May - 2022

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Lukas Kendall, Writer/Filmmaker/Producer

lukas@filmscoremonthly.com

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May 31, 2022
2 min

The Six-Million Dollar Man Clips

Today I am gearing up for our “hard” (real) launch tomorrow (June 1, 2022) of a crowdfunding effort for FSM Studios—my production entity! Read all about it in Friday’s column as well as Monday’s. Please forgive me as I am legally required to post this disclaimer: We are “testing the waters” to gauge investor interest in an offering under Regulation Crowdfunding. No money or other consideration is being solicited. If sent, it will not be accepted. No offer to buy securities wi

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FSM Studios F.A.Q. (version 1)

May 30, 2022
10 min

FSM Studios F.A.Q. (version 1)

On Friday I announced the next stage of my professional life, turning Film Score Monthly into a film and TV company—FSM Studios. This is, truly, my dream project. And it would be my dream career. I am using the platform WeFunder to raise investment from my community—which is to say, unlike Kickstarter, which is donations, this is actual, SEC-approved investment. The initial phase of the project involves me raising enough money from “my peeps”—they want $25,000—to demonstrate

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Return of the Jedi Orchestrations

May 29, 2022
6 min

Return of the Jedi Orchestrations

People seemed reasonably interested in my breakdown a few days ago of which orchestrators worked on which cues for John Williams on The Empire Strikes Back. So, would you like to know about the other two original Trilogy films? Star Wars Star Wars (1977) was almost entirely orchestrated by Herbert Spencer, who was Williams’ primary orchestrator for many years. I’m not going to list each and every cue, though you can find that here. The only exceptions are: R3 Pt 2 New (the re

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Best of the Blog!

May 28, 2022
4 min

Best of the Blog!

Yesterday I announced that I am raising money to start a film company. I realize that is a lot to ask of the universe! I don’t like asking for money. I have much more fun when I am giving to the universe, and not expecting anything in return. Much less stress! To the end, I’ve been happy to publish this blog, which I started last August (2021) and have continued ever since with daily updates. I don’t know how much longer I can post something every day, but it’s been fun to sh

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FSM Studios Announcement: Crowdfunding Soft-Launch

May 27, 2022
5 min

FSM Studios Announcement: Crowdfunding Soft-Launch

Good morning, world! As we head into this holiday weekend (Memorial Day in the U.S.) I am announcing the “soft launch” of what will either be a flourishing career as a film producer—or not! The “hard launch” (whatever that is) will be next Wednesday, June 1. I am using a platform called wefunder.com to raise investment money to produce films and television. This is different from Kickstarter, Indiegogo, et al. in that it is NOT donations! In other words, you are NOT just givi

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Wil Wheaton

May 26, 2022
3 min

Wil Wheaton

Like most fans of my generation, I knew Wil Wheaton as the terrific star of Stand by Me, and was encouraged when he was announced in 1987 among the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation. And like most other fans, I quickly found the early episodes’ Wesley storylines to be so cloying and unbelievable, it made me groan whenever the character showed his face. (It turns out that Gene Roddenberry was running on, let’s just say, some seriously depleted dilithium crystals, and was

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Unspeakable

May 25, 2022
2 min

Unspeakable

I try not to write about politics here. Not because I’m not interested; I follow it pretty closely. But I learned a long time ago, in catering to film music fandom, that there are so few of us, it would only be reducing our audience to discuss topics like religion and politics that end up being divisive. If you espouse your political views, you mostly end up only talking to people who already agree with you—and risk pushing away friends who just don’t see the world the same w

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Shane Black Halloween Party Invite

May 24, 2022
1 min

Shane Black Halloween Party Invite

I used to spend way too much time hanging out at (screenwriter) Shane Black’s house (roughly 1997–2003, for me). Shane had the greatest Halloween parties. Above is the invite to the 2001 one. I can’t print the entire invite because there’s personal information on there (the RSVP number) and, more importantly, a lot of off-color humor—which is genuinely funny, I have to say. There’s nothing so bad that Shane would be canceled over it, but it’s just not meant for public consump

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The Empire Strikes Back Orchestrations

May 23, 2022
5 min

The Empire Strikes Back Orchestrations

Over the weekend, Jo Ann Kane Music Service put up a Facebook post celebrating the 42nd anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back (released May 21, 1980). Jo Ann Kane Music Service is probably the biggest music preparation company in the film business, and they have a massive archive of the scores they’ve worked on over many decades, particularly for the 20th Century Fox archive and for John Williams. When I was doing the FSM CDs, they kindly allowed me to visit to review the sc

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May 22, 2022
1 min

Lukas and Charlie Episode 10

Despite overwhelming apathy, Charlie Vignola and I are continuing to record our weekly screenwriting “power hour” (neither an hour, nor full of power). Here’s episode 10, in which we talk about the importance of executive oversight and then, in the second half, go over the top-12 horror loglines on the Black List website. I appreciate that most of the regulars here are my film music peeps, but if you’re trying your hand at screenwriting (a very hard thing to do), I do think w

