There's a wonderful section of that interview with Feynman, where he talks about winning the Nobel Prize, and he said, 'I hate prizes. They warp people's perception of you, and the danger is that it warps your own perception of yourself. The real reward is this pleasure of finding out. That's the Nobel Prize that you win.' And the fact that there is something that you win because some committee somewhere decides that you win, that made him very nervous, and I share that feeling. I mean, on the other hand, it's nice to have won it, but you also think in the back of your mind, 'Well, what does that really mean?' So it's nice to be nominated. I mean, if they just had nominations, and they said, 'Here are five films that we think deserve respect for whatever stuff', and that's it. But because it's show business, we have to have somebody who wins.

And so the decision is put down to a vote. In the United States, it's the vote of the entire membership of the Academy, all 5,000 people. In England, for the... In Great Britain, for the BAFTA, it's the opposite. The winner is decided by a select committee of people who get together around a table, ten or 12 people, and the nominees, which have been selected by a very large number of people, are presented, and they, these 12 people, decide which of these nominees is going to win the prize. And it's a silent vote. You don't know what the other people voted for. But the topic of all of these films is discussed.

I actually prefer the American system. As arbitrary as it is, it basically admits it's a crapshoot, it's just... You know, who can really decide? Whereas, the British system, the BAFTAs, are... There's the illusion of: we kind of know who... which is best, and that's more like the Nobel Committee in terms of deciding who wins the prize this year. But having set all of that aside, it is a slightly surreal experience, being up there, holding one of those statues that, you know, has so much historical baggage behind it at this point. They're, you know, 85 years, almost... More, 85 years old, that idea of giving Oscars, so there's a tremendous history behind all of this.

And the fortunate and unique thing about English Patient, where I won both editing and sound, is that that's the only time that has ever happened in the United States. The only other time it's happened in Great Britain at the BAFTAs was also me, for The Conversation, that I won a double BAFTA for editing and sound on The Conversation back in the mid 1970s. So it's... I guess I'm the double trick person. And, you know, I don't see sound work and editing work as being entirely different from each other. They're – to me – they're the flip side of each other's coin. You need a different sensibility for each of them, slightly, but they're both in the service of the ultimate creative message that you're trying to put together for the film.