My favourite memory of those two weeks in Hollywood and the earlier audition in Toronto was when we went to the dailies of the scene we had been working on. It was a small screening room, Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine were sitting there with us and some crew members and the lights came up and everyone was silent waiting for Mike Nichols to respond. I thought it obvious he would say “ok we got that” but actually he was upset. “Fuck that gold curtain fucks it all up! Shit it should be silver!!” Then everyone else chimed in agreeing with him.

“Ya it’s horrible Mike.”

“All wrong that curtain. Gotta go.”

“Soooooo wrong. Fuck that curtain shoulda been silver for chrissakes.”

I thought they were all cowards. It was straight out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Big dog and a little dog and the little dog is changing his own opinions just to remain on the good side of the big dog.

But over years in the world of recording I often have had the experience that people I was working with didn’t necessarily tune into all the sounds that were my job to catch and repair or alter.

“You hear that?”

“What?”

“That.”

“Should I do it again?”

“Yes let’s do that again.”

So maybe the colour was totally wrong. How would I know?

Glad none of them noticed the piano was a midi keyboard.