There’s something refreshing about a film that wears its heart firmly on its sleeve. From inception to promotion, discussion to delivery, director Michael Showalter’s new film Spoiler Alert hides nothing. Yes, it is a queer love story based on the best-selling memoir by writer Michael Ausiello. Yes, it is tough watching Michael grapple with his husband Kit’s cancer diagnosis and, ultimately, his death. However, it is also heartwarming, hilarious and clever. Spoiler Alert is not a film whose aim is to merely draw tears in pursuit of its final destination; it is a film about the unexpected beauty of the journey.
Written by Dan Savage and David Marshall Grant, Jim Parsons (The Big Bang Theory) stars as Ausiello in the film. A shy and slightly awkward, pop-culture-obsessed writer, everything changes when Ausiello meets Kit Cowan (played by Ben Aldridge) in classic meet-cute style. Though not a perfect couple, the pair enter a new phase of their relationship when Kit gets diagnosed with cancer. Forced to confront new realities, both men gain new perspectives on their life, love, family, and identities both in and out of their relationship.
Wrought with delicate emotions and tonal shifts, Showalter knew a sensitive score would be critical for Spoiler Alert to land properly. Having previously worked with composer Brian H. Kim on Search Party and Hello, My Name is Doris, Showalter knew Kim would be a perfect musical fit. Thanks to a career filled with diverse projects of varied scope and scale, Kim’s stylistic range and technical prowess were precisely what Spoiler Alert would require.
Though highly fluent on multiple instruments, Kim’s affinity for the piano shines as the foundation for the score and adds instantly endearing intimacy to the story. Supported by achingly beautiful strings, atmospheric electronic elements, warm woodwinds, and playful percussion, Kim’s music beautifully navigates the film’s emotional narrative. A truly remarkable feat of aural awareness and compositional dexterity, I sat down with Kim to learn more about what scoring this very special project required. Along with discussing all things Spoiler Alert, we dig into his eclectic resume, how that diversity has benefited him both creatively and professionally, and how the industry has improved while still having so much further to go.
Film Cred: I’m so excited to talk to you about this beautiful film, but before we dig into it too much, I’m going to admit right now that the trailer alone had me in tears.
Brian H. Kim: That’s very much what they were going for, I think. [Laughs] When I first saw the movie, I saw it at a friends-and-family screening right after I signed onto it. It was a very, very early screening and was like the first director’s cut. I had read the script and was familiar with the story of Michael Ausiello and what happened to his husband just from following his writing over the years, but then I saw the film. And I was devastated by it. [Laughs]
Then, immediately afterward, I had to talk to Michael [Showalter] for the first time in years. Just because of the pandemic, life, and everything, he was busy, I was busy, and we hadn’t done a project together in a few years. I was still very much in the world of this film that I just saw, so it was, like, so awkward. [Laughs] But I was really excited and honored to work on it because it’s a true story, and it is really sad, but it’s also really beautiful. Knowing that I was going to have to cover such a wide range of emotions in it, I was really interested in seeing how it was going to progress. I’ve worked with Showalter before, but this was definitely the heaviest thing that we had ever done together.
FC: Let’s talk a bit more about that range of emotions. This movie has romance, comedy, inspiration, and that devastating, sad part. When you began your initial brainstorming and discussing the music with Showalter, how did you approach all of that?
BHK: Yeah, really good question because, man. I had a lot of those same questions after I saw the film for the first time. Once I started looking at the film structurally and seeing what [the music] was going to need to be, there is sort of two halves of the film. There is the first half about them getting together and everything pre-cancer diagnosis. Within that, there’s also some conflict that they go through. And they’re not always together during that pre-cancer section. So there are some parts where they’re separated, some where they come together, and the relationship ups and downs of that.
Then there’s the second half of the film, which is post-cancer diagnosis. It still has moments of lightness throughout, but from then onwards — I mean, it’s sort of in the title of the film — you know where it’s going. And the focus of the film becomes different in the second half. So I think something we were very cognizant of was that the first half couldn’t be hypocritical or betray the second half. Any sort of comedy that was happening in the first half, we couldn’t play it so light, such that it felt out of place when the second half of the film comes around. That would be really jarring for the audience. It just wouldn’t make sense as a viewing experience because it would feel like you’d be watching two different things. It still had to feel like one cohesive story.
