http://ipraudio.interlochen.org/Michael_Mittelstaedt_0.mp3
Michael Mittelstaedt, Director of Motion Picture Arts at Interlochen Center for the Arts.
Transcript of Island Cabin Discs on Interlochen Public Radio, hosted by Jeff Kimpton, September 7, 2012, in Interlochen, Michigan.
JEFF KIMPTON, HOST: Welcome to Island Cabin Discs on Interlochen Public Radio. This is the program that features the people you know about sharing the music they would take with them to a deserted island getaway in the middle of Lake Michigan. I’m Jeff Kimpton your host, and my guest today is Michael Mittelstaedt, Director of Motion Picture Arts here at Interlochen Center for the Arts. Welcome, Michael, to the Island.
MICHAEL MITTELSTAEDT: Thank you, thank you. I’m happy to be here.
KIMPTON: Well, we’re taking a little different twist this time. We had “Island Cabin Books” a little bit with Anne-Marie Oomen. Maybe this is kind of “Island Cabin Films.” You head up the film program here--the Motion Picture Arts Program. So, we asked you to be on the program. What went through your mind because you brought a huge collection of music both in film and not.
MITTELSTAEDT: Sure. I started to try to think of the rules of the world because I spread out pretty broadly in my taste in film and music and I sort of think, well, what would I take with me that was representative of something I would listen to over and over again. Whether it was a guilty pleasure or things I know have some gravitas in the music business. I was thinking generally about what I could listen to over and over again. Things that I feel like were pieces that I would repeat.
KIMPTON: And as we were talking here, beginning the interview, which we’ll share with the listeners in just a bit, some of your early experiences in film were in the very first grade! It’s really interesting to see that the seeds were planted a lot earlier probably than most. We’ll come back to that in a little bit. We asked you what would be your first piece and you were very definitive in the piece you want to start with.
MITTELSTAEDT: Sure. In first grade, my teacher Mr. Winnicker was an avid film buff. We were watching 16mm prints of Gene Kelly musicals probably weekly.
KIMPTON: (Laughs) Was it part of the reading program?
MITTELSTAEDT: Yeah, it was! We were singing and dancing along with it in sort of a six-year-old version of it. It was that in combination with my father that those two people influenced my interest in film. So, “Singin’ In the Rain” is really dear to my heart and that era of musicals is the one that really appeals to me most. And I think it’s because Gene Kelly, like some of those other singers of that time, their music, or their voice is an extension of their speaking voice as opposed to a trained voice. I think that’s what is so alluring to me. Not only that but Gene Kelly can dance circles around many, many other dancers.
KIMPTON: On a soundstage with rain.
MITTELSTAEDT: Right, kicking around big puddles and still pulling of the choreography.
(Plays “Singin’ in the Rain” from Singin’ in the Rain)
KIMPTON: That’s the amazing “Singin’ in the Rain,” Gene Kelly, from the musical-movie of the same name. With our guest today, Michael Mittelstaedt, Director of Motion Picture Arts here at Interlochen Center for the Arts. So, when you see that--hear it--as both a filmmaker yourself, a student of film, a film historian, it gets into the how they actually made it. Because it wasn’t really made outside--it wasn’t really made in the rain. It was spraying stuff. Share a little bit of that with our listeners.
MITTELSTAEDT: There’s not only the challenge for Kelly to splash around in those huge puddles, but it was also the technical challenge of getting rain to show up on film. I think in the early days of rain machines they were trying different ways in which to get it to show up on screens. I think they were mixing it with milk at times to get some sort of white tone or texture to it. In that particular instance, I remember there was the point of really, really having to pour down heavy, giant droplets of rain in order to get it show it up on film. His performance is under the duress of all those crazy effects they were trying out and he still pulls it off.
KIMPTON: We’ll hear a lot of these fascinating stories as we take a tour through movie music and some of your music as well. So, you grew up where?
MITTELSTAEDT: I grew up in Southeast Michigan. Mt. Clemens, Clinton Township area. We became Clinton Township when we got a post office and a zip code. I’m a Michigander.
KIMPTON: And early experiences with film...you talked about your teacher and then your dad. Your dad was a film buff?
MITTELSTAEDT: He was. My dad was really into the Peter Sellers and Pink Panther, James Bond...
KIMPTON: Mink Minky! (Laughter) Birdie num num! From the party, one of the great movies, right?
