Musings of a 30-Something Composer

Music? Movies? Coffee? Both? Why Have a Blog?

The Spring of 2020 was no different for me as it was for many who found themselves stuck at home for long periods of time trying to “flatten the curve” in the early days of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Prior to this, I couldn’t think of the number of times I’d told myself something along the lines of “I wish I had more time for this” or “if only I could make time for that”… Well suddenly, I had all the time in the world. It was during this time that the blog idea started coming together.

This was a tough period for many cinephiles in Los Angeles. Our churches had been shut. These places of worship where we could kneel before the altar of Cinema, popcorn and diet cokes in hand, were now silently waiting for the projectors to be running once more. One of the things I found myself doing were these long movie marathons I referred to as “viewing projects”. It started as a sort of supplement to my reading of Peter Biskind’s great book “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls”. Between streaming, my home video collection, and places like Cinefile Video & Vidéothèque staying open with curbside service through the thick of it all (truly a godsend if there ever was one), I watched as many of the films featured in the book as I could.

That gave way to my partner Stacey and I coming up with more series we could view at home. It was our own repertory experience with all of the personal agendas & programming bureaucracies removed. We went from the films of New Hollywood to the Erotic Thrillers of the 80s & 90s. We explored our favorite actors & directors. Early on in the pandemic, we watched about a dozen Toshiro Mifune films. Last year we watched all of the Harry Potter & Star Trek movies. No topic, person, or genre is too high or low brow. Many of these dives have proven to be very fascinating in either seeing how a series of movies progresses over the course of each installment or how a filmmaker/actor changes across their filmography.

In trying to figure out how to embody my love of cinema on my website (I never really thought of myself as a cinephile until Justin Hurwitz introduced me to Damien Chazelle in this way), I figured that the Deep Dive series will serve that purpose. Part blog post, part video component (I haven’t figured out exactly what to do yet in that department), keep an eye on this space for my thoughts & findings through these watches projects. Sometimes, scoring work is prevalent (thank goodness), so I may not get to post as frequently as I may want but will try to nonetheless.

My first post here will be a Deep Dive into the films of Robert Zemeckis.