Pud Cusack

There are some last names that are distinct. There are some last names that are well-known, especially in a specific industry. There are some last names that bring to mind a specific family. And since “Cusack” is all three, it is my obligation to tell you that, as far as I can tell, Pud Cusack is not One Of Those Cusacks. Certainly she’s not in the immediate nuclear family; we have traced all of those. Logically she must be somehow related to them, because it isn’t a terribly common name, but that doesn’t mean she’s closely related enough for them to have even met. There’s an Irish acting dynasty with the last name—Jeremy Irons married into it—and today I learned that there was a Lady Joan de Cusack in Ireland in the fourteenth century, but I don’t know if Pud Cusack is more closely related to the American acting branch, the Irish acting branch, or any of the assorted athletes and politicians.

And if, yes, she came to my attention because of her last name, well, she’s the sort of person I enjoy getting to fully on her own merits. It is true that we mostly cover actors, writers, directors, and musicians around here. But I do like getting to people in the other aspects of media creation, even if it’s kind of frustrating trying to track information down about them. Cusack’s Wikipedia page is a stub. Her IMDb biography only tells us films we might know her from. And the other sites I can find that talk about her all quote the Wikipedia page.

Because Pud Cusack is a sound engineer. And if you’ve been following the column, you understand the problem. It doesn’t matter that she was nominated for an Oscar—it’s how I found out she exists—for The Mask of Zorro, losing to the crew on Saving Private Ryan. You don’t remember any of the people she lost to unless you’re deep in the weeds of the Oscars, sound engineering, or Spielberg films, either. It’s one of those jobs that is deeply important to film as a medium but is basically forgotten when we talk about people who actually work in film, and I do like getting to those people.

And I’ve seen—or, you know, heard—some of Cusack’s work, too, some of it in the theatre. IMDb is seldom to be trusted for a complete list with people in this area of the industry, but they list her career as going back to 1988. In that time, she’s done such films as, of course, The Mask of Zorro. But she got her start as a boom operator, including on My Cousin Vinny. She has also worked on Captain Phillips, Captain Marvel, Us, and Little Women. She did an episode of Hawkeye. Possibly more than one; it’s the kind of thing IMDb screws up.

And if she also did Madame Web, well, I suspect sound engineers are less able to pick and choose than certain other people who share a name with her. (And Lord knows they aren’t all making good decisions, come to that.) I think you do a lot of working for the people who’ll hire you, and sometimes that’s Loving and sometimes that’s Terminator: Genisys, and that’s not your fault or your choice. Is working on The Cat in the Hat because it pays your bills worse than choosing to be in the Hot Tub Time Machine franchise?