MITTELSTAEDT: Exactly! Those movies, along with Star Wars, and Superman, and Indiana Jones, we would watch over and over again. I would watch it with him on TV even if we had the VHS or DVD at the time just because out of the sheer entertainment that comes with those films and the clear story that comes away with them.
KIMPTON: As you were a young, impressionable child was there the thought that film was something you might want to get into at that point? Or were you a participant or observer?
MITTELSTAEDT: I was this avid observer. I go back and look at the years at some of these movies were printed and put out and distributed and I’m surprised how young I was when I was seeing some of these movies. I was four or six years old when I saw Star Wars in the theater. I saw Superman in the theater and it was really influential with me as an observer. But I think in second grade I reported to my parents I wanted to be a dentist. And then as I grew a little bit older I discovered what you would have to be doing and how little people flossed. (Laughter) I couldn’t undergo that. It was fascinating but not so fascinating that I wanted to get into everybody’s mouth with tools.
KIMPTON: The movies I went to when I was young or your age were El Cid, Spartacus, Ten Commandments. Those were some of the huge ones. And many times we did them widescreen at the drive-in.
MITTELSTAEDT: And those are at some of that magnitude of adventure that are so impressive.
KIMPTON: Right, and I remember it was such a shift when I was in junior high. It was Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Then the genre began to change from the Cecil B. Demille spectacles into much more personal films. Those were very different times. But then I’m a little older than you are so...(Laughs)
MITTELSTAEDT: But I’m still seeing those movies!
KIMPTON: They are part of movie history. Part of that actually leads to the second piece, the hero part of this that we talked about earlier. Your second piece is by the amazing, perhaps one of the greatest or best-known film score composers of all time, John Williams.
MITTELSTAEDT: Indiana Jones was one of the turning point movies for me in just thinking about watching films over and over again and starting to break it down into the hero and their objective. And at the same time still having the thrill of a film. So, even though you’re dissecting this piece it’s still thrilling to watch the story over and over again. With Indiana Jones I chose the song “Desert Chase,” and the reason I chose “Desert Chase” I feel like just by listening to the song I can watch the movie in my mind because of how the song becomes partner to the action that’s happening. And in that part of the sequence, you could take out what little dialogue there is in it and sound effects and it would stand as a stand-alone piece almost as if it’s a silent film piece accompanied by music. So, Indiana Jones is pressed to go after the Ark of the Covenant. They put it in a truck, it takes off. He doesn’t have a vehicle, what does he do? I think at the time he declares he is going to improvise and he finds himself a white horse. But at the time you don’t judge that as being a little over the top. You just follow along because you’re so engrossed in that portion of the movie because your disbelief is so suspended that anything can really happen.
(Plays “Desert Chase” from Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark)
KIMPTON: I think anybody who has seen the great Raiders of the Lost Ark will remember that “Desert Chase” which that was by the great film composer John Williams. So, you went to high school, Clinton Township, and then you became a Spartan.
MITTELSTAEDT: I did. Yeah, Michigan State was my next step.
KIMPTON: You decided you didn’t want to clean teeth and give flossing lectures for a living.
MITTELSTAEDT: (Laughs) No, I was resolute about that.
KIMPTON: I think you went into psychology to start off with?
MITTELSTAEDT: I did. I think I was interested in psychology in the way that I think everything academic that interested me was that it had a story behind it. So, even science and biology. Biology had a more specific story to me.
KIMPTON: You get to meet some really clever people. (Laughter)
MITTELSTAEDT: It’s a lot of drama when they separate and get back together. But it was the personal story of psychology. In addition to that I was also learning a lot of language and Spanish. So, I had two degrees coming out of Michigan State. But still, I guess it was probably three and half years into my time at Michigan State that I wasn’t aware that I was headed towards film.
KIMPTON: What was the trigger? What pushed you to film?
MITTELSTAEDT: I was at a point in my life where from many different directions, not just parents...
KIMPTON: “What are you going to do with your degree?”
MITTELSTAEDT: Right, exactly. They were suggesting, “You need to focus. You really need to focus.” (Laughter) I like theater, I enjoy telecommunications. I was doing radio and I was doing some theater while I was at Michigan State. Michigan State is a wonderful place where you can taste a lot of things, and as I was about to graduate a friend of mine had suggested, “Have you ever thought of film because of what you’re doing?” That was sort of the big moment for me, a cataclysm of thinking, “Oh my God!”
