 Thank you for coming out today for the soundtrack release of Miracle Mile. Thank you very much. We have several great guests here today. To my immediate left is Paul Haslinger from Tangerine Dream. Paul has had a really prolific career over the years. After Tangerine Dream he embarked on a solo career. He's worked on quite a few really cool projects like the TV shows Halt and Catch Fire and Fear the Walking Dead just to name a couple. And he's done scores for movies like the latest Resident Evil movie Resident Evil the final chapter for Paul W. S. Anderson and he's worked on other Paul Anderson films like Death Race. And to my far left is Steve DiGiarnette the writer and director of Miracle Mile. In addition to Miracle Mile Steve directed a really cool post apocalyptic movie that I'm a big fan of called Cherry 2000. We're going to show some clips from Miracle Mile just for a couple of minutes just to give you some context for what we're doing here today. But I just real briefly I'm going to introduce myself. My name is David Moore. I wrote a book called World Gone Wild Survivors Guide to Post Apocalyptic Movies. The book was what I would hope to consider the ultimate end of the world movie guide. I reviewed something like 850 films in the genre. It took me a long time to write it. And in the book I also interviewed a whole bunch of filmmakers and actors and screenwriters including Steve which I think is why I was asked to come here because I have a little bit of a history with Steve and I have a history with the genre. So I'm going to sit down. We're going to take I don't know like three or four minutes to look at these clips from Miracle Mile and I'll come right back up and we'll ask some questions to these guys. OK. Thank you. It took tens of thousands of years for civilization as we know it to reach the modern era. And it took 30 years for Harry Wachell to find the right girl. Mr. Charles Horton, Sam Marino, wake him up. Any price. No amount is absurd, right? Is anyone here a Christian? You know, like a hardcore one? I hope I can maintain. Danny Berrigan and his brother. I'll settle for you. Yeah. Bobby Seale, Dick Gregory. You got these people's thumb now? Terry, don't you get ahold of me yet? No. Get this line up first. Don't waste time. There's no point. Get it? Stay calm. Optimum efficiency. So my first question is for Steve. You wrote this script in the late 70s. Is that right? Yeah. Well, I pitched the idea to Warner Brothers earlier in 70. I turned it in, I think, December of 79. So just at the very end of the 70s. And the movie was not made until 88? Shot it, I think, in the end of 87. It was released in May of 89. So right at the tail end of the Cold War, I was going to say something, not to get too politically invested here. But I mean, the movie came out at a very crucial time in our history. And it kind of feels like right now we're on the precipice of another Cold War nuclear apocalypse. This movie is just as important as it was then. Well, I'd like to say that it's much more likely to happen tonight. And this is before the election in November, even, than it was back then, where everybody's on high alert. People were really skilled and trained to have mutual assured destruction. And now who's mining the store? And a tweet could set things off. So yeah, it sadly plays more dramatic and less comedic today, I've noticed, when I've run it. Yeah. The movie, in essence, is a timeless film. And over the years, I mean, I remember when it came out, it had this very slow build. I mean, there were people that really loved this movie when it first came out. I mean, I was one of them. As a kid, I saw it. It just was amazing. I remember I think I watched it on VHS the first time. But the movie's not a cult classic anymore. I think this movie is verifiable classic all on its own. So I just wanted to say that. That's a statement. Thank you. I'm happy just being a cult oddity. Well, I think Cherry 2000 is a cult classic. But Miracle Mile is a classic all by itself. And my next question for you is that I've were connected on Facebook. And I've seen you post pictures. And you have posts, it seems like every other week, at least once a month. Sorry. Well, I mean, no, no, it's not that. But you are going to screenings of Miracle Mile all over the world. Well, I came back from France. We ran in 15 cities in 19 days, sold out the cinema tech. Two different articles in Calle du Cinema. So I'm like Jerry Lewis there now or something. They do feel that way. They discovered some lost classic film. I guess it's going to play in 100 theaters by the time it's done. You know, our house theater is where you are. It's coming out in Blu-ray. Turbine is coming out. It's already out. That Blu-ray and the UK Blu-ray is coming out, too. Well, what is it that you think this? Why does this movie resonate so strongly all over the world? It's not just amongst film lovers and fans of post-apocalyptic movies like myself. But this movie is resonating on a global scale. Why do you think that is? What is it about this movie that is garnering new fans? We