John Pritchett is one of Hollywood’s most veteran and sought-after production sound mixers. In that position, he is the head of the sound department on-set, recording and mixing all the sounds as they occur.
Mr. Pritchett’s career spans back to the early 1980s, when he began working with legendary director Robert Altman, with whom he would make seven films. His first mega-hit was 1987's Dirty Dancing. Since then, he has served as Production Sound Mixer on several films of Lawrence Kasdan (Wyatt Earp, French Kiss), Oliver Stone (W., World Trade Center), Robert Rodriguez (Spy Kids 2, Sin City, Grindhouse), Paul Thomas Anderson (Magnolia, There Will be Blood, Inherent Vice), Jake Kasdan (Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle), and more.
He has received Academy Award and Cinema Audio Society nominations for both Road to Perdition (2002) and Memoirs of a Geisha (2005), as well as a BAFTA nomination for There Will be Blood.
Other film credits include The Green Hornet, The Tree of Life, The Amazing Spider-Man, and episodes of Fresh Off the Boat and Westworld, all before being hired by the Russo Brothers for the last two Avengers films.
Mr. Pritchett had just finished work on the upcoming “Jumanji 3” when he sat down with ReelTime. He discussed his lengthy career, his personal style of sound mixing, and the many wonderful directors he’s worked with. Of course, the topic of Avengers soon came up as well.
Pritchett was quick to lay praise on the film’s editor, Jeffrey Ford, who has also been admonished by the Russo Brothers in many of their own recent interviews.
“I just did these two Avengers movies,” Pritchett says, “and the editor on that movie was so good at doing all these kinds of things. He would make beautiful mixes, and show them to us, as, you know….just to let everybody know what he was doing, because he really liked going in there and doing that same stuff. But he loved the stuff I would give him because it was a mix that he could start with. And then if he wanted to tweak it, he could do that. He would add sound effects, he would add music, all kinds of stuff, even though it’s not the finished product."
"He’s great. He’s fantastic, in that, he really isn’t just cutting the movie, he’s telling the story. I mean, he’s actually putting it together... We did like seven weeks of reshoots on this thing because of so many things that he came up with that would make the movie better; that we needed. So we all came back and did all these reshoots, because of him. Yeah, he’s brilliant."
If you’ve been paying attention to the Russo Brothers’ recent interviews, you’ll know that Ford was the one who suggested the line “I am Iron Man,” which was added in at the last minute, becoming the final scene shot for the movie. Pritchett, however, points out that he wasn't even including that in the material he was referring to!
"I did the stuff in 2018, I believe, of which we did seven weeks of reshoots back in Atlanta. And then, then they said that was it, they were done. And then I got a call in January; could I come out to L.A. for five days to do something else? And I said “Really? It isn't done?” But...I couldn’t do it, cause I was doing Jumanji. But they did come back and shoot more stuff, including some pieces that we didn’t even know about."
Interestingly, those reshoots also included Karen Gillan (in scenes alongside Zoe Saldana), so she must have gained a repreive from the Jumanji shoot for that week while other scenes were shot.
Pritchett then commented further on the secretive nature of the shoot.
"It was the most secretive operation ever,” he adds. "[The actors] didn’t even know what they were going to be saying each day until they got their signs.”
The Russo Brothers are also known for maintaining much of the same crew throughout their four Marvel films. The Sound Mixer is one exception, as their two Captain America films were both recorded by fellow veteran Petur Hliddal (Batman Forever, The Aviator). When asked what it was like coming to work with a crew that already knew each other so well, he had this to say...
"A lot of these people I knew, as well, from other movies….The first AD [Chris Castaldi] and so forth. People that I know. And the producer, the line producer [Michael Grillo], is one of my dearest friends. And that’s the reason that I got invited, because Petur Hliddal actually retired. Otherwise he would’ve been on it. Because they are very loyal to people. But a good friend of mine, a producer...wanted to bring somebody on that he thought they would like. And I’d done so many shows with Michael Grillo [Wyatt Earp, The Trigger Effect, The Green Hornet, The Amazing Spider-Man], that’s how I got in. And we all got along swimmingly.
"One of the most professional crews I have ever worked with. In every department. An astonishing bunch.
"But when you’re talking about a first unit crew every day of five hundred people, and a second unit of about four hundred people, it’s inevitable that a lot of those people I knew. There was just so many of them that I’d worked with them before, in one way or another.
"And they will work with the Russos again, but the Russos may be changing course a little bit. I think they may be wanting to do some much smaller projects, at least for a while. And if I can do those, I’ll do those."
The Russo Brothers have already announced their next project as Cherry, starring Tom Holland. We’ll have to wait and see if Pritchett and other Avengers crew members come back for that.
Additionally, the comment was made that, between the two Avengers films and two Jumanji films, he seems to be consistently working with Karen Gillan.
"We love Karen...She’s tremendous, and she’s also directed two of her own movies now. One’s on the festival circuit, and the other one is, I think, gonna be on iTunes. But she’s a director in her own right. She’s very talented, and just a lovely person to be around.
Gillan’s feature directorial debut, The Party’s Just Beginning, is now on iTunes. As far as the other, he was likely referring to the anthology film Fun Size Horror: Volume Two, of which she directed one sequence, or one of the short films that she has recently made.
Check out the full interview in the video above!