KIMPTON: You “focused.” (Laughter)
MITTELSTAEDT: I can report back that now I have truly focused. It was then that I started looking for film schools and looking at how the education I had already gotten how it applied to what I was about to do. And it fit very well.
KIMPTON: I think sometimes people forget it’s a cumulative series of experiences that kind of add up and then there’s this “aha” moment. And sometimes it’s a natural pathway and sometimes it’s very circuitous or a complete 360 in the opposite direction.
MITTELSTAEDT: Right, well, we have a hard time looking back and thinking that everything we do, all the education we get, all the conversations we have, everything is additive. There’s going to be a moment that tips you over into the right direction for you. And that’s what I found. And I truly felt when I was going to tell my parents that this is where I was headed...that was a really difficult conversation I thought I was about to have. I was going to be outed as a film major and that’s where I want to head. Because they were already thinking, “Where are you going to go with degrees in psychology and Spanish literature?”
KIMPTON: And instantly they probably had visions of you in Beverly Hills, a large mansion... (Laughter) People following you with clipboards following you saying, “Mister Mittelstaedt, what can we do?”
MITTELSTAEDT: Or the opposite! “He’s got this great refrigerator box over on the corner of whatever and whatever.” But I found a place for all my interests and that was a wonderful revelation for me.
KIMPTON: Part of that is the hero issue that you were talking about here in your next piece, a piece from Silverado.
MITTELSTAEDT: So, Silverado is a movie similar in spirit to Indiana Jones. For me it was this ensemble cast of Kevin Costner, Danny Glover, Scott Glenn, Jeff Goldblum, Kevin Kline, and John Cleese. And all these actors were new to me at the time. Brand new to me at the time. And Kevin Kline plays this marvelous cowboy who has been wronged by his gang. They’ve left him to die in the desert. He’s only in his union suit and now he has to recollect all these pieces he’s lost. His pistols, his saddle, his hat--all these things he has to collect back while he searches out these guys who left him in the desert to die. And he’s stunning in it. But part of the stunning-ness is these shots of wide-open Western vistas, mountains, and wildflower meadows and all these wonderful things. And the song just swells underneath their riding together to avenge these bad guys.
KIMPTON: I always called it “soaring-Dances-with-Wolves-french-horns.” (Laughter)
MITTELSTAEDT: Right, right! This brilliant brass, this wonderful brass chorus. Just hearing that song, much like “Desert Chase” and some of those other pieces, I can picture where they are in the film and what’s happening.
(Plays “Main Theme” from Silverado)
KIMPTON: You’re listening to Island Cabin Discs on Interlochen Public Radio. I’m Jeff Kimpton, your host, and my guest today is Michael Mittelstaedt, Director of Motion Picture Arts at Interlochen Center for the Arts.
(Continues “Main Theme” from Silverado)
KIMPTON: That’s the main theme from Silverado. Another selection of our guest today, Michael Mittelstaedt, Director of Motion Picture Arts here at Interlochen Center for the Arts. Okay, I think you go off to Ohio University for your film program?
MITTELSTAEDT: I did.
KIMPTON: How do you become a filmmaker? What are the rudiments and crafts? And I think it will feed into our discussion of what’s unique about our program here at Interlochen.
MITTELSTAEDT: Sure. It was a love for all the components. It was really a marvelous way to indulge in all these art forms I would never be or have time to be an expert in. I could work with musicians, I could work with actors, I could work with storytelling and writing and take the part of writing and directing but not necessarily have to be a master of all those other art forms but still get to indulge all that sensibility of interest in those different disciplines. It’s a love of it because I think there’s a number of people who begin to get into filmmaking who are pretty quickly stopped. It’s not always fun; it’s not always sexy. It’s a lot of hard work and can be an art form that cuts out the people who are really not in love with it because of its difficulty. But I think the willingness to get through that process and go through to the end of films and talking about film and that love of film keeps you wanting to do more, keeps you wanting to continue to produce.
KIMPTON: So, what do you start with? I know here we start with telling a simple story. You have to be able to tell a good story. How do you begin to move into becoming a filmmaker? Some kids, of course, have their camera and get their little animation on their computer. Is it play or is not play but experience?
