Tom Curley: Oscar and BAFTA-Winning Sound Mixer Talks 'Whiplash', 'Yellowstone', and Wild Set Stories

Good afternoon, good morning, good evening, Screen Rats, and welcome to another episode of Television Times.

Today, we're doing things just a tiny bit differently.

Normally, we have someone from in front of the camera, an actor, a comedian.

Sometimes we have directors.

But today, we've got an Oscar winner, a Bafta winner.

Today, I'm talking to Tom Curley.

Now, Tom Curley is a production audio mixer, a sound engineer, essentially, who works on film and television in America.

And he won an Oscar and a Bafta for the film Whiplash.

He's worked on loads of stuff.

He's worked on Yellowstone.

We'll talk about all of it.

But the point of this one is, I just wanted to talk to someone in the background who did the work.

We always talk to the people at the front of the camera.

I thought it would be interesting to have this conversation, especially because I have a sound background.

We're not going to talk about that.

It barely comes up.

It's not very technical in that way, so keep listening.

You're all safe and fine.

And if he does talk about it, it's done in layman's terms, right?

But this was our first guest who got in contact when I sort of left Twitter.

Now, I have left Twitter, but I also haven't left Twitter.

I closed down the accounts and a couple of guests who are only on there asked me if they could do posts, so I sort of reopened the Television Times X account just so they could do that occasion.

But we're not really using it and we're not really going on there.

The other day, I did want to close it completely, of course, but we're not using it for any kind of promotion.

But so I went to Blue Sky, like a lot of people did, and I linked up with Tom.

He was one of the friends who I made on there early on, and he got in contact and told me that he worked in TV and film and we struck up a little chat, and that's how he ended up on the pod.

And I'm not going to turn down an Oscar winner, do you know what I mean?

And then the fires happened, so there's a lot to unpack there.

And he's in LA, as is my brother-in-law and his family.

So I sort of feel a little bit plugged into that world, and I really wanted to chat to him.

And we had a lot in common, actually, and this conversation was done very early, this morning, actually.

I'm recording this a week before the podcast goes out, and I talked to Tom this morning.

I got up really, really early, five something in the morning, to do it, and I barely got any sleep, maybe four hours.

So if I'm not on top form, please allow me that slight get out clause.

Right, that's quite enough for me.

Let's get into our chat.

This is me talking to the Oscar winner, Tom Curley.

And the Oscar goes to Whiplash.

Roll up, roll up, and welcome to another edition of Television Times with your host me, Steve Otis Gunn, where I'll be talking to someone you do know or someone you don't.

It might be funny, but it might not be, but it's always worth tuning in for.

So here we go with another episode of Television Times.

Morning Tom, evening for you.

That's right.

How are you?

I'm doing well, thanks.

Look at all that gear behind you.

Yeah, so it's funny you say that because I recently taught a class to some Saudi Arabians, and they had me starting the class at 7 a.m.

here for them.

You're not much of a morning guy.

Surely you have to do lots of mornings on the job that you do.

Oh, yeah, if you're paying me, yeah, I love it.

Yeah, I've had call times pretty much every single hour the clock has to offer for one reason or another.

Well, it's nice to meet you.

Tom or Thomas?

Shall I call you?

Tom is good.

Tom is good, actually.

But I accept Thomas.

You accept Thomas.

When you're accepting awards, you accept Thomas.

Yeah, yeah, it's usually a good thing.

Well, congratulations, even though it's a very long time ago.

For Whiplash, getting your Oscar.

And Bafta, I don't know if you're aware of that.

Yeah, Bafta as well.

Yeah, one in each hand.

That was my, so far, my first and only trip to London, which was, I must say, pretty nice.

It's a long time ago.

I didn't realize the film was that old now.

It goes fast.

Yeah.

Well, must you remind me?

Oh, sorry.

Yeah.

No, I just mean in like, in my mind, the film is what, five years ago, but of course it's 10, because everything that you think is five years ago is actually 15.

Yeah.

Well, that's amazing, man.

I mean, I watched the video of you accepting the award.

I saw your little cart, your Euro cart full of gear, that little video that's knocking about on YouTube.

So it was fun to see all your gear.

Got some PTSD from some of that.

It's funny.

I've had a few international jobs over the years, and it's very funny how like what you're doing and who you're doing it with makes quite a bit of difference in how you get treated there.

I went to Bermuda to do an interview with basically the president of Bermuda, and we had a letter from his office saying, hey, these guys are with me.

And we just showed it to the guy at the desk, and he was just like, all right, have a nice day, and we could have been carrying in just bazookas or whatever.

It was like just wave hand, welcome to Bermuda.

And, you know, one of the first actually like big budget things that I ever worked on was a movie called Dragon Wars.

And it's a Korean written produced and directed movie that was shot half in Los Angeles and half in like around Seoul, South Korea.

And the director is pretty famous.

And basically everywhere we went, it seemed like they never asked for permission when we were in Korea.

They would just show up and start doing stuff.

And then the people in charge would start losing their minds because they apparently had no idea that we were going to be there, or the extent of what we were doing because it was a big crew and they were setting up all these effects and explosions and dragon fire and all kinds of stuff.

And it turns out we were in a national park that was like 700 years old or something.

And all these park rangers come rushing out.

They see the director, Mr.

Shim, and the whole mood changes.

They start shaking his hands, slapping him on the back.

And everything was forgiven.

And we just went about our business.

