'Twister', Composer, Mark Mancina

0:05Jawad MirI wanted to sort of start off with, just, how your career got started, Mark. You know, how you got into music, what inspired you. What has your journey been th… so far?

0:17Mark MancinaWell, probably, I would say, 90% of the guys my age would probably have the same story at the start, which is that we saw The Beatles on Ed Sullivan when we were little kids, I think I was six or so, and, it just changed my life, changed the world, really. And, I played music before that because my... I played piano. I started when I was about three 'cause my brother played piano, and he was older than me, so I wanted to kinda copy him, and I liked…

0:48Mark Mancina... The piano. And then of course when The Beatles showed up, it's all about guitar and I switched over. And really from that point on, I have played music. I've never not known what I wanted to do. I just, I wanted to write songs. I have music inside my blood, and when you have music in your blood, you kinda can't get rid of it. It's kind of a curse…

1:12Mark Mancina... And a kind of a blessing.

1:15Jawad MirRight.

1:16Mark MancinaSo I followed the path of whatever it took. I mean, I play... I wrote music all through high school. I had a band, and we did all original music, and it was quite complex music. This is in an era when, you know, Genesis and Yes, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer, and those groups were really popular. And, I really was attracted to that music because it combined m… my classical sensibility with my pop sensibilities and kind of into a interesting mixture. Strangely enough, I went on to produce Emerson, Lake & Palmer later in my career, so it's very weird how all this... And Yes. So it's very weird how all this stuff happened. But, I eventually found my way, and it's interesting you bring it up because the d… the director who gave me my biggest break was the director that did Twister and, Jan de Bont, and he gave me my break on Speed, which was a 30 million dollar picture, which is small by some means, and he really took a chance on me doing it.

2:21Mark MancinaHe somehow knew I would be the right choice. I don't know how, but he, believed in me, and that really set the stage for my movie career. That's where I kinda got credibility because that movie was, and is still, revered by a lot of people and a lot of directors as, just a real, watershed action movie. So,.. And the score…

2:42Jawad MirYeah

2:42Mark Mancina... Too was unique, you know? It was a different kinda score and

2:46Jawad MirSo what did, what did Jan de Bont see in you considering…... You had never done a film? No, I…

2:51Mark MancinaI've asked him that.

2:51Jawad MirYeah.

2:52Mark MancinaYou know, I saw him not that long ago. They did a, they did a anniversary of Speed, and we did a little talk at a music store, a record store in, at Los Angeles. I couldn't believe how many people turned out for it. And I asked him that question. I said, "Jan, I mean, I ha…..." I was in Hans's stu… Zimmer's studio, so I had some credibility because I was working with Hans, and that helped. But he… they had already hired Michael Kamen for S… for Speed, and…

3:22Mark Mancina... I don't, still to this day, don't understand why Jan thought, "No, I want this guy to do it instead of Michael Kamen." but he got rid of Michael Kamen, who's a great composer, was a fantastic person and composer, and I felt really weird, but I got the job, and I lived and breathed it, and it really took off. And so, you know, when Jan said, "I have my next movie", and I went to... I rem… I'll never forget this. I went to his office and looked at a little bit of footage. And then he flew me to, I wanna say Omaha. I could be wrong. I don't remember exactly where they filmed, but wherever they were filming, they flew me out there, on the set, and I'll never forget it because they had these, gigantic propellers blowing, you know. They had a truck, the red truck, and on the, underneath the truck with a camera, fastened to the truck as it was going 60 miles an hour is Jan de Bont, you know, filming upside down.

4:29Mark MancinaAnd I just thought, "What a maniac this guy is. He's out of his mind." but it was really fun, and the whole movie was really fun. It was such a good movie and, you know, I got to explore some different ways to go, and it was, it was a really enjoyable experience. Speed was kinda terrifying. I enjoyed it, but it was terrifying because it was really my first... I kept thinking, "Any day I'm gonna be fired." But by the time I did Twister, I was pretty confident and, you know, I felt like I was doing some cool stuff, so.

5:04Jawad MirYeah, fear normally, you know, motivates you to do great things, or it completely takes you in the other direction. And…

5:12Mark MancinaYes

5:13Jawad Mir... On the note of Speed, I have to tell you, I mean, I know you know this, but I'm just telling you this, to this day that theme, you know, da…

5:24Mark MancinaYeah

5:24Jawad Mir... And the movie itself hasn't aged at all, at all. It is such a fantastic action film with such a great concept, and if you... I watched the trailer recently, you know, just to kinda see how the trailer was done, and it makes it look like... One of the things I noticed was Jeff Daniels' role was, like, you know, huge even though, you know, we know what happens to his character.

5:50Mark MancinaRight.

5:50Jawad MirAnd it's such a great film, and that one scene that never leaves my mind is the, which I'm pretty sure a lot of people, the baby stroller. You know, when the…

6:00Mark MancinaOh, yeah

6:00Jawad Mir... Bus hit the baby stroller…

6:01Mark MancinaOh, yeah

6:01Jawad Mir... And it just, you know, your heart in your mouth and…

6:04Mark MancinaYeah

6:04Jawad Mir... Even if I know now it's gonna happen, I still cringe. Like, what the...

6:11Mark MancinaYes, loved that and I, and I, you know, I my, I have a 21-year-old daughter, so when she was about 16, I showed her Speed and, I hadn't seen it forever, you know? And yeah, I felt the same way. I felt like, man, this really holds up. It's really fun. I love the elevator sequence. To start that movie with that whole elevator thing is so... And talk of the bus, right? It's a still thing. It's a, it's thing…

6:38Jawad MirYeah

6:38Mark Mancina... That's stuck, whereas the bus c… is going. So it's like…

6:41Jawad MirYeah

6:41Mark Mancina... It was such a great way to start the movie.

6:46Jawad MirYeah. And…

6:48Mark MancinaYeah

6:48Jawad Mir... Mark, how did you, before... Let's go back a little bit before Speed. You know, you were working with Hans. How did you work on his team or on, or in his office, or whatever that was?

7:01Mark MancinaYeah.

7:01Jawad MirHow did you s… you know, make that transition into the score world, in the, in Z… Hans Zimmer's world?

7:06Mark MancinaWell, what happened, so I was, I had a little studio in my house, very small, and I was always wr… as I told you, since I was 12, I was writing songs, so I always had material. I still have, CDs full of my music recorded in garages with bands, and I have all of it. I, it's amazing I still have it, but... By that time I was, you know, writing for, myself as an artist, and I had an LA producer, his name was, his name is John Van Tongeren, and his buddy was a fellow named Jay Rifkin. And Jay was an engineer, and Jay came over to mix my music, and he liked it, and he was impressed with it, and he said, "Have you ever written any instrumental music?" Well, yes, 'cause I was doing documentaries, so I had a lot of instrumental music and I had one particular demo that I did that was really quite strong.

8:08Mark MancinaI think, it was one of my better demos. And he said, "Could I have it?" And so I gave it to Jay, but I didn't know that Jay was partners with Hans Zimmer. And I didn't even know who Hans Zimmer was.

