MRH : Are there certain horror stories you find more intriguing than others?

JBL : I love all kinds of different horror films, but I'm a sucker for stories that involve regular people doing disturbingly realistic things, and psychological horror that really cuts deep, maybe some supernatural stuff. Some favorites are Les Diaboliques , Fulci's Murder To The Tune of The 7 Black Notes, Planet Terror, The Innocents, Peeping Tom, Donnie Darko, Night of The Living Dead, The Uninvited, With A Friend Like Harry, the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Shaun of The Dead, Fritz Lang's M, American Psycho, Halloween, Audition, A Clockwork Orange, Amityville II: The Possession, and anything by Alfred Hitchcock or Dario Argento.

I also tend to have a weakness for well-done ghost stories, and pretty much anything with a "devil-children" theme, in the vein of The Omen, even ridiculous ones like The Godsend. Children hellbent on destroying everything in their paths are always righteously creepy. In literature, I find that a lot of classic children's stories are beyond insane... Lewis Carroll, Roald Dahl, and Heinrich Hoffman's Der Struwwelpeter, and I also have a giant anthology of ancient children's literature from around the world, that's fantastic. I also repeatedly re-visit Edgar Allan Poe, and William Golding's Lord of The Flies.




MRH : Roman is less reliant on songs, and I wonder if the film marked a major creative shift for you, since the suite of themes on your CDs reveals a greater variety of melodic material, and efforts to move towards a more dramatic orchestral sound?

JBL : Definitely a HUGE shift. Roman was the most satisfying experience, from a creative standpoint. I knew it as it was happening... it's the first feature I've worked on so far, where once I got to the stage of working out my ideas, there were absolutely no third-party distractions or interference standing in the way between concept and getting it recorded.

It's also the first where I wasn't working a 9 to 5 day job at the time of recording. I was still broke and still had to work pretty fast to meet a deadline, but at least I wasn't at the mercy of anyone else's daily schedule, nor having to worry about any sabotage! For the first time, the recording was pretty much 100% me holed up in my apartment, hitting the record button, occasionally jumping on the horn with Angela and Lucky.

Angela seemed to know from the beginning that she wanted more score than songs, because as an actor herself, she'd been very invested in the emotions and psychology of the characters. She might agree that the process of sculpting the movie further through score and sound design was an exciting learning process and became a great tool for deeper expression, as opposed to slapping a bunch of songs in.

I hope, at some point, to be able to release the full Roman score unedited, in chronological order. The La-La Land CD gives a taste of it, but hearing the whole collection of Roman's cues one by one, gives off the feeling of pure unfiltered creative expression, because that's really what it was. There was no budget, so it was impossible to spend more time dialing in the mix.

But like I said, I at least had the uninterrupted time and freedom to get specific about following Roman's mindset and transformation over the course of the film, getting inside of his head, assigning themes and sometimes instruments to each of the characters, playing with those layers and all the other things I couldn't do with May, Sick Girl, or The Woods.

That's where the increased sense of orchestration seems to come from. Some of that flow was changed in the actual film, as some of the tracks were edited, and layers removed and that wasn't my intention. But I still find that it works and it's still the most enjoyable and intriguing soundtrack to listen to, in full.

I also tried to take aspects of each of the three features I'd done for Lucky and bring them into Roman. May was heavy on plucky piano and strings. Sick Girl was synth-heavy, and my bits in The Woods were inspired by 1960s pop arrangements. For Roman, a delayed guitar is the dominating instrument, but there's musical nods to the other three films in there, too. Angie had already chosen some indie, experimental and alternative country-style tracks before I started, so that also influenced the decision to work more heavily with guitar on this one, to build a bridge between those and the more layered orchestral score.

In terms of my own songs in the movie, some were written as replacements for things we couldn't get the rights to, while others, I used more as a foundation for further layering the score. For May, I had Angela sing on the score, so for Roman, while Lucky was out of town and couldn't record with me, I pushed for him to let me cover one of his songs and I incorporated that into some of the themes.




MRH : What film composers do regard as personally influential, and what film scores do you see as landmarks in horror?

JBL : The main composers I feel were direct influences on the way I see film music on the whole and in the genre, have been Bernard Hermann, Wendy Carlos, Ennio Morricone, Giorgio Moroder, Goblin, Beethoven, John Carpenter, Danny Elfman, Quincy Jones, Gert Wilden, John Cage, Stewart Copeland, Modest Mussorgsky, Mozart, Henry Mancini. There's also musical influence in many other ways from The Beatles, Schpilkas and Lucky McKee.

As far as horror landmarks go, Goblin and Claudio Simonetti have stunned me time and time again with their work for all those great Argento films, as well as Romero's Dawn of the Dead. Bernard Hermann's Hitchcock scores and his final one, for Taxi Driver. The motifs used by John Williams in Jaws, Jerry Goldsmith in The Omen, Harry Manfredini in Friday The 13th, John Carpenter in Halloween, and Hermann's Psycho are probably recognized anywhere in the world, and also left me with my share of nightmares. More recently, I still haven't been able to shake Robert Rodriguez's score for Planet Terror or Michael Andrew's score for Donnie Darko.

MRH : Are there other film genres that you would like to tackle?

JBL : I have always wanted to do musicals. But mostly, the kind of musicals for people who hate them. Not really showtune-ish, but the kind of music that you really put on when you're going through something or get in a particular mood. What people actually listen to and where; when people break into song, it's done in a less unnatural way.

I think it's possible to pull off musicals that are darker in theme, too, than you normally see. Another genre I always wanted to do, was a western of a Leone/Morricone type. I actually just wrapped up a super duper independent short that allowed me to do that, and later, I'll likely be on board for a planned feature to come of it.

ome darker themed animation or puppet films would be nice, too. And basically, a stop-motion film of any kind would be a dream. But I also would love to do more full-on horror... and could see myself doing something where I'm required to stay extremely dark the whole time, with a good chunk of unnatural and unsettling sounds, maybe even where only vocals are used. The Woods, meets The Omen, meets Opera, meets Fran Drescher and Joan Rivers.