As soon as I got off the phone with writer-director Danny Strong I called Bear McCreary.
“The guy who created EMPIRE and wrote THE BUTLER, the last two HUNGER GAME films, GAME CHANGE and RECOUNT is writing and directing a film about JD Salinger… and he wants a score like TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD!”
I had remembered that Bear’s career started assisting MOCKINGBIRD’s Elmer Bernstein.
“Holy Shit,” Bear enthused.
We both knew Bear had ZERO music to match that description. And we both knew instantaneously what he needed to do.
“Can I get you a demo in a few days?”
Without reading the script or speaking with the director, Bear decided to take a giant stab at it based purely on the MOCKINGBIRD music note.
Two days later Bear sent me a synth mockup of a really strong theme. I gave him notes on how to shape and rework it as a better sales tool.
Two days after that Bear was on the Warners scoring stage with a 75-piece orchestra and a film crew shooting a music video of the recording of his piece.
The editing of the video itself was approached as a work of artistic expression for Bear and his team.
I sent that music video to the director.
Before he watched it, Danny Strong asked what else Bear had done. I confessed a lot of horror and science fiction TV shows and 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE for producer J.J. Abrams.
I sensed he was not impressed.
Nothing on Bear’s resume was remotely appropriate for convincing a director of a serious drama to bring the WALKING DEAD composer onto his movie.
I urged him to look at the video and call me back.
A while later he called saying he thought it was good enough to have Bear read the script.
Bear read it instantly. And five days later finished a new batch of demos (this time synth with some live players), based on several different passages in the script.
In a inspired stroke, Bear didn’t just write the music in abstraction though he had not seen a single frame of the film.
Instead he created artistic videos of those script passages by animating the screenplay’s text against his music. WOW!
It was so compelling to watch the words of dialogue and descriptions come to life against Bear’s emotive music.
I rushed it off to Danny Strong. It was his words from his script that were being illustrated and underscored.
His response was good enough to warrant a Skype conversation with Bear.
That eventually lead to Bear getting a rough cut of a number of scenes. Which, naturally, lead to Bear creating his next batch of demos, this time to picture.
Around this time I checked in with Bear to see how he felt about creating so many demos on a long shot chance of ever getting the job.
“I want to score films. And I am getting to do that right now through these demos. Whether I ultimately get to do the final score isn’t what matters. Writing new, emotional music matters. Giving myself 100% efforts towards trying matters. Being in discussions with a great filmmaker is what matters. Working together on this with you is what matters.”
The director liked what Bear had done with the scenes and asked me if it would be okay to give Bear some comments and notes. He was sensitive to how much work Bear had already done on spec and didn’t want to take advantage of him, especially since he still wasn’t sure who he was going to pick.
I explained that Bear would love to be given the chance to hear his thoughts and re-write his demos to address them. What better way to get a sense of how they could work in collaboration?
Which lead to yet another set of demos.
Now keep in mind, no one ever requested Bear to do anything. This film was already drawing a lot of attention leading to a number of major film composers circling around it expressing interest.
Bear was willingly volunteering to do all he was doing knowing upfront he was a dark horse with little chance of getting the job.
Somewhere over the course of a half a year Bear ended up demoing SEVEN times.
And the director was still not yet convinced.
And why should he be? NOTHING about Bear’s credits and history would remotely indicate he was good casting for the part of scoring this dramatic period biopic. There was a plethora of other, proven composers who could nail this.
I remembered that since the director was on the other coast he had never even actually met Bear, the demo king.
So, I told him Bear was coming with me to New York in a few days to see a play. “Why doesn’t he swing by the cutting room first so we can meet?” asked the director.
Sure.
I called Bear. “Drop everything, book a flight and hotel, you’re my date for a play in NY. Oh, and you are meeting Danny Strong first.”
Bear, being Bear, was onboard before I even finished my sentence.
In NY the two of them looked at the film (now temped with a lot of Bear’s demos) to discuss working processes.
After several hours they finished and Danny Strong decided to join us to see the play and have dinner afterwards.
A few days later Strong offered Bear the film.
He said he was moved by Bear’s passion and commitment in pursuing it. He loved the music and it was working great in the temp. And, ultimately, he felt Bear had the soul of a real artist.
As is often the case on smaller dramas, there was very little in the budget for the composer and recording. The original budget provided for basically a synth package, not the rich orchestral score they now had in mind.
We negotiated the best deal we could which still ended up being a package deal that came very short of what Bear was contemplating.
It became an opportunity for Bear to pay further grad school tuition into his own Feature Film Scoring University of Real Life.
He financially invested into furthering his career by financially investing into the recording of an orchestral score he would be proud of.
Bear and Strong really bonded at the Scoring sessions (pictured here) and this week Bear joined Strong and the cast of REBEL IN THE RYE onstage for a Q&A after the World premiere at Sundance.
Bear, a TV composer of zombies and Sci-fi adventures had three feature films at this year’s Sundance FILM Festival.
And he got there and on his path to doing more film scores through a whole lot of demonstrating what he was capable of doing.
