"It's all in the (film) music": Interview with Lukas Kendall (Film Score Monthly) - Part 2
In this second part of our exclusive interview with Film Score Monthly's Lukas Kendall (part 1 available here), he candidly talks about how to best represent a film score on album, the amount of hard work requested by the coveted multi-disc boxsets, his approach with collectors, his years as a magazine editor and his own general view on the future of film music and soundtrack collecting.
ColonneSonore.net: FSM was probably the first boutique label to set the bar quite high in terms of presentation. You chose since the beginning to focus on archival presentation of film music, i.e. every cue as written and recorded, sequenced exactly as you hear (or you should have heard) in the film, recovering also source cues, outtakes, unused cues, alternates and so on. You put extra care in artwork and sleeve design as well. Do you think FSM has been indeed a pioneer in this sense?
Lukas Kendall: We did solidify, if not pioneer, the standard of presentation that all of the labels now use. I felt like collectors overwhelmingly preferred this type of presentation and that it made sense to give them what they want. It was what I wanted, too—because I was a collector. It just seemed confrontational and arrogant to deny what the customers were clearly asking for in the packages.
We put an enormous amount of work into our liner notes and I get frustrated today when I see liner notes with obvious mistakes, sloppy research, bad writing, and so on. We tried to have the liner notes organized in a clear and useful way and be devoid of mistakes. So many liner notes now don’t tell you anything interesting or useful. They literally read like somebody sat down next to you and started talking about everything he remembered about a soundtrack and stopped when the page count ran out. It takes real work to make the liner notes good—primary research, new interviews, editorial review. People don’t want to put in the effort and/or they don’t know how, and most labels—and collectors—don’t know the difference. It’s a shame.
CS: The so-called “complete & chronological” presentation is now the norm for specialty labels. However, this is a choice that makes a strong argument – sometimes to the point of obsession – among film score fans and collectors, i.e. complete & chronological vs. original album sequencing as envisioned by the composer. I guess after producing a couple hundred albums you developed a personal idea about all this. So, is there a right way to arrange/produce a film score album?
LK: The right way to produce a film score album is the way we did them. It may seem like there were a hundred people who wanted abridged albums, but it was really just one guy who posted a hundred times. I’m not saying our way is creatively the best, but it is the best for our audience. There are some producers who in their arrogance think they can devise some magical sequence that will unlock the majesty of a score, but I find it obnoxious to leave off cues just for the sake of it. My friend Dan Hersch, the well-traveled mastering engineer, likes to say the two most overrated aspects of album production are the sequence (with regard to pop music) and the spaces between tracks—nobody really cares. It’s true: producers like to obsess over these because most of the time they didn’t write the music, they didn’t perform the music, they just want to insert their own authorship, and this is all that’s available to them.
Anyway, I’m ranting. It’s not rocket science. Sometimes you want the source music within the score cues, sometimes you want it at the end—there are subtleties to address—but most of the time the answers are obvious. If everybody complains about your CD, it’s your fault, not theirs. Very rarely would more than a collector or two complain about an FSM album. It is true that we treated our CDs not like albums to be listened to but more like a “document dump” to be archived. It may be artless, but it is correct for our audience and correct for posterity.
CS: I guess a lot of this has to do with our own personal experience/growth as listeners (not just of film music) and how we relate to certain specific works. Recently, I'm finding myself returning more often to OST albums presentation instead of complete scores because of time issues―today I do not have the free time to just listen to music I used to have! I really rediscovered some of those short albums. Sometimes there are some criminally absent glorious cues you really can't be without, but I can see why the composer felt a certain way and I appreciate the tight, more compact experience. What do you think about it?
LK: I think that as listening experiences, yes, the shorter presentations are better. It’s natural that if you cherry-pick the best cues and cut out the boring parts, the album will be better. But then people lament what got cut. There is always that short 20-second transition that is your favorite moment in the entire score that the composer (usually Goldsmith) left off the original album—who are we to perpetuate that deprivation? There is no perfect solution except to release everything complete and chronological, and let people make their own abridged sequences in iTunes, which is easy enough.