Most of the music is in the second half of the film. There’s only a handful of cues in the first two reels of the film, and they mainly come during sort of comedic moments. There’s a moment in the trailer with Smurfs, and that was one of the first big cues of the film. And it’s very funny. By the way, those are all [Michael Ausiello’s] Smurfs. That’s his Smurf collection, actually in the film, which I didn’t know until later. I asked him, “Did you have a crazy time with props just finding these?” And he was like, “No, no. They just had to go to my house.” [Laughs] That’s very funny visually in the film, but it is also a big secret that his character has been holding. He’s afraid that if he lets go of this secret, then anybody who loves him isn’t going to love him anymore because it’s just so ridiculous.
So the cue there is funny, but there is a hint of melancholy. He’s sort of losing something in this. He’s losing a part of his own secrecy, and he’s giving it out into the world. So he is a little bit nervous and sad about that. And the conversation that ensues after the Smurf incident is a very heartfelt conversation between Jim [Parsons] and Ben Aldridge. So that was one moment that we were being very aware that we weren’t playing it too funny. That first half had to be very specific because we knew that all of the really dramatic music in the second half was going to be in this very ethereal, beautiful realm.
So the other part of balancing out the tone of the film was making sure that once we got to the second half, knowing that all this sad stuff was going to happen, we didn’t play it just for tears. We didn’t want to score it in an old-fashioned way where we were telling the audience, “You should cry…here.” The focus was mainly on making everything beautiful, focusing not on how Kit is dying but on how Kit is living and just appreciating the beauty of his life and the beauty of their relationship. It was a long process getting to that point. We were writing stuff right until the last minute, but once we figured it out, we were like, “This is it. This is the balance that we need to find.”
FC: While there are some great peripheral characters, the movie revolves around the characters of Kit and Michael and the performances from Parsons and Aldridge. What are some of the perks of composing for something so intimately character-driven?
BHK: Yeah, Jim and Ben are really, really, really good. Just like, absurdly good. You know, everybody knows Jim Parsons from The Big Bang Theory, but he’s done a ton of stage work and some movies over the years, too. Showalter told me that when he decided to do the movie, he felt a similar way to when he did The Eyes of Tammy Faye with Jessica Chastain. He just felt there was a side of this actor that people hadn’t seen. And there are a lot of times when Jim is doing stuff on screen that is just mind-blowing. I think he is going to impress a lot of people.
And Ben Aldridge, I only knew from Fleabag, which is very different than this. But in this, he does things with Kit that are unforgettable. Things I still think about on a daily basis even though I’ve been done with the film since July. So getting to work with actors who are doing that sort of thing, there’s never a sense when I’m scoring them that I am trying to fill gaps that the director needs to be filled in. That happens sometimes. It’s like, “Oh, we didn’t get the coverage of that scene that we wanted to get, so we need the score to lift this up in a way that we’re not really doing here.” But with this, it was never like I needed to pull anything else from Jim or Ben. I was just supporting the amazing stuff that they were already doing.
What was nice about the way the story is structured and the characters is that there’s a “Michael Theme” related directly to him and his throughline. Then there’s a “Kit and Michael Theme.” And what’s interesting about the “Michael Theme” is that we introduce it in the first frame of the film, it’s around for the first reel, and then it goes away for a while.
Then the “Kit and Michael Theme” takes over as the Michael-centric portion of his life is sort of done. We don’t really bring the “Michael Theme” back until the very end of the film, as Michael’s solo journey is coming back into focus. When you have a story really built on two characters, you can focus the thematic moments on beats for them. You can be really, really loyal to those themes and bring them back over and over again.
FC: So, this film is called Spoiler Alert. Even in the trailers, they’re very clear about where the story is heading. While based on a true story, I still found that quite interesting, as so many movies depend on twists, turns and surprises. What does that mean to you as a composer? How did that intentional lack of ambiguity impact the choices you made or could make?