It's funny how they've fallen over things like that.

My only experience of that is taking a play, Woman in Black, which ended up being a film.

We did that in India.

And it was just like a ramshackle group of people that were touring the UK.

But then the posters were like direct from London.

And wherever we went, we would be in the fanciest hotels.

And they would take us to these lavish meals and treat us all like kings.

And it was like, we're just like a little touring company.

There's nothing that special.

But we got treated so well.

It was fantastic.

It was like being famous.

Of course.

Excuse me.

I will drink some water.

I have two beverages here.

Just in case you have to have a backup beverage.

Well, I drank some.

I've got some water here.

And I am terrible at drinking water.

I just don't like it.

Yeah.

I saw one of those big cups.

I think they're from the States, actually, because we don't really have them here.

But there's this massive water bottle and it had hours on it.

Like how much water you're supposed to drink by each hour.

And the thing was so fucking big.

I was like, I haven't drunk that much water since 2010.

I don't even know what I'm looking at here.

It's just enormous.

There's definitely such a thing as too much water.

Yes.

Well, let's not talk about water in Los Angeles.

Whoops.

I take it that you're safe and everything was well your end with those terrible fires?

Yes.

Yeah, it's a bizarre time for us here.

There was one flare up that was about five miles north west of my home.

And fortunately, the winds were also blowing to the west.

So that was not a threat to me.

But at the same time, if the wind had shifted, it very possibly could have been a threat to me.

So, yeah, it's crazy, man.

Yeah, it's very strange.

And of course, nobody's allowed to go around the parts that are truly wrecked.

Yeah.

But we've seen it all on news, helicopter footage and such.

It looks like an apocalyptic, you know?

Yeah.

I'm pretty plugged into it.

But the thing that yesterday I heard, which really blew my mind, is that the mortgage companies are still making people pay for houses that no longer exist.

Oh, yeah.

How's that?

Wow.

That is fucking dark, man.

Well, unfortunately, I think we're headed for a time of much less sympathy than we deserve.

What do you think?

Yeah.

What makes you say that?

Well, you know, I don't know.

It's probably not for the scope of this podcast, I suppose.

No, it's OK.

It's fine.

Now, I'm really struggling with, like, you know, the social media aspect of everything is the thing that's really causing me some grief, because I don't really want to be a part of something where, you know, people are doing Nazi salutes.

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah.

It might not be the place where I want to go, hey, guys, you want to listen to my podcast?

So, yeah.

Well, in fact, I mean, maybe we should mention that that's how we came together was on Blue Sky, which I mean, I, I know, I don't know about you, but I found that to be a breath of fresh air.

Yeah, it is.

I pop over to X.

I still have an account open barely.

And I pop over there and I just put my toe in the water and just have a quick look.

And it's like, oh, no, no, no, no, no.

This is like someone's personal Vendetta machine.

Yeah, thanks.

Well, I mean, the nice thing about Blue Sky, I mean, I guess you could look at all of the social media as kind of a sponge that can suck up, you know, clean water or dirty water.

And yeah, but Blue Sky makes it a lot easier to wring out the sponge, I guess you could say.

Yeah, I think so.

It's interesting.

It's an interesting time.

We'll see how it goes.

Hopefully it's not as bad as we think it's going to be.

But I fear it's going to be worse.

But anyway, let's move on.

There'll be films made about it, Tom, and you'll get the job.

So here's hoping.

So just bring it back for the listeners of the podcast.

They might be wondering, what is your job to the person that doesn't know anything about sound?

How would you like describe what it is that you do?

Right.

So whenever you picture somebody making a movie, they always show the cameraman and frequently they show the boom microphone flying up over the actors.

It's rare that I myself actually wield the boom microphone, but that guy works for me.

And the audio that he captures with his boom microphone or she, and also another crew member who puts wireless microphones on people.

All of those signals come to me and I record all of the audio aspects of the performance.

And sometimes that's connected directly to the camera and sometimes it's not.

We also involve music playback and some live music recording, but that's pretty rare.

So do you do any kind of mixing of those signals at your end, or do you just give it all raw footage?

Well, it's both nowadays.

The way technology goes, we can record a mix, multiple mixes if necessary, and send those out to various different destinations.

And then we can also record individual ISO tracks of each microphone or each input that we have of whatever sound source that we need to capture.

So you can send some, like if they've got an in-ear monitor, if an actor or somebody's got that, like a director, whatever, they can have their own monitor mix that you create using those original sources.

Correct.

Yeah.

So we should talk about Whiplash because it is, you know, the big one.

I've watched it twice.

I loved it.

I didn't watch it at the exact time it came out.

I think it was a couple of years later because it just seemed like, why would I watch a film about drumming?

But it seemed really, really, really intense.

I'm looking at the film and I'm thinking, well, where is everything?

That's the other thing as well.

You guys hide really well.

It's like, where are the mics?

Because obviously that drum kit needs to be mic'd really, really well.

I mean, are you using just boom mics or secretly got little mics around them that we can't see or what's happening there?

No, we did just boom microphones.

Well, Miles Teller had a wireless microphone on whenever he had scripted dialogue.

JK.

Simmons refused to wear a wireless microphone.

Why does that sound on brand?

And the funny thing was like, I had this whole speech worked out in my head and he just shut me down with a look and something along the lines of, I don't think so.

Oh, really?

He was very into the character of Fletcher.

I don't know if he was going method or whatnot, but he didn't scream at anybody.

