An Interview with Richard Beggs

On a beautiful, sunny Saturday, sound designer Richard Beggs (b. 1942) invited me to his home studio in San Francisco so I could interview him about his accomplished career and work as a sound designer. Richard had worked in home studios of his own making and in rented spaces in the San Francisco area since the 1960s, including in the Sentinel Building, where he met Francis Ford Coppola.¹ A director who wanted to push sound into new possibilities in Apocalypse Now (1979),² Coppola collaborated with Richard on that film, and subsequent projects, and helped launch Richard's career in film sound. Richard made his decision to finally leave his most recent studio in the Presidio, perhaps because of changes in the industry (he could accomplish all he needed in his new, state-of-the-art home studio, after all), or perhaps, as he mentioned, because he didn't necessarily want to keep working. But, this was a statement I would soon have reason to doubt.

Richard's love of music and abiding interest in recording technology led to his work as sound recordist, re-recording mixer, sound mixer, and sound designer, and to a substantial list of credits from blockbuster fantasies, including Ghostbusters (1984),³ Galaxy Quest,⁴ Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,⁵ and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe;⁶ to drama, including Sleepers⁷ and Rumble Fish;⁸ and films of experimental bent, including The Legend of 1900,⁹ Strange Days,¹⁰ Adaptation,¹¹ and Children of Men;¹² as well as documentaries and shorts.¹³ For the stage, Richard created the scores for several ballets, including two commissions for the Oakland Ballet: The Awakening, for which Richard won the Isadora Duncan Award,¹⁴ and Our Town.¹⁵

Although Richard's work necessarily remains a matter of balancing technical, practical, and artistic concerns, his most gratifying achievements involve realism and a particular psychological dimension or, as he puts it, point of view. His collaboration with Sofia Coppola,¹⁶ now twenty-years long, has provided opportunities for his distinctive and subtle approach. Now 77, Richard is designing sound for projects in animation and horror—both new to him.

The details Richard shares about his forty-year career reveal the fragile interdependence of Hollywood collaboration, whether in moments of needing to explain and defend his work or, on the other hand, when industry heavyweights went out of their way to defend his contributions, and his very craft. Richard admits he still worries about where the ideas will come from, and if they'll come on time, and he tells of experiences in a politically vital Hollywood, where a thoughtful John Williams sends a welcome request,¹⁷ a Hollywood higher-up voices skepticism, and the Coppolas emerge as his champions.

I. A Pure Existence, and a Living—the Early Years

km [kate mcquiston]:

What elements of your background led you into sound design work?

rb [richard beggs]:

In my teenage years, I became interested in classical music—serious music, and I had this abiding parallel interest in audio technology, hi-fi, and I guess audio was my hobby, and music—I don't want to use the word passion—I was committed to the music proposition. This may not have been my first foray into this area, but it's the one I remember.

I was driving my first car, a real rattle trap, and I was going down into a little ravine—the road went down and then up—I was trying to find a radio station and inadvertently came across the local classical music station. They were playing Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries,"¹⁸ and I stopped twiddling the dial. I mean there was something about that, a "What is that?" It was thrilling. And the car—I pushed the accelerator hard, and went down into this gully then started coming up. The rise to the crest on the other side was all timed to the music. It was ridiculous—the moment was sort of scored. And the physicality was there with the car...