FSM Get-Together Photos

I want to thank everyone who came out to our get-together on Wed. evening, April 9th at Private Island Trax in Hollywood. I had no expectations and made even less preparations but it was a really lovely evening that everybody seemed to enjoy. Nowell Beer kindly sent the following photos.

Unfortunately, this blogging software is driving me nuts and I messed up the order of the photos. The second photo (sorry these are out of order) is me doing my best director impersonation (they say if you are a movie director and a photo is being taken on set, point at something so show you are directing) with Private Island Trax proprietor and engineer Michael McDonald at right. We had a Pro Tools rig connected to a projection monitor so that people could see the screen (what I was pointing at) -- thanks to Trax for setting that up.

Photo below that is another angle of the room with guests looking at the big screen.

Next photo is a shot of Mike McDonald.

Bottom photo is the incomparable Jeff Bond. Note: That light blue shirt of his is older than most Hans Zimmer fans.

Finally, the photo up TOP (sorry I can't get this blog software to let me line up the captions and the photos) includes some luminaries, who in their defense probably were not posing for the photo. Left to right, that's Beth Krakower of Cinemedia Promotions, producer Didier Deutsch (how many CDs of his do we all have in our collections?), Preston Jones, I think Mike Hyatt, agent Richard Kraft, Eugene Iemola, I think Chris Mangione, Matt who was filming the event possibly for Headline News (provided there was no news that day -- but seriously, thank you for documenting this, and acting as your own cameraman too!), and seated in the orange shirt is John Davis of Precision AudioSonics who does most of our analogue-to-digital transfers. 

This event was really special for me because it took me full circle to what inspired FSM when I was a high school student on Martha's Vineyard in 1990. Other kids had their friends with whom they could talk about Guns 'n' Roses and go off-island to see concerts, and I wanted someone with whom I could discuss Jerry Goldsmith. Everything at FSM -- from the magazine to the website to the CDs -- came down to a primal human need to turn to your pal and say that you liked something. That's why I've invested a lot of money in the message board and why I hope we have one of the more robust online communities for film score discussion.

Fortunately, I've talked about making CDs enough that I could hold a room (I hope) and answer questions and that's mostly what we did. I've done this before in print and radio interviews but it was really rewarding to do it in person because I felt free to open up and tell some stories and not worry about something being taken the wrong way. After this Q&A was over, people hung around to mingle (I'm very glad they did) and eventually it ended with a few people forming a semi-circle around Richard Kraft (a usual occurrence when Richard is around) for a combination of war stories, bull session and random musings -- totally interactive and full of love and humor. It really was all I ever wanted when I was 16.

I do have one regret which is that the event was necessarily limited to those who could make it in the L.A. area. Growing up on an island, I am particularly sensitive to not having access to something fun. I would encourage people to put on their own “satellite” get-togethers – all you need, really, is to pick a place to meet (be it a Borders or bar/diner or something), post the announcement, and have someone who doesn’t mind a small amount of organizing and the prospect of greeting strangers. It can be weird meeting people who are otherwise mysterious screen names on the Internet, but as we showed last week, it can be done. So I would encourage you to try -- next up, New York? (And yes, I would be happy to host another in Los Angeles.)

Please see the message board thread -- http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=49440&forumID=1&archive=0 -- for more reactions on the gathering and to post your comments. If you were there, by all means chime in!