Experiencing "A Series of Unfortunate Events"... Will Certainly Make Oneself Grow Up-- Real Fast-- Real Quick.

Maybe it's by divine design-- or my own self-fulfilling prophecy of fundamentally flawed undoing-- but I find the act of writing anything-- anywhere-- anymore-- near-next-to-impossible in any capacity-- that is-- without listening to music in concurrent harmony. I've tried, believe me. I've tried. I can't do it. I just can't do it.

“Music’s the only thing that makes sense anymore, man. Play it loud enough, keeps the demons at bay.”

More often than not, when I’m writing a new screenplay or comic book, I go to my favourite film composer, Thomas Newman-- in the search for inner serenity.

I find soothing solace and peaceful sanctuary whenever I'm listening to his calming strings and pleasant keys, while in the background of my work. If I’m on a long drive home, and just want to feel the mixture of emotions turn over in my stomach from the daily grind, I will without a doubt put on American Beauty (1999).

If I need to relax after a long hard day of work, or my anxiety is kicking in full force, I turn to his music and just completely destress my body and calm myself down. Thomas Newman has personally proven to help stop my anxiety attacks, before they ever get too deeply rooted in reality. Attacks where the rumination and fixation on negativity are respective king and queen. He’s helped me with that more times than I can count. It always works. And always will. Thank you, sir. Thank you.

It’s almost too hard to explain why I love his music. I mean, I know why I do, but I feel like any word that I use to describe the notes on the page, ultimately in the end won’t really matter. Simply put, nothing would do them proper justice. Frankly, it’s less about any one word, and more about how the music makes me feel, deep down in my very bone marrow.

When I listen to his music, I immediately feel better about the world. His music feels both somehow operatic and deeply personal at the exact same time. Melodic and classical. I have a genuinely visceral reaction-- in that my body temperature fluctuates instantly. For the better. Always for the better.

I feel utterly transported into another world. It’s like you’re on your very own personal VIP tour of some secret universe that you and only you have momentary, ephemeral access to. He’s letting you in on a little secret, that only you and he are privy to. I don’t get that with anyone else.

My gateway to Newman was when I first went to go see Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004) back when I was eleven-years-old. #CoreMemoryUnlocked This is one of those movies in particular that I feel often gets lost in the shuffle. YA WANNA FEEL OLD? THIS MOVIE CAME OUT TWENTY YEARS AGO, LAST DECEMBER. LET THAT SINK IN. IS IT SUNK? IT WILL BE. FEEL OLD, YET?

The 3-season Netflix series (2017-2019) is honestly near-perfect, and I do highly recommend it. From the great performances, poppy costumes, vibrant sets and whipsmart dialogue, etc…, it all works.

Very much akin to one of my favourite shows of all time (and cancelled far too soon), Pushing Daisies (2007-2009). Of which Barry Sonnenfeld worked on both. So there's that.

With all that being said, that will never change the fact, that the movie adaptation will always hold a special place in my heart. When people talk about the great Jim Carrey roles, I feel like nobody ever really talks about his performance here, as Count Olaf. And they should. They really should.I truly believe that he utterly disappears in that film. Pun intended, because yes, he has to play multiple different roles within it in order to disguise himself-- and his truly nefarious motives. He is so good in that movie, it’s honestly criminal. He is also playing a criminal. That’s how good he is.

“Dinner is served. Puttanesca.”

“What did you call me?!"

“It’s pasta. Pasta Puttanesca?”

“Where is the roast beef?” “

"Roast beef?”

"Yes, roast beef! It’s the Swedish term for beef that is roasted!”

As a big fan of energetic and flamboyant production design, I absolutely love the way the sets, locations and costumes all look. When the Baudelaires Orphans are bravely sailing across Lake Lachrymose to save their agoraphobic Aunt Josephine in Curdled Cave, it's clearly on a soundstage. I think about it every single time I see it, but it doesn't ever bother me. I don't ever feel taken out of the moment.

It just feels like a purposefully, hyper-stylized, operatic and theatrical Grimm’s fairytale. It was shot by Emmanuel Lubesky, after all. Go figure. The film has a very clearly Tim Burton-esque inspired look to it all. Newman's score only enhances that tenfold. I love that this world feels timeless or even better, out of time as it were. It's specifically never specified when it's supposed to take place. Also known as Neo-Victorian. I love that.

And for anyone who loves extensive three-hour-plus behind-the-scenes documentaries on the making of your favourite films, as I much as I do-- this one's for you. The fact that this absolute mammoth of a doc isn't also registered on Letterboxd along with the film itself, is an absolute crime of the highest internet-cineast order.

You start the movie off musically with “The Bad Beginning”. I mean where else is one supposed to begin? The Littlest Elf is doing his adorable little woodland dance, the record scratches, and the ominous instrumentals kick in, telling you that this story isn't going to go the way you think. Well, the music and Jude Law.

Even though it was totally made up for the film adaption, I still find “The Train-Track Sequence” to be absolutely riveting every single time I see it. “There's always something.”

"The Baudelaire Orphans" and "One Last Look" are both about the same event happening, but are brilliant framed to be narrative emotional bookends.

SPOILERS AHEAD, ya know for a film that's twenty years old (feel old, yet?) and a book series that's even older…

When the three heroes of the story find out that their parents died in a tragic house fire, having lost every single thing they’ve ever owned in the process-- their world is completely shattered. They trepidatiously walk up the steps into the smouldering wreckage of what once used to be their sanctuary. This scene always hits me so close to home. Every single time.

"Last Look" is them returning to their former home, one last time. One last time, after the many misadventures that they've had up until then. The children go to remember what their home once used to look like. Now, they're finally ready to depart and grow up, a lot faster than they're supposed to. The score is both somber and hopeful.

And that's what a lot of Thomas Newman's work is, like “The Letter That Never Came”. Sometimes all you need, are, an inventor, a reader, & a biter.

“At times the world can seem an unfriendly and sinister place. But believe us when we say that there is much more good in it, than bad. All you have to do-- is look hard enough.”

Thomas Newman loves focusing on the constant balance between life and death. The frightening and the arresting, the gory and the heavenly. His scores are as beautifully heart-wrenching, as they are also equally life-affirming.

With every passing year-- and the increasingly unlikely event I'll ever actually have a child of my own-- somewhere down the road in the future-- to this very day, I still hold true to one real resolute and absolute fact. If I ever have a daughter, I'm gonna name her after Violet Baudelaire. One of the best and most inspirational female characters in all of literature. There. I said it. And one that had a heavily positive impact on me growing up throughout my childhood, my youth, my adolescence and still continuing on into full-fledged adulthood. When in doubt, always think this thought: “What would Violet do?”

As Violet reads the letter out loud to Klaus and Sunny in the film's final moments, their parents single out three distinct but very important virtues. The Baudelaire Parents single out these three distinct but very important virtues to their three-- now sadly orphaned children. The same three distinct but very important virtues that I would want to instil in my Violet. If she is ever to exist…

The Baudelaire Children, who in an instant became The Baudelaire Orphans, have and always will be, full of-- kindness-- bravery-- and selflessness.