Thanksgiving 1998

by Lukas Kendall

I have been editing and publishing Film Score Monthly for eight years now -- the first "issue" was a one-page newsletter in 1990 -- but 1998 has far and away been our greatest year as a magazine. It's only appropriate that we take Thanksgiving to stop and give thanks to the people who have made it happen.

First of all, I went through all our issues this year (including Vol. 3, No. 10, December, which ships next week) and made a list of every composer who stopped to talk to us. The length and scope of this really blew my mind.

To these talented and hardworking individuals, thanks for sharing your thoughts with us:

Mark Adler

David Amram

David Arnold

Steve Bartek

Marco Beltrami

Adam Berry

Elmer Bernstein

Simon Boswell

Bruce Broughton

Carter Burwell

Jay Chattaway

George S. Clinton

Elia Cmiral

Doug Cuomo

Burkhard Dallwitz

Mychael Danna

John Debney

Anne Dudley

Danny Elfman

Cliff Eidelman

Stephen Endelman

Richard Gibbs

Philip Glass

Nick Glennie-Smith

Christopher Gordon

Harry Gregson-Williams

Larry Groupe

Lee Holdridge

Bruce Howell

Mark Isham

Michael Kamen

Brian Keane

Robbie Kondor

Michel Legrand

Dennis McCarthy

Ira Newborn

Trevor Jones

Basil Poledouris

Trevor Rabin

David Reynolds

Lalo Schifrin

Stephen Schwartz

Edward Shearmur

Rick Silanskas

Howard Shore

Mark Snow

Brian Tyler

Debbie Wilde

John Williams

Christopher Young

Hans Zimmer

Also, thanks to the following record labels we did stories on:

Pendulum Entertainment

Citadel Records

Varese Sarabande Records

Arista Records, Shawn Murphy, Ken Wannberg & Laurent Bouzereau (Close Encounters)

...And the following:

Brett Ratner & New Line Cinema (Rush Hour)

Randy Gerston

Brendan Carroll

Dreamworks Music Department (Prince of Egypt)

and last but not least, the creators of South Park

This was a remarkable year for us, to cover such diverse subjects. Besides chronicling the creation of dozens of new film scores (from small independent films like Happiness to blockbusters like Armageddon), we had academic essays on Titanic one month, and a look at the making of the Close Encounters CD restoration the next. I don't think film music has opposites as polar as South Park and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, but we had both on the cover. We were at the John Barry concert in London, and John Williams's film scoring seminar in Tanglewood. We told the world that the late orchestrator Greig McRitchie wrote the Rice a Roni jingle, as part of a touching obituary. Plus, we did a two-part buyer's guide on every single Bruce Broughton score ever written, and a three-part buyer's guide on John Williams. (The next one is scheduled for February 1999, to chronicle Jerry Goldsmith's vast output.)

Naturally, these articles did not write themselves. My personal thanks to the hardest working reviewer and interviewer who writes about film music because he loves it: Jeff Bond. I think Jeff wrote over 50% of the magazine this year... not necessarily a good thing, but we're working on that. Thanks as always go to our longtime columnists John Bender, master of weird foreign stuff, and the Laserphile himself, Andy Dursin, whose writings on this website are under the Aisle Seat moniker. And also due for praise is one of the most intelligent interviewers of film composers ever, a composer himself, Doug Adams.

And of course thanks to everyone else whose name appeared in the contributors list this year:

Jack J. Bailey

Edwin Black

Brent Bowles

Jonathan Broxton

Tony Buchsbaum

Jon Burlingame

Jason Comerford

David Coscina

Tom DeMary

Didier C. Deutsch

Jeff Eldridge

Ray Faiola

Nick Freeth

David Friede

Daniel Goldmark

Travis Halfman

Lothar Heinle

Bruce Herman

Iain Herries

Scott Hutchins

R. Mike Murray

Jon & Al Kaplan

David C. Kim

Kyu Hyun Kim

Phil Lehman

Corey Long

Wes Marshall

James Miller

Nick Redman

Kyle Renick

William Richter

Patrick Runkle

James Southall

Robert L. Smith

Paul Tonks

James Torniainen

Laurence Vittes

Jeffrey Wheeler

Bill Whitaker

Trevor Willsmer

Jeff Wilson

Also, Big Thanks to:

Joe Sikoryak, our design director, who has changed our lives

Webmaster Bill Smith, whose work is letting you read this

Everybody at 20th Century Fox's stellar music department, for licensing to us the first discs in our Silver Age Classics series

John Waxman, who provides our concert listings (and indeed, provides the concerts), and always helps us when we have a question

Irascible Dan Hersch and everyone at DigiPrep, who make our CDs sound so much better than the aging source material

Karol Martesko and Tom Brunelle at Filmmaker magazine; Karol set us up with a great printer in Wisconsin (Schumann Printers) and national magazine distributor, and Tom does our ad sales

Leonard Rosenman, who signed Fantastic Voyage CDs on October 3rd, and everybody at Creature Features, who hosted the signing

Ian Gilchrist, Rykodisc Records, and MGM Music, with whom we've consulted on their great reissue series of United Arists scores

Taylor White, who produced our Mad Monster Party CD release

Jeff Bond's wife, Brooke, who moved to Los Angeles so Jeff could write about soundtracks

Nick Redman, who taught us everything we know about producing CDs

newlyweds Jon Burlingame and Marilee Bradford

Each and every contributor to the daily website column; unfortunately, it would be too large a task to go through all 300+ columns this year to list out all of our names!

and last but not least,

All the agents and record company people who give us news

One always takes a risk making a "thanks" list this long, because the omissions become that much more noticeable to those who deserve the recognition. In general, we'd like to thank virtually everyone we've been in contact with, with only a few exceptions, like the people at the Fat Cat replicating plant, who were so inept that I had to physically drive to their facility to take back our CD materials.

And oh yeah...

You, the READERS!

We thank you more than you can know.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving, except for you people outside the U.S., in which case, have a happy Thursday.

MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com