CS: Well, that's a pretty definitive answer and I agree with you. Now let's talk about another peculiarity of FSM: the fancy multi-disc boxsets dedicated to a franchise, a composer or even a genre. I particularly enjoyed the Elmer Bernstein Film Music Collection boxset and the Superman “Blue Box” set. I guess all these were really mammoth, time-consuming projects. What were the challenges and problems on these kind of boxsets?
LK: The box sets were a problem of scale. They were a huge amount of work. The Star Trek box set for La-La Land last year was backbreaking, but fortunately we had a fairly large team on that and while I supervised everything, many people did as much if not more work than I did. The hardbound books with the Bernstein and Superman boxes were beyond difficult to proofread. After Superman I said, forget it, I’m not a book publisher—let’s put the liner notes on the Web site. That was not the panacea I had hoped for—the online liner notes are easy to correct if mistakes are found, but they still need to be written and edited—but proofreading a 136-page hardbound book of itty-bitty type is madness.
CS: Is there a title, or a project, you really would have loved to release, but you couldn't for whatever reason?
LK: Most of what I wanted to do I was very fortunate in that it came to pass. I wanted to do an expanded edition of The Man With the Golden Gun when I worked on the 2003 James Bond reissues, but EMI ran out of time and money. I always wanted to release some CDs of music from cartoons that I watched as a kid, silly stuff like Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends and The Transformers by Johnny Douglas, an English bandleader, but it was impossible dealing with the copyright owners. Try telling Hasbro they need to let you do a score CD for a $5,000 advance.
CS: I know you always preferred to work without involving the composers, which sometimes aren't too passionate about revisiting their older stuff. However, did you ever get feedback directly from them? (The ones still alive of course!)
LK: It’s been alarming how many composers have passed away since we started our CD series: Goldsmith, Bernstein, Poledouris, Rosenman, Barry, many others…David Raksin, Fred Steiner, Fred Karlin, Marvin Hamlisch. It’s life, but it’s sad—and strange. We were weeks away from releasing our Shaft Anthology when Isaac Hayes died. I can’t remember the timeline, when we were working on Star Trek: First Contact for GNP/Crescendo when Joel Goldsmith died. Oh, and Angela Morley and Captain Nemo and the Underwater City…there was a morbid period of time where it seemed like we were killing composers.
To answer your question, yes, it’s true I tried to work without involving the composers, because I needed the CDs to be presented in a certain way to satisfy the collectors, and it could be very unpredictable when a composer might object to that. So it was easiest to just play dumb and forge ahead—as they say, to ask permission is to seek denial.
The one happy exception was spending a week with Basil Poledouris and his engineer, André Knecht, to make the Big Wednesday CD. It was only a few years before Basil died and I really treasure that time. He was a great composer and a wonderful man.
In general, if the composer or his family did reach out to me after discovering a CD we released, they were complimentary. Rózsa’s children had a particular objection to the branding we used on our CDs in which the composer’s name is printed in big type and comes up vertically through the clear part of the tray, rather than being printed directly on the front cover. They said that their father had fought long and hard always to get the credit, “Music Composed and Conducted by Miklós Rózsa,” and they were disappointed we did not always honor that. I was on the defensive to justify our packaging and while I understood their point of view—and all things being equal, I would have just done what they wanted—I also found it ridiculous even to be having the argument. I was mostly annoyed with myself that I hadn’t anticipated this objection and had to deal with it after the fact.
So yes, I typically played dumb, but most of the time I think the composers sincerely did not know about our CDs, or just wrote us off as nerds exploiting their old work—which is not far from the truth.
CS: You have always been very open with fans and collectors about the specifics of your work, explaining the problems and the technical matters about releasing certain titles. You also asked many times direct feedback from collectors on the message board about what they would like to see released. You did the same thing back in the days of the print magazine, so I guess this is a natural thing for you. How did you manage this aspect of the job?
LK: I always believed in transparency and it came naturally for me to interact with the collectors because I had been doing it so long with my print magazine. I worked really hard on the CDs and felt like I had nothing to hide; in a few cases where I did have something to hide (maybe if we cut a corner on a clearance—don’t ask me, because I won’t tell), it drove me crazy having to stay silent. (As they say, telling the truth is the best way to remember what you said.)