MITTELSTAEDT: It’s both. I think that if you’re unwilling to play then you’re never going to venture outside of your current skill level. So, trying things out, tweaking things, moving things around, being really willing to take something apart and reassemble it. The story you wrote as a screenplay after you shoot it might not be what you thought you had when you wrote it. What ends up on the screen may be completely different from your original idea but still has the same spirit of it. The willingness to write the script and tweak it, and tweak it, and tweak it until it’s as good as it can be for the amount of time you had to write it is really important. That flexibility once you get to set is really key in thinking of how all the components are going to fit together. And then being really, really decisive with your performers and your crew.
KIMPTON: And then if it doesn’t work out I guess you go to Whiskeytown which is your next selection here.
MITTELSTAEDT: What I first thought you were going for when you asked, “How do you make that film?” I think it’s finding those things that generate images for you. Finding that list of opportunities. I peruse the Library of Congress website for all kinds of images that I do little story sketches on. I look up mustache; I look up rodeo clown. I look up these different types of images that I try to generate images from. With Whiskeytown, whose lead singer is Ryan Adams. Ryan Adams is probably more well-known than Whiskeytown now. I discovered them when I was working on a music video for a band called Big Back Forty. They had come back from a tour and were talking about how Whiskeytown had just broken up and Ryan Adams was going to go on his own. Now Ryan, I don’t know him personally, but Ryan Adams is a songwriter who really knows what it is like to write a character sketch. To take you through the process of discovering a lonesome cowboy and his dismay at what sounds as if he has just lost his love and the things he should have done in order to keep her.
(Plays “Sixteen Days” by Whiskeytown)
MITTELSTAEDT: So, with that song, like a number of the tracks on my list, it’s telling a story through music. I think you can go about finding these images generated from all different types of arts.
KIMPTON: The piece was “16 Days” by the group Whiskeytown with the singer Ryan Adams. So, sometimes there is the discussion that film is not art. That it’s pulling all these different things together and that the arts are those pure things that make it up. I personally don’t believe that and I know you don’t either. But to those to say that it’s not really an art, art is music or it’s visual art, what’s your argument for that?
MITTELSTAEDT: My argument is that film is a container for all art forms. It’s a place where they can all come together and work on a common goal. I think the stratification of the value of different art forms is very dangerous. What it does is put up an obstacle to collaboration that shouldn’t be there. So, film is that lovely place where all art forms can come together and work on a common goal. Each is a character in that story, each is telling a different part of that story. None is unimportant in the development of that project. So, I’ve had a number of arguments. I think there’s a number of people who would say screenwriting is not literature. I would argue different than that because it is telling stories. It is the first step in telling your story.
KIMPTON: I would have a hard time saying screenwriting is not writing for theater. I mean, parse the difference.
MITTELSTAEDT: Correct. You’re reading it just as if you’re reading literature. It’s not filling in all the gaps for you but once we produce and shoot the film it is filling in some of those visual gaps. It should be all on the page before you get to production.
KIMPTON: Have you seen The Artist?
MITTELSTAEDT: I have seen The Artist.
KIMPTON: I have to ask that question because it was this year’s Academy Award winner. Tell us what you thought about that as a genre piece.
MITTELSTAEDT: I thought it was a lot of fun. I know there was a number of critiques against it because it wasn’t a silent film. Well, it’s not going to be a silent film. It was produced today in our generation. It is a nod to the silent films and not trying to be a replication of silent films. If it were truly a silent film there would be a piano player in front and he or she would be playing along with. I think it’s an opportunity to think that we don’t necessarily have to have tons of dialogue and sound effects and gasoline explosions to make a film.
KIMPTON: Well, and to develop characters as well which were extremely well developed just in a different way. The old way.
MITTELSTAEDT: The action was telling the story and that’s what movies should aspire. If I turn the sound off I still have a pretty good idea of what’s going on.
KIMPTON: Let’s go to a different piece of music.
MITTELSTAEDT: I was thinking in some of these character sketches they also move onto Jakob Dylan and Harper Simon. Jakob Dylan is Bob Dylan’s son; Harper Simon is Paul Simon’s son. Both of them were artists that struggled with their voice in the beginning. What I’ve discovered in their more recent music is they’ve come to an understanding that their voice is a lot like their fathers’. And when they’ve embraced that I think they’ve come up with a beautiful musical voice of their own that has some of the characteristics of their father’s.
KIMPTON: Well, here’s the selection “Nothing But The Whole Wide World” by...
MITTELSTAEDT: Jakob Dylan on the album Women + Country.
