cinememoir | A Passion for Film Music: Bonding with My Brother over an Often Overlooked Art Form

By Kevin Renick

“One of Jóhannsson’s finest moments is track 17, an outdoorsy cue entitled ‘Camping’ with viola solo, celeste, and multiple string parts. Ultimately the music achieves the effect of a celebration of life and love, of triumph over adversity, and the greatness of acting such as Eddie Redmayne’s, wherein most of the means of communication are taken away one by one.”
— Kyle Renick, from a 2014 review of the soundtrack to The Theory of Everything in Film Score Monthly

Felicity Jones and Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything. — Felicity Jones and Eddie Redmayne in *The Theory of Everything.*

I lost my only brother Kyle at Thanksgiving in 2019. It was a shocking event, something I was slow to accept, because Kyle was a larger-than-life figure – a brilliant, boisterous, often hysterically funny human being with immense talent in several different realms. He was a great writer, he’d become a well-known theatrical producer in New York City (two of the big hits that began at his off-Broadway WPA Theatre were Steel Magnolias and the musical Little Shop of Horrors), and he had an encyclopedic knowledge of classical music and, a genre that was commonly overlooked, film scores.

Before his death, Kyle had evolved into an authority on film music – he had thousands of soundtracks in his personal collection, was a regular writer for Film Score Monthly, and had earned full press credentials, allowing him to interview top film composers like Johann Johannsson (mentioned above), Elliot Goldenthal and countless others. It was characteristic of my brother that he’d get more excited about interviewing a prominent film composer than other journalists might at the opportunity to talk to the superstar actors who were featured in the films.

Sometimes before a pending interview, he’d call or email me, his younger brother, to ask a few questions. He knew how much I was into rock music and ambient music, and I could give him background on the Scandinavian music scene, the work of Jonny Greenwood from Radiohead (Greenwood composed the stunning score for There Will Be Blood which Kyle wrote about), and other such topics from time to time. I adored film music myself, and was proud of my brother – even in awe – for becoming perhaps one of a dozen experts on the genre in the U.S. But then that grim November day rolled in like an impossibly dark cloud formation. I just couldn’t believe Kyle wouldn’t be around anymore. How could it be? This amazing, witty, passionate purveyor of things I often adored myself, had died? It was unthinkable. Many months later, it still is.

My earliest memories of Kyle and the mysterious world of film music date back to my childhood in the early 60s. We took summer trips to a secluded Illinois resort called “Chautauqua.” The atmospheric village had an outdoor theatre where they would screen recent film releases, including Bye Bye Birdie, The Nutty Professor, Lilies of the Field, Come Blow Your Horn and a film I particularly recall, Topkapi. The score was by Greek composer Manos Hadjidakis, and Kyle was taken with it. So was I, actually: the main theme stayed in my head for years. Kyle would later tell me that this same composer had done Never On Sunday, a film which he remembered my parents going on a date to see (that would have likely been in 1960). He credits this film as well as the original King Kong, with its score by Max Steiner (a movie all four of us kids loved growing up) as the start of his keen interest in orchestral film scores. I couldn’t articulate my emotions as well as Kyle, but I was listening closely, too…believe me.

Here are three of my favorite examples of Kyle’s extraordinary writing about film music from Film Score Monthly:

From a 2017 review of Michael Abels’ score to Get Out:

One moment a phrase suggesting Camille Saint-Saëns’s Danse Macabre is heard on violin, the next a chorus of eight is singing Swahili phrases evoking the profane Latin of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. The intimacy of a harp in a bucolic setting has rarely felt less reassuring, even more, disquieting, as do descending string chords accompanying a hypnotic suggestion to “sink into the floor.” It’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? 50 years later, with a few of The Stepford Wives invited for barbecue and Bingo. Some audience members will find the film’s scariest words the final phrase of the end titles: “Filmed on location in Alabama.

