Directors Kris Bowers and Ben Proudfoot discuss their Oscar-nominated short film The Last Repair Shop with two-time Academy Award-winning film composer Hans Zimmer. Produced by Breakwater Studios, the film concerns a Los Angeles downtown warehouse where a handful of devoted craftspeople keep over 80,000 student instruments in good repair.
The Last Repair Shop won the Best Short Documentary award at 8th Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards and is available for streaming on YouTube and the Los Angeles Times website.
Hans Zimmer opened the chat, stressing how their film “is vastly important and vastly touching and vastly moving and tells a very important story that nobody really knows about.”
How did they come across the subject, he asks, “because the subject of, ‘hey, we are playing music and music is important,’ that’s been covered a thousand times, but nobody’s covered this amazing shop that is so vital to our existence.”
Kris Bowers responds: “We found out about this repair shop a little over four years ago when we were making another film together about my grandfather, A Concerto is a Conversation, and Jeremy Lambert, a producer on this film, sent Ben the article about the repair shop. And Ben at the time asked me if I had heard of it because he knew I went to LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District) schools. And for me it was such a surprise that, one, I never knew this shop existed, but also I never even considered as a kid how these instruments are kept in shape. For me, it was like I go play the piano in the auditorium or the music room, or I play the saxophone that I have – that’s the school saxophone in the music room in middle school. And when it’s broken, somehow the next second it’s fixed. I never thought about how that happened.”
Co-director Ben Proudfoot adds later: “The other interesting thing, living in Los Angeles we were both surprised and just very proud that LA is the last major city that has one of these repair shops. And to think about all of the session musicians and composers and all kinds of really crucial people, not only to film music but music in general, that have come through LA’s public school system and played these instruments…it’s kind of mind blowing. From John Williams who graduated in 1950 from North Hollywood High School all the way to Chris. I mean, the LA public school system has really been kind an unsung educational institution when it comes to American music and to film music as well…”
Watch the entire conversation here:
