Best Sound Mixer Kevin O'Connell: 21st time's the charm
Tuesday, February 28, 2017 at 5:00PM Tim here. Somewhat overlooked in all the furor over the rightfully furor-inducing parts of the Oscars on Sunday, a little bit of history was quietly made.
When the four-member team from Hacksaw Ridge took to the stage of the Kodak Theater to accept the award for Best Sound Mixing, the worst losing drought in the history of the Academy Awards ended. Kevin O'Connell received his first nomination in that category in 1983, for the subdued domestic drama Terms of Endearment, which perhaps unsurprisingly lost to The Right Stuff. 33 years and 21 nominations later, in a career including 209 films to his credit as a mixer, he finally picked up his very first statue on Sunday. You may remember him as the guy who thanked his late mom for helping him to get his first job in the industry, and who asked as thanks only that he'd mention her one day as he accepted an Oscar.
Whatever feelings one might have about the film, it's hard not to be excited on O'Connell's behalf...
20 unsuccessful turns at-bat is quite a daunting number, and surely you'd have supposed that somewhere in there, one of his films would strike a chord with the voters at the Academy.
Unfortunately for O'Connell, he's spent much of his career grubbing around in movies that Oscar tries to pretend doesn't exist: loud, idiotic summertime action movies. A quick scan of his nominated work reveals a great many Jerry Bruckheimer-Don Simpson productions (Top Gun, Days of Thunder), as well as several collaborations with that paragon of cinematic excess, Michael Bay, including his last nomination, 2007's Transformers (not that O'Connell only does big heaving tech films; his next film after Hacksaw Ridge was the high school comedy The Edge of Seventeen. But the Edge of Seventeens of the world don't get nominated for sound Oscars).
This is hardly to say, of course, that O'Connell himself ought to be ashamed of any of these projects: the quality of the sound mix has not a solitary thing to do with the quality of the screenplay. Indeed, the noisier and more mechanically overwrought the movie, the more vital it has to bring somebody on who can carefully manage the balance between explosions, roaring jet engines and the sound of the human voice. Even if we might not want to know what the characters in Pearl Harbor, for example, were saying, O'Connell and his fellow nominees for that film made damn sure that we could hear it perfectly crisply. Unfortuantely.
Even on those occasions when he was able to hitch himself to a more respectable kind of gigantic popcorn movie, O'Connell tended to suffer from sheer dumb luck. He was nominated for the first two Spider-Man films, critically-acclaimed box office smashes, but in each case had the misfortune to face the sound mixers from a musical (Chicago and Ray, respectively), this category's most reliable genre, La La Land notwithstanding. His most openly respectable films, like Terms of Endearment and A Few Good Men, simply aren't the kind of thing that we associate with bombastic sound design. I have to imagine that Top Gun would have won in any year that the Best Picture winner wasn't a tech-heavy war epic like Platoon.
And then what happened at the 1996 Oscars, which I just can't explain at all: O'Connell was part of two different nominated sound teams, for The Rock and Twister, both huge hits with marvelous sound design (Twister in particular), and then somehow The English Patient's sweep of 9 awards was enough to pick up Sound Mixing along the way.
But it's all behind us now. O'Connell is part of the club, and not unworthily: Hacksaw Ridge might not reinvent the war movie soundscape, but it's extremely effective at keeping Andrew Garfield just far enough above the wide-ranging fray of noises that we never forget that it's all ultimately a character study. Congratulations to O'Connell for his long-awaited victory, and we look forward to hearing from him again soon.
Reader Comments (9)
So the secret formula to win Sound Mixing: be loud and prestigious?
I watched the telecast with my mother, and tried to explain why Kevin O'Connell's win was a big deal. I finally said "He's the Susan Lucci of the Oscars" and she understood.
I am so happy for him finally having an Oscar! And his speech was touching - as was the way his fellow winning sound mixers let him do the talking. A lovely moment on Sunday night.
Congratulations- the clips they showed from "Hacksaw Ridge" look and sounded impressive
I've had my eye on this Oscar story for a while, and watch out each time he's been nominated to see if he finally won. And this year, Kevin finally did! He was hoping his Mom would still be with us when he got the Oscar, and that's why he kept hoping to win one. What a wonderful win!
I also remember Kevin each time the "–––––– is due/robbed!" meme goes around, like last year for Leo (UGH) and now for Amy Adams (who I like, but don't feel has been given a role that feels the Oscar has been 'snatched' away rom her. Funnily enough, I thought she finally gave a performance that deserved it for Arrival, and then she doesn't get nominated! She would've won over Emma, because she has the "due" narrative).
Amy fans should take a seat for now, because: Glenn Close. Annette Bening. How about Thomas Newman — nominated and lost 13 times?! At least,
Kevin O'Connell.They gave standing ovations to everyone except him! Shame!
It wasn't until after he made his acceptance speech that I realized this was Oscar's (previously) most common bridesmaid. I enjoyed his speech, and the fact that his Mom's name was 'Skippy'. Good for his team for letting him speak for them - he's waited long enough!
This was definitely one of my favorite moments from Sunday. I liked how not only did his other mixers let him speak, but even the band allowed him to speak longer than what might have been expected from a Sound Mixing winner. It was a wonderful moment all around!
I stood and cheered in my living room. THIS was my highlight of the night.
I've been rooting for him for quite a while and I'm very happy he won. While the movies themselves he worked on sometimes are terrible (what hath Transformers wraught on the world?) his work is always good. He really should've won at least twice by now. Also good on his team for letting him speak. That was very gracious.