From a retrospective article, Best of 2017:

The most memorable cue in 2017 came halfway through Episode 4 of Twin Peaks: The Return, as Deputy Bobby Briggs (Dana Ashbrook), former hellion and now solid citizen, enters the Police Department conference room, and hyperventilates at the sight of a photograph of murdered girlfriend Laura Palmer from 27 years ago, her beauty intact in his memory. Angelo Badalamenti’s heartbreaking theme for the victim ascends aloft before resting on E, with repetitions of the phrase E, D, F, E, D, C, and then descending back into the musical murk of the murder and its continuing ramifications for Twin Peaks. In moments such as this, the present connects to the past, and time becomes something ineffably other, enabled by Badalamenti’s inspired music and the genius of writer/director David Lynch…

From a disgruntled 2017 review of Hans Zimmer’s score for Dunkirk:

The live-to-film phenomenon continues its nationwide expansion: Max Steiner’s Casablanca in Cedar Rapids, Bernard Herrmann’s North by Northwest in St. Louis, Mozart’s Amadeus in Boston, and many others. Some skeptical audience members refer to these events as “cinema karaoke concerts,” but to us film music lovers, and for an entirely new audience of potential film music enthusiasts, these events are heaven on earth. Which brings us to the issue of hell on earth. The New Yorker writer Hilton Als coined the phrase “oratorio of noise” for Iron Man 3, but it perfectly characterizes Dunkirk and its raucous, relentless, repulsive score by Hans Zimmer “and his team” (Christopher Nolan’s words). Enraptured if lunatic press coverage of the film suggests that Zimmer will receive another Oscar nomination. But the only use I can imagine for this score would be to torture political prisoners. I know if I was forced to listen to it ever again, I would confess to anything.

A personal history of my relationship with Kyle could be told through the film scores we liked or talked about. A particular favorite of mine was Elmer Bernstein’s score for To Kill A Mockingbird, which captured the innocence of childhood and the sense of scary, incomprehensible things out there from a kid’s-eye view about as well as anything I’d ever heard. Kyle gave me my first version of this score, a lovely vinyl LP which was simply a treasure to me, and I still can hardly hear that piano-centric opening theme without tears welling up in my eyes. Kyle told me of Bernstein’s notable work in epic Hollywood films such as The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape and many others, and sometimes such soundtracks would get played on our living room stereo along with the more typical classical works. But my ears started perking up even more when great composers like Bernard Herrmann, Ennio Morricone and John Barry would inspire Kyle’s most passionate observations. He loved all three and shared them with me as my own interest in this rather esoteric music genre grew by leaps and bounds.

The scores for The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Jason and the Argonauts and Psycho by Herrmann, and John Barry’s James Bond scores as well as classics like Born Free, The Lion in Winter and The Last Valley, (an example of a score I found haunting without ever seeing the movie, something that happened often under Kyle’s influence) became embedded in my musical DNA. For many years, I only casually noticed that Kyle was playing this “type” of music when he would come home for family visits. He’d been away for most of my life, living first in Boston while in college, and then moving to New York to try to break into the theatre world.

A turning point happened in 1975, the first year I visited him in New York City. We went to a small theatre together in Greenwich Village to attend a screening of the Australian-set film Walkabout, directed by Nicolas Roeg and starring a teenage Jenny Agutter. The film was about two children lost in the wilderness, and John Barry had composed the score. I was utterly transfixed and haunted by this movie. I told Kyle at length how much I loved the music, especially the deeply melancholy opening theme (which in some ways sounded like the perfect opening cue for my entire life) and a recurring choral excerpt meant to evoke something precious being lost forever. Kyle loved it, too, but told me there was no full score available yet for this film. As a present later that same year, he gave me a vinyl record containing themes from many of Barry’s scores, including the Walkabout main title, and I loved this album. It set me on a path of browsing for film scores on vinyl during regular trips to record stores. I one-upped and astonished my brother for Christmas the following year or so when I came across a rare limited Japanese pressing of the Walkabout score in its entirety. I bought two copies, one for Kyle and one for myself.

When Kyle got excited about a rare soundtrack, it was a big deal to me. I loved being able to impress him! John Barry was to become a key favorite for me as he was for Kyle; I adored The Last Valley, and years later, I would not be able to get the melancholy score for Body Heat out of my head. And at least a pair of cues from the Oscar-winning Dances With Wolves score were among the most beautiful short pieces I had ever heard anywhere; I mentioned this to my brother.