8:19Jawad MirRight.

8:19Mark MancinaSo when he said he was partners with him, I was like, "I don't know." I thought he was talking about the composer that wrote Miami Vice, but that's a different person. Next thing, I got a phone call from Hans, and he said, "Bring your, bring your equipment to my studio." So I just had like, you know, I could fit it in my trunk, you know? And I had an old Buick, and I drove up to his place in Santa Monica and, unloaded my stuff and set up, and I think it was Billy Idol coming in and Billy and I worked on a song for Days of Thunder.

8:50Mark MancinaI think that's where, I think that's where it started. And then, you know, and then Hans would ask me to do commercials or ask me to work on a series or ask me... And I would do some of it at my house, and then I would sometimes bring my stuff in and do it at his place. Eventually I worked on a movie called True Romance.

9:09Jawad MirYes.

9:09Mark MancinaAnd True Romance is kind of what turned on Jan de Bont. He heard some cues from that and thought they were really cool, and those were my cues. So, I think that's, kinda helped Jan, with Speed.

9:24Jawad MirGot it

9:24Mark Mancina... But you see, at the same time, I had a parallel career. I was also producing and writing songs for other artists. So I had written a song for Yes, and I co-produced that, and then I wrote a song for Emerson, Lake & Palmer, and I moved to England and produced their entire album for a year and a half. So…

9:41Jawad MirOh, wow

9:42Mark Mancina... I kinda had the scoring thing going and the song producing thing going. So it only seemed natural that one of the first big breaks, besides Speed, was The Lion King, because that, the first movie, Hans asked me to do the songs. He asked me to arrange and produce…

10:00Jawad MirYeah

10:00Mark Mancina... Because the songs weren't sounding African. They were Elton songs, and they didn't really have a lot to do with an African feeling.

10:07Jawad MirRight.

10:07Mark MancinaSo and Hans felt that I could do that because he had listened to other stuff that I did, so

10:13Jawad MirOkay

10:13Mark Mancina... Speed and Lion King ca… came out around the same time.

10:17Jawad MirYeah.

10:18Mark MancinaSo that was a good jumping off point, you know?

10:23Jawad MirYes, and I ju… I mean, '80s was a great era for films and 70s and 60s. '80s was the beginning in my view, and please tell me if I'm wrong because you're the expert, '80s was the era of maybe slowly the very beginning of musical scores kinda coming into play, like Back to the Future, E.T., you know, John Williams stuff. But '90s, you know, especially with the film like The Rock, Speed, Twister, The Lion King, the scores became, like I, that's how I got into scores. Like, I think the album that guided me into scores was Last of Mohicans. And

10:58Mark MancinaOh, yeah. Trevor Jones, right?

10:59Jawad MirYeah. To this day, I listen to that, 1492, Twister, Speed, The Rock, Tarzan…

11:07Mark MancinaYeah

11:07Jawad Mir... Which you also did. You know, there's some great soundtracks, and I think that '90s era built a very strong fan base for score lovers. Would you say that's something that you witnessed, too?

11:19Mark MancinaWell, yeah. Well, I would say that, see, I think that scores, let's just go back to, you know, '50s, '60s, you know, scores were really based a lot more on jazz, which was the, mo… more of a flavor of early, earlier times. And when you get into the '60s and the, and all the rock music, when they would do a rock score, it was never good, you know? It just didn't, it just didn't work. Like a, you know,.. So that never worked, and I think then in the '70s, especially with John Williams, he realized, you know, a great theme, transcends, the movies. I mean, you walk…

11:58Jawad MirRight

11:58Mark Mancina... Out of the theater singing the theme. So that was the '70s and all of that, and then I think what happened is technology kind of made it so that guys like me and guys like Hans, who were… Song guys, score guys, but song guys and had come from a pop world could kinda transfer into kind of a score world with thematic music that's, that's memorable, and accessible. And it wasn't really based on, you know, it wasn't rock music, and it wasn't jazz, you know? It was, maybe simpler than that or maybe, more accessible than that. I'm not really sure, but…

12:45Jawad MirYeah

12:45Mark Mancina... Kinda became its own thing.

12:47Jawad MirWell, one thing, unique thing about the '90s era, let's focus on your work, right? Like, the,.. And I'm, I'm not a music expert. I know when I hear great music. I'm a filmmaker myself.

13:01Mark MancinaYeah.

13:01Jawad MirBut the f… the element of using drums, right? Like, you use it in Tarzan quite a bit. I don't know what the right terminology is, but the, it was just something fresh, and I think that makes sense now that the el… you guys are coming from that world of pop and songs, and you brought that in a, in an ori… organic way. It wasn't any intention. That's just who you were. And that, I think that clicked. And the, obviously the notes and the theme, you know, that... And the thing is, a lot of soundtracks have great themes, but they don't have good soundtracks. The thing with Speed and Twister, you know, Lion King, Tarzan, all these, you can listen to the soundtrack entire day. Like, it's the whole th… Bad Boys II, which you did. A… and that's, that's remarkable. So I just wanted to mention that, you know, the entire soundtrack is something you can s… listen to while driving or s… you know, going on a flight or something.

13:57Mark MancinaYou know, I don't remember who told me this, and I mean, it might have been... I don't know who told me this, but I remember early on somebody told me, it wasn't Zimmer, i… because, it was, if you can create a soundtrack that makes the movie better, and yet the soundtrack can live on its own away from the movie, then you've really hit it out of the park. And, I think that's really true, and I think that, I think in a lot of areas that's gone. A… because wh… what's happened is, there's been a stray away from thematic film scores or thematic scores, and more like…

14:37Jawad MirYeah

14:37Mark Mancina... Mood and more like a vibe, which is great. A mood is great. But when you take the music away from the film, it's just, there's nothing there really. It's just kind of something where you kinda go, "Okay. Well, it's okay."

14:50Jawad MirYeah.

14:50Mark MancinaAnd I call it wallpaper, and I don't mean wallpaper in a bad way because I've done it, too. It's just, it's a different type of approach, and I've always had the approach, you know, I'm a songwriter. So for me, I love being able to take, for instance, the... If you listen to the overture to Speed, the opening, it sound, the drums sound like something Phil Collins would have done. I played it, but, you know, I'm a, I grew up on Phil Collins.

15:17Jawad MirYeah.

15:18Mark MancinaI saw Phil Collins when he was, when he was 21 years old, I s… when I was a kid. And, I knew that style, so I was able to put that into the score of Speed, you know, and kinda cross... And I hadn't even worked with Phil yet. So, it's, yeah, and that influence, I think, that we all had from, let's say, Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel and Phil Col…, all these people kinda…

15:42Jawad MirYeah

15:42Mark Mancina... Helped shape that landscape.

