Widescreen: Film composer's work to be performed in Downers Grove; a McFly mystery solved?
Film composer Jermaine Stegall, who spoke with the Daily Herald in March 2021 about writing his wall-to-wall score for Eddie Murphy's “Coming 2 America,” will be in the suburbs this weekend when the Downers Grove North Alumni & Friends band performs his piece “True North.”
The free concert begins at 4 p.m. Saturday, April 29, at the high school, 4436 Main St., Downers Grove, and will honor the retirement of fine arts chair Brayer Teague.
A Joliet native who attended Northern Illinois University, Stegall's music can also be heard in “Praise This,” a film about a praise choir competition starring Chloe Bailey of R&B duo Chloe x Halle, which is available exclusively on the Peacock streaming service.
Now screaming
Er, now streaming on Paramount+: “Scream VI,” the latest installment in the meta-slasher franchise that helped inspire Stegall to become a film composer. He said that seeing Wes Craven's original on VHS in 1997 was “an out-of-body experience.” By 2004, Stegall was an intern on the Will Smith movie “I, Robot,” working under “Scream” composer Marco Beltrami.
Let's keep the connections coming: A grieving police officer who helps our heroines in “Scream VI” is played by Northwestern University grad Dermot Mulroney, who also moonlights as a cellist. You can hear him play on Michael Giacchino's scores for “Mission: Impossible III,” “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol” and “Star Trek Into Darkness.”
Didja ever notice ...
I've seen “Back to the Future” dozens of times since 1985, when my dad took 6-year-old me to see it at the old Randhurst theater. (No, not that one, the OLD old Randhurst theater.) It took me 38 years to find some clues planted in the film's opening scenes about how it is that 17-year-old Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) became BFFs with mad scientist Emmett “Doc” Brown (Christopher Lloyd).
I pieced these details together after seeing it two weekends ago at the Music Box in Chicago: Doc's garage is next to a Burger King. When Marty enters the garage in the opening scene, we see Burger King wrappers and cups on the ground outside the garage, and some strewn across Doc's bed. A few minutes later, we meet Marty's brother Dave (Marc McClure), who is in his work clothes — he's on the night shift at Burger King.
So Doc is one of Dave's regular customers. All it takes is one chance encounter when Marty is visiting his brother at work, or Dave saying, “You wouldn't believe this guy who comes in every night ...”
Great Scott!
• Sean Stangland is an assistant news editor who has been hurling profanities at killer robots this week while playing “Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores.”