putting himself through high school and after graduation, moved from his
hometown of Van Nuys, California, to Charleston, West Virginia. There he
played in a group that performed music and comedy on a TV program
every weekday morning from 7:00 to 8:00. When the group lost its contract
and broke up, Cooney found himself flat broke and alone. "I spent
Christmas at the Midnight Mission. I said, `You know, this whole drinking
and drug thing just ain't working out.' I was 19 years old. That's when I
gave up the drugs. It took me three years more before I gave up the booze."
With nowhere to go,
Cooney reconnected with a
high school friend who was
performing as a clown with
Ringling Bros. and Barnum &
Bailey Circus. The friend got
him a clown job and Cooney
got out of Charleston. Circus
management liked him so
much that they sent him to
Ringling Brothers' Clown
College. He traveled for
another year with the circus
following graduation, during
which time he began learning
to train elephants, "because I
really hated being a clown."
Deciding it was time to get
off the road, Cooney took a job
as an elephant trainer at the St.
Louis Zoo, where he remained for three years. On a summer vacation, he
returned to California to look up some old friends who were in the animal
business. He discovered upon arrival that the business had been sold to
actress Tippi Hedren, but went to see the elephants anyway and learned
they were in need of a trainer. After verifying that he was indeed an ele-
phant trainer, Cooney was offered twice his zoo salary to train elephants for
the movie Roar, starring Hedren and Melanie Griffith. It was his first film.
The elephants did not work every day, so Cooney filled the down time
by hanging out with the picture's sound mixer. "Having been in music, I
knew how to engineer records. I've always been kind of an electronically
technical guy. The sound mixer liked me and took me under his wing. He
taught me about mixing sound and taught me to be a boom man." When
the movie wrapped, Cooney took work on a couple of nonunion movies
as a boom man, eventually logging enough hours and experience to get
in the union.
What do you like
least about your job?
"What I really hate is
trying to get the job. It's
the worst part of the busi-
ness. Regardless of what
you do in the film busi-
ness, that would be most people's reaction.
It's the hustle I hate, because there is nothing
artistic about it and there is nothing techni-
cal about it; it's constantly selling your-
self."--Tim Cooney
What do you love most
about your job?
"What I love most is the actual filmmaking,
the actual job itself."--Tim Cooney
VOICES OF
EXPERIENCE
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