Recording March 2022 - 63

MARCH 2022
TAXI's Virtual Road Rally 2021
Mary Ramos, Music Supervisor
Part 3, Keynote Interview at TAXI's 25th Annual Road Rally
Interviewed by Michael Laskow
Mary Ramos is an award-winning music supervisor
who has helped create the musical identity for
over 100 films in nearly 30 years. She's helped to
shape the music for blockbuster features, awardwinning
independents, passionate
documentaries, episodic TV, commercials, and
video games as well. She's worked on Grammynominated
soundtracks and won two Guild of
Music Supervisors' awards for Django Unchained
and The Hateful Eight. And while she might be
best known for her work with Quentin Tarantino,
what makes Mary fascinating to us is the wide
range of projects that she's worked on, including
one of my all-time favorites, Happy Gilmore, Bride
of Chucky, South Park, Chef, Kill Bill: Volumes One
and Two, Mrs. America, which had an Emmy-nominated
score, Little Fires Everywhere, which also
had an Emmy-nominated score, Wu-Tang: American
Saga Season 2, Wasteland 3, which is a video
game, and Stillwater, which was just out a month
or two ago.
Continuing from where we left off in Part 2:
Yeah, you're right. It's visceral. You may not make
an out-loud mental note or verbal note like, " Oh,
the music made that seem better, " but if the
music weren't that good or that right, you would
feel it.
For instance, there's a scene in Little Fires Everywhere
where... It was a long dinner scene, set in
the '90s, with a tough topic, so there were a lot
of pauses-uncomfortable pauses. And then it
just needed to take the melodrama out of the
scene, because there were a lot of pauses and a
lot of intense stuff they talked about. I thought
it needed to be a dinner party; they were having
dinner together. I felt like it needed some
music in the background, not even blaring up
in your face, but something in the background
from the time period that like just a little
underneath that took air out of the dialog. And
I feel like it really helped that moment.
I know how many crazy hours
that you work. I remember seeing
on IMDB that one year you
did seven projects in a year.
That's a lot. Most supervisors will
have one or two or three, you
had seven. And you had years in
front of that and behind it that
were also really, really busy. I
hear from frustrated TAXI members-musicians
in
general-that they're so heartbroken
that when we forward
their music to a supervisor in
response to a brief or even a production-music
library for
addition to their catalog, and
they don't hear anything back.
In their mind's eye that song,
that instrumental, was the most
important thing in the world to
them right now. And now it's on
Mary's desk and they sit there,
and they stare at the phone, and
they check their email every
three minutes, and then they
get so heartbroken when they don't hear back.
Can you explain why the industry doesn't pick up
the phone or send an email saying, " Gee, John,
it's a really cool song, but I can't use it, and here
are the reasons why " ?
Yes, and I'm sorry that it is that way. It is rude
and it's unfortunate, but it's the nature of the
way things are. We're not the final say, and so
what we can do is be the cheerleaders about a
track, and we can send it off to the director
and the director can take a month or however
" You know, good covers are like
gold. "
-Mary Ramos
long to process it, and then never tell us
whether they liked it or not. You know, it's a
chain of events. But I will say this: Nothing
that comes across my desk, if it's good, goes
into the [trash] bin. I'm a hoarder of good
music, obviously. I save really good tracks. As
a matter of fact, on something I'm working on
now, I found something that was a pitch-
because I hoard emails as well-so I found
something with a pitch from like 2016 and I
put it against a picture, and it worked fantastically.
So, I reached out to the person who
pitched me, forwarding the 2016 email that
they sent, and they were like, " Oh, my God!
So glad you kept this. We no longer control
this 100%. " So if it's something good that we
come across, it's not going to go to waste. We
work on so many things that we keep you in
mind.
We had one TAXI member who heard back seven
Continued on page 64
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