contemplate the end of the world these days. And so the whole theme of the movie is what would you do if you were chicken little and you knew before everybody else did? And how would you spend that time? Would you try to get out of town and save your ass? Would you ultimately be spoiling data? I want to be with the person I love, even if I don't know them that well. So I mean, I think the tension of the times certainly does that. There is an affection for all things 80s. And the mullet, I'd like to CGI. But otherwise, I do embrace the 80s-ness of it. Although we didn't wet the streets down and use a lot of smoke and backlight like a rock video. So it looks a little different than other 80s movies. I don't know. When the film came out, I'd say 75% of people were very positive. Some adored it. And then some people hated it. Some just thought it was the worst movie ever made or frustrated them some others. So there were a lot more people who vehemently didn't like it. And I don't seem to find that too much today, I guess. But I am dealing in the cult world, which they are all fans. So yeah. We're not going to talk too much about Cherry 2000. But I wanted to ask you one question about Cherry 2000. And that's about the score by Basil Polodaris. Basil was one of the all-time great composers we ever had. What led you to get Basil for that film? Well, my first professional job, I got to direct part of an Alfred Hitchcock Presents pilot that then turned into a TV show. So my first time I said I was directing John Huston, Kim Novak, Tippi Hedrin, Melanie Griffith, and Stephen Bauer in that classic, you know, Man from the South, the bat with a cigarette lighter or getting your finger cut off. So he had scored that. And, you know, did meet briefly with Frank Zappa about scoring Cherry. But otherwise, you know, Basil was perfect. I think his score, the supporting cast, and Julie Weiss's costumes make that film work, whatever works in that movie. I helped a little bit. The script by Michael Almoreta was quirky. But the score really makes that movie work. Yeah, I agree. So when it came time to make Miracle Mile, when you were putting the movie together, at what point did you realize? I mean, a lot of filmmakers like Paul W.S. Anderson, they go with the same composer many times. The question is, at what point did you think I want somebody else? I want something totally electronic? I want Tangerine Dream. Well, I never thought in a million years I could get Tangerine Dream. I wrote the script playing the Sorcerer soundtrack and other Tangerine Dream things. I mean, that's maybe I played a little of Peter Gabriel's birdie later or something. I don't know when that came out. That was later, I think. But when I was writing it, I was just, you know, writing in the middle of the night playing, you know, Sorcerer soundtrack. I still, that to me is in my creative process is, if I play that, I will imagine missiles flying over and things like that. So then when we had a rough cut, you know, we sent it to them. Paul will tell the stuff. And John Dailey stepped up of Hemdale to pay whatever prices. We were a very low budget movie. So I was surprised that, first of all, that they wanted to do it. And then that John Dailey would pay for it. And it was one of the most amazing times of my life going over there to work with them. Paul, let's just assume that nobody knows anything about Tangerine Dream just for a second. Can you just give us a little backstory on how you became involved with Tangerine Dream in the early 1980s? They were, they had a studio in Austria and they were auditioning players for a UK tour. They had their third member unexpectedly quit the band and they needed a replacement fast. And they had somebody lined up, but it turned out that he couldn't, he got sick on flights. So that was not good for touring. So they were auditioning players to fill in quickly or originally just for the tour. It was a 86 UK tour. And I at the time was studying music in Vienna and was a session player. I was in the studio circuit in Vienna. So I went to the audition, didn't give it much thought honestly and somehow got the gig, played the tour and then after the tour was asked to stay on for the next album, then there was a US tour coming up. So eventually just became part of the band. So it was a series of coincidences as most things in life are. One thing I've noticed about Tangerine Dream, I grew up in the 80s. So I mean, Tangerine Dream was always there. It was always a part of cinema. I always associated Tangerine Dream with cinema until I figured out, oh, there's other albums too. But the film projects that Tangerine Dream as a band or a collective or whatever we wanna call it, each project was radically different from the last one, the films. I mean, Sorcerer is nothing like The Keep. The Keep is nothing like Three O'Clock High or even Risky Business. Miracle Mile is very radically different than anything else. How did Tangerine Dream, how did you guys go about, I mean, I know projects come to you but when projects did come to you, how did you