Johnny Knoxville's homage to Evel Knievel; composer Mac Quayle; SAG-AFTRA vote

They’re voting on national officers, the president and secretary-treasurer, and also board members from L.A., New York ... The issue for the challengers, in a sense, is a rerun of the merger ballot, which passed by a ratio of about four-to-one back in 2012. But the challengers feel that the promises of the merger [between SAG and AFTRA] have not been delivered. They’re not really saying what they’d do differently, but they’re saying, We don’t like the way things are.

At one level the main issue is compensation from new media, which has been the issue that’s been roiling the unions since the writer’s strike in 2007/2008. But at another level it’s that this business, both on the television and the motion picture side, is undergoing enormous changes ... SAG-AFTRA encompasses not just famous names who are at the top of the pinnacle, who live lives of enormous privilege and enormous wealth, but many middle-class and even working-class actors who struggle to put food on the table and feed their families in an expensive city like L.A. or New York. The issue really is, as the industry changes, where is the work going to be and what is compensation going to look like?

If the challengers do prevail here, then that may give them an opening to then, two years from now, take control of the boardroom itself. So you’d have somewhat of a split union for the next two years. What happened in 2008 is that they stalemated, essentially, for a year. [They] lost a year’s worth of wage increases, estimated at a total of, I think, $100 million in losses, and got nothing for that stalemate. So if we ended up with that again, we could end up with a production slowdown and with an effect on what people will actually see out there on their screens.

I think there's a connection with making dance music, which is what I did with Donna Summer, and now scoring for film and television. I'm applying a lot that I learned as a dance producer now in my composing technique. 

Dance music has a lot of repetition in it. I can't do as much repetition in composing, but I still use that as a technique — having one thing just repeating over and over, slowly changing, and other things on top of it that are changing as well. 

It's interesting because I didn't notice it that much as I was growing up. I would notice some music and thought it was interesting, things that would stand out like "Jaws." Maybe that's one of the first things I remember, that theme. But I wasn't actually thinking about how effective it was in the film. That came much later. So certain sounds that resonated with me would jump out and I would notice it. And then other scores, I wouldn't even notice that there was music there. 

Piano in this show was something that really came out of some initial discussions about some of the musical sounds that were going to be used in this season. There were talks about early 20th Century classical music and how that might influence some themes, and piano seemed like a natural choice. 

Well, there was some of that. It makes sense. It works so well with the images. But what was more prevalent was one of the first pieces of music that I wrote for the show. It ended up being called "'50s Sci-Fi Strings." It was evoking sci-fi soundtracks from the 1950s. It was a very simple string motif that was doubled with a theremin.

A theremin is an instrument that was invented by a guy named [Leon] Theremin ... back in the 1920s. It's an electronic instrument [that] looks like an old TV antenna — a couple pieces of metal sticking out of a wooden box. As you move your hand close to the metal, there's a magnetic field that produces a tone, and how you move your hand changes the pitch and volume of the tone. 

Well, it's a fun, wacky film. The Slasher, the main character, thinks reality TV is the worst thing ever and so he goes around Los Angeles... 

[Laughs] I did resonate with his basic premise. He goes around Los Angeles, kidnapping, torturing and killing reality TV stars and then promoting it on social media. The public supports him— surprisingly, or not— and it turns out that he likes '80s music. So my job was to create cues that made him happy as he went around wreaking havoc in the reality TV world. 

It started with a love of "Star Trek" when I was a kid and I wanted to be in a room filled with all those things on the bridge — all of those flashing lights, computers. And then I got introduced to synthesizers. There was this guy in this local band where I grew up in Virginia, and he invited me over to his house to see these two synthesizers that he had and he played them for me. I was maybe 15 and it just blew my mind.



Ever since, I've been trying to replicate the way I felt that day. He helped me buy my first synthesizer and then I bought another one and I started getting a studio. I've always just really immersed myself in that. I love real instruments, but there's something about electronic instruments that just gets me. 

It wasn't something that I set out to be typecast as. I've never really worked in horror before. None of this has been straight-up horror so I don't know if I'm going to end up in that role. 

I did speak to a fellow composer recently who now has two kids and, in the past, was doing a lot of horror shows and now has somehow switched into kid films and shows. And he says, "Now my kids can come in the studio, cause otherwise they couldn't see the images on the screen." 

Evel is the ultimate showman. Elvis could sing — he was great looking and charismatic. But Evel not only did these death-defying stunts and invent that whole genre, but he was so smart, charismatic and he was such a salesman — he could talk anyone into anything. 

Evel wouldn't ever admit he was scared, and from the people that were around him, they would all admit that you could tell when he was scared. His life was on the line with every jump, so I don't know if he was honest about his fear. I'm very honest about my fear — when I'm doing a stunt that I think could be forever bad, I'm scared. I recognize that I'm scared, but I still do it. We need the footage. [laughs]

Evel did no rehearsal. I think his only rehearsal was to take a shot of Wild Turkey and say, "You've got to feel it!" I've seen people today that go so big or jump so far, but if some people are trying to jump 300 feet, first they'll jump 100 feet, move it back, jump 110, and on and on. Evel didn't do practice jumps until Kings Island, which was near the end of his career. Other than that, he just went for it.



He's the godfather of just going for it, and sometimes he would crash, which was what really made him popular, to be honest. His crashes made him famous. That whole mindset is just like, Okay, let's have crashes. If we ever land a stunt, we're doing it again. And that spirit hovers over "Jackass."

I learned quite a bit in making this documentary, but all heroes have flaws. Superheroes have no flaws, usually, because they're superheroes, and Evel was a superhero to me. I don't want to get into listing the worst things he ever did, because I don't think that's helpful. We cover everything in the documentary, warts and all, but I'm very conflicted now with Evel, because I'm still that little kid when it comes to him. He's my hero, but some stuff's really hard to swallow.