(ALL EFFECTS ARE VOCAL EFFECTS.)
GK: He was at one time the top sound effects man in the business. (SLOW FOOTSTEPS) He'd started out on our radio show playing Buster the Show Dog (WOOF) but we couldn't afford to pay him the million that Hollywood could and whenever Hollywood needed to ov erdub footsteps or a creaking door (CREAKING DOOR) or the cry of a bull elephant in heat (ELEPHANT) ---- they called for Tom Keith, and Tom Keith came (RACING CAR REVS UP, SCREECHES AROUND CORNER, FADES), no matter what, no matter where ---- if they were on location in Spain (CHOPPER APPROACH), Tom Keith went, and when he got there he did what he needed to do.
TK: Hi. My name's Keith. Tom Keith.
TR: Tom. Listen. We got a problem. Big battle scene. Normandy. German army coming in from there. Americans over here. Artillery. Mortars. Hand grenades. A German Messerschmidt comes in low and strafes the American line. A tank blows up. That's no problem. We got that. The problem is---- we're in a farmyard and in the middle of the battle a chicken flies out of the henhouse and the guns are still for a moment as the chicken walks across the barnyard. You get it? Man's inhumanity to man, man's humanity to a chicken ----- it's an irony type of thing ---- okay, sweetheart? You ready?
TK: I'm ready.
TR: ACTORS, TAKE YOUR MARKS! CUE SPECIAL EFFECTS! (TK fading series of calls) CUE THE MESSERSCHMIDT! (TK FADING SERIES OF CALLS)
(GUNFIRE. CRIES OF TROOPS. EXPLOSIONS OF ARTILLERY. ABOUT FIFTEEN SECONDS DURATION. THEN A SHOUT ---- TK: HOLD FIRE!!!! ----- AND SILENCE, AND A CHICKEN WALKS ACROSS SCENE, CLUCKING. THEN MESSERSCHMIDT COMES IN ON STRAFING RUN, MACHINE GUNS BLAZING, AND T ANK BLOWS UP.)
TR: CUT! CUT! Beautiful! Beautiful! (MULTIPLE KISSES ON CHEEK) (MUSIC)
GK: So he said goodbye to St. Paul (TK: Bye.) and he went off to become the miracle man of the movies. Some directors wouldn't sign a deal unless there was a rider saying that Tom Keith was part of it. He did that scene in the Tarantino movie, the alley littered with glass (A FEW FOOTSTEPS, HESITANT, ON GLASS), and John Travolta walking, gun in hand, slowly, trying to see what might be back in those dark doorways, behind that dumpster, around that corner, and then (CONDOR). That was Tom Keith.
James Cameron, director of "Titanic":
TR (SOFT SPOKEN, BUSINESSLIKE): We were shooting the scene where Mrs. Astor and Mr. Astor are leaving their stateroom and going to the boat deck with their cat Agnes ---- and you can hear the bulkheads popping and people screaming and beams creaking as th e ship lists to starboard and water is crashing up the No. 5 starboard stairway and suddenly there's Agnes ---- that's the cat ---- and she looks up at the camera and meows ---- and it was a crucial scene and there we are, the stunt cat and the cat's doub le are hyperventilating, and meanwhile we're paying three hundred grand an hour in overhead and Kate and Leo are in their trailers waiting to shoot their scene, and a thousand extras are standing around, and you're trying to coax this cat to meow and it j just sits there panting and the cat wrangler is waving a wet hanky and the cat's physician is giving it a salt pill --- that's when I call for Tom Keith. (MEOW)
GK: Because he could do cats. He could do dogs (DOG), he could do bison (SFX), cougars (SFX), caribou (SFX), wapiti (SFX), elands (SFX). And of course he was rewarded handsomely for it. And he left Minnesota and moved to Malibu (SURF, GULLS) and he bought a BMW and he went on Oprah.