BHK: That’s a very cool question. This is not a spoiler alert because if you see the movie, you’re going to see the first frame of the film, and it’s not going to be a surprise, but we start at the end. The first frame is Kit in his hospital bed. So from the very beginning, the film tells you it knows what it is and where it will go. So the first cue, that “Michael Theme” that I mentioned, is really stripped down, very bare but not quite sad, but also certainly not full in any way. It’s very minimal. We wanted to acknowledge that the film will have this emotional weight to it.
We didn’t want to start at an 11 as that doesn’t give us anywhere to go in terms of the emotional arc. So that first cue of the film, it has sprinklings of the theme that’s going to come back when Michael is saying goodbye to Kit later, but it is a very stripped-down version of that. That was a conscious choice just to tell you that we know where this is going to go. I mean, it’s in the title, you know? [Laughs] It’s based on a book that is also a true story. If you read the book or look up Michael Ausiello or Kit Cowan’s biography, you know what’s going to happen.
There was never anything we wanted to hide. There was never anything that we felt like we couldn’t try or we couldn’t hint at for later. We could plant a lot of thematic seeds at the beginning of the film that come to fruition later. Similarly to that, we had to be aware of what was going to happen because the audience knows what is going to happen. With the tone, we had to be very conscious, so we wouldn’t do something wrong, betraying the film.
FC: What are some of the scoring challenges or special considerations an intense, gut-punch scene requires so that it doesn’t get pushed over the edge?
BHK: I read this quote from Thomas Newman a long time ago, who is a composer that I really like and one of the big reasons that I came out here to do this, and he said that his creative process involved a lot of sleep. And I was like, “That’s a weird thing to say.” I was in graduate school at the time. I was just writing and working so hard and was like, “I can’t imagine sleeping as part of this creative process. I have so much to do!”
Then I got this film, and once I started getting the cuts, I started watching them at home. Whenever I would watch the cuts to get into the vibe of the film, it was so emotionally draining that I would have to go on a lot of walks, do something else for a while, or take a nap. And he was right. It helps.
I would find that if I sat down to write just from watching the film without this emotional buffer zone, I would do exactly what you alluded to. I would lean too far into what the emotion was because I was too much in that moment. I was too much in exactly what was happening on the screen in that one frame that I was working on or whatever.
So if I went on a walk, if I took a nap, if I took a shower, played with my dog or played with my kids for a little while, I think my brain would sort of keep working, but it would put all of that stuff into context. That way, if I came back after an hour or so and sat down again, I knew what I had to do, but that emotion wasn’t quite so raw and at the surface. I could take a little bit more time and see what the scene was saying in the broad context of the film. Not just what is happening in this one specific moment. Then I wouldn’t have that gut reaction scoring thing. It would be a little bit more considered.
Because you’re right, if you have something that is this emotional and that you know is going to affect the audience in a particular way, the worst thing you can do is be too obvious and beat the audience over the head. Audiences are really savvy now. If a film is being inauthentic, dishonest to you, or hyperbolic, you’re going to notice it right away. It is going to take you out of it, and that is definitely something that you don’t want a score in this sort of movie to do.
FC: You have such an eclectic resume. So far, you’ve scored animation, horror, documentaries, dramas, and many different television shows. How has that style diversity benefited you as a composer?
BHK: Yeah, I didn’t expect that. [Laughs] That was sort of a funny thing, and it just sort of happened. I moved out [to Los Angeles] in 2007 and went to the USC Film Scoring Program. When I left that, I didn’t really know what I was going to do. For a while, I worked as an assistant for a composer named Christophe Beck, who eventually would come to do Ant-Man, Frozen, The Hangover movies, and stuff like that.
When I was working for him, it was before all that. He was doing a lot of comedy work, and I was like, “Maybe I’ll try to get into studio comedy! Seems like a fun gig.” Then when I was done working for him, I started working for another composer named John Swihart. I think he is most known for How I Met Your Mother, and I worked a lot on that show. So I was like, “Maybe TV is a pretty good place to be. I think I should just start doing this.”