We have a robust message board and I’m proud of the community there. Because I’ve been doing this since I was 16, I’ve seen everything by now and I tend not to lose my temper or my patience. When people are disagreeable or criticize us, I usually kill them with kindness, which drives them crazy—they’re like, “Why aren’t you getting mad back?” If you just agree with people and say “thank you for your feedback,” it shuts off debate that might embarrass you, which has always amused me—whereas if you argue with them it only prolongs the negativity. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to teach this to Ford Thaxton!
CS: Film music has probably never been so popular and available around the world as it is today, not just in terms of soundtrack releases, but also in concert hall performances, university classes, books, etc. There are also a handful of festivals around the globe. And finally, it looks like film music has also much more exposure than before in pop culture, influencing contemporary filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino. According to you, how has the landscape evolved since you began your adventure with FSM, both the magazine and the label? Does your overall perspective on film music changed during these years?
LK: Film music for me was a kind of identity statement that I made as a teen to differentiate myself from peers from whom I felt alienated. I legitimately liked movies and movie music—I still do—but when you’re a teenager and all the kids are listening to heavy metal and rap, you’re making your own statement by listening to Jerry Goldsmith. Hopefully as I’ve grown into adulthood my tastes have become better rounded, and I’ve come to see the limitations of film music as it is written in support of another medium, and is mostly derived (sorry, but it’s true) from the classical literature.
It’s been enjoyable over the last 20 years to see film and TV music make a larger impact in the popular culture, though I question if it can break through its current ceiling of exposure and popularity.
CS: You have been a real pioneer with the print magazine. You established essentially a newsletter for a few collectors and turned it into a real magazine with interviews, essays, articles and so on. But you always kept a fresh, candid approach, giving voice to many opinionated people. You and the gang were essentially making serious critic writings about film music without giving up your deep passionate “fan” side. In retrospect, how do you see now your 15+ years making the print magazine?
LK: Before I was “feeding the dragon” with the CD label, I fed the dragon with the print magazine—the dragon being the monthly page count—and it was fun for many years, when I was in college and when I had just moved to Los Angeles. There was a sense of adventure and creativity, and I enjoyed giving the magazine the sense of an authorial voice. I really liked publishing interesting writers like Jeff Bond, Doug Adams and John Bender. I was always frustrated that there was never a budget to pay for better content; we always relied on volunteer contributions, and the magazine was never close to profitable. But I am proud of our reporting. In many cases we have the only interviews that you will find with certain composers as they were in the middle of or just finished with an important project, when their perspective and memory is fresh. I have archived all of the issues and I’m glad they are publicly available as PDFs (on a CD-R from Screen Archives, or as downloads to FSMO subscribers), even with the occasional silly and juvenile content.
Within a year or two of moving to Los Angeles, editing the magazine had lost its luster for a few reasons. I discovered first-hand the fraudulent nature of entertainment journalism, in which you are writing favorable reviews (even if subconsciously) to avoid offending people you know personally—not only to preserve your access, but because it’s natural to want people to like you. You also have to “feed the dragon” so relentlessly that you are relying on publicists to bring you stories. (Film composers didn’t seem to have publicists when I started out; now it’s quite common.) You’re acting as a stenographer for publicists and you really feel like a chump. Provocative and irreverent reviews that were easy for me to get away as a kid in Massachusetts were not possible as an adult in Los Angeles—and the kind of serious, well-researched and reasoned articles that were rewarding to publish took so much effort and money that it was hard to do them on anything approaching a consistent basis.
Now that I remember it, publishing the physical magazine was a thankless task. There were always phone calls and emails, “I didn’t get my issue, can you send me another copy?” In retrospect, it’s remarkable the print magazine lasted as long as it did. I am glad that the gang has kept the publication going as FSM Online, although now that I think of it, why am I writing this giant confessional for your publication and not our own? (The answer: because you asked, and they didn’t.) It would be great if everyone could read the articles, rather than putting them behind a paywall, but there’s never been a big enough ad base for a film music magazine. The only ads that are appropriate are from boutique CD companies, who have a captive audience anyway and neither need nor can afford advertising.
