ANACORTES — As the Oscar contenders rolled in for 2007, Nick Alphin quickly whittled the 50 or so titles down to a handful.

“No Country for Old Men,” was a good one, no doubt. “Atonement” took viewers through a fantastic single shot that cost filmmakers about $4 million. And who could forget “Juno?”

But for Alphin, the winner of last year’s Academy Award for Best Film should not have been “No Country” but Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood,” the epic tale of a silver miner-turned-oil man on a quest for power during southern California’s oil boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The former Hollywood sound man and for two decades a voting member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences can’t tell you exactly what he’s looking for in a “winner.”

Not that his 2007 favorite film won.

“I rarely win,” Alphin said with a sigh.

He’ll watch almost any film — the good, the bad, the terrible. After all, he’s made a career in the film industry and his passion is films.

The 72-year-old who was once nominated for an Oscar walked upstairs last week to his entertainment room, where he and his wife, Suzie, spend Friday nights with friends watching movies on their big-screen television. Alphin’s eyes light up, his speech quickens with excitement, as he sifts through the shelves of DVDs of a variety of films.

Ask him his favorite movie, and he’s quick to answer: “Lawrence of Arabia.” Ask him about the worst movie he’s ever seen — that’s tougher.

“I really don’t know,” he says with a shrug.

He’s seen so many movies, and been a part of many others through his 30-year career as a sound man for some of the biggest studios in Hollywood, including Universal, Disney and Warner Brothers.

Everyone knew everyone

Alphin can remember the early days in the 1940s and ’50s — often called the “Golden Age” of Hollywood — when the stars shined with a kind of immortal brilliance and the studios were monolithic giants that literally owned their stars and shaped everything from political opinions to fashion in America.

It wasn’t the thrill of being around fame or the possibility of making it on the big screen that drew Alphin to Warner’s doors. No, it was all part of the family business. Alphin’s father, Harry, had been working in sound for years, since he was a young man working on the back lot of Warner’s studios and was dragged into the studio one hot day to help with the sound for a movie.

Harry went to work on the studio’s sound process and sound division, called Vitaphone, in the earliest days of Hollywood. He was responsible for tweaking the sound for the pioneering 1927 film “The Jazz Singer,” and working on the set of the 1959 blockbuster comedy “Some Like it Hot,” with acting giants Tony Curtis, Marilyn Monroe and Jack Lemmon.

“I remember him (father) coming home and saying, ‘You thought the film was hilarious, you should have been on the set,’” Alphin said.

In the “old days” living in Burbank, Calif., you either worked at Lockheed manufacturing aircraft parts, or you worked in the film business, Alphin said. If your father worked on the sets, you worked on the sets; if your father was a sound man, you probably followed in his footsteps.

In high school, Alphin worked as a rigger at Warner Bros. After graduating from high school, he took a job at Universal Studios in the script department, collating and delivering scripts. His two sisters both landed jobs in the studio’s mail department.

Alphin’s older sister, Bunky Young, who also lives in Anacortes, said the film business has changed dramatically since the early days of film when she was bicycling and roller skating around the back lot of Universal Studios delivering mail and working for Walt Disney.

“Everybody knew Walt and Walt knew everybody by their first name,” Young said. Disney would often invite the film crews and his friends to his house and he would drive them around the property on a train he had put in, Young said.

Young would later watch as Disney broke ground on Disneyland and would become a personal assistant to actress and longtime friend Linda Evans, who made her mark in the 1960s Western “The Big Valley” and in the successful 1980s soap series “Dynasty.” Young also acted in several episodes of “Dynasty.”

“That was a special time,” she said of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

In the early days, Alphin said most people working on the sound, lighting and staging at the studios were sons and fathers. “There was a real nepotism system in those days,” Alphin said.

Everyone involved in a film worked on the sets and knew each other, Alphin said.

When there was a party, everyone from the set was invited, including the lowly sound men and women, Alphin added.

“I’m glad I saw a little bit of the majors,” Alphin said proudly of the large studios. “When you worked for a studio, you were literally raised at a studio. You learned their processes.”



Finding his niche

Alphin worked at Universal for several years and then decided to attend college, not knowing exactly what he wanted to do for a career.

While in college, Alphin and a friend decided they wanted to take a trip to Europe. The plan? Get a job, work like crazy, save money for about a year and then head across the Atlantic.

He took a job at Universal again, this time in the sound department, where he worked almost around the clock, making good money for a college kid, he said.

As a sound man, Alphin worked in many different aspects of sound. Producing sound isn’t as easy as moving a microphone close to the actors, Alphin said.

“The important thing to remember about films is that everything you hear was put there,” he said.

All those taps in the old Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire movies? Those were all recorded and included in the film after it was shot. The actors’ dialogue? Someone had to include that, too, and make sure it was in sync with the lip movements of the actors, he said.

Alphin was working for Universal when “Psycho” was filmed in 1960. He laughed when he remembered how the sound men created the horrid stabbing sounds during the infamous shower scene with Janet Leigh. “They took a three-pound roast and stabbed the roast,” he said.

After saving enough money, Alphin and his buddy spent nine months in Europe. He returned home and worked at several jobs before deciding to get “serious” about a career in films.

In 1966, he landed a job with Disney Studios as a sound man and stayed for 20 years. After a long and successful career with Disney, Alphin took a job for five years in a sound house working for television shows.

Later in his career, Alphin worked as a re-recording mixer, working with other sound experts taking the music, sound effects and dialogue from the editors in charge and putting it all together with the film.

His eye for detail would earn him an Oscar nomination for the 1984 Mel Gibson and Sissy Spacek drama “The River.”

Through the years, Alphin was involved in dozens of films, including “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” “Splash,” “The Black Cauldron” and the sound for television series and movies, including “The A-Team,” “Secrets,” “Born to Run” and “The Tuskegee Airmen.”

He continued on as a successful sound man until retiring 13 years ago. He moved to Las Vegas in 1996 in the hopes of finishing college and earning his film degree, and in 2001 received his degree from the University of Las Vegas. He moved to Anacortes about six years ago after visiting his sister and falling in love with the area.

Choosing the winners



In 1986, Alphin began voting for the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences’ Oscar would-bes, a process that involves screening between 45 and 60 films from film companies that think their movies might have a shot at winning.

In weeding out the top films, Alphin gets two votes: one for the top five films, and one for five films with the best sound quality. The Academy then tallies the votes and sends the academy members a list of the top films to choose from.

Academy members don’t have to see all the films to vote, but Alphin said he watches every one on principle.

Through the years, he’s occasionally spoken about films and sound at seminars.

In his day-to-day life, he enjoys watching television and films. He tries not to spend too much time dissecting the sound quality of what he sees.

“When I sit down to see a film, I want to see it as it was meant to be seen,” he said. “I want to enjoy it.”

Most recently, Alphin has branched out to play in a local music group, the Backyard Band — he plays guitar — with his sister Bunky, Young’s daughter, his wife, Suzie, and several friends. They’ve played at several local venues, including the Anacortes Art Walk.

And when he’s not performing with the band and watching movies, he’s introducing films during the Anacortes City Library’s film series, which took off this spring and will start up again in October.

By then, he should be thinking about the next round of Academy award.