To My Professional Friends

Today’s post is a little bit complicated for me, emotionally. I started FSM when I was 16 (15, actually). Above is a pic of me with Elmer Bernstein in 1992, when I was 17. (Matthias Büddinger kindly took this and shared it with me years later.)

I wish I still had that hairline—but look at those zits! Maybe they don’t really show up in the scan? But yeah, I remember bad skin.

I also remember loving film music so much but in the world of 1990 being unable to find anything about it. Who were these composers? How did they make this incredible, endlessly interesting music? Which movies had they done? And above all—where could I find the music?!?! The local record store certainly wasn’t much help.

These are the things that did not exist when I started FSM: DVDs, Pro Tools, smartphones, and oh yeah, basically the entire Internet as we know it. No Facebook, Twitter, IMDB, Discogs, etc.

I was kind of a smartass and so FSM took on that irreverent tone. What can I say? It’s a character flaw.

As the magazine grew in circulation, it began to be read by composers and industry folks. A lot of them were charmed by it, or at the very least, appreciated that people cared enough to support a fanzine about what they did for a living.

And some, I gathered, were a bit put-off (Jerry Goldsmith, for one) by the fact that they were being critiqued by people who were not especially educated or well-informed or even, at times, all that kind about the immense workplace pressures they faced.

It’s been over 20 years since I was editorially involved in film music journalism in any kind of consistent way. I’ve moved on to other ventures and, the past ten years, have basically lived a quiet life with my family in the L.A. suburbs.

A few months ago, an emergency came up where somebody was retiring and we were going to lose the website (and its financing) that has housed www.filmscoremonthly.com for the past (wow) 25 years.

I saw on the calendar that it was coincidentally the 35th anniversary of the creation of FSM, and thought we could do a Kickstarter to raise money for a new, permanent website with a proper, searchable archive of our 35 years of content.

This is something very important to me, for reasons I discussed yesterday—that there be a permanent place for all the documentation we have created about film music.

The Kickstarter is live and fans are supporting it to my great and everlasting appreciation.

So today’s column is about outreach to those professional people—namely, composers—who would have the means to support our Kickstarter.

We’ve set a goal for $25,000 that we’re sure to reach, which is great, but the real goal is $50,000—that would allow us to produce everything properly, without having to rush and cut corners.

My grandmother always said, “Don’t count other people’s money,” which is good advice. But I know there are composers who are rightfully well compensated and who could easily send donations our way and not blink an eye.

The question is, why should they? Wasn’t this a snotty fanzine by some punk kid?

Well, it was...and because those backissues are frozen in time, they always will be what they are.

Does some of it embarrass me? Well, yes—and are there unkind things we said and did for which I feel sorry? Well, yes, to that too. And I really do mean it.

But there’s also a ton of stuff I will always be proud of: the initiative, the passion, and above all, the love. I truly love film music, it’s gotten me through some of the darkest days of my life, and probably the same is true for a lot of our audience.

For me, it wasn’t easy to be a precocious kid growing up on an island, and not to have any friends interested in the geek stuff that was still decades away from being cool, and (sorry if my mom reads this) my parents were getting a divorce...my life basically sucked.

What I had were movies and TV shows that grabbed my attention, sparked my imagination and gave me some sort of meaning and ability to experience emotion—chiefly through the glorious, imaginative, endlessly interesting dramatic music.

So Danny Elfman, if you’re reading this...and Hans Zimmer, if you’re reading this...and any of the dozens or hundreds of composers and professional people who have made film music their life and career...

For one, thank you for how much you’ve enriched our lives.

And for another, if you might be inclined to give any amount of money—which you can do anonymously on Kickstarter—I will put it to good use celebrating and documenting your life’s work.

So that’s today’s begging letter.

There is, alas, no digified way to write a begging letter—but I have tried!