Although I took note that I could occasionally grab Kyle’s attention through the world of film music, more often it was him impressing ME with something revelatory in this medium. I will never forget him talking about Aaron Copland’s “Americana” style and how influential it came to be. Of Copland’s work in film, which included Of Mice and Men, the music for Our Town (1940) was the one that became hugely personal and impactful. To this day, I absolutely cherish this score, and I’m not sure it would be the shivery classic that endures in my psyche without Kyle’s influence. We watched the movie together at least once at home, and I don’t know which of us teared up the most. We both had a nostalgic (and melancholy) streak. I do know I went on record as saying that Copland’s main suite for Our Town captured my own sense of longing for my lost childhood years better than any music I’d ever heard. When Kyle died and I wrote a tribute to him for Film Score Monthly, I singled out Our Town as a pivotal moment in our shared legacy, and it’s almost too much for me emotionally these days. But the music is undeniably eternally beautiful…

Starting in the 1980s and through most of the following decade, a treasured ritual took place that cemented film music as a bonding thing for Kyle and me. When he came home for Christmas or any other extended visit, we would listen to film soundtracks on my dad’s basement record player, which had awesome Bose speakers. During these times, I got to hear the music of Richard Rodney Bennett (Murder on the Orient Express), Laurence Rosenthal (Return of a Man Called Horse, a score I loved), and Maurice Jarre (Doctor Zhivago, The Man Who Would Be King and Witness, among countless others). The score for Witness would come to be a personal favorite.

We also listened to the legendary Nino Rota, whose scores for classic Fellini films made all kinds of music history. Casanova became a cherished score despite my never seeing the film for which it was composed. And of course we heard a lot of John Williams – one of the most successful composers in Hollywood history as Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Raiders of the Lost Ark became ubiquitous.

Perennial Academy Award-nominee Jerry Goldsmith represented a special case; Kyle would wax poetic at the mere mention of his name. Kyle was so passionate about the diversity and quality of this man’s work that he set out to collect every score the composer ever recorded. That would be hundreds of titles! Among many of Goldsmith’s scores that we listened to together or talked about were: The Wind and the Lion, The Omen, A Patch of Blue, Poltergeist (we both loved this one), Coma, The Boys From Brazil, Alien, and The Flim-Flam Man -- a score I liked so much that Kyle gifted me with a special new version of it on CD one year along with a couple of other Goldsmith soundtracks. This became part of our ritual. At first Kyle sent me cassettes of scores he no longer needed because he had updated versions. Later he sent extra vinyl records from his collection, and finally, limited-edition CDs or CDs he’d replaced with newer versions. My collection expanded because of Kyle’s generosity. And once in a while, I’d find a soundtrack he needed and surprise him. But that became impossible in later years. He simply had everything. I did manage to win points, however, when I secretly wrote to Jerry Goldsmith and told him of my brother’s passion for his work. I shyly asked for TWO autographed photos, one for my brother and one for myself. Goldsmith cheerfully obliged and thanked me for writing. It’s not like film composers were superstars on the level of various rock stars or actors. But in Kyle’s world, this meant a lot. Not that a Goldsmith autograph was all that rare. It’s that I had bothered to procure it at all – that I THOUGHT of giving something like this to my brother. It just meant a great deal, and I knew it. Here’s one of the times Kyle wrote about Goldsmith for FSM.

“In November, Varèse Sarabande Club released a limited Deluxe Edition of The Haunting (1999). It is worth reminding ourselves that Goldsmith’s dramatic instincts inspired the writing of scary music even when the movie’s subject was not necessarily things that go bump in the night, such as Coma and Capricorn One. But it is also necessary to recall that Goldsmith worked wonders on many truly terrible movies during the latter part of his career, of which The Haunting is screamingly emblematic. Goldsmith was the recipient of a BMI Film Music Award for this score, but upon the film were bestowed five Razzie Nominations for Worst of the Year, and the Stinkers Bad Movie Award for Worst Remake. Listening to the Varèse CD affords an interesting opportunity to hear the movie Goldsmith contemplated, and to imagine one without this terrible cast, director and screenwriter. Theo (Catherine Zeta-Jones) describes the haunted Crain House, the movie’s main character, as “Charles Foster Kane meets the Munsters,” although the ghost of Hugh Crain bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the Emperor in Return of the Jedi. Goldsmith’s musical portrait of this house is wonderful, however. The CD liner notes present an object lesson about all the things that can and do go wrong with such a movie.”
— Kyle Renick from Film Score Monthly in 2018

As I stated in my FSM tribute to my brother early in 2020, despite Kyle’s vast experience as a musician, writer and musicologist – as well as a guy who was 100% confident in nearly all his opinions – he deferred to me when it came to rock music and the genre of ambient, which was my own pet passion. Kyle knew my hero was producer and ambient wunderkind Brian Eno, who had composed plenty of film music himself, including the scores for Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones and the documentary For All Mankind. Ambient music came to be used in films with increasing frequency, and soundtracks in general often got categorized as a “type” of ambient music. Or at least, you could use them as background listening if you were so inclined. Anyway, this led me to declare that film music and ambient music were like “first cousins” that generally got along well. Kyle agreed with this, and I was flattered whenever he emailed me to ask something about ambient music, such as Johannsson’s beautiful classic Fordlandia.

