The Jerry Goldsmith Book

UPDATE: I might be guilty of “worst timing ever” because needless to say I am running a Kickstarter right now, we have hit our initial goal of $25K and I’m trying to get to $50K to finance our 35th anniversary projects. We will get these projects done and the perks delivered on time, I promise, and I have the track record to back it up! So for the people responding to the below on our board, “No more Kickstarters!” I hear you, but please consider the FSM one, we need your support. Thanks!

This is one of the more upsetting and delicate posts I’ve had to make: what happened to the Jerry Goldsmith book project, which raised $171,207 on Kickstarter back in spring 2023.

It’s the subject of an increasingly large and understandably angry thread on the FSM board.

I won’t keep you in suspense: the book is done, thankfully, but hasn’t been printed because the publisher no longer has the money to print it.

This was suggested more than once on the board, but I guess it’s so boring and simple, people didn’t want to believe it?

So what happened—and how do I know?

The publisher is Taylor White from Creature Features. Here he is (on the right) in a goof photo with Douglass Fake of Intrada in 2009, after a film music event in L.A.

Taylor has been a good friend to so many of us in the community going back to the 1980s and ’90s. We have found him caring, dependable, generous, loyal, warm, resourceful and good-humored, with a large network of friends. And that’s why so many of us have been happy to work with him and help him out on various projects. (I did a ton of uncredited work on Return to Tomorrow.)

Taylor’s day job has been as a collectibles merchant, owning and operating Creature Features, which had a few locations in Burbank over the years.

He was able to service various Hollywood names—fans who made it big as creators and were able to track down and buy some of their favorite collectibles and pieces of movie memorabilia.

Unfortunately, the past ten years have not been kind to this market. An entire generation is aging, dying, and selling their collections, causing values to plummet. Taylor had to close the physical store, and was left “holding the bag” with a large warehouse of memorabilia.

So those glowing words about Taylor’s personality...I mean it, truly. I have so many good memories of him. I remember him carrying FSM at his store...complaining about comic book collectors who would see a comic listed for a dollar and go, “I’ll offer you 75 cents”...visiting me one time when I was at Amherst...we have been friends for a very long time.

But, sadly, there’s also a “Dark Taylor.” And Dark Taylor has a temper—which has been unleashed on me on more than one occasion. And that really sucks. He knows this, too, and speaks eloquently about it—but still blows up. Very sad.

So we have somebody who is a really likable guy...except when he gets mad...and his entire livelihood is wrapped up in a dying collectibles market...

Can you see where this is going?

The Goldsmith book was an unexpected bonanza, but Taylor had alienated—and was in the process of alienating—his various team members who had always helped him to get the work done and kept him on track.

He burned through too much of the money and now doesn’t have it to pay the printer.

I was in contact with him during this time as I had helped promote the Goldsmith Kickstarter, and offered various advice with projects he wanted to do.

He had done me a huge favor by handling the shipping for some of my own personal CD collection a couple of years ago. That went well, so he brought me the Brent Armstrong CD sale which we did out of his warehouse. Then I sold a lot of the Creature Features CD inventory, again out of his warehouse, before setting up FSMCDs.com in my house.

You know how back in October people were solicited to give their addresses for the Goldsmith fulfillment? This is because I noticed that Kickstarter’s 18-month project deadline was about to hit, and I told Taylor to do it ASAP or he’d have to do it later manually and it would ten times as hard.

By this time I had already been screamed at more than once—but because the author, Jeff Bond, is my pal, I still wanted to help.

So I prepped all the fulfillment lists, made various printing and mailing arrangements...and it was going to take mid-five figures to print the books in Eastern Europe (as opposed to using Amazon print-on-demand) and handle all the postage.

The fact it hasn’t happened tells you what you need to know.

I feel terrible for the collectors who have been in the dark and awaiting the books. I don’t want to be on the receiving end of Taylor’s temper, ever again. (I had kept quiet in part so I couldn’t be blamed for any of this fiasco.)

And now I’m a little worried about people being mad at me for not having said something sooner. But the donations were already made...what could I do, really?

I just want to make one thing clear: all these memes about the publisher being on a yacht and implying this was some kind of Bond-villain scheme to defraud Jerry Goldsmith fans—it was never that. So I would appreciate it if people would stop posting those, seriously.

It was simply a case of good intentions held back by improper management.

Will the books ever come out? I hope so...but I don’t know. He would need an angel donor (unlikely), or to liquidate something valuable (unknown if this is possible)—or to make enough profit on something else.

He does have a significant number of other unrealized projects, and they’d be really cool, but he can’t be the one selling them, because of the ill will over the Goldsmith Kickstarter.

I always like to offer solutions, instead of just complaining about problems. When I started this column, I didn’t think I would land here, but...

If it were possible for me to take over some of those projects and generate enough money to print the Goldsmith books—of course I would do that.

That’s really the only solution and offer I can make—but I’ll make it in good faith.

Hopefully it won’t come to that, and he’s already lined up the financing. But I honestly don’t know.

I’ll hit “publish” on this and hope it doesn’t turn into an even bigger shitshow.

In the meantime, enjoy this classic movie moment:

And, in case I didn’t make it clear enough, my sincere sympathies to the donors who are still awaiting these books.