15:45Jawad MirAnd one thing I wanted to comment on, you were talking about, like, the soundtrack living forever, right? You know, longer than, you can listen to it on its own. You know, it's, when I first was, when I first fell in love with movie scores, and I'm just gonna talk about specifically Twister and Speed, you know, I would listen to it on a cassette, you know, back in the day.

16:05Mark MancinaYeah.

16:05Jawad MirAnd literally, like, I would put the Speed theme on, and I would just visualize myself, you know, sitting on a bus…... And trying, and trying to go through all these hurdles and stuff. And same thing with Twister, the, there's a sh… a lot of shots in Twister like that where, because it's all shot in, like, a farm area, so you have this aerial shot from, you know, here's a road. It goes over…

16:28Mark MancinaYeah

16:28Jawad Mir... All these crops. And I would look at these, I was driving these farms area, and I would try to visualize while the music was playing. And that's, that to me, like you said, that to me is a soundtrack that lives forever. Like, you're, you're trying to mimic it yourself in your head, and you're trying to come up with these, visuals. So, you know, kudos to you for the work that you have done. Huge fan of your work.

16:49Mark MancinaThank you.

16:49Jawad MirJust wanted to mention that. Yeah.

16:51Mark MancinaThank you. I did talk to somebody, a while ago in Europe, that interviewed me, and he recorded one of my scores that didn't used to be available on, the score wasn't available. It is now, but it wasn't for e…... And he recorded it from the, from the TV on a cassette, and he's listened to it, like, every day for, like, I don't know, 20, 30 years, whatever it is.

17:18Jawad MirYeah.

17:18Mark MancinaAnd it cracked me up 'cause I thought, "Wow, I've gotta get you the, just the, just the score, you know, the recorded score so that you don't have to listen to all the dialogue and everything," you know?

17:26Jawad MirAnd you know, I used to do the same thing. I had a tape recorder that I would put right next to the TV speaker. And without the dialogue, wherever the music were, I would record it, because Twister soundtrack wasn't available for the longest time.

17:38Mark MancinaYeah. It wasn't.

17:39Jawad MirAnd now it's on YouTube. I mean, you can listen to the whole thing on YouTube.

17:43Mark MancinaYeah.

17:43Jawad MirBut yeah, you just hear, like, you know, even the audio quality wouldn't be that good, but that's what it was. Like, that's how you could listen to the music.

17:50Mark MancinaYeah.

17:51Jawad MirRight?

17:51Mark MancinaRight.

17:51Jawad MirAnd

17:51Mark MancinaRight

17:52Jawad Mir... But.

17:53Mark MancinaRight.

17:53Jawad MirBut, g… going on with your, with the conversation, how do you... What's the process for coming up with a theme or just a track? Let's talk about theme. Like, what, how do you get into that? Like, you know, for example, you got handed over Twister. "Okay, you know, here you go. Let's come up with something." Like, what steps do you go through to come up with a theme to start off with?

18:15Mark MancinaAnd every, you know, every movie's different, right? So for instance, you know, a movie like Training Day, I don't sit down and say, "Okay, what's gonna be my theme to Training Day?" Because Training Day is such a dark movie. And it does have a theme, but it's, it's a, it's a mood theme. And, it's not, it's not three notes or four notes like Speed is, you know? And Twister kinda had two sides to it. It had the wheat fields, which was what you were talking about, and that's a very exciting, uplifting theme.

18:51Mark MancinaYou know, dare I say Aaron Copland, because I'm a huge fan of Aaron Copland, and I'm nowhere near the composer that Aaron Copland was. But, you know, that Americana feeling that he invented, I grabbed a little bit of that in that theme.

19:11Jawad MirYeah

19:11Mark Mancina... But, you know, again, that is only there that time, another time, when they're, when they're running and getting stuff ready, and then at the very end played very romantically.

19:25Jawad MirYeah.

19:25Mark MancinaIt wasn't a theme that plays everywhere, obviously, because there's so much tragedy that happens.

19:29Jawad MirYeah.

19:30Mark MancinaSo the other side of it was those big, thunderous chord changes, very slow, with the choral, the choral being the voices being the tornado.

19:40Jawad MirYeah.

19:40Mark MancinaAnd, that was the LA Master Chorale. And so that concept for me was, okay, this thing is spinning, and everything's going everywhere, so rather than the music doing that, I'm gonna do big, long, ominous... Like, during the drive-in, right?

19:56Mark MancinaBig, ominous chords to go with his ax going, you know? And that was really fun, 'cause it's really fun to do, you know, we say, play against the picture, so kind of do the opposite of what the picture's doing, you know? If something's happening…

20:10Jawad MirYeah

20:10Mark Mancina... Really quickly, play something really slow, you know, that kind of a concept.

20:15Jawad MirRight. And do you come up with the theme... I know every film is different, I would imagine so. Like, is it sometimes before the film even goes into production or in the production, or do you like to see the visuals to inspire you, or something like that?

20:28Mark MancinaWell, with l… live action I like to see the visuals, but with animation you normally get, you know, still shots. Like, you don't get the film, so you don't know the movement and the color. You don't know what the colors are gonna be. And that's really tough.

20:42Jawad MirYeah.

20:42Mark MancinaBut I can tell you, like, a r… just, like, you can just see how, cheap my ideas are. But, so Speed, bum, right? Like four notes. And, when they hired me to do Bad Boys, of course they wanted Speed. So they had temped the entire movie with the score from Speed, which drove me crazy, 'cause every time I saw Will Smith running they had bum. You know, I'm going, "No, I can't," you know? So my theme was bum, ba, which is basically…

21:14Jawad MirI've noticed that, yeah

21:15Mark Mancina... Basically upside down, right?

21:17Jawad MirYeah.

21:17Mark MancinaSpeed theme upside down. But, you know, it worked. And, what I was really happy about is I saw, right before COVID I saw Bad Boys 3.

21:26Jawad MirOkay.

21:27Mark MancinaAnd it starts with my themes, and the, my themes are throughout that movie, from the original Bad Boys.

21:32Jawad MirOh.

21:33Mark MancinaI didn't do it, but, it's really cool that they, that Bruckheimer wanted to hold onto that as a s… as a signature, which is cool. 'Cause as soon as you hear that, dun, you know it's Bad Boys, you know? You just kinda go, "Oh, yeah."

21:51Jawad MirYeah. I'm glad you brought that up, because I was gonna ask you that there's very much similarities in the Bad Boys and…

21:57Mark MancinaThat's why

21:57Jawad Mir... Speed.

21:59Mark MancinaI stole from myself.

22:00Jawad MirSo…

22:00Mark MancinaThat's okay. Yeah

22:01Jawad Mir... It makes, it makes... And I think a lot of composers, and even filmmakers, you know, there's a lot of uniqueness in every project that we do, but also some things that just never leave us even if we try to. It's just, it just kind of embeds in the, in us, right? And when you have done the score or the first draft of the score, what's, what's the process? Like, does the, you sit with director like Jan de Bont or, Michael Bay, you know, just to kinda go through it, and does he give you notes, or what's that like?