Kyle was getting more and more interested in the sounds coming out of Iceland, and in one of our last exchanges on that subject, he expressed enthusiasm for the music of Hildur Guonadottir. She had composed the music for the miniseries Chernobyl, which Kyle loved, and became the first woman to win an Oscar and Golden Globe for her score to the movie Joker. This was all triumphant for me, as Hildur had worked with my favorite Icelandic band Mum, and was part of the ambient collective PanSonic for one album.

I wanted to talk to Kyle more about her and the way film music was evolving, but he died before I had the chance. I had so much I wished I could say to him. He KNEW I “got it” when it came to film scores. I could talk intelligently about the importance of good scores in strengthening the impact of films and often being better than the films that contained them, which Kyle’s prior review of Goldsmith’s score for the Haunting remake illustrates.

Kyle often had the opportunity to watch films (sometimes restored prints) accompanied by the “score played live” by a top orchestra in some beautiful concert hall. This was the case early in 2018, when the mega-cult film Scarface, scored by Giorgio Moroder, was shown in a spruced-up version. Here’s an excerpt of his writeup from FSM in May of that year:

“The restoration looked terrific, and the opening orchestral and choral salvo of Giorgio Moroder’s score sent chills up and down my spine. The interplay between “The World Is Yours” theme and the motif associated with Tony Montana’s sister Gina, sounding like a variation on an “Ave Maria,” suggested a colloquy between Catholic forces warring over Tony’s soul. The pulsating, pounding music for the montage of Montana and Sosa’s business dealings booming has never sounded so thrilling—nor have the various original songs by Moroder, such as “Push It to the Limit.” The sequence concluding with Tony’s exhortation to “Say goodnight to the bad guy!” was greeted with thunderous applause, as were various murders. In the terrifying scene of Tony killing Manny, the two main themes merge into a hellish crescendo proclaiming the final loss of Tony’s soul…”

Kyle and author Kevin Renick playing with hats their mom loved to wear.

But I will close with two anecdotes that have a more intimate, personal meaning. One thread of the final email exchange Kyle had with me and my sisters, Pam and Therese, had to do with the movie Psycho, which of course has one of the most famous scores in history, composed by the legendary Bernard Herrmann. Kyle had the privilege of watching another of those “live orchestra and film screening” events in NYC, and his comments about that experience could fill a separate essay. Overall he was enthralled, and he shared his observations at length with his three siblings, marveling all over again about the effectiveness of Herrmann’s music. Not just the shrieking strings during the infamous shower scene, but the entire score. The four of us enthusiastically traded thoughts about our own experiences seeing Psycho for the first time, and we had no way of knowing this would be the last “family” email thread in which we would all be energetic participants.

Even more poignantly, Therese reminded me of an article Kyle had posted in 2010 about the film music of that year, which included the Up in the Air soundtrack (score mostly by Rolfe Kent) for which I’d miraculously landed the theme song. After everything we’d shared through the years – talking about themes and cues we loved in various movies, how certain composers were consistently great, how soundtracks were often better than their movies and how exciting new composers had the ability to keep things fresh – the most breathtaking irony was that Kyle had written about ME as a composer/performer on a film soundtrack. Brothers with an enduring shared passion enjoying one more stunning surprise. I could almost hear the melancholy yet uplifting cue that might soundtrack this story’s ending…

“Even if I did not regard Rolfe Kent’s score and Randall Poster’s Music Supervision as highlights of 2009 (and they both conspicuously and emphatically are), I would name my principal pleasure of the year being my brother Kevin Renick’s song “Up in the Air” second in the end titles of the movie, making surprising mincemeat out of Graham Nash and having me wonder if there is any other instance of a singer/songwriter being quoted verbatim before launching into song in the end titles. Not to mention presumed disqualification by the inscrutably arcane rules of the AMPAS Music Branch due to placement and provenance.”
— Kyle Renick in Film Score Monthly, January 2010

End credits. Lights fade up. But the world of music cues and powerful movie moments would continue forever. My perception of the importance of music in telling a cinematic story was deepened by years of shared listening and conversations with my brother. I still miss him terribly. I hope wherever he is, that rare scores by Goldsmith, Barry and the Icelanders we never finished talking about are in continual rotation. And always playing through high-quality Bose speakers…