Emmy Vindication
DEBBIE WALLIS LANDAU
SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
urt Sobel bought
his first guitar 21
years ago. Com-
posing original
songs was his avo-
cation, when other
teens were pursu-
ing sports or going
to parties.
Yet as he strum-
med chords in his Oak
Park bedroom, stardom
looked a long way off.
Last August, the now
39-year-old composer's
lifelong aspirations were
rewarded with an Emmy
for his original tune
"Why Do I Lie?" written
for the HBO movie Cast
a Deadly Spell.
"It was an enormous
thrill," Mr. Sobel said
from his Pacific Pali-
sides, Calif., home. "To
get the recognition from
my peers is quite an
honor."
Curt Sobel
finds that
Oak Park
and
Hollywood
can mix.
The Emmy was the
ultimate justification for
Mr. Sobel's decision to
drop out of pre-medicine
a semester before gradu-
ation and pursue a com-
posing career.
"I used to perform at
the Ark in Ann Arbor
while I was at the
University of Michigan,"
he said. "Or on weekends
I'd be featured at a club
like Delta Lady in
Ferndale, which gave
opportunities to new
artists."
Mr. Sobel enrolled in
the two-year composing
and arranging curricu-
lum at Boston's Berklee
School of Music. In 1978,
armed with his diploma,
he loaded his car and
drove to California to
make his musical for-
tune.
"But when I arrived in
L.A.," he said, "I realized
I was still too green. I
didn't know enough
about the mechanics of
working with key people
like producers and direc-
tors — the people you
have to please and
appease, for example."
It was his great good
fortune, he said, to be
offered a job at a sound
studio to learn music
editing.
"I got hands-on experi-
ence working with great
composers I respected,
like Alex North, Georges
Delarue and Bruce
Browden. Composing for
orchestra and composing
for movies are very dif-
ferent. With movies,
you're right in the room
with the decision makers
whose point of view you
want to influence."
EMMY page 80
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