He was very professional and nice.

But yeah, it was just kind of scary also being there with his aura, you know?

He's an intense dude.

Yeah, exactly.

And I've been around all kinds of actors and, you know, some of them exude that energy.

You know, it's strange.

Yeah.

And was Miles is playing the drums, obviously, he's been probably a million times.

Was he a drummer before?

I think he said that he had played drums in a garage band when he was 15 and he had, you know, kept up with it a little bit.

But he never took it very seriously.

And then once he booked this role, he's got on like a six month intensive course about jazz drumming.

And, yeah, he didn't get I mean, I think he'll tell everybody as well.

He didn't get everything right if you put it under a microscope.

But we also had a stunt drummer.

I forget his name.

Yeah, I figured.

Yeah.

But for a lot of the close up stuff where it is very high skilled shots of hands moving around and things like that, we had a fill in guy that was really super talented.

That was wild.

And that was a Blumhouse movie as well, which people don't seem to really know.

Yeah.

And it's not the type of thing that they normally do.

What was the distance of time of your involvement and it coming out and getting those awards?

Quite fast.

So, yeah, Helen and Cooper took a chance on producing the short film, which I was not involved in.

And that won the Sundance Shorts Festival in 2013, I believe.

Then they were able to, from the buzz that generated, they raised, I think it was only $3.5 million budget.

Really?

Yeah.

I know Blumhouse movies are notoriously dumb.

It was almost threadbare budget.

Right, right.

And we shot it in 19 days.

And most of that was in downtown Los Angeles, even though it was set in New York.

A bit like always sunny in Philadelphia.

You always keep thinking, hang on, that's not.

Well, I mean, my most recent job was CSI Las Vegas, which was also shot here in Los Angeles.

Oh, don't ruin it for everybody, Tom.

I see it all the time.

It all turns into like Austin Powers with the British phone box on the Pacific Highway.

Yeah, exactly.

It's always so impressive as somebody who listens for a living to hear different people's accents, their genuine, you know, normal voice, and then also people that are really good at doing accents.

It's magical.

Oh, yeah.

You must have worked with the relaxed actors who just drop accents as soon as the lines finish, right?

And then you've probably got the Christian Bales who, you know, stay in it to the point where you forget their Welsh.

I want to look up her name so I don't get it wrong.

But I worked on a movie a few years ago during COVID called Queen Pins.

I loved Queen Pins, the voucher film, the comedy.

Yeah.

Yes.

So it was Kristen Bell and Kirby Hell-Baptiste.

Yeah, the Australian actress.

She's got a very distinct face.

Yeah.

But she's done one of the most convincing American accents I've ever heard an actor do.

The Aussies are good though, aren't they?

They're really good.

Yeah.

So did you not know?

Was she in character the whole time?

Yeah.

I never caught her offset just speaking in a normal voice.

So yeah, I was surprised because the first time I heard it was after we had wrapped.

And I was just shocked.

Yeah.

And then she just dropped in and went, Hey, mate, how's it going?

You saw that?

What are you goofing around?

It is really good.

Kelly Riley is really talented as well with her accents that she does on Yellowstone.

I have to admit, I've never seen Yellowstone.

I only know of it.

My in-laws watch it.

I know that for sure.

It's got spin offs.

It's like a whole universe of TV shows, isn't it?

Yeah.

Taylor Sheridan has really launched an empire with that.

And it's kind of a strange little circle for me because a lot of it goes back to Harvey Weinstein.

So I graduated from the University of Buffalo in Buffalo, New York with a degree in film studies.

Yeah.

I see you lived in Troy.

I love upstate New York.

I think it's one of the most beautiful places I've ever been.

I would agree.

Most people around the world just hear New York and they think, Oh, what borough?

You know, exactly.

Just keeps going, doesn't it?

It's massive New York.

Yeah.

I used to go to Toronto a lot.

So I take the bus.

I took the mega bus from New York through Buffalo to Toronto.

But I've also taken that train which goes New York to Montreal.

You know, I've been on trains in Sri Lanka and Russia and whatever.

And I tell you, that is the most beautiful train of it.

It's up there.

It's like the one in New Zealand.

Nice.

Open top, whatever.

It's just, and you're quite close to New York and it's still beautiful.

And you're like, when does it get ugly?

Oh, now.

Yeah.

There's a hard line.

Yeah.

I think it's Yonkers.

It's quite close.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Anyway, sorry.

There's several notable people that have graduated from the University of Buffalo, but in the film department, Harvey Weinstein was one of them.

At the time, he had only had a reputation.

He had no formal anything happening in his world.

But either way, he was also the powerhouse of the 90s and the Academy Awards and Sundance and independent film.

And so when I was trying to build my career, he was, you know, somebody who I was trying to be on his radar.

And the first time I ever had an encounter with him was at an after party for the Bafta Awards in London.

And so I was walking around with a champagne glass in one hand and an award in the other hand.

And just kind of gazing around and seeing who's who and, you know, what's happening.

And I see Harvey talking to some woman.

And I must have been very conspicuous about this whole thing, even though I didn't think I was.

But the woman and him finished their conversation.

She walked away and then he started looking at his cell phone and he never even looked up.

He just said, not now, kid.

Really?

Yeah.

And he blew me off.

And at the time, I was like kind of crestfallen.

And I thought, you know, oh, well, that sucks.

But then a few years later, he funded the movie Wind River, which was written and directed by Taylor Sheridan.

