Sound Wizard Ben Burtt’s ‘Star Wars’ Credentials Got Him Access to Abraham Lincoln’s Actual Pocket Watch for ‘Lincoln’: ‘It’s Not Something People Will Know, But I Know It’
variety.comJamie Lang There are movie fans, and then there are “Star Wars” fans. “‘Star Wars’ is an exception. It launched the foundation for my career and formed a fan community which has been amazingly enduring,” veteran sound designer Ben Burtt told Variety before picking up the Vision Award Ticinomoda at Locarno. “I’ve met so many people who saw these films as children, and it inspired them to get into the movies.
I can’t think of anything else that lasted that long in popularity. I will always have this ‘Star Wars’ connection.” It came in handy when he was working on Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln,” starring Daniel Day-Lewis. “I got fewer opportunities to work on films that, well, weren’t in space.
This one was very straightforward. No creature voices, no spaceships, no big sounds. But the original script had Lincoln taking out his pocket watch all the time.
He would look at it while thinking and writing and dreaming. I thought: ‘Wouldn’t it be great to record the actual watch of Abraham Lincoln?'” Burtt “went to a lot of trouble” for a full year trying to locate and then get permission to record one of the remaining timepieces. “One was in the Smithsonian, but they were nervous about touching it – let alone winding it up with a key.
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