Patton Oswalt

Exceptional journal entry about the passing of an era at his myspace blog:

I went to Sony Studios this morning to watch Michael Giacchino score Ratatouille. The score mixer was Dan Wallin, this smiling dude in his 80's who's mixed films like, oh, BONNIE AND CLYDE, WAIT UNTIL DARK, COOL HAND LUKE, THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER, BULLITT, THE WILD BUNCH, WOODSTOCK, THX 1138, DIRTY HARRY, ENTER THE DRAGON, THE LAST DETAIL, BLAZING SADDLES, THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE, YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, NASHVILLE... the man has 502 imdb.com credits. They were using speakers he'd custom built himself, and they were scoring with a FULL ORCHESTRA sight-reading the score along with the movie. Oh, and they were on the stage where they'd scored THE WIZARD OF OZ, all the Fred Astaire films, GONE WITH THE WIND...

Michael told me this was probably the last film that would ever get recorded to tape. He was going to be scoring something else in the fall, and was already told, "You got the last of it for this film".

Wallin had recorded stuff to ACETATE in the 60's.

It was like watching the Justice League of film scorers.

I walked around in a daze. I talked to tuba players, vibraphonists, and string-men of every stripe. They let me stand in the orchestra space while everyone played, and it was like being stoned by sound.