(Plays “Nothing But the Whole Wide World” by Jakob Dylan)
KIMPTON: That’s “Nothing But The Whole Wide World” by Jakob Dylan. “Nothing But The Whole Wide World” is that there’s a whole wide world out there for kids, for things to explore and make films. Tell us a little bit about, just a quick thumbnail sketch of the kinds of things kids study here when they come to our film program.
MITTELSTAEDT: Sure. Their very first steps are learning more about visual storytelling. So, our intent with some of the younger students is to enroll them in a class called “Story.” Our faculty member Andy Hiss teaches that class. Making a common understanding of the components of story from all different backgrounds. Whether it’s an opera or a triptych or a play or just a short story so that when they graduate through the program, that as they move into “Intro. to Screenwriting” and the other courses that we offer, they are building from that very base of what filmmaking is and that is to really understand what your characters are and what their story is. Then they begin to build the components on top of that; of cinematography and camerawork and post-production, working with actors and directing them and putting all those components together in a series of tiers in order that they can produce a much better film from the experience of knowing what it is to tell a story.
KIMPTON: As you tell a story, what are some of their struggle points? Is it getting to a longer narrative? Is it how they keep the energy going over multiple minutes? I know you start first with the one minute movie.
MITTELSTAEDT: Right, one minute silent shorts.
KIMPTON: And then it builds from there. Do some students have hurdles as they try to blend in the various parts? The technology as well as the story and the acting and the written part?
MITTELSTAEDT: I think sometimes the obstacle is that the story is mistaken for premise. That I’m in this different world or I have these quirky characters or they’re wearing these types of costumes or they’re carrying these types of props instead of thinking about the relationship between two people. What does one want from the other? Are they going about it the right way or the wrong way? How can they get that? How much can we hold that tension of that character’s need before we lose our audience? And what’s the new tension if we want to regain the attention of the audience? The pitfalls are often the gun becomes drama, the explosion is drama, cursing the screen blue is drama. They all have the parts of longer films and more development time. What we forget is sometimes drama is in the very small events in our lives. Between two people a conversation can often be a really amazing drama. It doesn’t need all those layers of complication to make it dramatic. Sometimes it’s just someone in love or an obstacle in their relationship.
KIMPTON: Let’s keep our audience engaged and go to another piece of music. (Laughter)
MITTELSTAEDT: We can hop back to the early days of my interest in music. It was because it was combined with cartoons. “Rabbit of Seville” comes up for me in a beautiful blend of classical music and pop culture because I can sing along. All of sudden “Barber of Seville” has lyrics for me. That may be in part intended, I guess. The cartoons that would use amazing string orchestras and all these wonderful musicians just for a two-and-a-half minute short, you know? Help us enter that world in a much bigger way.
KIMPTON: Well, of course we know a lot of the great musical scores to a lot of the cartoons in the ‘30s and ‘40s were classical pieces.
MITTELSTAEDT: Right. They had the luxury of the entire orchestra.
KIMPTON: It was quite amazing. Alright, this is the “The Rabbit of Seville” with the Sydney Symphony.
(Plays “The Rabbit of Seville” by the Sydney Symphony)
KIMPTON: That’s “The Rabbit of Seville” with the Sydney Symphony. A little background on that?
MITTELSTAEDT: My Saturdays were filled with watching cartoons in the morning. My father would wake me up at about 6:30 for both of us to head downstairs and watch cartoons. That was the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner hour. I guess technically, it was two hours. It’s a fond memory for me, “The Rabbit of Seville” and all the Warner Bros. cartoons in that something has been lost on Saturday mornings. The programming has gotten too “tween” and all kinds of drama...
KIMPTON: Spongebob and...
MITTELSTAEDT: Yeah, yeah. I mean, there’s a fondness for Spongebob but I think that the Warner Bros. were truly some of the greats.
KIMPTON: So, you have a youngster on the way. Are you going to go back those old cartoons and show them in the morning?
MITTELSTAEDT: Well, I don’t have to go get them. I have them!
KIMPTON: Well, that’s what I meant.
MITTELSTAEDT: There was a time in my life where I had a book of all the Warner Bros. cartoons. I geeked out by checking them off having seen them all. Some of them had been banned for reasonable content reasons. But yeah, I will indoctrinate my son or daughter with Warner Bros. cartoons. There’s no way around it having me as a father.
