FSM Tenth Anniversary Editorial

by Lukas Kendall

The following appeared in our tenth anniversary issue of FSM, Vol. 5, No. 5, which subscribers should have received by now. (If not, write us!) I got a lot of compliments on it, so I thought I'd reprint it here on the site for people who do not see our hardcopy magazine.

Ten Years -- What a Ride!

Holy Moses, it's been A DECADE of Film Score Monthly.

Forgive me if the following sounds like a confessional or a treatise -- and if it relies on the first person too much -- but 10 years represents over one-third of my life, and I've spent it pounding out magazines about movie soundtracks. So, owner's prerogative:

I have so looked forward to FSM's 10-year anniversary. Now that it's here, I wish it was accompanied by a comet or some exciting fanfare, but it's still significant. Flash back to 1990: I was 15 years old and living on an island (Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts -- yes, some people live there year-round). The magazine that became FSM started after I had a letter about soundtracks published in Starlog magazine #153. The letter ended, "Anyone want to start a club? Write me!" Ten people did, and I started sending them a monthly newsletter with notes and information about movie soundtracks. That is how the magazine came to be; everything since then is a matter of doing things bigger, better and more professionally as I went from high school to college to "the world." But since June 1990 my life has revolved around getting a new edition out the door every month to six weeks. In fact only this year have I finally hired a managing editor, the proficient Tim Curran, so I would not have to deal with the day-to-day assembly of the magazine. By the end of 1999 I was pretty cooked from being on a monthly grind for so long.

Although I have not been as present in these pages recently -- I've mostly been producing the FSM CDs -- I am passionate about movie soundtracks, and it's worth explaining this lifelong love affair. My world of 1990 on Martha's Vineyard was very different from that of 2000 Los Angeles. I remember vividly what led me to publish, month after month, a newsletter of information and opinions about this neglected form of music. I was a basically sweet, inquisitive kid who loved the arts and found it hurtful that the world was populated with people who did not. Movies were fantastic because they were a synthesis of the three things I loved most: art (pictures), storytelling and music. In the 1980s my life revolved around Star Wars, Star Trek, comic strips, comic books, soundtracks, TV shows, Red Sox games and anything else with which I could identify. I always wanted to be Captain Kirk or Han Solo -- or perhaps to be the fantastic people who created them. I always wanted to play baseball like Carl Yastrzemski (I even took to batting left-handed). I identified with all of these characters (face it, baseball players are sort of characters) and loved the imaginative worlds they inhabited. George Lucas said recently that children gravitate to things like Star Wars because they are fascinated with power; I think this is true. I know I longed for the power to make a difference when I was just a kid but aware constantly of injustice and inequality in the world -- everything from what I watched on the evening news to the way kids teased each other (most of all me) at school.

The tales of my youth should sound familiar to all soundtrack and movie buffs: wearing out the grooves on records; making homemade audiotapes off TV airings of favorite movies; buying new comic books every Tuesday; waiting in line for summer movies. In retrospect some of the works hold up; many don't. But I always separate my aesthetic opinions as an adult from the sheer joy and fascination I found as a child. When you're immature you like a lot of kitsch or crap or worse, but I remember watching things like Star Trek's "Bread and Circuses" as a 13-year old, when McCoy accuses Spock of not being afraid to die because he's more afraid to live -- and thinking holy cow -- poor Spock. All of the morality tales in things from Star Wars to Spider-Man were powerful to me, and I loved the music as a way to re-experience these feelings.

A Long Time Ago...

In 1990 I literally lived in a house in the middle of woods, and when it's winter on Martha's Vineyard there's not a lot to do. I did not have many friends outside of my family and these fictional characters with whom I felt tremendous empathy. On top of everything else, I was deeply unhappy about my parents' recent divorce. Eventually I grew more and more interested in movie soundtracks but was frustrated at how hard they were to find. Remember -- even the internet was a few years away at this point, and it's a good thing I got into this in 1990 rather than 1995 or else I would have just done a website and not explored the harder but more rewarding enterprise of print. Still, just 10 years ago vinyl was being phased out in favor of CDs, but hundreds if not thousands of fantastic soundtracks were unavailable on disc. Finding any information about Jerry Goldsmith (let alone a photo) took a lot of diligent letter writing -- asking for catalogues, back-issues of magazines, and trying to find pen-pals. That is how I slowly got the notion that I could make a positive contribution to this art form, by acting as an information clearinghouse and a way for people with similar interests to connect.

I don't want to recount the details of FSM's growth over the last 10 years because it would be a novel. I understand why people like George Lucas could be dissatisfied with some of the amazing things they have created. Not to compare a soundtrack fanzine to a worldwide movie phenomenon, but you remember the embarrassments and the failures more than the successes. FSM has been so hard for me to keep going -- at college I used to stay in my dorm room writing letters and sending out issues, when maybe I should have been playing sports or going to parties. In retrospect, and especially since FSM now employs a half-dozen people, it seems unnecessary that I sacrificed so much time and energy being a one-man show. Then again, considering all the ways in which young people go off on tangents to find themselves, I can proudly say I did everything I wanted to do, and the results have been all I hoped for: The magazine has brought a lot of fun and joy to my fellow fans and provided an invaluable learning experience for me as a young, hopefully creative person. I've been a writer, copyeditor, graphic designer, negotiator, mover, accountant, salesman, ad man, database programmer, office manager, entrepreneur, shipper and receiver, consultant, CEO and much more. Maybe I'm not the best at everything, but it's been fun! My life today is like waking up from a 10-year drunken binge and discovering that instead of causing destruction, I created a wonderful little institution that brought happiness to people and is the perfect calling card. (Apologies to drunks.)