22:35Mark MancinaYeah. It's a, it's a, it's, it's awful really, 'cause, I mean, you're, you know, you work... You're gonna play them maybe two to three scenes that are maybe two minutes each… ... That you've worked on for a week and a half, whatever it is. And depending on who you're working with, and depending on who's involved and who has a voice, th… the meeting can go great, it can go south. It, you know, with Michael Bay it would go south all the time. W… with Jan it was great, and Jan had some great ideas. I'll tell you one great idea Jan had.

23:15Jawad MirSure.

23:15Mark MancinaOkay. So, the melody from Speed is in a minor key. Dee, da, dee, da, dee, da, dee, da, dee, da. Right?

23:29Jawad MirYeah.

23:30Mark MancinaSo I did that when the, when he rescues Sandy Bullock, out of the bus i… on the, on the little cart and they go flying.

23:39Jawad MirYeah. Yeah.

23:39Mark MancinaSo I went right to da in the minor key, and I thought it was great. And Jan came in and he said, "I don't know." And I go, "What do you mean you don't know? That's the theme to our movie." And he goes, "I know, but it doesn't have, it doesn't have any joy. It doesn't have any release." And I was like, "No, you're crazy." And then he left, and I sat there going, "He's wrong, he's wrong." And then I went, "Wait a minute, he's right. All I have to do is put that into a major key. All I have to do is rather than play it in E minor, play it in the relative major, which is G major. Keep the theme exactly the same…

24:20Mark Mancina... But play the major chords under it," which it's a whole different thing, man. And when you see that scene, still gives me chills, 'cause it's just so right, you know, that we finally went into this beautiful…... Major, like heroic part of that theme.

24:35Jawad MirYeah.

24:35Mark MancinaSo, you know, sometimes, you know, you get notes and you think, "You guys are nuts," but then you look at it and they could be right. So it's a tough one. And then, you know, a lot of the times it's not just the director. It might be the director and two producers and a music editor, and they all have a, an opinion.

24:52Jawad MirEverybody…

24:52Mark MancinaSo one guy says, "It's too fast, too slow, it's too this." You know, it kinda depends also, you know, on the trust because when you're working with people that trust you, they tend to think that you know better. And when you're working with people that are like, "I don't know about this guy, this Mancina guy, I don't know about this guy," the whole time it's just awful, you know?

25:12Jawad MirYeah.

25:12Mark Mancina'Cause they're just doubting you the whole way.

25:16Jawad MirAnd I'm glad you mentioned that, right? Because that happens in every form of creative arts. Like e… you know, even myself as a director and in documentary films, when I'm talking to potential, you know, investors or even producers or anything like that, sometimes people just give you full trust, and those are the people, at least me, I find that I want to make sure that I do justice to. Like, I get more motivated to…

25:42Mark MancinaYou wanna do good work for 'em

25:44Jawad Mir... Y… you're right, because they trust you, they put faith in you. Not saying that others don't, that you don't, sometimes that there's an exception to that, but there's not, it's just not the same thing. And I, and I feel that's why it's so important to, you know, have your say, but at the same time, put trust. If you've hired someone, there's a reason you must have hired them.

26:02Mark MancinaI agr… I agree. And it's so frustrating when they don't, because you're kinda like, "Well, what'd you hire me for?" You know?

26:08Jawad MirYeah.

26:08Mark MancinaOr if they want you to copy a score from somebody else and you're just going, "Well, why don't you hire him? But you know, don't hire me to do that."

26:17Jawad MirDoes that happen without naming names?

26:18Mark MancinaBut talking about that,.. Oh, sure. Well, Michael Bay's a pr… a prime example of that.

26:25Jawad MirOkay.

26:26Mark MancinaI just, I never could connect with him. I thought Bad Boys 1 was a killer score, and I remember him saying to me, "Why does everybody talk about the music for the foot chase? It's not that great." I was like, "That's just not something that you would say to me. That's a weird thing to say to me." But anyway, there's a lot of great people out there. I've, you know, I've, I've worked with people that are really wonderful too. Like I said, with Jan, you know, give me a really great idea, and let me run with it. I just did a movie with Chris Williams. I've done two movies with Chris. One w… was Moana, and then the last one was The Sea Beast, and, really difficult stuff, but not difficult because he's difficult. Difficult because he's smart, and he has a vision, and we try to line up, and it's hard to line up with music sometimes. But it was never insulting. It was never, you know, "This is garbage," or anything like that.

27:25Jawad MirYeah. Does it worry you if ever you did a track or a soundtrack or a theme and the director came up to you, said, "Okay, you know, throughout the soundtrack, okay, this is great." Like, not questioning you. Like, does that worry you, or do you question yourself if nobody questions you? Does that ever happen?

27:43Mark MancinaYou know, I worked with,.. Oh, gosh, his name just went out of my head. I can't believe this. Joe Rubin.

27:50Jawad MirRubin.

27:50Mark MancinaJoseph Rubin.

27:52Jawad MirOkay.

27:52Mark MancinaI did, I did Money Train. I did... Oh, you know what? I've done three movies with him. I did Money Train, I did Return to Paradise, which was a really good movie that most people have not seen.

28:08Jawad MirI haven't seen it yet, but I've…

28:09Mark MancinaWith Anne Heche and Vince Vaughn. It's a really good movie.

28:12Jawad MirOkay. I've seen the trailer, yes.

28:14Mark MancinaYeah. And it's good. And, those two scores, especially Return to Paradise, he was really on my side and the, it's one of my better scores, in my opinion. I think it's one of my strongest scores, and y… he let me go. So, you know, I can't say that I questioned myself. I really felt like I was doing the right thing, and now when I, again, when I played that movie for my daughter or my brother, and my brother's, like it's one of his favorite movies of mine, the score really holds up. And I only had 14 people, so it was a very small budget, small, score.

28:51Mark MancinaBut I think really cool. So I, you know, I've, I don't know what struggles the other guys go through. I, Alan Silvestri's a close friend of mine, and I have o… other friends that, Tom Newman, I've talked to many times, had dinner with. And, everybody goes through hell, you know, in some way or another. And Tommy Newman is just such a great composer, and you would think that people would just trust him to do whatever the heck he wants because he's so good. But it's, it's the same thing. It's always the same thing. It's subjective. So it's one man's opinion against another man or a woman.

29:28Jawad MirYeah. Yeah. T… T… Thomas Newman, I mean, he, I listen to one of, the scores quite often, Road to Perdition, you know, the one with Tom Hanks… ... And Sam Mendes directed. But yeah, i… i… and I wonder sometimes that sometimes all these struggles between creative people, because all of us are creative people, right? And we have all our opinions. Sometimes it can go completely south, and sometimes it can, you know, blossom into a beautiful flower too, but I think that is very rare. Would you agree with that?

29:59Mark MancinaOh, absolutely. In fact, you should read a book, a friend of mine, a c… colleague that I worked with, Glenn Berger.

30:08Jawad MirYeah

30:08Mark Mancina... Glenn Berger was one of the writers on the Spider-Man movie with U2.