And through the success of that film, that got him in the door with Paramount, which launched Yellowstone.

And one of the assistant directors on Yellowstone was also the assistant director on Whiplash.

So the whole thing came together in this strange circle where I ended up working for him without ever meeting him.

And then two months later into the filming of season one, all of a sudden his name wasn't on the call sheet anymore.

And everything happened.

He was immediately let go.

Right, right, right.

Because it is weird when you see his name on like, well, pretty much every film I loved from the 90s, to be honest.

And they haven't taken it off.

And they shouldn't take it off.

Of course, don't take the name off.

Just remind us so we can go, Oh yeah.

But God knows what he was looking at on his phone, Tom.

Yeah, right.

Probably best you didn't see.

Now I look at it as a dodged bullet.

Exactly.

You swerve something.

It's an adventurous career that I've had.

I just read something last night just before I went to bed.

Probably not the best thing.

Something like AI will completely transform the world in three to five years.

We will be pushed forward seventy five years in technology.

I'm not looking forward to that, Tom.

That's too much.

Well, there's all kinds of ways to look at it, I suppose.

I mean, it could unlock, you know, unlimited potential for the human race.

If we figure out a way to work together with ourselves and with technology, I think, you know, really, it could be unlimited.

That doesn't seem to be the human way.

We seem to use everything for that.

So then there's, yeah, there's the absolute opposite method of that, where everything is just all shit and it's like Elysium.

It just all turns to pornography.

It's just going to be sex robots and, yeah, deep fakes.

That's what they use it for.

And idiocracy will come true.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, it has the WWE thing.

You know, the president's like a WWF at the time, I think, guy.

Yeah, and he hasn't quite, he hasn't quite pulled out a rifle on the floor of the Congress yet.

But I mean, not him particularly, but there were rifles in the Rotunda.

The Rotunda, yeah.

Let's not talk about that.

Oh my goodness.

Anyway, we're getting off topic again.

So you mentioned CSI Vegas.

Is that still going?

Is CSI still going?

Unfortunately, no, not at this time.

I don't think that means that the entire franchise itself is gone, but CSI Las Vegas is canceled.

I got annoyed when they called it CSI Vegas because I was like, no, it's just called CSI.

All the other ones are the hangers on.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, I think it was supposed to be somewhat of a reboot or re something.

Yeah.

I mean, we had 4 million viewers a week on average, and it seemed like it was like doing well enough as a show, but Paramount has been going through a whole bunch of stuff.

And, you know, I don't know, they called the whole bunch of shows.

It was very strange at the time we were shooting a half season.

Season 3 is only 10 episodes.

And I remember the one that used to be 26 or something.

Sorry, I should say series 3.

Series.

Oh, yes.

Yeah.

I understand the difference in that terminology.

Season is fine.

I say seasons.

Yes.

However, yeah.

So right around the time we were filming episode 10 of 10, there was all this press coming out about the different shows that were being renewed.

Yeah.

And we weren't one of them.

And they kept coming and they kept coming.

And we were like, any day now, any day now.

And then we wrapped our season and I think it was like about three weeks later that they announced it was over.

I've got a little favor to ask you.

Could you please follow us on social media?

And if you've got time, leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get them.

It all helps drive traffic back to the podcast.

But for now, let's get back to the current episode of Television Times podcast.

So how does that work for you?

Do you book things back to back or do you get on a show and stay on it until, you know, there is no show?

Or how do you sort of work your schedule?

How do you do that?

Generally speaking, if it's a show like that, yeah, then you let them dictate your schedule.

And they have off periods.

Sometimes they call a hiatus period.

Usually when the season is done after, you know, I don't know, it's like 25 or 30 weeks or so, we'll have a break in between seasons of maybe three or four months.

And, you know, the actors usually go off and do a movie or something or take a vacation and we're welcome to do whatever we want at that point.

And technically, if we find something we like better, we're welcome to not come back as well.

Usually if you're on a prestige series or procedural type show as a career crew person, that's like the brass ring, you know, I mean, that's...

You must have seen that change between, you know, things would be on from what you call the fall till like May and then they go off and do movies and then they come back and you'd have that yearly with the Christmas hiatus, I think, right?

Right.

I guess it's just shifted to whatever, right?

Because of streaming, you just film it whenever, put it out whenever, it's 10 episodes or 6 or 26.

That's right.

Well, I mean, this particular last season of CSI, we were up against the actor's strike and the writer's strike.

And you know, nobody was working on any kind of union shows for months and months and months, but there was still like reality shows and things like that going on.

Have you worked on any reality shows?

Not many.

My brother works on the Property Brothers.

I don't know if you've...

Yeah, it's in your credit as well.

Is that a mistake or were you on it?

No, no, I filled in for like a couple of days on those.

I've never done like a full episode of that show, but...

We used to watch that avidly when we were in...

There's that channel.

Is it called HGTV?

The one that Nathan Field had...

Yeah, Home and Garden Television.

Yeah, and those two twin...

Are they Canadian?

They're Canadian, twin brothers.

I think so, yeah.

And yeah, we used to just get sort of hooked and suddenly I'm watching five episodes of this thing, I'm like, what am I doing?

Yeah, they're kind of like...

They're the Taylor Sheridans of HGTV.

I think they have like 45 or 50 different shows now.

Really?

I'm exaggerating, but it's unreal, like, how busy those guys are.

