Alan Decker

There were a lot of things about running Homeland that drove me absolutely crazy, but there was always one place where I felt completely at home. Where I was guaranteed real creative joy. And that was on the mix stage with Al and Nello. They mixed all 96 episodes of the show, and I wouldn't have missed a single playback for the world. I don't want to talk about Nello as if he's gone too, but these two guys, that partnership, was just off-the-charts magic. They made everything they touched better, right before your ears. And Al was just the greatest guy. I never saw him grumpy, not once in ten years. Always up for a conversation about books or politics, quick to laugh, a great storyteller, he made the work genuinely fun. And he was genuinely gifted. We drank a lot of whiskey together. I'll miss that. I'll miss the satisfaction of solving a tricky sound problem together. I'll miss saying to him "Thing of beauty" when he nailed something perfectly. I'll miss all the nights he loyally showed up to hear my wife sing at Catalina's. And I will never forget the toast he made on the very last day of the show, when we put the series' finale to bed. It was gracious. It was deep. It was funny. It was all the things he was. He started out in life cutting meat in a butcher shop... and wound up being an artist in the truest sense of the word. I'll never be on a mix stage with Al again, but he'll always be with me on every mix stage I'm ever on.