30:15Jawad MirOkay.

30:15Mark MancinaAnd he wrote a book about his experience, and a lot of people, including the director Julie, who did The Lion King with me, a lot of people hate him for the book. But I read the book, and I thought it was fascinating because what it's about is it's about a bunch of people that are really talented…... Including Bono and The Edge, getting together and putting something together that they were all passionate about and that they really believed in, and it's a complete mess.

30:42Jawad MirYes.

30:43Mark MancinaAnd a complete horrible... Including when they signed the contract in the apartment of the manager for U2, the manager dropped dead when the contract was signed, in front of everybody. That was the beginning of this.

30:59Jawad MirOh, wow.

30:59Mark MancinaSo, I mean, when you read this book, it, you kinda just go, "Oh, my God," because it, you know, everybody has really good intentions. It's not like somebody's trying to wreck the whole…

31:08Jawad MirYeah

31:08Mark Mancina... But as you say, it's very rare when all these brains get together, like we did on Lion King. You know, Lion King was, you know, there was, there was Hans, there was me, there was Lebo, Nick Glennie-Smith.

31:23Jawad MirYep. Very

31:24Mark MancinaI'd say for the most part, for the most part, the music came out of those guys, you know, in all, in all different ways. Songs, themes, a… all came out of the four of us.

31:36Jawad MirSure.

31:36Mark MancinaHans was the quarterback, you know? Then you have the two directors, Rob and Roger, and then you have Tim Rice and Elton, and, the producer. All of us somehow came together and made something really great out of something that wasn't really very great. Inc… and the writers as well, I can't forget them, Irene and John. I can't... You know, it, that show came out of le… let's say 12 core people, you know? Somehow, all with good intentions, somehow made something really great that's gonna last a lifetime, forever, right?

32:19Mark MancinaBut why did that happen, and then, like, the next thing didn't work? You know?

32:25Jawad MirRight.

32:25Mark MancinaAida, or whatever was the next, you know, Tarzan, that Phil Collins did as a musical. It's, who knows? It's a strange thing. Sometimes the stars align, I guess.

32:38Jawad MirI think it's also... Well, T… Tarzan, by the way, I think is a phenomenal soundtrack, and even the songs are great.

32:45Mark MancinaThank you

32:46Jawad Mir... But, I think what happens is when you believe in the project more than your ego…

32:54Mark MancinaAh

32:55Jawad Mir... I think that's when the stars align. And I think when…

32:57Mark MancinaIt, good point.

32:59Jawad MirYeah. 'Cause when you start thinking about, "Well, my way," or, "This is my input," and that, you know, then it suffers. But moving…

33:07Mark MancinaI think you're right

33:08Jawad Mir... Yeah. M… m… moving on to the next point, Mark, what inspires you? What musical score do you listen to very often, or music composer? Even at this time or, you know, in between projects or before the project is about to start, is there anybody that you look up to or you listen to?

33:28Mark MancinaWell, I don't listen to film scores much.

33:33Jawad MirOkay.

33:34Mark MancinaI wonder why that is. I think, I think it's probably because it reminds me of work. And, I mean, certainly, like you said, Road to Perdition, and when I, when you said that, I thought, "Yeah, I remember when I first got that and I put it on, I listened to it, and I loved the sound of it, and Tom's writing, and, I love his engineering, the engineer that does his stuff, and, the mix," and, you know. So I was thinking all that stuff, you know? And I do…

34:03Jawad MirYeah

34:03Mark Mancina... I do look up to him, as one of my people that I would look up to. But, you know, I never usually... Like, if I'm gonna start a movie, I don't get a bunch of score stuff and listen to it. I'm more apt to listen to, Rachmaninoff, Dvořák, classical music.

34:26Mark Mancina... I just, I get more from it. Yeah, I'm inspired... You know, one thing I can say is, and whether it's good or bad, I don't know, but I've always been able to sit down at a guitar or a piano and just from scratch play something. 'Cause oftentimes I'll play and somebody'll go, "What was that?" And I go, "I have no idea." So I've, I've, I've always been able to do that, and I don't, you know, s… somebody who's a great composer would listen to it and go, "That's a bunch of dribble. That's a bunch of nonsense." But well, you know, maybe it is, but somehow I've sort of made a living, you know, being able to, kinda sit down and come up with themes and come up with stuff, and form it into a score that people seem to like. My last score, the CBS did really well. The movie did really well. The score was up for an Annie Award, which is an animation award.

35:26Jawad MirYep. Yep.

35:26Mark MancinaAnd it released it on vinyl, which is, and, packaged it really beautifully.

35:31Jawad MirOh, did they?

35:31Mark MancinaYeah.

35:32Jawad MirAll right. I'm glad they did.

35:32Mark MancinaIt's really... And we did, we did it all at Abbey Road. W… I did a lot of it here. I played a lot of instruments on it. But we recorded at Abbey Road, so it's just got a beautiful sound to it. It's a really beautiful sounding score.

35:47Jawad MirI've listened to the score. I gotta get the vinyl for sure, and, but that's…

35:50Mark MancinaThe vinyl's great

35:51Jawad Mir... I'm getting back into that, you know, the digital is becoming a little too much. You know…

35:56Mark MancinaYeah

35:56Jawad Mir... It's awesome and everything, but I like…

35:57Mark MancinaYeah

35:57Jawad Mir... To have that authentic feel of things.

35:59Mark MancinaMe too.

36:00Jawad MirDid you, I'm sure you ha… you know about Gustav Holst. Holst, is it? Gustav Holst?

36:06Mark MancinaOh, Hol… you mean The Planets?

36:08Jawad MirYeah, The Planets. Oh.

36:09Mark MancinaSure. Sure.

36:10Jawad MirOne of my favorite, you know, musical piece.

36:14Mark MancinaFantastic.

36:15Jawad MirYeah.

36:15Mark MancinaFantastic composer.

36:17Jawad MirYeah. But I just thought about…

36:18Mark MancinaI grew up on, I grew up on that music. And again, I think, I'm quite certain that, John Williams did, and

36:27Jawad MirYeah

36:27Mark Mancina... And before him, y… you know, it, The Planets is such an influential... The Planets is, akin to Aaron, how Aaron Copland sort of invented th… this American... Music, I believe that Holst invented the sort of the planet, the science travel. Somehow he invented the sound of what everybody envisions that's what it's supposed to sound like when we go into space, right?

36:55Jawad MirYeah.

36:55Mark Mancina'Cause it's always, it's always in there somewhere, is that influence from those, that beautiful suite.

37:03Jawad MirYeah, there's actually a piece in Star Wars, I don't know where, I think it's episode four, which is almost close to identical being…

37:14Mark MancinaMars from…

37:15Jawad MirYeah. There's this, like, literally…

37:16Mark MancinaThere's a bunch of Zimmer stuff. There's some Zimmer stuff that's even closer.