You know, that's a good way to be these days because, you know, media is changing.

Does the BBC still have the same kind of clout that it used to?

The BBC, because it's a state-run television network, they have to really tread carefully how they say things.

So you'll be watching the news and they'll be like, well, clearly he did a Nazi salute.

And then you'll always have to have someone with an opposite view going, well, no, no, it's more like a Caesar's kind of celebration and he is autistic or whatever.

He was hit with a taser.

He's hit with a taser.

He'll be hit with something.

But yeah, so you have to always have a balanced view, which can sometimes be tiresome.

So yeah, I mean, they're just trying to do the right thing all the time, which is very nice.

But it does open the door to have people with mad views on fighting their corner, even though we all know it's bullshit.

So that's the problem.

Right, right.

Yeah.

Well, they hold a place in my heart as an audio person.

I mean, they led the charge early on in producing high quality sounding programs of all sorts.

And not only that, but the science and the technology behind a lot of it as well.

Yeah.

I mean, it's a force.

I hope it never goes away.

We pay something called the license fee here just for American listeners, which is about 150 pounds a year.

That basically funds the BBC.

And a lot of people don't want to pay it anymore.

And they want to move to like a streaming subscription service so people can opt out.

You know, we had the iPlayer.

We had like a Netflix portal in 2007, which is really early.

I was on tour and you could download TV shows and watch them later in your hotel room or on your digs.

It was like amazing.

This was before Netflix.

Netflix was still sending out fucking DVDs at this point.

You know, so it was like amazing.

They've always been at the forefront of that kind of thing.

I actually worked on two different BBC programs a while ago.

Oh, yeah.

Which ones?

One of them was for BBC Scotland and it was about the history of bagpipes.

Oh, my God.

I hate the sound of bagpipes.

How did you get through that?

And well, I was I was kind of excited because the whole reason they were in California was because there was this guy named Eric Regler who played the pipes.

He played the Yulean pipes as well as the traditional bagpipes for Braveheart and also Titanic.

So that we got to we got to record a session with him playing both of those songs just out in his front yard.

And I got to set up a couple of overhead mics and just sit there and enjoy it.

You know, it was like a front row seat to something not necessarily historic, but you know.

That's great.

My experience of bagpipes usually means I'm standing in the street in Edinburgh and someone will pipe up behind me at high level and I won't even know it's coming and it will just make me jump out my skin because it's the loudest thing you've ever heard in your life.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, it's each to their own.

But that sounds good.

What was the other TV show?

Was it Less Bagpipe Involved?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

No, it was a whole whole different thing.

And I actually got to be kind of the the American ambassador to the British crew that was assigned to me.

But it was a super size versus super skinny challenge, which if you don't know it, it was like they had a whole bunch of very obese Brits and a whole bunch of nearly anorexic ones as well.

And they they made them live in an apartment with each other.

Wow.

And challenge them to try and live each other's lifestyles and stuff.

And then the part where I came in was they flew the obese ones to the Midwestern American states.

And they were they weren't obese.

And they literally like they brought them in to embed them with like a 500 pound minimum person.

Right.

Who was severely affected by their problems.

And the bedridden.

It was kind of a scared straight for fat people.

Jesus, I've never heard of this, Tom.

I'm looking at it.

I'm looking at it now.

It sounds like unethical at this point.

That is amazing because like there are times, you know, I've never been skinny.

But when I go to the states like here, I'm like, you know, I'm not obese, but I'm fat.

And when I go to America, my genes are down the bottom end of the scale of sizes.

I'm like, oh, I feel positively normal here.

Are you familiar with the restaurant chain Cracker Barrel?

I've heard of it.

It sounds racist, but I'll go with it.

Well, yeah.

I mean, you're not wrong.

But we were on our way to, you know, find our subject that the producers had already been in contact with and everything.

But we stopped for lunch at a Cracker Barrel somewhere in Tennessee.

Banjo Plucking Country.

Half the people in there were like, you know, 400 pounds plus.

It was like just phenomenal.

And the things that they serve in that place are like gravy-covered fried chicken and, you know, potato the size of your head and...

Everyone loves a potato the size of their head.

Yeah.

It's just phenomenal.

It is funny because when I come to the States, you see, I think it's a combination like here, at least I walk everywhere.

I mean, my life is walking, right?

You don't really have that sort of lifestyle in too many places in the States, especially when I visit Phoenix.

And I know it's immediately that you've got like, you know, I'm not being rude, but extremely large people, like beyond my comprehension of large, ordering, like I'll go into Starbucks or a coffee shop, and I'll say, can I just get a black, I just drink black coffee.

I drink coffee as coffee is made.

It's, there's the coffee, nothing in it.

Thank you.

They'll go in and order a fucking, I don't know, Frappuccino with cream and fucking smarties and other, what's in that thing?

It looks like a cake.

And they'll get what the size of it, it always gets me is the bottom size of the cup is always ready to sit in a cup holder.

But then it goes up and then it expands to the size of a bucket and they just keep going.

And they walk out of this thing and get in a car.

And I'm like, that is probably, I mean, it's probably over your daily calorific need.

But I mean, I couldn't even imagine drinking it because obviously it's going to be sweet as fuck.

I don't want to drink that.

But it's just, I just don't understand the portions, man.

I don't understand the size of your meals.

They're insane.

They're like something out the Sopranos.

Everything's just like a giant bowl.

I know it's all, would you like to take that home and all of that?