decide we want this project but not this one because each one is so different. And now we look back on these movies and each one of them, even near dark or some of these films are very special movies. And partly due to the fact that these have really cool scores. Well, I think this is definitely a case where the perspective from the outside looks different than the perspective from the inside. And the honest answer is that how projects come to you is always a matter of coincidence and circumstance and it was the same for Tangerine Dream. Now I wasn't directly involved in project selection that was mostly Edgar and Chris when he was in the band. But I can assure you that there was no plan. There was no plan to only do special projects or specific projects. We would turn down certain things that were just bad movies or bad projects. But other than that, we didn't really have a scheme or a system in place to say we wanna, we have to do one on this side and then we're doing another one on the other side. That's not how it works. You're grateful when a good one comes along and this hasn't changed for me. To this day, you just have to be grateful when you get on a good project. And I've said this before in interviews, but the first time we watched Miracle Mile, it was like, yeah, this is a good one. You don't need, you have an initial reaction to a project and as a musician, you're either inspired or you're not. And it's not a black and white, of course, there's sort of degrees of it but once in a while one comes along where you go like, yeah, I really wanna do that. And that was Miracle Mile. Steve already mentioned that John Daly had a hand in getting you guys. But how was the project pitched to you? I mean, post-apocalyptic genre is kind of, it was the Western of the 80s. I mean, we're looking at pictures of the Road Warrior and Mad Max all over the place here. And there was this glut of Mad Max, Road Warrior type thing, a lot of cheapies. So how was this project pitched to you guys? Hey, I've got this really interesting post-apocalyptic movie for you guys. What were you thinking when this came? You know, I mean, I don't think it was pitched in a certain way that we knew what the story or the plot was about and we had a look at the movie and it seemed very well put together and have a certain aesthetic that as, you look at it as the group Tanger and Dream and you say, yes, this is something that we can do something for that's A, related to what we've done before, but B also gives us an opportunity to try something else. The score is an interesting, comes at an interesting point because it's the first score without Chris Franke, which was a big change in Tanger and Dream. And yet it relates to, it relates to the film scoring history of Tanger and Dream in interesting ways. The second clip we saw, this is material that at the time we were developing and it got used in Miracle Mile and in Near Dark, there's a connection between Near Dark and Miracle Mile in that one scene and the third scene, the night sequence, of course, borrower is inspired by risky business. So we were kind of reinventing ourselves a little bit for the film and we used to do that quite frequently, but Miracle Mile is not this isolated thing that happened on an island, but it connects to everything else that happened before and that's typically how it works. There is no, these projects don't happen on an island. They happen in connection with everything else that's going on, even the live work or the album work that was going on at the time in some ways influenced this film. For us, it was quite often because on an album, you always try to find a focus for the album and for the release and there's a lot of good ideas that don't make it onto the album because they don't fit that particular focus, but they can, for instance, find their way into a film and you say, I have this track, didn't really work on the album and this is how it started, by the way, with Sorcerer. Sorcerer was a bunch of leftover tracks that they just sent to Friedkin because he just kept bugging them and said, here, here's some stuff that we couldn't find any other place for. See if you can use it. Do you, oh, I do remember looking at the museum sequence that was a change of pace, too, and that was mainly your classical training, wasn't it? In that museum piece? Because you were highly trained in classical music and I remember Edgar remarking on that, too, that this was the sort of the new thing. I don't, I think what that piece was, I guess I first thought was this one of Edgar's things and then I heard to you, and I said, you know, that was definitely something I played, but I think it was Edgar sort of telling me some idea that he asked me to execute. I think he was encouraging your gifts, which did make it different than some of the things in the past. We were an interesting combination. When the final product of Miracle Mile complete score was in there, everything was all set, you got it for you, Paul. Do you remember watching the complete product and what did you think when you saw the