Here’s a vintage, rare clip from 1988 of John Williams talking with Gene Shalit about the score for The Accidental Tourist. I love when people unearth these things and post them! We know how John Williams writes his scores because, fortunately, he’s told us, and his explanation has remained remarkably consistent over the years. First, he spends some amount of time (he usually describes it as 2–3 weeks) coming up with the thematic material. This is the most arduous, unpredicta

Things from 10 years ago feel lame. But things from 20 years ago feel cool. Circa 1989, Star Wars was passé. (It was actually kind of dead.) By the late 1990s, it had peaked. Now, for some reason, people feel warm and fuzzy about the Star Wars prequels—which we ridiculed—and the sequels have become the embarrassing stepchild. (Also, Game of Thrones is so over right now. For years, it was the coolest thing ever. The wonky ending didn’t help.) The Matrix 4 trailer looks super

Fifty-five years, wow. I remember when it was the 20th anniversary in 1986. Getting old! This is from a Star Trek exhibit in Hollywood in 2009, I forget the details. Neil Bulk was there: At another time, I went to the Las Vegas Hilton Star Trek Experience and on the flight simulator–Enterprise tour. Never really cared for motion simulators—I have a weak stomach, and think the “stories” are silly—but the show involved a brief visit to a replica of the Enterprise-D bridge, full

This is a random photo of tapes stored at UCLA of the CBS music library, which was donated to the Special Collections dept. and, thankfully, preserved. Unfortunately, the online finding aid was never completed—or at least, it wasn’t as of 2011, when I wanted to produce a few CDs from the CBS library. When the collection was first donated to UCLA—I forget that particular story—it was sitting on pallets, totally uninventoried. Jon Burlingame went over there and, via a personal

Writing a blog on what I guess will be a daily basis reminds me of the first time I tried “daily programming”—in elementary school, I think in fourth and/or fifth grade. I created, with some friends (hello, Primo Lombardi, Jon Barlett and Frank Flanders), a comic strip called “Bob’s Bar” and envisioned making my own Peanuts, Garfield or Bloom County (I think this was pre-Calvin and Hobbes). I LOVED comic strips, and loved to draw, though I didn’t stick with it (to my dad’s di

There was talk on a Facebook James Bond music group about some of the remaining unreleased Bond music, and given that I produced the 2003 expanded albums, I felt qualified to weigh in. Those albums were done very quickly in the fall of 2002 and sometimes I think of giving a blow-by-blow account...but I really don't want to. The folks at EMI were very good to let me spend more money than they probably wanted to for the transfers and new mixes for Thunderball, You Only Live Twi

From 1994 concert work by Wojciech Kilar. WHY WAS I NOT INFORMED. (It reminded me in some places, favorably, of early James Horner. Certainly a coincidence—it’s the use of the lydian scale in those wonderful string patterns.)

The above “score grid” is from a coverage I bought from one of the script competition/coverage companies, Shore Scripts, which I’ve been using lately from time to time. Their readers seem pretty good, they are not too expensive, and the turnaround time is quick (five days). The blog title (“The Buyers Are the Sellers”) is something I’ve been meaning to use, as it was a realization I had about the years-long difficulty in getting a lit manager. (I had one, in the past, but lef

Our twin girls (they’re seven) have a large stuffed bear that they like me to position in the house for them to find. This looks cute in the pic, I’ll admit, but in person it was a little creepy to walk past the bear all morning and feel like she (we’ve been informed it’s a she) is watching you. Also creepy: you can see me taking the pic in the mirror in the upper left. In the upper right is the signed (by George Lucas) original 1977 Star Wars poster that was an unexpected gi

I’ve added an “About Me” page to the site, with rapid-fire smart-aleck remarks. The above pic: this is a drawing I made of Jay Chattaway’s house on Martha’s Vineyard in the early 1990s. Jay was a composer on Star Trek for many years, but from time to time I talk so persistently about Star Trek, he’s like, “You know, that’s not all I’ve done, right?” He scored films like Silver Bullet, and was an arranger/producer for Maynard Ferguson in the 1970s, among many other credentials

Yesterday I blogged about the unpublished Jerry Goldsmith biography...and I can't say it was a good experience. I don't mean to complain, just being honest. I was taken to task by a few folks pretty hard and their criticisms were, by and large, valid. So I accept it. I appreciate that people are passionate and took the time to express their opinions. You can see some of that discussion at Facebook, Twitter and the FSM Board. Yikes! Even though the FSM board is known for its f