who signed the act with the intention of producing them. Hendrix
jammed with the group, took them to a concert, and then flew off to
England and died.
A brief fling with record producing followed. "I dropped out of that
and went to the unemployment office and picked up magic. In those days
you had to sit in the unemployment office for days. It wasn't like it is
today, where you fill out a form and they mail you a check. You had to
actually go there, fill out the form, be interviewed, and sit there until they
found a job for you . . . My job was to convince people that they didn't
want to hire me.
"I used to sit down in the unemployment department and read books
on magic and bore all the people by trying magic tricks out on them . . .
`Pick a card . . . ' I learned a lot of things about visual effects through
magic. It's all about illusion and misdirection."
At the time, Okun's next-door neighbor was a film music composer.
He introduced Okun to a friend named Saul Bass, who needed a gofer.
"Saul was one of the leading graphic designers in the world, the guy who
reinvented the title sequence for movies. He won an Academy Award for
a short film called Why Man Creates. He was quite influential and knew
everybody under the sun.
He was George Lucas's
student adviser when Lucas
was at USC."
Because Bass didn't drive,
Okun's job was to pick him up
and drive him to meetings and
work locations. The first
Saturday, he drove Bass to
USC: "They had rented some-
body's apartment and were
shooting out the window to
the USC football field, where
the marching band was stand-
ing by to march and form the
word `And' for a title sequence
for That's Entertainment II. The
DP offered me a doughnut,
which was phenomenal, and
let me look through the lens.
It was a brand new lens that
had just been invented, called
an 11:1 zoom. From where
What do you like
least about your job?
"What I like least about
the job is that there is a
great deal of talk and
waving your hands
around, trying to get
people to understand what it is that you can
do for them . . . People come to you asking
for something nobody has ever seen before.
You present them with an idea and they say
they have no idea what you're talking
about--that's because nobody has ever seen
it before!"--Jeffrey Okun
What do you love most
about your job?
"What I love the most about the job is that it
is never boring . . . You never know what
new and exciting challenge you're going to
have to solve."--Jeffrey Okun
VOICES OF
EXPERIENCE
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