Interview with Emmy Nominated Music Composer Gary Stockdale

Hello Gary, tell me about yourself and how you began in the entertainment industry? I began playing piano and singing at places like the Comedy Store in Los Angeles. I was the piano player there in the late '70s. Just before that I had gone to Los Angeles City College and had studied composition at that school as well as privately and began writing original music for small projects.

In the late '70s I got to know Henry Mancini through his daughter, Felice, who was my girlfriend. Through him I met Lalo Schifrin (Mission Impossible). Lalo needed a young guy to help him with electronic music stuff, and so I began working with Lalo as an arranger and orchestrator. I did a number of films with him including "Sudden Impact," "Doctor Detroit," "FX2," and Peckinpah's last film, "The Osterman Weekend." I turned his original "Dirty Harry" theme into a song that Roberta Flack sang over the end credits to "Sudden Impact," put synth and drum-machine parts into his music cues to make them sound more contemporary, and even wrote cues myself. I was lucky to be able to work with Lalo. I really got to see the inner workings of film music, and learned from his compositional style.

Through the Mancini connection I also began working as a singer for films and television. For Hank I sang on "10," "SOB," "The Great Mouse Detective" and "Victor/Victoria."

The greatest thing about knowing Hank, though, was being able to watch him work and study his scores, which I did. I don't think there's a note of music I write which isn't influenced by his great sense of melody and his colorful use of the orchestra. He not only knew a lot about music, but he knew how to live, how to enjoy the finer things in life. I'm so fortunate to have known him.

Share with me some about the musical Bukowskical? Bukowsical! is a musical that Spencer Green and I wrote, which we are preparing to take to the New York Fringe Festival in August 2007. http://bukowsical.com

This festival is a great showcase for new work, and many very successful shows have come out of the Fringe, including Urinetown and Avenue Q.

The conceit of the show is that it is actually a backer's audition for an extremely ill-conceived musical about the life of gritty and profane Los Angeles poet/novelist, Charles Bukowski. The story is really about the particular troupe of actors putting on the piece who sincerely believe that musical theatre can change the world.

We will be doing a limited run in Los Angeles Sunday nights in July at the King King bar/theatre on Hollywood Blvd. We would like everyone to come and see it before we head off to the Big Apple. http://kingkinghollywood.com

Who came up with the idea for the musical? I was on an email "group" called "The Stump" which, at the time, was populated by a great amount of Los Angeles' writing and comedy community. At a social gathering of its members, I met Spencer and realized we both had an affinity for musicals. Spencer posted a little thing on the circle listing the titles of a bunch of fake musicals that were, of course, too horrible to ever actually be done. There was "Into Rosemary Woods," "Aack! A Cathy Musical," "Bergen Belsen Bingo," and "Bukowsical" (after "Seussical" - a real musical that also should never have been done - but actually was).

I emailed Spencer and said, "You know, we should go ahead and write some songs for 'Bukowsical'." So we wrote a short backer's audition piece with three songs that was about 10 minutes long. We performed it at a local ongoing performance salon called "Sit 'n' Spin" and it was a big hit. Then we forgot about it and went on with our lives and separate careers.

So a few years later, we happened to play the songs for Dean Cameron, (a friend of mine and the creator of "Urgent and Confidential: The Nigerian Spam Scam Scam," the writer of the movie "Hollywood Palms," and star of such teen comedies as "Summer School," "Ski School," and "Rockula.")
As soon as Dean heard it, he said, "We should do this show!" Well, it wasn't a show yet, so Spencer and I expanded the concept, wrote the script, and wrote more songs. It was then performed at Sacred Fools Theatre in Los Angeles in a 55-minute late-night version, and received rave reviews. It was later expanded to 90 minutes which is its length today.

Regarding television, which productions did you write the music for and perform music for? I did the original theme and score for ABC's "Sabrina, the Teenage Witch," Oxygen's "Good Girls Don't" (Claudia Lonow's very funny show which was originally titled "My Roommate's a Big Fat Slut"), "Team Knight Rider," and "Penn & Teller's Sin City Spectacular." One of the songs for "Sin City Spectacular" gave me my first Emmy nomination.

I currently score Showtime's award-winning hit series "Penn & Teller: BULLSHIT!," and CMT's "Cowboy U." I received my second Emmy nomination for the theme to "BULLSHIT!"

One of the projects I'm most proud of being associated with is Paul Provenza and Penn Jillette's amazing movie, "The Aristocrats." I wrote original music for the film and was delighted to be caught up in the controversy surrounding it. I guess I'm a little amazed that in 2007, the "f" word still causes an uproar amongst the general public - but that word is perhaps one of the tamest in the movie.

Even though it's all about a simple joke, the film becomes a treatise on the power of language and how words themselves can still shock (as well as examining the difference between "shock" and "surprise" and how people react to both). That is also a theme we explore in Bukowsical! We present the peppy genre of musical theatre with the explicit sexual language and scatological themes Bukowski used in his writings. It's a cultural mash-up that makes us laugh. Hopefully, audiences will laugh as well. So far, they have.

OK, back to the resumé: For two years I music-directed Comedy Central's big "Last Laugh" end-of-the-year special. The highlight of that was working with William Shatner, writing special material for him and actually conducting his performance.

As a singer, I just worked on "Studio 60 Live on the Sunset Strip" and have sung on "Family Guy," "The Spongebob Squarepants Movie," "Matrix Revolutions," "Van Helsing," "Prince of Egypt" and many more, but that's enough for now.

I understand that you are also a member of a successful rock band in Los Angeles called "The Jenerators" Could you tell me alittle about the band, and the type of music they perform? The Jenerators is led by former child-star, now writer/actor/musician/singer Bill Mumy ("Lost in Space") and its members include actor Miguel Ferrer (son of José Ferrer and Rosemary Clooney and star of "Crossing Jordan" and the movies "RoboCop"), and David Jolliffe ( who played "Bernie" in the '70's series "Room 222").

I would say it's mostly hard rock in the vein of Neil Young, or America, with most of the songs written by Bill. It's been fun to play with these guys for so many years (about 18) and we're actually playing locally again on Saturday, the 10th of Feb. at a local place called Rusty's Surf Ranch.

Bill Mumy himself is quite a renaissance man. Though mostly known for his child-star status, he is also half of the duo "Barnes and Barnes" who did the wacky "Fish Heads" song. Their music videos were played on MTV in its early days and were some of the funniest and most innovative seen on the channel.

One more question, tell us all about StockdaleSound studios? Nowadays, nearly every composer has his own recording studio and mine has all the usual digital bells and whistles. It's Macintosh-based and I've just recently redesigned it so I can do most of my live recording right in the same room where I produce and engineer so it's very easy and user-friendly.

I do have a nice set of microphones that I bought from Ron Hicklin when he retired from running Killer Music, one of the more successful ad-jingle houses in Los Angeles in the 80's and 90's. Some of the microphones were used at the old United Western Studios, which was one of the major Los Angeles record studios from the 60's to the 80's. I even have an old RCA 77 mic from the 40's that was used for many old radio shows.

I'm so happy none of us have to use cassettes anymore.

Thank you Gary so much for this wonderful interview and for more information please go to the sites listed: http://stockdalesound.com

See Bukowsical! when it plays LA in July 2007, just before it goes to the New York Fringe Festival in August! http://bukowsical.com

And watch Penn & Teller: BULLSHIT! on Showtime http://sho.com/ptbs

Photo by Chuck Ivy