Oscar lives on Whidbey, thanks to his ‘Bourne’ job

Kirk Francis seems as aggressively unpretentious as an Academy Award winner can be.

The Whidbey Island resident keeps his gray hair pulled back in a ponytail and is fond of Hawaiian shirts. He wore one under his tuxedo jacket earlier this year, when he took the stage at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles to accept an Oscar for his work on “The Bourne Ultimatum.”

The gold-plated statuette now resides on the bathroom counter. Naturally.

Francis’ name will again roll across thousands of screens this weekend, during the credits for “Eagle Eye,” a movie starring Shia LaBeouf that could easily top the weekend box office chart.

Francis, 61, is a sound mixer at the top of his profession. Just like a cameraman needs to capture images, Francis records every noise a director might need on a set. Forty years into his career, he mainly works on big pictures like “Eagle Eye” and with Oscar-caliber directors.

But it wasn’t always that way.

The Bay Area native didn’t go to college, instead spending two years hitchhiking across the country and traveling to India, he said. Upon returning to the U.S., he landed in Los Angeles. He grabbed a copy of the Hollywood Reporter and saw a wanted ad for a commercial sound man.

“I applied for the job, and I BSed them into thinking I knew about it,” he said.

He enjoyed the work, slowly expanding his repertoire to include rock bands and, in the end, movies, where the pay and hours were best. Granted, working for Hollywood didn’t mean instant glamour.

Francis said his early credits were on “movies where people were naked a lot.” His work in the mid-’70s included blaxploitation and sexploitation flicks, including “The Naughty Stewardesses” and occasional drive-in horror.

“ ’I Dismember Mama,’ one of my favorites,” Francis said, grinning. “Well, I was getting started. You’ve got to start someplace.”

It took more than a decade before he worked on notable movies: 1988’s “Bull Durham,” 1993’s “Sleepless in Seattle” and 1997’s “L.A. Confidential.” The last led to Francis’ first Oscar nomination and won him a British Academy of Film and Television Arts award — basically a European Oscar.

He kept working, updating what is about one ton of audio equipment with the newest technology, lugging it off to northern Arizona or west Africa, recording actors on miniscule, $4,000 microphones.

Then came the Bourne movies. He worked for director Paul Greengrass on both sequels, earning his second Oscar nomination in 2008. His wife, Leslie Larch, was thrilled. He was anxious.

He didn’t need to be. The movie swept the technical awards, and Francis won his first Oscar.

Granted, his acceptance of the award could have been smoother. After stepping on the train of the model handing out the Oscars, Francis approached the microphone, last in line behind the two sound men who shared the award with him. Before he could speak — just to say two words, “Thank you,” since if you name one person, you need to name them all, he explained — producers cut to a commercial.

Oh well. He felt uncomfortable up there anyway, he said. He went backstage to talk to the press. For Oscar.com’s Thank-You Cam, he said, “I’d like to say aloha to all concerned,” smiled, nodded, and walked away.

“I think in 15 minutes I drank a bottle of champagne,” he said. “It was oceanic relief.”

While he credits his win to movie producer Frank Marshall, Francis clearly earned the award. For instance, during filming, he noticed the ululating sound of prayer being played over city loudspeakers in Tangier, Morocco. Between scenes, he and his crew recorded the noise, later included in the film.

“That’s exactly the kind of thing that distinguishes one job from another,” said Rich Miller, awards administration director for the Oscars. “Could they have made the movie without that? Yes. Would you have felt that you were more in the area with them? You wouldn’t have.”

After his win, Francis finished work on “Eagle Eye” and recorded sound for director Terrence Malick’s “Tree of Life,” which co-stars Brad Pitt and Sean Penn. Now he’s spending time at home on his heavily wooded 35-acre lot in Langley. Outside of smoking his pipe and walking with his dogs, Sam and Rosy, he isn’t quite sure what comes next. His agent will let him know.

“They’re talking about making another Bourne movie, which I’ll certainly make myself available for,” he said. “I’m sure I’ll get something.”