Steve Maslow, the veteran re-recording mixer whose precise command of dialogue and music helped shape the sound of some of Hollywood’s most celebrated films — including The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Speed — died Monday, April 27, at a West Hills care facility after a battle with cancer. He was 81.
The Cinema Audio Society confirmed the death, and his wife Ronna told The Hollywood Reporter that the Los Angeles native had been ill for some time. He is survived by Ronna, son Travis, and a granddaughter.
Known across the industry simply as “Maz,” Maslow spent more than half a century behind the mixing board, accumulating over 200 film credits. He earned seven Oscar nominations for Best Sound and took home three — a record that places him among the most decorated craftsmen in Academy history. His back-to-back wins for the 1980 George Lucas sequel and the 1981 Steven Spielberg adventure came early in his film career, a streak that immediately established him as one of the craft’s top practitioners.
His partnership with mixer Gregg Landaker, which began on Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979, shaped more than 130 films over decades. While Landaker took charge of sound effects, Maslow concentrated on dialogue and music — a division of labor so effective that the two shared six of Maslow’s seven Oscar nominations.
The third Oscar arrived in 1995 for Jan de Bont’s action thriller Speed, where Maslow’s mix transformed the relentless bus-chase sequences into a sustained, pulse-raising experience. His range across genres was striking: from John Carpenter’s The Thing to John Hughes’s Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, from Martin Scorsese’s concert film The Last Waltz to George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road in 2015.
Before film, Maslow’s path ran through rock and roll. A San Fernando Valley native born on October 17, 1944, he dropped out of college to work as a roadie for Strawberry Alarm Clock. He became a recording engineer, mixing Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons’ 1976 smash “December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night)” and A Taste of Honey’s “Boogie Oogie Oogie” before the music industry’s shift away from studio recording pushed him toward film.
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“Samuel Goldwyn Studio called me shortly thereafter,” he once said. “I was there for almost 15 years.”
Grief spread quickly through the industry on Tuesday. Greg P. Russell, a 17-time Oscar nominee himself, wrote on Instagram: “We lost one of the best of the best and so many who loved him are heart broken today. We’ll miss you buddy and thanks for all the memories.”