KIMPTON: You talked a little bit about the gasoline explosions in drama and special effects. Let’s talk a little bit about what’s the role of special effects in films. Recently we went to a film and all the trailers were just all these explosions and these monsters that morphed into this and that. The movie we actually saw had none of that, it was Iron Lady. I was waiting for Margaret Thatcher to turn into some kind of werewolf or something but it didn’t happen! (Laughter)
MITTELSTAEDT: Right, right. Packing pistols!
KIMPTON: So, what’s the role of that? What’s the future of that in film? Where’s it taking the genre?
MITTELSTAEDT: I think that again, the special effects in film should be partner to the story of what’s needing to be told. If there’s guns or explosions it should make sense within the context of the story. I think sometimes we suspend our disbelief in the way that anything can blow up in a ball of flames. We’re understanding that the magic moments are lost because we’re covering them up with these giant effects. I think that 3D has a wonderful place in upcoming filmmaking. I’ve enjoyed it in certain places. I’m really excited to see Pina, Wim Wender’s new piece in 3D, the dance piece. I think there’s places for 3D but I think we're starting to 3D everything. I don’t think it’s necessary for the storytelling in it. It’s an opportunity but I think we’re lathering it on everything. Obviously, there’s a place. When our guest, Jeff Wozniak came to talk as an artist from Industrial Light and Magic. He was talking about Rango and Rango’s work and just trying to make all the effects all appropriate to the world in which the characters live. The dirt--all the dirt that was surrounding those characters and how grimy they were. So, every choice that they made was partner to the story and how they made those creatures look.
KIMPTON: Do you think that’s what is fueling the backlash in the small, independent, very humanistic film movement that’s also telling stories in a different way?
MITTELSTAEDT: I think so. It’s hard when we come out of a film that we’ve been impressed but that effect is not lasting. So, when we come away and we thought, “What a ride” with Transformers and some of these big films it feels like a rollercoaster. But when you get off the rollercoaster how much do you remember the very specific parts or character of that roller coaster going up and down? I think that movies that really pay attention or they could pay attention, I mean Star Wars had lots of amazing explosions and lasers and all these amazing effects at the time. But we remember the story, we remember who the characters are. I think you are hard-pressed to remember some of the characters in the movies that are just effects. While it is exciting and sometimes it’s worth a bucket of popcorn, I think years from now when someone asks you what the story is of Transformers you might be hard-pressed to say.
KIMPTON: But you also have another story here and it was interesting as we were talking about this last selection that we’re going to play here. About you and your friends in high school going out with your little SLR cameras and little video...
MITTELSTAEDT: Yeah. I think everybody’s teenage life they have this fantasy of where they’re going and part of that for me was thinking about working in art. We would drive out in my 1975 Plymouth Duster--Harvest Gold Plymouth Duster...
KIMPTON: Absolutely. Brocade seats?
MITTELSTAEDT: Right right, and a giant console air conditioner right between the two seats that would freeze your...But while we’re out taking pictures of old, broken-down rusty tractors and leaning barns, I would have R.E.M. playing in the background. It was one of those artists that everything I listened to when I was a kid my father would ask me, “Is that R.E.M?” (Laughter) Because I listened to it so much as a kid. But it helped us, I think, get the sense of feeling like artists. And maybe some extent posturing as artists as kids, you know, getting your SLR out and shooting all kinds of film.
KIMPTON: And sometimes that’s how the process starts. And it’s a process of “Pretty Persuasion.” This is the last piece of our guests’ today, Michael Mittelstaedt, Director of Motion Picture Arts here at Interlochen Center for the Arts. Mike, it’s been a lot of fun. We have a lot more to talk about but we do have a time limit. Cut! (Laughter) Thanks for being here.
MITTELSTAEDT: Thank you.
(Plays “Pretty Persuasion” by R.E.M.)
KIMPTON: My guest today was Michael Mittelstaedt, Director of Motion Picture Arts at Interlochen Center for the Arts. For more information about the music you’ve heard on Island Cabin Discs, go to ipr.interlochen.org and click on Island Cabin Discs. Or write to us (ipr@interlochen.org) and refer the episode featuring Michael Mittelstaedt. I’m Jeff Kimpton, your host, thanking you for being with us today. The Executive Producer for Island Cabin Discs is Thom Paulson and this edition of Island Cabin Discs was produced by Brock Mormon for Interlochen Public Radio.