So you've got another meal for later.

Or going to the cinema and filling up your soda cup on the way out, by the way.

Not on the way, not while you're even there.

I just get some more for the car.

It's like, guys, stop now.

It's over.

The credits have rolled.

It has a little bit to do with television and the end of World War II.

Oh, go on.

I think, well, the Great Depression and the success of World War II and then the television, you know, and all that started bringing everybody together in the living room and that led to TV dinners and the tray things.

Yeah.

And the selling of the idea of American prosperity, you know, and consumerism and blah, blah, blah.

And certainly, you know, if you're a rich, successful young consumer, you can afford, you know, the meal of a king every night.

Do you eat your dinner in front of the television?

Frequently.

I always do.

I never haven't because as soon as I grew up, it was like, well, now I used to be, I was able to watch Doctor Who as a kid, or while having soup on like a Saturday or something.

And I don't think I've ever, ever, I mean, my kids actually said to me, I think it was yesterday, my son said to me, can we watch something when we have our dinner?

And I said, no, just eat, just concentrate on your food.

They go, but you and mama always sit in front of the TV.

I go, yeah, we do.

We absolutely do.

I can't imagine.

I've listened to a podcast while eating, but that feels weird.

It doesn't feel as good.

Yeah.

But I think when you're not...

I do notice that, like sometimes if you're watching something and you're eating, you don't concentrate on the food.

You don't see it, it's gone and you don't even remember eating it.

I think that's probably where some of this lies.

But it does feel like, you know, because we're all just kids who have grown up, right?

So it just still feels cheeky to be able to do that, because my parents and grandparents would never have let me do the things I do.

You know, just sit there, have a beer, have a fucking nice big bowl or whatever and just shove it all down and then follow it with something else and just keep watching the movie.

It's fun.

Well, the trick is you have to watch a cooking show about the dish that you're eating currently.

Well, they're very big.

But if you watch a cooking show about the dish that you're eating, then you don't have to look at it.

You can look at the TV and you still get the flavor.

Yeah, that's true.

I could watch the British Bake Off, whatever it's fucking called.

I can't even understand if I could go back a couple of decades and tell people that it's all cooking shows and all dancing shows.

I don't think people would believe me.

My first international experience was I spent the summer in Japan when I was 21.

There's nudity and all kinds of stuff on Japanese TV.

It's weird stuff.

Some of the most bonkers television I've ever seen.

And I mean like Charlie Sheen in a cigarette commercial getting like, you know, run over by a CGI car for no reason.

You know, just all kinds of weird stuff.

I love Japan.

I love Japan.

I spent a lot of time in Tokyo, and I just, I've got a friend who's there at the moment and he's posting videos, and everything he eats looks amazing, and everywhere he is looks amazing.

It's just like, I miss Japan.

I love it.

Absolutely love it.

But yeah, it is the craziest.

And they have those TV shows that they're like the sort of Italian TV shows, where they just go on for about seven hours.

You don't, you have no idea what's going on in there.

Yeah, it's like a non-stop TikTok.

Yes, it is a non-stop TikTok.

That is Japan.

Japan is a non-stop TikTok.

I don't know if you could look inside the brain of somebody having a seizure, I think that's kind of...

I always remember there was a show on, well, we had a Sunday night TV show called Clive James Presents or something.

He was like an Australian journalist, comedian and he would show a Japanese TV show.

I think it was called Endurance or something like that.

This is in like the 80s.

All I remember is they'd have a big table full of food and they would tie these people up and hang them upside down and starve them basically.

They'd be there for hours and they'd be crying in pain and agony and they'd be starving, they're hanging upside down, they're throwing water on them or whatever.

And it was whoever lasted the longest and didn't eat the food won the show.

And I guess it was reality TV back in the day.

But it looked brutal and really harsh.

They've always been a little bit.

I mean, I love Japan, but yeah, the telly is absolutely fucking mental.

I think the closest we ever got in the US was the morning radio shock jock type people.

Let's see how it stands.

Yeah, more specifically, the T-MU versions of Howard Stern, you know, the small town Howard Sterns would always have these cockamamie contests in a mall or in a Wal-Mart parking lot somewhere to, you know, win a John Deere tractor.

Oh, the keep your hand on the car thing.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, somebody actually died from doing like the drink more water than everybody else challenge, you know.

There you go.

Nice call back to why water is disgusting, right?

That's what Mr.

Beast does now.

You're aware of Mr.

Beast?

Yes.

Yeah.

That's what he does.

He's basically one of those guys.

I saw recently in my sound person circles that they set a record for having the most people mic'd up on any show ever was supposedly a thousand people were wearing wireless microphones all at once.

I mean, my kids watch it, but I can't watch it.

I can't stand the guy.

I'm sure he's a lovely man.

Probably not.

What do you think will be the top TV show on television in 2050?

You'll be working on it, Tom, of course.

2050.

Can it be anything at all?

Yeah, what do you reckon it is?

Are you just saying make up a fake TV show or?

I just wonder what do you think people will be watching?

It could go one of two ways.

It could get out of control and be mad like idiocy.

Well, yeah.

Or will it be just another boring thing like people sewing blankets?

Oh, right, right.

Well, I mean, it might very well be just an actual flame inside of the husk of an old television.

Isn't that what the number one streaming thing was at Christmas on Netflix?

Do you see that?

No, no.

I mean like an actual flame, like in your wasteland of a house.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

Okay.

