Thomas Causey, a veteran sound mixer who earned Oscar nominations for Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy and worked on four Star Trek films, TV’s Dallas and dozens of other movies and series, died Sunday in Cathedral City, CA. He was 76.
His daughter-in-law Crystal Causey confirmed the news to Deadline.
Born on December 5, 1949, in New Orleans, Causey’s career in sound spanned more than 40 years, working with such top-name directors as Francis Ford Coppola (Gardens of Stone), Steven Soderbergh (Erin Brockovich), Garry Marshall , Terry Gilliam (The Fisher King), John Carpenter (Halloween, The Thing), Richard Donner (Lethal Weapon 3), Albert Brooks (Defending Your Life) and James L. Brooks (Broadcast News). He also worked on nine films starring and/or produced by Adam Sandler.
Sometimes credited as Tom Causey, he already had a handful of sound-department credits when he served as a sound mixer on Carpenter’s landmark 1978 horror pic Halloween, starring Jamie Lee Curtis. That year he also worked as a production mixer on several episodes of CBS’ Dallas and NBC’s Police Story.
By the early 1980s, he would focus mainly on feature films, working as a sound mixer on such popular films that decade as Escape from New York, Halloween II, Big Trouble in Little China and The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!
He was part of the team that shared Best Sound Oscar and BAFTA nominations for Dick Tracy, the comic strip-based 1990 pic with a colorful look and cast that included Beatty, Madonna and Al Pacino. The following year, Causey earned a Primetime Emmy nom alongside three other member of the sound team for the NBC telefilm Fire on the Mountain, starring Buddy Ebsen and Ron Howard.
Causey then worked steadily throughout the 1990s and 2000s on movies including The Rocketeer, the Hot Shots! films, Hoffa, Escape from L.A., The General’s Daughter, Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves! and The Other Sister. He was a sound mixer on 1994’s Star Trek: Generations, starting a four-film Trek run with the Next Generation cast through 2002 that included Star Trek: First Contact, Star Trek: Insurrection and Star Trek: Nemesis.
As the millennium turned, Causey served as production sound mixer on Soderbergh’s Best Picture Oscar-nominated Erin Brockovich, for which Julia Roberts would win her lone Oscar. Other 2000s credits included Big Momma’s House, Jurassic Park III, Raising Helen and Georgia Rule. Causey’s final credit was as sound mixer on Adam Shankman’s 2008’s Bedtime Stories — one of nine films he worked on starring and/or produced by Sandler including Anger Management, Spanglish, The Longest Yard, The Benchwarmers, Click, Reign Over Me, I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry and You Don’t Mess with the Zohan.
Along with his daughter-in-law, Causey is survived by his wife, Christina; son Jesse; brother Matthew; sister-in-law D.G.; stepsons Tyler, Kyle and Paul; and granddaughter Coraline. He was married to Maggie Reavis Causey from 1973-93 and to Katherine Sullivan from 1997-2002.