Former Black Flag Bassist Thanked For Mad Max: Fury Road‘s Oscar
Kira Roessler's Facebook
Ennio Morricone and Sam Smith won their Oscars last night, but they weren’t the only musicians to win. Kira Roessler, the badass former Black Flag bassist, has been working as a sound effects editor since the late ’90s. She was part of the crew that worked on Mad Max: Fury Road; her title was supervising dialog editor. Last night, Fury Road won an Oscar for Best Sound Editing. And while Roessler wasn’t the one who went onstage to accept the award, sharp-eyed viewers noticed her name on the little scroll on the bottom of the screen.
Roessler has had a pretty fascinating career. She started out in the punk band DC3 and was asked to join Black Flag after founding bassist Chuck Dukowski left the band. She played with them for most of their turbulent final years, and it can’t have been easy to be a woman in hardcore in that absurdly male era. After leaving the band in 1985, she formed the two-bass duo Dos with former Minutemen member Mike Watt, her husband at the time. The two aren’t married anymore, but Dos are intermittently active.
As a sound editor, Roessler has 53 credits on her IMDB page. She’s already won an Emmy for her work on an episode of the HBO miniseries John Adams. That means she’s halfway to and EGOT! And when Black Flag inevitably win their lifetime achievement Grammy, she’ll be that much closer. I don’t know how she gets that Tony, though.
Congratulations to Kira Roessler (Black Flag, dos) for winning an Oscar on Mad Max Fury Road (sound editing)
— Tobi Vail (@mstobivail) February 29, 2016
More specifically, Kira Roessler was part of the sound editing crew that won the Oscar for Mad Max Fury Road pic.twitter.com/ppSUMkxJxv
— Tobi Vail (@mstobivail) February 29, 2016
Whatever the Academy might be trying to tell you, Mad Max: Fury Road was the best movie of 2015 by an apocalyptic Outback mile, and it is so, so appropriate that at least one Black Flag member was working behind the scenes.
UPDATE: As some of you have pointed out, Roessler did not win the Oscar just because she worked on the team. She was just listed in the broadcast’s new ‘thanks’ chyron. Still cool!
