Kris Bowers is no stranger to the awards season conversation. He’s a four-time Emmy-nominated composer--for his work on When They See Us in 2019, Mrs. America in 2020, and twice for Bridgerton (Original Dramatic Score and Main Title theme Music) in 2021. Bowers is also a Best Documentary Short Subject Oscar nominee as a producer and co-director (with writer Ben Proudfoot) of A Concerto Is a Conversation, also in 2021.
Fast forward to today and Bowers and Proudfoot have teamed to produce and direct another documentary short, The Last Repair Shop, which this week earned inclusion as one of just 15 films on the Oscar shortlist in the Documentary Short category.
Spotlighting four of the people responsible for repairing the musical instruments used by students in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the short film--which premiered at Telluride this year and was acquired by Searchlight Pictures and L.A. Times Studios--last month won the Critics Choice Award for Best Short Documentary. The emotionally touching short reflects the positive influence that musical instruments have on the youngsters who play them and the adults in the LAUSD free repair service who keep them working and in tune.
Meanwhile on the long-form score, Bowers served as a composer on director Blitz Bazawule's The Color Purple (Warner Bros. Pictures), which is one of 15 films shortlisted in the Best Original Score Oscar category.
Instruments of positive change
Proudfoot became aware of the LAUSD’s instrument repair shop through a link to an article about it sent to him by producer Jeremy Lambert (A Concerto Is a Conversation; Lambert also wound up serving as a producer on The Last Repair Shop). Proudfoot was drawn to the story and shared it with Bowers who immediately came on board. “I’m an LAUSD alum and never knew the shop existed,” recalled Bowers who knows all too well what music and education in the arts can mean to youngsters.
A dozen people worked at the repair shop and when asked who might be interested in sharing their story, four volunteered. “Each of the four had an incredible story to tell,” related Bowers.
There was a division of labor between the directors on The Last Repair Shop, with Proudfoot interviewing the craftspeople/repair artisans and Bowers interviewing the youngsters. But otherwise, as in the past, pretty much all the other responsibilities were shared as the directors worked to organize their approach to the story, communicated in tandem with the editor, were involved in the edit, the final mix and varied other aspects of the film.
Bowers observed that their backgrounds mesh and complement each other; he being a composer/jazz musician and Proudfoot having roots as a sleight-of-hand magician. They thus both have an orientation of going with the flow and the natural progression of things, being open to improvisation and embracing different directions as they emerge, all in the interest of what’s best for the story and doing justice to its characters.
Among Bowers’ biggest takeaways from The Last Repair Shop was the realization that “every person has a really profound story within them.” The instrument repair artists certainly did, sharing life-changing and life-affirming experiences related to their work. As for the youngsters, Bowers said, “You think kids haven’t lived enough life to have any deep stories. Each, though, had a really deep emotional and moving story. They already had this wisdom in terms of how to look at different experiences they’ve had in their lives.”
In terms of discovering and connecting with those stories, Bowers observed that all the subjects in The Last Repair Shop “just needed someone being there to listen and to ask questions to pull that out of them.”
The Color Purple
For The Color Purple, the prospect of reimagining the story as a musical feature film seemed daunting. Based on Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Color Purple,” Steven Spielberg had already famously directed a lauded movie adaptation. That 1985 release scored 11 Oscar nominations, earning Spielberg the DGA Award. And in 2005 a Broadway musical version emerged and became a great success, garnering 11 Tony Award nominations. A revival of the Broadway production won two Tony Awards in 2016.
There was much for a movie musical rendition to live up to--but in order to do so, Bowers recalled that director Bazawule brought him on six months before filming started. The composer became embedded in reimagining the story musically, developing a deep and innate understanding of the material that served him in good stead. Bowers was writing the initial themes and cues when filming got underway He had a pass at the full score months before the final movie was completed. He and Bazawule had the opportunity to sit back and watch it a number of times “with what we thought was a completed score.” They would continue honing, fine tuning and refining in order to properly advance the story.
Bowers has another feature, director Ava DuVernay's Origin (Neon), believed to be in Academy Award contention, though not for music since it didn't make the shortlist cut.
Bowers reunited with DuVernay on Origin. Their history together includes her serving as a producer on A Concerto Is a Conversation, and creator, director and executive producer on the miniseries When They See Us, for which the composer earned an Emmy nomination.
Origin chronicles the remarkable life and work of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson (played by Academy Award nominee Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) as she investigates the genesis of injustice and uncovers a hidden truth that affects us all. Writer-director DuVernay adapted the screenplay from Wilkerson’s non-fiction book, “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.” That book’s thesis traces injustice and persecution to a caste system, a hierarchy placing some groups over others--as it exists now and historically in India, in the U.S. relative to the disadvantaged such as Blacks, and dating back in part to Nazi Germany with the systematic killing of Jews. Wilkerson sees these travesties as being connected--not a function of race or religion but rather a caste system in which people are treated as lower forms of life. Wilkerson pinpointed the Third Reich, for example, as being inspired by Jim Crow laws which disenfranchised and persecuted Blacks in the U.S. Jim Crow helped Nazis in turn to make an argument for and craft legal discrimination in Germany against Jews.
Origin brings these historic dynamics to the fore as well as the tragic events of Wilkerson’s personal life--the death of her husband and shortly thereafter her mother--which framed her writing. The result is a film that’s a portrait of grief and healing--both personally and in the world.
Reflecting on the work he did for Origin, Bowers said it affirmed for him “the deceptive simplicity of music that needs to underscore these heavy emotional and weighty ideas. There were so many sequences in that film where music has to tow the line of supporting heavy emotional information without making it feel melodramatic.” The music, he continued, could not demand too much attention, meaning he had to thread the needle in terms of the music having a subtle impact but not being too overtly impactful in order to best support the narrative.
One discipline informs another
Bowers observed that his experience as a director of short films has informed his work on TV and features as a composer.
“I can speak to directors with a bit more confidence now in terms of the shape of their story--what I might be inferring from watching something, understanding how they might be breaking up the story in terms of structure.”
Bowers said what he’s learned from the directorial/filmmaking space can only help him from a music creation standpoint. He is now better able to look at scoring a film from a different perspective--as part of what assorted aspects of the storytelling process are contributing to that effort. In turn, he can better see how the pace of the edit is affecting the story. “Should the music play with or against that?” he asked. “How much is sound design helping us feel a certain section of the story...I understand the moment in a different way.”
That understanding runs deep as also reflected in Bowers’ other high-profile credits including features such as Green Book (a Best Picture Oscar winner) King Richard, Chevalier, Haunted Mansion and the upcoming Bob Marley: One Love. His additional TV endeavors include the Bridgerton spinoff Queen Charlotte as well as the Marvel limited series Secret Invasion.
(This is the eighth installment of a 16-part series with future installments of The Road To Oscar slated to run in the weekly SHOOT>e.dition, The SHOOT Dailies and on SHOOTonline.com, with select installments also in print issues. The series will appear weekly through the Academy Awards gala ceremony. Nominations for the 96th Academy Awards will be announced on January 23, 2024, The 96th Oscars will be held on Sunday, March 10, 2024.)