Disney ultimately declined to assist in arrangements for this interview. I asked Burtt himself if there’s bad blood between them since his work on The Force Awakens.
“I don’t know if there’s bad blood,” he answered. “Nobody . . . I was just never consulted or hired to do any of them (after 2015). No one’s ever told me why. No, I was told—on the new regime, I was just told, ‘Just stay in your room and make sounds and just send stuff to us. We’ll decide what to do.’” It was a change in philosophy that, Burtt thought, would “doom the whole process.”
It was a considerable demotion as well. Burtt was deeply involved in Lucas’s prequel trilogy, working as an editor and second-unit director in addition to his usual role in the sound department. “I had a lot of influence on all that,” he said. “It wasn’t always easy working with George, but at least it was one voice. And you could get his attention and have your say and present something and get a yes or a no. But it was just one person you had to get past. Not banks of different people who want to have a say.”
Burtt has a model plane, a Nieuport fighter aircraft, dangling from the ceiling; there’s a miniature cutout of Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams standing in it, waving anachronistically from the cockpit. “Matt Wood (who took over sound design on TLJ) put that there to torment me. I came in one day and he’s flying my plane.” Burtt laughed. “Anyways. That’s reality.” He also explained his decision not to use any Star Wars footage in a sound-design class he taught earlier in the year: “Then I’d have to deal with Disney.”
Burtt told the magazine that he doesn't expect to be invited to Abrams' "Episode IX" or any other future "Star Wars" film, though he did contribute to the "Forces of Destiny" series and a "Star Wars" video game. One possible reason for being pushed out of the big show, though, may be his own exhaustive work in collecting sounds may have contributed to his demise.
"They know there are big [audio] libraries that people can just click and drag things out of and make a lot of noise," he said.
With the extra time on his hands, Burtt is now at work trying to persuade the decision-makers at Skywalker Sound to turn his accumulation of physical artifacts and curiosities into a museum.
“You know that line in Indiana Jones, ‘It belongs in a museum’?” he says. “That’s me. I’m a museum piece.”
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