37:20Jawad MirYeah, I'm sure, I'm sure there is. Which takes me to next question, so this, I wonder if this happened to you ever. I was talking to the director of The Prince of Egypt, and Hans Zimmer, did the score of that, and they were trying to come up with the theme and everything. And now this is a story from one of the, from all the three directors that directed Prince of Egypt, so I'm going by that Hans came one day into the studio, and he was like, "I... Guys, I've got the theme," and, you know, he played it, and they all looked at him and they're like, "That's the theme from Xena: The Princess Warrior."

37:52Mark Mancinahuh.

37:52Jawad MirAnd he, and he goes, "Well, I must have been... My kids watch it all the time, so I just probably just sat in my subconscious."

37:58Mark MancinaYeah.

37:58Jawad MirHas that ever happened to you…

37:59Mark MancinaYeah

37:59Jawad Mir... Where you came up with... Okay, what would that be if that did happen?

38:02Mark MancinaI ca… I wrote a theme for this show, and I can't remember what the show was, but the theme I came up with was a Silvestri theme, you know?

38:11Jawad MirOkay.

38:11Mark MancinaAnd so I played it for my orchestrator, and I said, "I think this is kinda good. It kinda sounds John Williams-ish, you know?" And my friend goes, "Yeah, well, it sounds Alan Silvestri 'cause it's almost note for note from one of his, from one of his action scores." And I went, "Oh, God, it is. It's almost exactly the same." I know…

38:28Jawad MirWas it Romancing the Stone, or...?

38:29Mark MancinaI don't remember what I stole from, 'cause as soon as I realized it, I erased it. I was like, "Oh, forget it," you know, "Forget it. I can't believe I did that."

38:37Jawad MirYeah.

38:38Mark MancinaBut I think we've all done that. I've heard, God, I've heard Speed in scores a lot.

38:43Jawad MirYes.

38:43Mark MancinaThe theme and, you know, I did a movie called August Rush and that ha… really thematic, Rhapsody at the end, and I've heard quotes from that in other people's scores, and I always think, I wonder if they, you know, subconsciously, just like me, you know, just subconsciously said, "Oh, I like that melody," 'cause it sounds familiar…

39:06Jawad MirYeah

39:06Mark Mancina... Because they've heard it before, you know.

39:08Jawad MirYeah. I think, I think it is subconscious because something like that happened to me. I'm a, I've grown up on Spielberg like most of us, right? Like, I've loved his work, and that's what got me into filmmaking. One of the most recent docu… narrative documentaries I did, In Search of My Sister, I created the poster myself. This was during COVID times when nothing was happening, and I created it. I'm like, "Where the hell have I seen this poster?" And this wasn't in any way a copy. It was actually very thematic to the film, a woman sitting in front of a television set looking at satellite imagery. And then two weeks later after I finished it, I stumbled upon to the Poltergeist poster, and I'm like, "That's where I got it from, the subconscious." But I think it happens…

39:55Mark MancinaPush delete. Push delete. Yeah, I know. I've, you know, I think we all have all done it, right? I mean, you know.

40:01Jawad MirYeah.

40:01Mark MancinaWe're influenced by what we see and hear.

40:05Jawad MirAbsolutely. What, are you working on next, if anything?

40:12Mark MancinaWell, I am, and unfortunately, I am sworn to secrecy

40:17Jawad MirThat's funny

40:17Mark Mancina... Only because they haven't announced it yet, and they haven't announced the people involved in it yet.

40:24Jawad MirOkay.

40:24Mark MancinaSo I'm already doing it. We've been working. We've been here in my studio working. Everybody's been here. It's been fantastic. But unfortunately, I can't talk about it, but…

40:33Jawad MirNo worries

40:33Mark Mancina... It's fun. It's really cool. It's a, it's a big, it's a big project. It, and I can just tell you that it's, I'm not doing the score, so it's not a score, but, it's really exciting. And then we're about to start a series for Disney for, Disney+, of Moana.

40:55Jawad MirOkay

40:55Mark Mancina... I think it's a four-part series, going on with her life into, where she takes off at, I think, 18 or so, and, it's really good.

41:06Jawad MirOkay

41:06Mark Mancina... So that, th… so those things are, those things are going on. There's other things coming, but they're, you know…

41:11Jawad MirSure

41:11Mark Mancina... We're gonna wait. You know, they're…

41:14Jawad MirI read about…

41:14Mark MancinaThey're, they're making a new Twister movie

41:16Jawad Mir... I was gonna ask you, I read about the Twister, sequel. Are you in any way remotely involved with it, or you don't know?

41:23Mark MancinaDon't know. Don't know. I mean, no… nobody's, I mean, the head of music, at Fox, I've talked to, and he'd love me to do it. But there isn't any talk of me doing it, so, you know…

41:37Jawad MirRight

41:37Mark Mancina... Who knows what's in their mind, you know.

41:41Jawad MirYeah, it's a shame that Bill passed.

41:43Mark MancinaI should do it, you know, I mean, and, you know, I don't know whether I even want to, but I should do it, you know, 'cause…

41:49Jawad MirI think you should. Not that my opinion matters, but I think you should.

41:53Mark MancinaI mean, you know, I mean, obviously it would be updated, and it would be a different kind of a thing, but, who knows? These things are politics, and you never know what the heck, how things are gonna land.

42:03Jawad MirYeah, and…

42:05Mark MancinaI don't need more work. Let me put it that way.

42:08Jawad MirNo, I, it's not about, you know, it's not about more work in terms of, you know, necessity of living, which is great and everything, but just the idea of doing what you are born to do and what you're meant to do and what you would love doing because that puts you in a happy place, and, you know…

42:24Mark MancinaYeah

42:24Jawad Mir... That's, that's the most important thing above anything else. And…

42:28Mark MancinaWell, those are movies, you know, like if, for instance, if they did a Speed, if they did s… redid Speed as a new version of it would be really weird if they didn't use my themes in it. For me…

42:40Jawad MirIt would

42:40Mark Mancina... It would just seem like it's not Speed. It would seem like it's a… Whatever, you know

42:45Jawad MirSomething else, yeah. I…

42:46Mark MancinaBut if they did use my themes, even if I didn't do it, but if somebody else used those themes in a different way, it would really feel like a Speed thing. I'm kinda surprised they haven't done it, 'cause I mean, it is a classic, but you know, they could update it and do it probably pretty cool.

43:01Jawad MirI think my guess would be because Speed 2 happened, and Speed 2…... Didn't do well box office. Which I actually s…

43:09Mark MancinaYeah

43:09Jawad Mir... I actually saw it, right? Because even though I heard so much terrible things about it wasn't that terrible, but it wasn't obviously as great as the first one. Maybe that's what they mean.

43:20Mark MancinaThe frustrating, the frustrating thing for me was that after Speed and after Twister, you know, I would say to Jan, "How come we're not doing a Speed 2?"

43:28Jawad MirRight.