It could also be Ask the Series from the creators of Ask the Movie.

Just a mask.

Yeah.

That was the idiocracy callback.

Oh, that's another thing.

You were, because even though you Whiplash is Blumhouse, it's not a horror film.

Yeah.

You did the film.

Is it, how do we say it now?

It used to be called a Ouija board when I was a kid.

Ouija?

Oh, yeah.

How do we say that word now?

I had a very, I think it's Ouija.

Ouija.

I had a very small part in that.

And the way IMDB works, it kind of makes it look a little more pronounced than it was.

But I was only on that for about two or three days.

Doing re-shoot type stuff of people crawling through heating ducts and things like that.

But I did work on Sinister 2.

I did about half of that movie.

Yeah.

And I don't know exactly what the story is, but I heard that they shot half of that, or they shot most of that movie in the Midwest, somewhere near Milwaukee, Wisconsin, or something like that.

And then a lot of it they weren't very happy with, so they came and re-shot a bunch of it in Los Angeles.

Was there anything filmed in a spooky, haunted place?

Obviously not, because it's not real.

No, I have worked in places that are supposed to be haunted and stuff, but I've never experienced anything like that, including EVFs.

I don't know how ghost aware you are, but personally, I've never heard any of my equipment record any kind of electronic voice phenomenon.

I had it happen to me when I was 15, and it freaked us out, but I think it was just Russian radio signals coming in.

Oh, right.

Yeah, like a speeded up voice saying a word over and over in a sort of computer voice.

It was really, really strange.

But, you know, of course, those are the days where you could actually pick up radio through the tape heads of a Walkman.

Right.

There's a thing called a noise floor that microphone preamps all have, and the farther you turn the gain up, the more electronic artifacts are presented into the signal.

And then when you digitize that, it makes it have that sort of weird mechanical sound to it.

And, you know, some of it just gets represented as weird little tones or breathy noises and stuff.

And if you have a willing ear, you're going to hear what you're told to hear, especially if they have a subtitle on the screen.

Yeah.

The manipulation that can happen with all that stuff is really remarkable.

Well, it's like when we say, you know, okay, well, if you sit in a room and you literally, I do this sometimes, you know, I try to meditate, can't I?

But you know, you sit in a room and you just listen to silence.

There's no such thing because we always hear something.

There's always a sound in your ears, even if it's just a slight ringing or you can always hear something, can't you?

There's never, I don't think silence exists personally.

And if you were to record that, you will hear something.

And especially, like you say, if you want to hear something, you will hear it.

It's like those things from a few years ago where they'd say like two different words on the YouTube thing.

And it would be like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, ladle, ladle, ladle.

And someone's hearing a completely different word.

But then you put it in your head and you can hear it too.

So it is.

Yeah, there's a there's an entire field of study called psychoacoustics.

Psychoacoustics.

Yeah.

And that's that's how the signals that come out of your inner ear go directly into the lower rear parts of your brain.

And similarly to where your eyes go and and your brain tries to figure out what it's hearing and and it can be tricked.

Yeah, clearly.

It's mad.

It's a mad old thing, isn't it?

Yeah.

It's doing a movie called Obsolete in 2008.

We were shooting in Death Valley.

Oh, that's hot.

Hotest place I've ever been in my life.

Close to 50C.

Yeah, no thanks.

As the sun went down, we found out that there's a family of donkeys that live there.

They didn't know that we were there, but they came out to their usual spot and we were in it and they were not very happy about that.

And they chased us away.

You're chased by donkeys?

Yeah.

In the middle of the desert.

That's cool.

Did you mic them up?

A donkey is quite a hairy, like, I mean, I always think of the hair being a bit like straw.

You think they're going to be so hot there.

Sure, you would have to shave them to help them out.

No, they're just wild donkeys that live in the desert.

Wild donkeys that live in the desert.

You wouldn't think that.

I don't fully understand it myself.

No, that is odd.

I saw wild horses once in New Zealand.

It's amazing when you see wild creatures just running.

I mean, you probably see it because you film in Montana, right, for the other show.

Oh, the horses in Yellowstone were, yeah, incredible.

Yeah.

I mean, you must.

Yeah.

Oh, I did want to just touch on Documentary Now!

And it made me think, actually.

Oh, right.

They're hilarious.

Have you mic'd up Fred Armisen?

Oh, many times, yeah.

Does he know you did Whiplash?

Because he's a drummer, isn't he?

Yeah.

Yeah, we talked about it.

Yeah.

He must be excited.

He's a, yeah, he's a super cool guy.

And actually, like, if you're in Los Angeles, it's pretty easy to find him.

He's usually just around.

He's one of those guys.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He shows up at like jazz clubs and stuff and just drums for random punk shows and things like that.

Yeah.

He's really into his punk and he's a huge Anglophile as well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I like, I like Fred.

He's a good cat.

Yeah.

So how was that working on those shows?

It's bizarre getting paid to laugh, you know, and it's somewhat stressful because, you know, it's still our job to do a good job, but comedy often flares when it's unpredictable.

And they're some of the best improv-ers out there.

So, you know, we really have to be focused and, you know, paying attention and ready to react to just about anything.

You have to gaffer tape your mouth up so you don't get caught laughing.

I've gotten good at biting my tongue.

But there's times where, I mean, especially nowadays, like it's so much easier to fix things than it used to be.

It's a lot more common for crews to break up these days than it used to be.