CS: Looking back at your FSM years, both as magazine editor and CD producer, do you have any regrets?
LK: I do not have regrets over the quality of the productions, but I do regret not managing relationships better and being nicer to people. I know I am coming off as cantankerous in this “exit interview,” but I am taking care not to take aim any particular individuals. In my unseasoned youth, I was obnoxious and rude on many occasions to people who deserved better.
Maybe everyone feels this way, but my life from maybe age 23 to age 35 (when I met my wife) is a blur. I remember events that happened—in fact, my memory is very good for specific anecdotes—and the general order in which they occurred, but I could not tell you what age I was or what year it was without looking at a calendar. But, as I said, maybe most people are like this.
I kid you not, but I have a recurring nightmare in which I am trying to close down the FSM Culver City office, and I am still there late at night trying to organize the inventory and clean the warehouse space and sell off the furniture. It’s like purgatory. It was a very stressful time.
I remember when we were shipping all of the CD inventory to Screen Archives—I had simply had enough of running a mail-order store—we had four or five pallets out on the sidewalk for the freight company to pick up, and literally there was a blind man who lived in the neighborhood walking down the sidewalk with his cane going back and forth, about to run into five giant pallets of boxes. I think I yelled outside, “Excuse me, sir, we have some obstructions on the sidewalk,” or something like that.
I’m not exactly sure how this metaphor is relevant, but it seems evocative of something.
CS: After working so much producing soundtrack albums, do you still listen to film music just for your own pleasure? If not, what do you like to listen to?
LK: I do still listen to film music for pleasure—very often—as well as an eclectic mix of pop and classical. I am 100% an iTunes convert and love having my library on my desktop computer for easy access. I remember even in college how I would take CDs out of the rack and put them by the CD player, and a stack would accumulate until I went through and put them all away. Nowadays I can’t remember the last time I took a CD off of the shelf to do anything but rip it into iTunes or check the packaging for a work reason.
The future of film music is going to be digital. For years, the studios (wisely) licensed only physical CD rights to the boutique labels, keeping the download rights. I wish they would start putting the scores up for downloads because that way everything under the sun could be available. It would be the single best way to combat all the illegal download sites. The problem is simply one of administration: the studio music departments have been so downsized that they do not have the manpower to set up the royalty schedules and do all the encoding and paperwork.
My career, such as it is, has been enabled entirely by digital technology. I started my magazine when desktop publishing was replacing paste-up. I started supervising new mixes of classic film scores when Pro Tools was just powerful enough to replace a live mixing board. E-mail and Web sites let us build an instant community with our audience. And finally, the movie I have just produced, Lucky Bastard, was not only shot and exhibited digitally, but the entire story’s raison d’être revolves around cheap, do-it-yourself filmmaking.
I’ll leave you with two anecdotes from my Amherst College education. At one point there was an article on my FSM activities in the college’s alumni magazine, and I received an encouraging letter (and an original 1977 Star Wars poster autographed by George Lucas) from Gordon Radley, an Amherst alumnus, then the president of Lucasfilm. I interviewed Gordon for our school paper and he said that he and Lucas discussed how digital filmmaking was going to change the world, and that they (Lucas and Radley) were too old to reap the benefits of it, but my generation would be smack in the middle of the revolution. He was absolutely right.
The other anecdote is that I was in a film theory class with an excellent professor. We were looking at Silence of the Lambs, and I forget exactly what came up, but I raised my hand and asked, “Isn’t it true that movies today have too many close-ups, because audiences are too used to television?” The professor, John Cameron (he was terrific!) thought for the slightest moment, then said, “Yes, but I try not to beat up on historical change.” Can you imagine a more perfect response?
None of this is in response to a question you asked, but my point is that the only way to go through life—and take the most advantage of the present—is to be mindful of the past (classic movie music) as well as interested in the future (new movies, new scores and new technology).
With that, I’ll say thank you for your questions and no matter what happens, yes, I will always have a passion for movie music.
CS: Thank you, Lukas. It's been a hell of a ride with FSM all these years. Thank you for this wonderful conversation and best of luck for all your current and future projects!
FSM CDs available for purchase at Screen Archives