Touch of Evil
By 1998, he had risen to become the Vice President of Sound Operations for Universal Pictures. That same year, Varney collaborated on the sound re-editing for the 1958 Orson Welles film, "Touch of Evil". Welles had been replaced from the film during its post-production, and was never allowed to cut "Touch of Evil" the way he had originally intended. Rick Schmidlin produced the re-edit for Universal Pictures based on a 58-page lost memo written by Welles a year before the film was released. Varney spearheaded the sound restoration for the 1998 directors cut re-release of "Touch of Evil". Varney used "digital processing to bring the 40-year-old soundtracks to a new level of clarity," according to Walter Murch, who worked as the sound editor and sound mixer for the 1998 re-release.