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Up the Long Ladder

May 21, 2022
3 min

Up the Long Ladder

I have a soft spot for this late-second season Star Trek: The Next Generation episode. It was the first time I really started to take notice of Ron Jones’ music. Initially, the TNG scores had left me cold. The TOS music was more to my taste, plus the feature scores by Goldsmith and Horner. The TNG scores seemed small and synthy in comparison—to my 14-year-old ears, at least (forgive me, composers). But “Q Who” (an all-time classic episode) had featured a unique, long-lined me

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R.I.P. Vangelis

May 20, 2022
2 min

R.I.P. Vangelis

I was posting my column yesterday about an old Star Trek episode when I saw that Vangelis died. Truly, this is a far more consequential matter to write about. Words like “influential” and “legendary” get overused but they certainly apply here. Vangelis was a hugely consequential artist in every sense of the word: from his record projects, to his film scores, to his enigmatic rock star image. It takes a special kind of genius to practically invent his own genre—the “one–man ba

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Q Who (or Q Who?)

May 19, 2022
5 min

Q Who (or Q Who?)

The all-time classic Next Generation episode “Q Who” rolled around again in the nightly airing of vintage Trek shows on the Heroes & Icons cable channel. The episode title had a question mark on the script, by the way, but not in the actual episode, above. (Go here for a Star Trek script archive.) This episode was such a thrill to watch in the spring of 1989. I’ve talked about this before, but the first two years of The Next Generation were rocky ones for us fans. We were so

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The Popular!

May 18, 2022
5 min

The Popular!

Yesterday I posted an album of John Williams pictures to Facebook that we collected over the years. It was, naturally, well-received, and I’m happy to share these images. One of the things you learn publishing an entertainment magazine—or being involved in entertainment, generally—is that some things are just hugely popular: Star Wars, Star Trek, James Bond, Batman. They touch people on an elemental level, enter the culture and become a part of it. Put them on the cover of yo

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John Williams Photos

May 17, 2022
1 min

John Williams Photos

I’ve posted a fun collection of John Williams photos to Facebook. We collected these over the years for Film Score Monthly, and many thanks to Joe Sikoryak for curating them. However, anything we’ve used without permission—or with a wrong caption—that’s my fault, not Joe’s. Just let me know and we’ll remedy. Thanks!

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Checking In...

May 16, 2022
1 min

Checking In...

That lunar eclipse was pretty cool. I remember a solar eclipse, I think in 1996 (I was at college) which brought a veil of darkness onto campus in midday. That was pretty interesting. I also remember an A-Team episode where they hypnotize B.A. (Mr. T) to get him onto a plane (“You ain’t gettin’ me on no plane, fool!”) and the trigger word was “eclipse.” Then they’re in a firefight and Faceman runs out of ammo and yells at him, “clips, gimme clips!” and B.A. thinks he heard “e

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May 15, 2022
1 min

Keeping Scores by Paul MacLean

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog post about some composer interview videos I found on a YouTube channel called ThemeWorks. My old friend Paul MacLean—one of the first collectors to find me when I started FSM in the early 1990s—wrote to point out: If you like that channel, check-out “Nostalgia Clipse” on youtube, which has tons of old, obscure interviews, concert clips (and even *ads* featuring film composers). It also has that HBO interview with Goldsmith (but in color!)

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Spectral Shimmers

May 14, 2022
3 min

Spectral Shimmers

Above: James Horner’s cameo in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Wow, we finally got to hear “Spectral Shimmers”! This was an early James Horner concert work for large orchestra, written in 1978 (he was 25) and performed once, by the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra “to a nearly empty hall,” Horner recollected. The whole experience was so depressing, he shifted gears to scoring film—first for AFI, then Roger Corman, and the rest is history. The piece has been resurrected and pe

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Golden Child John Barry LP Assemblies

May 13, 2022
2 min

Golden Child John Barry LP Assemblies

NEWS FLASH: Selected FSM CDs are 20% off at Screen Archives, May 12–17. Go here for the details. I’ve had some interesting journeys in soundtrack-land. When I was a kid and saw The Golden Child in a theater, I never would have imagined I’d be involved with a 3CD set 25 years later (2011) presenting both the John Barry and Michel Colombier scores recorded for the film. This was a very ambitious project and it took a team of us to pull it off. Many thanks to La-La Land for rele

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Jerry Goldsmith Photo Album

May 12, 2022
1 min

Jerry Goldsmith Photo Album

I have posted an album to Facebook of our collection of Jerry Goldsmith photos. Above is a super-rare shot from 1968 we found in the Warner Bros. archives when we were working on The Illustrated Man. Jerry (nice scarf!) is standing next to an unusual percussion instrument that, if memory serves, was created by somebody he knew on Catalina Island, where he lived for a time. As always, thanks to Joe Sikoryak for collecting and curating this over the years. And, if we’ve acciden

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