43:29Mark MancinaAnd he would say, "I just can't find the right script. I can't find the right subject," you know? I was like, "Okay," you know. And then he called me and said, "We've got it. We've got the subject. It's gonna be unbelievable. You're gonna write a symphony," and I was all excited. And I went to his studio, and I saw that it was a ship. And I mean, honestly, I didn't know what to do, because there's no way I could say, "No, I'm not doing it," because he gave me my break.

43:54Jawad MirYeah.

43:54Mark MancinaBut all I could think of is, "How am I gonna make this good?" I mean, it's a ship, you know? It's going so slow nobody cares, and you don't have Keanu Reeves.

44:05Jawad MirYeah, that's another thing.

44:06Mark MancinaSo it was a very painful movie for me, and I know for Jan too. It was a really painful movie, because it just got out of control. It cost a fortune, it wasn't good. And I just, I tried everything I could to make it good, but I just couldn't. I couldn't, you know.

44:24Jawad MirYeah. Yeah. No, I agree with you on that. And, in terms of, you know, d… I'll, I'll take another five, 10 minutes of your time, and then

44:35Mark MancinaOf course

44:35Jawad Mir... I'll let you get back to your work. Future composers, right? Like, you know, the way the '90s became, in my view, the era of new composers, and you know, I think we're in that same timeframe now, or maybe we're past that couple of years. What advice do you have for people who are trying to get into scores or trying to do film soundtracks?

45:00Mark MancinaWell, one thing I learned from Alan Silvestri is to always keep in mind that, you're in a service industry when you're a film composer. If you're a composer, you're not in a service industry. But if you're a film composer, you're in a service industry, which means you're there to serve the people hiring you. You're not there to serve yourself. If you can do both, great, but at the end of the day, it's not your movie, it's the director's movie.

45:37Mark MancinaSo, you know, you really need to listen to them, and you really need to be flexible. And that doesn't mean that you wanna give up on your ideas and be pushed around, but at the same time, it's not your movie. And you have to keep that in mind, because it's very easy when you write something to feel like you own, you own it, and you own now part of the movie. But it's, you know, my themes to Speed are my themes, but it's Jan's movie. Jan made that movie, you know? And they coulda hired another composer, and I think the movie still would've done really well. I think I really helped, but I, you know, I didn't make the movie, he did. So you have to always keep that in mind, I think, and it's hard, because when you write music, you become very close to it.

46:20Jawad MirYeah.

46:20Mark MancinaBut you have to keep that in mind, and you have to be very patient. You know? And you gotta keep your mouth shut. I think that's another thing. When you're coming up, not when you're at my point, I think keeping my mouth shut is not in, a good idea, but when you're coming up, keep your mouth shut, 'cause I didn't. I would speak, you know, and I put my foot in my mouth sometimes and said things that, you know, just shut up, you know? You're, you're coming up. You're not there yet. Don't, you know, get cocky, you know?

46:55Jawad MirYeah. I agree with that, but I would like to ask you one thing on that comment, and this is just a question. I find, this is not just in music or film, you know, I personally find that if you... And when I say don't keep, when I say speak up, I don't mean speak up in a rude way, right? Like, if as a creative person…

47:14Mark MancinaYeah

47:14Jawad Mir... Or as a human being, if you don't voice your opinion, whatever that is, right? Yeah, you're n… you're obviously deep down it's bothering you that you're not letting it out. That be… beside the point. I find that when you let your truth comes out, there's always people in the room or in the vicinity that maybe 1 out of 20 would appreciate that the guy or the girl had the spine, you know, to say something that they wanted to say. Do you think that is similar to what you're saying, or that's completely different?

47:47Mark MancinaThe, here's the difficulty. So, like, let's just say you gave me a scene. And I wrote music for it.

47:55Jawad MirSure.

47:55Mark MancinaAnd then I played it for you, okay? What I'm giving you is exactly what I think should be there. I've thought about it. I've thought about every frame, and I've thought, "This is what I think should be there."

48:10Mark MancinaSo if you say to me, "Well, I think it should be something else," and then you say to me, "But what do you think?" I already showed you what I think.

48:18Jawad MirYeah.

48:18Mark MancinaSo I don't wanna argue with you. I don't wanna sit there and go, "No, you're wrong. You're wrong." It's better for me to take in what you're saying and go, "Well, let me think what you said. Let me go back, and let me see if something happens. Like, maybe one of the things you said will stick with me."

48:37Jawad MirRight.

48:37Mark MancinaOr maybe I'll come back to you and say, "You know what? I just, I do, I just think you're wrong." But to say something right off the bat, I would just say, "No, this is what I think." You know, I just would repeat myself, right? Which you don't wanna hear that, 'cause that's not getting anywhere.

48:52Jawad MirYeah.

48:52Mark MancinaSo…

48:54Jawad MirAgain, I've learned that either take what the director's saying and take it in and take it back to your studio and see if you can formulate a revision that is, you know…

49:07Mark MancinaSure

49:07Jawad Mir... Does that, or take it back and think about it. But if I immediately react, I'm gonna immediately probably negatively react just because I've put so much work into it that I'm trying to save it, you know?

49:19Mark MancinaYeah. Yeah, you're right.

49:20Jawad MirAnd I might be wrong. I could be totally wrong. You know, maybe it's, maybe you're right, but, you know, I'm just... My tendency is to save my baby.

49:29Mark MancinaYeah. Yeah.

49:29Jawad MirNo, I think, I think you hit the nail on the head when you just said that, 'cause when you react in any kind of conversation in that very moment, 99.9% of the time you're reacting based on your own emotions and your ego and how it's bothering you.

49:43Mark MancinaA… absolutely.

49:43Jawad MirBut if you, if you cool down and you just settle yourself away for even 20 minutes and rethink it, like, you know, the way that you t… told me that example of Yann coming to you.

49:53Mark MancinaYes.

49:53Jawad MirAnd you kind of said that no, and then he went away and like, "Oh, yeah, you know, that you had that epiphany." So may… yeah, you're right. You're right in that.

49:59Mark MancinaI learned a lot from that. I learned a lot from that time. And I have to say, there's a, there's a wonderful documentary... Well, no, it's an interview, Rick Beato and Thomas Newman.

50:13Jawad MirOkay

50:13Mark Mancina... For you, I think you would really enjoy it because, he really asks questions of Tom that you would wanna know. He doesn't just ask, you know, "How big is your orchestra?" You know, he doesn't ask those kind of questions. He asks…

50:26Jawad MirYeah

50:26Mark Mancina... These kind of questions and more mental, like, you know. And Tom has a great attitude about when somebody gives him an opinion because he questions everything. So he questions the, that opinion, but he also questions his own music, right? And thinks about it in terms of, well, yes, it absolutely could be what you're saying. It absolutely could be. Or it could be this, or it could be some in between, you know?

50:55Jawad MirYeah.

50:55Mark MancinaWhich is a n… which is a great way of doing it because you're, you're welcoming criticism, but you're not saying, "Oh, yeah, you're totally right. I'm completely wrong." You're not saying that either.

51:06Jawad MirYeah. Yeah.

