Image attribution: http://getinmedia.com/careers/foley-artist
From one of our first issues comes this week’s vintage selection, Ricco Villanueva Siasoco’s “The Foley Artist.” This compelling short story focuses on Berong, a disgruntled old man who has spent his life imagining how it could be made as emotional and evocative as the movies, without really stopping to feel it. Take a moment this week to stop and enjoy DB 4’s “The Foley Artist,” and you’ll be glad you did.
“Berong lived in a two-bedroom apartment above a retail store that sold pornography in West Hollywood. Because he had spent his life adding sound effects to motion pictures – cushioned footfalls on parquet floors, any number of seagulls and crashing waves on boardwalks, the turbulent construction noises and traffic of a midtown avenue in Manhattan – he cared little for the winsome tones of the human voice. Dialogue would never hold as much resonance as, say, five carefully-placed elevator pings.”
Ricco Villanueva Siasoco is currently an instructor at Columbia University’s Teachers College. He has published fiction in The North American Review, Post Road Magazine, and the anthologies Screaming Monkeys (Coffeehouse Press, 2004) and Take Out (Asian Am. Writers’ Workshop, 2001). He received his MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars, and teaches creative writing at Boston College. He is completing his first novel. For more about this writer, you can read his spotlight on naspa.org.
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