The "Stair Thing"

When I went out to the pre-movie dinner for "Superman Returns" (it was that long ago? I get out that little?) "The Stair Thing" came up again. It's amazing where and when it hits, but it's always a surprise and I always get a wee bit defensive.

Otis turned to me at dinner and asked: "Did you really throw yourself down a flight of stairs for a sound effect?"

Um.....yes. Yes, as a matter of fact......I did.

I don't get mentioned much in the paper (at all), but the last two times I have been, SOMEone has mentioned "the stair thing" and both times they got it wrong.

I present in evidence Article 1.

Nice piece. And let me just say that John Siscoe is a terrific guy, a brilliant man and it was nice of him to even bring me up in the article.

But...he didn't exactly get the facts straight. I think he might have gotten carried away in the telling of the tale and a few things that weren't exactly...true...made their way into the article.

What's right in the story? It was for the NPR radio series "Sixteen Stories by Anton Chekhov," produced by John and Jean Sherrard for their Globe Radio Repertory (if you ever get a chance to hear it, don't pass it up. It's REALLY good.). I was looking for a sound effect of a man being thrown down the stairs. Every sound effects library I listened to had one of those, but they were usually "comedy" effects, so they also contained a goofy "reactive" voice saying "Ooof! Ow! Unh! Ouch! "D'oh!"" I couldn't use those because the actor who was being portrayed going down the stairs had a different voice timbre. I also thought the recorded effects sounded crappy. And the rule of thumb is: if you exhaust library sources, you create the sound yourself. Any good sound designer will just go out and do it, but I felt I had to look through the effects libraries to see if there was an element to the sound that I wanted to keep to enhance any original. There was nothing for me to use, so, I determined I would have to make the sound myself.

The house I was living in at the time had a nice wooden (good for a 19th century Russian house) staircase. Two flights it had. A short one. A longish one. Not too many steps. One day, I padded myself with sweaters and pads and towels and a bulky jacket and kinda, sorta "allowed" myself to tumble sideways down the steps.

I fell down the stairs.

I did it four times: two recorded from the top of the stairs (where the sounds would get less loud as I fell) and two at the bottom of the stairs (where they would get more loud). No, it didn't hurt much, as I was very padded. But it was loud enough of a racket that I disturbed the noisy dog next door, and I had to wait ten minutes between falls for the dog to settle down and stop barking.

Now, in the P-I article, John says that I came in on a Monday morning, "bruised and scratched up." No, not really. It was a weekday I threw myself down the stairs. I chose a weekday, specifically, so no one would be in the house to make a noise that might ruin a "take" (like, by laughing at me, say) and I wanted to do this stunt as few times as possible. As a result of my tumbles, I was not bruised and scratched. I think I got one bruise when I flung out an arm to slap a step going down (I was cheating), and I glanced a part of my arm that wasn't very padded. I was not disheveled. At no point, during the process was I disheveled. We also usually worked on the Chekhov plays at night, and John was only there a few times and not the day I brought in the DAT recording of the falls.

(I also remember that the engineer who was working with me on the project really enjoyed listening to the takes of me falling down the stairs. "I just want to listen to them ONE more time," he said with great satisfaction before we put them in. I don't think he liked me much that day.)

I had to look up what "nonpareil" meant, and though it's a wonderful compliment, considering how much John got wrong in the story, I take it with a grain of salt.

I now present in evidence, Article 2 from The Seattle Times dated July 17, 1999:

This was for an article in the Seattle Times on the Bad Animals studio in Seattle and it's team of sound designer/owners. Very generously, they snuck in a reference to my work on "Bill Nye, The Science Guy." They didn't have to. It was, after all, an article about them, but they did. (Thank you, Dave Howe, Mike McAuliffe and Tom McGurk) And this time, it's Bill Nye who tells the story of me throwing myself down the stairs...but it really wasn't for his show, it was for the Chekhov. The "telling of the tale" again. I don't remember ever telling Bill that story, but someone must have.

(And I have to insert here that I hope I don't sound ungrateful. Any publicity is good publicity, short of a perp-walk, and both of these articles say really nice things about me. It's just that I wish...they bring up that "stair thing!" I suppose reporters like it. They must feel compelled to use something that unusual. It's like I remember every time a news camera crew came out to shoot at a studio I happened to be working at, they always had to get the shot of the VU meter bouncing. Always.)

So there you have it: "The Stair Thing." I've told you the true story of it. Really, it doesn't seem that much. It's a thing, as they used to fumubble on "The West Wing." My albatross…my millstone. At gatherings, someone has to ask. It’s inevitable. And I get defensive.

Why?

Because it gives people the impression that I'm crazy.

I'm not crazy. (Really!) I'm a professional. I had a job to do, a sound effect to get, and I got it. I care about the work I do, and I do it to the best of my ability.
The only difference between me and a guy in Hollywood doing this, is the guy in Hollywood would delegate the falling to someone else, rather than take the lumps himself (they also have more talent, more work, and a lot more money). I, however, didn’t have the luxury of staff, and besides, you don’t ask someone to do something you wouldn’t do yourself.

Now, there are limits, of course. I once did a commercial about a sky-diver who jumped out of a plane, collided with another diver, and was knocked unconscious so he couldn’t open his ‘chute. I didn’t feel the need to recreate that by jumping out of a perfectly good airplane.

(Besides….there wasn’t time.)

But I will go the extra mile to get the best possible sound for a project.

I have gone to archery ranges and sweated bullets while holding the microphone close to a target to get the best possible “thw-ack!” of an arrow impact.

The best recording of a rainstorm I’ve ever made was in the rain-forest at Lake Quinalt out on the Olympic peninsula. I was thrilled with the sounds I was getting as a thunderstorm was going directly overhead. And then I realized...I was standing in the middle of very tall trees in the middle of a raging thunder (and lightning) storm, and I was holding up the only metal object (the microphone) for miles.

Okay. Maybe in the pursuit of that perfect sound, I do go a little overboard. Can't help it. It's the hunter-gatherer in me. I want to get it just right.

Next week: My head feels like it's going to explode and Part 1 (actually Part 5) of a film series.