Summon the Heroes

It is also time to offer hearty acknowledgments to the special people who have seen value in FSM and donated their help. Jeff Bond not only believed in the magazine enough to write for it, but he uprooted himself and his wonderful wife, Brooke, (she is the "B.A. Vimtrup" on the masthead) to come help in Los Angeles. Jeff is a huge success story -- from humble origins as a thirtysomething Kinko's manager in Ohio, he has written probably over one-half of FSM's articles, is a contributing editor to Eon online science fiction magazine (www.mothership.com), and author of The Music of Star Trek -- which I would have killed for when I was 12 -- and is a happy camper and wonderful intellect. Joe Sikoryak called from out of the blue to offer his services as a graphic designer, and without his help and expertise FSM would have never graduated from one-man fanzine to professional magazine. Nick Redman has always seen the value of the magazine, even when I did not want to admit it, and besides hiring me to write Star Wars liner notes in 1993 (the biggest thrill of my young life) he has been my showbiz mentor and a shining beacon of good taste. Of our recent hires, Jonathan Kaplan, Chelo Avila, Bob Hebert and Tim Curran all deserve thanks for their hard work, and they have my special gratitude for letting me have a life -- finally!

It is Jon Kaplan's father, Nathan, to whom I want to dedicate this issue of Film Score Monthly. Nathan passed away this month after a lengthy illness. It is especially shocking and sad because he was the same age as my dad (early 50s). This year I dealt with the loss of my grandfather, my dad's dad, who was 87, and it is a tragedy that Nathan has died a whole generation early. I am so sorry for my friends, Jon and his brother Al, whose perverse vision and humor I so appreciate. I have received literally thousands of letters over the last decade, almost all of which are sincere, but pretty much the same. But like Jeff Bond's casual submissions before them, when the Kaplans used to write me from Staten Island while they were in high school, I was struck by the inspired wit of their messages. They are special Kaplans and I am sure it comes from their family, led by Nathan. I love my parents beyond belief, but they never knew much or cared about movies; when my dad met Steven Spielberg and George Lucas once at an uppity reception on the Vineyard, he didn't even say "my son loves your movies" (I wasn't allowed to go) because he knew one of them did E.T. and the other did Star Wars, but forgot which did which. Nathan, however, was a passionate soundtrack collector who originally wanted to be a composer, but turned to dentistry to make ends meet. (When Jon applied to USC's film scoring program, he wrote on a questionnaire that if he couldn't be a composer, he would want to be a dentist -- he practically got yelled at by a faculty member, but replied that this is what his dad did.) I met Nathan only once, late last year, and although he was pretty out of it by that time, I sensed that this was a family whose love of film music was passed on from father to sons, the way I bonded with my dad through baseball and talks about politics over Sunday brunch. That's special, and I feel sorry for my friends.

I have to cut short other acknowledgments because I could fill all 48 pages of this magazine with them. The more people you list, the more hurtful it becomes to the people you forget. I hate it when people say "you know who you are" in situations like these, but suffice it to say, I know who you are -- from readers to composers to friends to family -- and I won't forget you. The amazing thing about Film Score Monthly is that it is not a business that should exist. Nobody sat around a boardroom dreaming of an idea to make money and said, "Let's make a magazine about film scores." FSM is simply a teenager's dream. It has succeeded through the passionate help of everyone involved, from paying customers to unpaid volunteers, and if I may say so, through my psychotic determination. But the fact that we're still here after 10 years speaks volumes about the heart of everyone involved. We are not a charity but proof that good intentions and sheer appreciation of things that are meaningful can succeed in a world that too often extinguishes the passions of the few.

The Agony and the Ecstacy

I have one hope and one regret for the magazine. They are past and future tenses of the same expression: that it has not been better, and that it should be better. As anyone who reads the internet knows, fandom takes on a life of its own, and often reflects the lowest common denominator of opinions. Everything has a learning curve, and film music appreciation is no exception. FSM at its best should include three separate things: 1) news, information and objective research; 2) subjective commentary and criticism; and 3) sheer joy for this art form that we love. It takes a huge amount of effort to separate these styles and let each grow: hard work and journalistic skill for the research, sophisticated analytical thinking for the criticism and emotional maturity for the appreciation. How do we praise something at the same time we point out its shortcomings? By keeping an open mind and an open heart; by respecting that many arguments are a matter of taste and nothing more; and by acknowledging that scrutiny need not invalidate anyone's passion or taste. I'm sorry that people have had their feelings hurt -- from composers to fans -- by items in FSM. It's telling that the most controversial material in FSM has always been criticism of composers for perceived "selling out," writing music beneath their abilities in order to satisfy the demands of the marketplace. In turning FSM into a business I have had a firsthand experience in how hard it is to balance artistic integrity with financial needs. It shows all the time in how mainstream vs. obscure we can be with our coverage, and the distribution of objective and subjective content. I feel sympathetic to composers who have written a lot of crap for money; in fact, I feel the turmoil of any artist who has to build a career in the real world (which is virtually all of them). At the end of the day, you can only do what you believe in and hope enough people support you. I'm proud to say that we've had a great batting average at FSM, and we owe it all to each other.

As for the next 10 years, I have great visions of doing wonderful media and art in addition to FSM, which I hope goes on forever. I distinctly remember in 1990 stuffing dozens of tiny, folded newsletters into envelopes all by myself, and everything I dreamt for at that time, you now hold in your hands. Looking back at the last decade, I wish I had the money and wherewithal to jump past the difficulties -- but we made it nonetheless. I can only hope the next 10 years are as wonderful. And as Ed Wood said, "Next time I'll do better!"

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