movie, when it was scored, done, done? Well, you know, I started on a note of honesty, so I will continue with honesty and that is that, you know, whenever, or for me at least in my experience, whenever you finish something and then there's a time period of about three years after you finish it where you can't really watch it or listen to it because you're in danger of becoming suicidal. So after those three years, the real assessment begins, you know, and a lot of projects kind of just fall away and some projects you go like, yeah, that was actually not that bad and then over time you appreciate it more and you know, Miracle Mile is a great example of that, you know, where really in the beginning you get like, ah, I would have done that different, I would have done that different and this is wrong and it's not mixed. Even though I have to say, you know, the other thing you noticed with the clips, how music-friendly this music, this movie was mixed is quite remarkable given the fact that these days I try to attend every dub mix and almost every dub mix. I have to make a point for the music to either be louder or lower because it's usually wrong. I mean, I remember, I think, I mean, it's not like you, you know, sometimes you send the music over and people do whatever they want. I mean, it was pretty much scored on the sessions there and then I, you know, with the music, I mean, it wasn't like, shame, we knew where all the cues were gonna go and I was on the stage making sure the music got up there. Mike Minkler was the mixer, he's one of the best, one of the Oscars, so. No, you let music carry the film at times and that is still to this day, it's... To me, it's, it's important to carry, it's important faction in this movie too as anything, is cinematography or writing or acting, is that the music is equal to any of the other creative parts of the movie, so. In 1989, there was a soundtrack release, there was an album that came out and that to this day has served as the soundtrack for this film, I've listened to that soundtrack many, many times on CD. Can you tell us, this question is for both of you, either one or both. What was on that soundtrack and what's on this new soundtrack that's different? What's the difference between these two soundtracks? The difference is that the original soundtrack was put together for private music label that we were assigned to at the time and it was the usual selection and concentration of tracks that we did for soundtracks for cues to be more, you know, consolidated as tracks, so it wasn't the full score, so this release now has the soundtrack released to original and then also the original score cues as they were used in the film, similar to the alien soundtrack that came out a while ago where it was the original recording and then what was actually used in the film. And the CD version had, you know, added on other instrumentation and added more things and places to it, yeah. We reproduced it a little bit for record release. Steve, this is pretty much my last question for you. Now that this movie has snowballed into this classic movie, as I've said, not just a cult classic, what would you like to say to fans of this film and to the people who came out to just to meet you today? You know, I just thank you and I love the way people in France are here to turn people onto it. They find somebody who hasn't, has never seen it and run it for somebody who doesn't know anything about it and is a litmus test, I don't know. That's the best way to watch it. You can't at four in the morning, but that's not that important. I don't know, just, you know, let's change the world so it'll be a comedy, not a drama. Paul, you've had a very prolific career. You've gone on to do lots and lots of projects on your own and with Andrew and Dream. Now that Miracle Myles, almost 30 years behind you, where does this project sit for you on your proverbial shelf? Well, one that I do not consider a waste of time. You know? No, I mean, it's like, it sorts itself out over time and there are a few ones that you're happy that you were part of and first of all, you're fortunate if you can even say that, you know, if you've spent your life in the entertainment industry and say, I've had a few that were actually not bad and you know, it's always gonna be that for me and it's also from the time in Tangerine Dream, it's just one of the founder memories that I have. You know, I was a 23-year-old kid. This was all sort of new stuff for me. Touring was amazing. You know, I went from slapping my own keywords on and off stage to everything was taken care of and then being thrown into film was amazingly stunning for me at the time. And but, you know, the truth is also that a lot of these films have sort of fallen away and some didn't, Near Dark didn't, Miracle Model didn't, Shy People in some degree didn't and you're happy if you can say that. So this probably is my favorite one though from the Tangerine Dream phase. All right, well thank you guys so much for taking part in this Q&A. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.