TK (HESITANTLY, SINCERELY): My great hope is that my sounds convey the beauty and the innate dignity of the natural world. I want to get to the soul of the animal. I don't want it to be just "a guy doing an elk". I want it to be more like "the elk speaking who is within all of us" --- you know? (ELK)
GK: He was riding high. A great career. Beautiful house, fabulous girlfriend.
SS: Tom ---
TK: Yes --
SS: Do the elephant.
TK: Later.
SS: I love it when you do the elephant. When you put your mouth right up to the side of my neck ---- right here ---- I love it when you put your mouth right there and do your elephant call.
TK: Jasmine----
SS: No guy ever did that to me before. Thrill me. With an elephant call. I want you to do it, Tom. Right here. Against my neck. I'll take off my necklace.
TK: Jasmine, we need to talk.
SS: And then I want you to whinny, Tom. I want you to hold me in your arms and whinny. I need your closeness. And I need your whinny.
TK: Jasmine, we can't substitute whinnying for real communication.
SS: Tom, I've been with men who communicated, and it bored me. It did. I've been in therapy since I was three years old, Tom. I don't believe in talk anymore. When you hold me and whinny it makes me all shivery inside. I feel that animal side of me, that right- side, coming out. No other man could make me feel primeval the way you do.
TK: Jasmine, we need to talk----
SS: Come at me with your elephant power. And then, hold me, Tom. And whinny. (MUSIC)
GK: He did it (ELEPHANT) and it did thrill her (WHINNY) but he felt cheap, felt used, angry, and one night when a spotted owl perched in a tree outside his Malibu place (SURF, GULLS, OWL), Tom shot at him with a howitzer. (SURF, GULLS, OWL, HOWITZER), and he went into therapy, and it really helped him, as he explained when he went back on Oprah a year later.
TK: I discovered that I had been using sound effects to attract women and I felt so wrong about that, so violated, in a way, and that was when I shot the howitzer at the spotted owl.
(MUSIC)
GK: Therapy made him feel better about himself, but it also gave him a cough. (COUGH) He'd been in a therapy group where people sit in a circle and drink coffee and smoke thousands of cigarettes, and at first he thought it was just a dry throat, but month s went by and (WORSE COUGH) the cough got worse, and he went to an ear-nose-throat man, who said:
TR: Hmmmmmmmm. Mmmmm-hmmmmmm.
GK: And inserted a probe deep in Tom's throat (GAGGING) and the next day, in addition to his cough, Tom had a hiccup. (HICCUP) And that was the day he flew to Montana to make a movie called "The People of The Sky and The Land and The Rivers" ----
(HORSES HOOVES APPROACH AT GALLOP, WHOA, AND GUNSHOTS. WHINNY. HICCUP)
TR: Cut!!! (FOOTSTEPS AND STOP) What was that?
TK: It won't happen again. (HICCUP)
TR: Is something wrong?
TK: No, I'm (HICCUP) all right. (MUSIC)
GK: But he wasn't. Six months after he left St. Paul for California, his career was in ruins (HICCUP) and this spring his house in Malibu (SURF, GULLS) slid into the sea (RUMBLING, CRASHING, SPLASH, SURF, GULLS), and the next day he flew back to St. Paul, back to the Fitzgerald Theater (FOOTSTEPS, CRUNCHING) and in the stage door (TR OLD MAN: Hi there, Tommy) and he went down the basement (FOOTSTEPS) and into his old dressing room (CREAKING DOOR) and sat down at his old dressing table (RUMMAGE JUNK) and h e looked at himself in the mirror. He'd grabbed at the brass ring and caught it and then dropped it, he'd had it all and then he'd lost it, he'd reached the top and now he was back at the bottom, but he'd gained something in the meantime that nobody can e ver take away from you and that's self-knowledge. And his hiccups were gone. (TK HOLDS BREATH, WAITING. THEN RELEASES.)
(c) 1998 by Garrison Keillor