51:07Mark MancinaCollaborative. It's very collaborative. And yet, and yet he's kind of combative. It's... You have to watch it 'cause it's interesting how he balances that, you know? He stays with his guns, but he also collaborates. It's, it's, it's interesting. I found it really fascinating.

51:23Jawad MirAnd you know, it's funny you mentioned that because filmmaking itself and trying to figure out what the audience want or what would click is all about human psychology, you know, trying to understand that. And then at the same time, what you just said, collaborating with people in such a way, and that's an art. That really is an art where you get your point across firmly but respectfully, and that…

51:48Mark MancinaYes

51:48Jawad Mir... Is not an easy task to do. You know.

51:50Mark MancinaNo, it's not.

51:50Jawad MirIt hurts.

51:50Mark MancinaEspecially as you say with, especially as you say with the emotion, you know?

51:54Jawad MirYeah.

51:54Mark MancinaAnd if you've, if you've stayed up till 2:00 in the morning working on this thing, then you're really kinda crusty and, you know, you just, you're just not, you're not patient enough to just really kinda take it in and, you know.

52:06Jawad MirYeah. Yeah.

52:08Mark MancinaAnd I've noticed that with filmmakers too. I know days when they come in when they're just exhausted, you know, and it's like, yeah, it's a music meeting, but man, you know, got so much in my head right now with, you know, cutting and all the stuff you gotta do as a director. Yeah, it's, it's, it's a process. It's a tough process.

52:26Jawad MirYeah. Do you listen to any international composers? Just, not in terms of soundtrack, but just, you know, music, singers or just to get a different vibe and a feel of the culture?

52:39Mark MancinaI do a lot and, but you know, the way things are now, I mean, you know, you flip around YouTube. I mean, I just flip around YouTube every night and I read, I love to read and I love to just... I go from, there's a new pianist... No, she's not new. There's a European pianist, she's Romanian. I've just fallen in love with this girl. Her playing is so magnificent. And I don't know her. She, you know, but I reached out to her and she knew who I was and so we've become kind of friends and I wanna bring her over here to play some concerts. But now I'm getting familiar with music o… from over there. I mean, she plays classical stuff, but, you know, now I'm getting familiar 'cause, you know, it bounces you from her to somebody else and then you go, "Oh, what is that?" And then that bounces you over to Turkey and you're listening to Turkish music. And so it's, it's really... I mean, that's the one great thing about YouTube is you really can…

53:32Jawad MirYeah

53:32Mark Mancina... Kind of listen to a lot of stuff that you wouldn't normally listen to, or watch.

53:38Jawad MirYeah.

53:39Mark MancinaAnd watch them play.

53:40Jawad MirAnd for emerging filmmakers too, you know, there's just so much temp tracks that you can utilize. I mean, I did this with my, one of my films over COVID, Citizen Amoria, and I needed a temp cram, a temp track for a very intense finale. And I was searching and I found this guy, I don't have his name written on here, but I have him bookmarked. He did this piece that was so cool and so suspense oriented and very mellow. And honestly, if it wasn't for that track, and I obviously, you know, contacted him and I said, "Listen, I wanna use this. What's the licensing fee?" and all that, and he was kind enough to give me the permission to use it.

54:24Mark MancinaOh, good.

54:24Jawad MirAnd if it wasn't for that music, every time we do a screening in the movie theater, it makes that finale. Like, it's just so amazing that the amount of stuff you can find, you know, on, and composers and artists and singers you can find on YouTube. It's just another way.

54:42Mark MancinaAbsolutely. And like you said, you just can hear music from all over the place in a half an hour sitting.

54:48Jawad MirYeah

54:49Mark Mancina... Well, if you get a chance, and I don't know where you can get it, but, you should listen to my score to, Return to Paradise. There's a couple pieces. One is called The Prison. But, I'm just saying that only because out of, I've, out of all my music, I hear that used for Temp more than any of my other scores. It's kinda droney, and it's kinda weird. It's, you know, it's, it takes place in Malaysia, so the, some of the instruments that I used are, somewhat Malaysian and, Orient, kind of an Orient sound.

55:26Jawad MirOkay. I found…

55:28Mark MancinaGive it a chance

55:29Jawad Mir... Yeah, I found it on YouTube, the entire, your entire album is on YouTube.

55:33Mark MancinaOh, good. It's a good, it's good kind of, docu… some documentary kinda stuff 'cause it's, it's not too over the top, so there can be narration over it without it getting in your way and, you know, that kinda stuff.

55:44Jawad MirAwesome. Fantastic. Anything else you wanna say, M… Mark, or?

55:48Mark MancinaNo. I just wish I could tell you what we're working on, but it's all exciting stuff. And, in the meantime, I'm, I'm a classical guitarist, so I've been playing, in a monastery that's near my house. It's been really thrilling because it's, I passed this monastery for years. It's right by my house.

56:05Jawad MirYeah.

56:05Mark MancinaAnd, I've always wondered what it would be like to just take my guitar in there and play some classical music, and so I've been doing that, and it's been really fun, you know? Really cool.

56:16Jawad MirDoes it, does it bring, take you back to your early days? Is that what it is? Or…

56:19Mark MancinaIt does. And yeah, it does. It reminds me of high school and college, but then the other thing it does is, a lot of what I play, I play a lot of Bach and a lot of Scarlatti, and that music in a, in a church, in a monastery setting, it just, it's like fits like a glove. It's, it's like meant to be. It's meant to be played in there. It sounds amazing in the, in the cathedral. And, it's really fulfilling to me 'cause it's so different than what I do normally, right? So it's just a way of touching people a different way. And it's really fun. I'm really enjoying it.

56:56Jawad MirThat sounds great. And I have to say, even your other work that you have done, you know, even though it's very action-oriented and all that, has deep meaning and deep connection to people's lives and, you know, especially in mine. Listening to your score, Bad Boys, Speed, Twister, I think Speed stands out more for me, and Tarzan, for whatever reason that is. I have no idea.

57:18Mark MancinaYeah.

57:19Jawad MirAnd it's very meaningful, and it's very powerful, so I wanted to thank you for all the work that you do and you've done because without music, there's no life. That's what I believe. But thank you.

57:32Mark MancinaIt's a pretty magical, thing, isn't it?

57:35Jawad MirIt is, and I don't know how people, you know, even in the old times before all the music was, you know, with the instruments that were made, like, you know, you play with your utensils or piece of plate or glass, you can just create music out of anything, and that…

57:50Jawad Mir... That's what I love about it, so thank you.

57:53Mark MancinaOh, you're welcome. Thank you very much for the interview. I appreciate all the compliments. I appreciate that very much.

57:58Jawad MirThank you. We'll be in touch

57:59Mark MancinaThanks

57:59Jawad Mir... Whenever.

58:00Mark MancinaAll right. We'll go, we'll do it again, okay?

58:02Jawad MirAbsolutely. Love to. Thank you so much.

58:04Mark MancinaGood luck.

58:05Jawad MirThanks. Bye.