And hey, this guy knows about recordings and stuff.