Really?

Yeah.

Which, I mean, also makes it a little more fun because everybody's not like turning blue off camera.

It must be fun, though, to work on something that's actually comedic, because at least then you're, you know, you're at least having a laugh as well.

And you did service Silverman's comedy special a while back as well.

Yeah, the, so yeah, the, there were two aspects to that.

There was the live show aspect, which is just like any other one.

And then she did like some little narrative bookends to the show where there was like some Cholo gangster type guys and they were commenting on her and like, first it appeared to be a misogynistic stuff, but then they turned it around to reveal that they're actually like really talented fashion critics.

Oh, right.

Yeah.

Like Queer Eye.

Yeah.

But they look like gangsters, you know, so it was like a little joke on top of the show.

Have you bumped into JK.

Simmons since Whiplash?

Yeah, a couple of times.

Does he remember you?

Of course.

Yeah.

I mean, that's one of those things where, I mean, it was a life-changing event for him as well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I think a lot of people, you know, it makes an imprint no matter what, but as a film crew, you are working very intimately with another 30 or 40 people for almost a month straight for that, which is a short period of time, but sometimes it's more like six months.

Yeah, like a family.

Yeah.

So if you were to tell my audience, mostly British audience, and some Americans and Australians and Canadians, something about your job that they probably don't know, what would that be?

We don't spy on people as much as people think.

Yeah, they always think you're listening, don't they?

Yeah, that's really bad form.

We could.

We could absolutely do it, which is fun to know that we can and then choose the path of light.

But I've known, there's many stories of couriers getting ended over stuff like that, so not something I'm really aiming to do just yet.

Oh, really?

Naughty.

The interesting thing nowadays, though, is like, you know, those giant broadcasting trucks, it looks like a shipping lorry, but inside is like $40 million worth of high definition electronics.

Yeah.

Those things are so capable nowadays that it's actually like eliminated a lot of jobs that used to require like a crewman at every camera station.

And, you know, now everything's running on like Dante networks and microwave wireless beams and, you know, remote controlled motion cameras and stuff.

It's amazing and bewildering at the same time.

Do you like that aspect of it?

Or are you a bit more old school?

I used to, you know, I used to be much more jazzed about the tech involved in making like, you know, excellent film cameras and, you know, super high quality, you know, effects and things, you know, like things that people put all kinds of effort into.

But we kind of peaked with quality, I think.

And most of the technological advancements of the past 10 years have been more of like convenience features and stuff.

Everything's connected together and they're all sharing metadata and, you know, you can store everything on remote servers and you can beam everything to editors right from the set and, you know, shooting three or four or five cameras at 8K and ingesting all of that stuff on set and then sending it all off for dailies and editing and stuff.

And there's nothing wrong with any of that, but it's really taken the stakes down for error, you know.

What it means is that people are putting less effort into every shot because fucking it up isn't really that bad anymore.

Right, and then eventually, yeah, but then somebody has to sit through it all and find the good stuff, right?

That's what I always think.

Apparently, that's no problem.

That's like, it just reminded me for some reason of that TV show alone, you know, the one where they go into the wilderness and they're just on their own with some cameras and they allegedly film the whole thing themselves.

Right.

That's kind of wild.

Yeah, I mean, anything's possible these days.

I think we could give all of that equipment to Elon Musk for his first personal visit to Mars, let him film himself on Mars in Alone Season 30.

And it's just Elon and you, you can pop up there, do your sound for him.

Oh, I don't know.

That should be a TV show, shouldn't it?

The first people to Mars, that's got to be a filmed thing that you just...

Yeah, but I want to be able to spend my money.

That's true.

Your money is no good out there.

No, I mean, I probably wouldn't make it back either.

No, I think it's a one way trip.

I think you've got to send the right people.

I've got a list.

We can all help each other out with that.

All right, Tom.

Well, it's been great talking to you, man.

Thank you for staying up your end.

Yeah, my pleasure.

Appreciate chatting to you.

It's pretty cool.

Yeah, my pleasure.

It was me talking to Oscar winner and Bafta winner Tom Curley.

Thomas Curley, C-A-S is how he is known in the industry.

Now, I hope you enjoyed that chat, and I hope you check out Whiplash if you haven't seen it already, because that is one hell of a film.

And check out all the other stuff he's involved in.

I mean, his CV is unbelievable.

Check him out on IMDb.

I'll put a link in the bottom.

Now, today's outro track.

Now, today's track, with all this talk of fires and whatnot, I thought I would play Waiting for the Fire.

Now, I have actually put this song out before the album version.

This is a remix.

This is known as the Atari Mix.

And all this talk of, like, you know, hills on fire in LA and the impending, you know, administration coming into power in America, I thought this would be a perfect thing because this was actually about the evangelical side of the Bush time in office, post 9-11 America.

So yeah, this song seems a little bit apt again.

So this is the remix.

I'm not sure you can get all the lyrics out of this one.

I'm not going to put the same song out.

So this is Waiting for the Fire, Atari mix and this was part of Re-Animals, which is a remix album that came out in 2007.

Here we go.

Well, if it wasn't already apparent, that is a remix that was put together in Tokyo, in Japan, shortly after the finishing touches were put to We Are Animals, the album, and that was released in 2007.

And well, I hope you like that, and I hope you like my chat with Tom Curley.

Thanks for listening.

See you next time.

Bye for now.

Look into my eyes.

Tell all your friends about this podcast.