Deadline has confirmed that Brian Kurland, a four-time Oscar-nominated sound mixer who sits on the Cinema Audio Society’s board, has resigned from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences over its plan to pre-tape several categories, including Best Sound.
The news comes a day after CAS and the Association of Motion Picture Sound weighed in on the simmering controversy, saying AMPAS marked out the categories as somehow less important “second-tier” skills. And longtime rerecording mixer and frequent Martin Scorsese collaborator Tom Fleischman quit the Academy over the plan a couple of weeks ago.
On Monday, IATSE president Matthew Loeb also called out the Academy over its “detrimental” plan to pre-tape Oscar categories, saying, “Behind-the-scenes workers get little recognition as is.”
The plan has drawn criticism from several other fronts as well, including the Academy’s Music Branch Governor Laura Karpman and at least three directors whose films are up for Best Picture: Steven Spielberg, Jane Campion and Denis Villeneuve.
Kurland has worked in sound production for more than 35 years, including all of the Coen brothers’ films. He has scored Sound Mixing Oscar noms for their No Country for Old Men, True Grit and Inside Llewyn Davis — along with James Mangold’s Walk the Line — and also worked on Joel Coen’s 2021 pic The Tragedy of Macbeth. He’s also the business manager for IATSE Local 492 for studio mechanics in Nashville.
Along with Best Sound, the seven other categories that will be presented in the hour before the Oscar ceremony and then weaved into the telecast are Editing, Makeup and Hairstyling, Original Score, Production Design and Documentary, Animated and Live Action Short.
The Hollywood Reporter first reported Kurland’s resignation.