But the benefit of having worked with some very diverse bosses is that their output was also very diverse, and their contacts were very diverse. So what happened was that I was working on all these different projects and meeting all these different kinds of filmmakers being an assistant. Then, when I stopped being an assistant and decided I just wanted to do my own thing, the amount of people I had met over the years went on to do a really wide, diverse palette of stuff. This is not to say that I worked with every single one of them, but I feel like seeing all the stuff that they were making was really inspiring.
The one thing that I did not expect to get to work on was TV animation. I didn’t really have any sort of leg in that at all when I first moved out here. Working with Disney is such a dream, and that was something that I didn’t even consider would happen until much later. But then Star vs. the Forces of Evil ended up being my first TV show as a solo gig.
I got it because they did a blind audition. They asked a bunch of composers to submit. Then they took everybody’s name off of the files and just played them for the showrunner and the producers and were like, “Which one do you like?” So out of a needle in a haystack, I got that job. That was a wildly different thing than I’d ever done before.
Then, after that, I did the first season of Michael Showalter’s TV show, Search Party, which he did with Charles Rogers and Sarah-Violet Bliss. That was a gritty, moody electronic score that I did not expect to do either. So in a very short period of time, I had these extremely different pieces of scoring that happened pretty early in my career. My nest egg of ideas at the very beginning of my career were in very different places. So I was very lucky to not get pigeonholed very early in my career. It wasn’t like I had one breakaway hit, and then somebody thought, “Oh, that’s what Brian does. We’re just gonna make him do that over and over and over again.” I did four very, very different things, and those all shot off in different directions.
For me, it’s kept things really fresh, and it’s made it so that I can go out for a lot of different jobs. I can also talk to a lot of different film creatives about a lot of different genres and styles of work. I can do a lot of different things to never get bored. I have two Netflix shows that I’m working on now, and they’re wildly different. One of them is an animated project, and one of them is a YA drama. It’s just this continuing trend of people seeing that I’ve done a whole bunch of different things and being willing to bring me on and try something wildly different for their new project. I think they know that I’m going to experiment and bring a lot of different ideas to the table.
FC: You mentioned that you benefited from a blind audition, and I’d like to discuss that a little bit. For one, I’m thrilled to hear that is happening. With so many streaming platforms putting out so much content, there are more opportunities than ever for composers, yet it still feels like there are areas that need work. For example, the Celluloid Ceiling 2021 report showed that women scored only 7% of the top 250 grossing films.
How have you seen the landscape of film scoring opportunities change over the last decade or so? In your opinion, what has gotten better and what still needs work?
BHK: Similar to what you’re saying about the 7% of women scoring projects — which is an absurdly low number — composers of color are also not doing a lot of these top-grossing films. There’s a handful of composers who have broken through. Michael Abels is awesome, and he does all of Jordan Peele’s stuff. Kris Bowers is amazing and has been doing Bridgerton, breaking into film and just doing incredible things.
But for Asian composers, you know, the hardest hurdle for me when I moved out here in 2007 was that I didn’t have a direct role model to be like, “Oh, that guy is just like me, and he’s doing great.” Like, the only successful Asian composer that I knew of was Tan Dun, who had done Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. And he’s not American; he’s foreign. And that was a foreign film. He won an Oscar for that because that score is amazing, but there wasn’t a straight line between him and me.
So what I will comment on is that I do think things are getting better for composers of color and for Asian composers. Over COVID, a bunch of Asian composers in Hollywood, New York, and Canada, and people who work in film and television started a Slack just so we could all talk to one another. It was also during a time when Asian-American hate crimes were on the rise. We all were feeling a little bit lost and just wanted like-minded people to talk to about that sort of thing.
It’s been really cool to see us all supporting each other, bringing them on to projects for additional music, for playing instruments, for engineering, for all these sorts of things, and seeing people in that crowd begin to rise to the surface a bit. So throughout being in that Slack, I think there has been a great improvement in the number of projects that we as a group had at the beginning of that Slack and now.
I also think studios are very cognizant of an audience being there for diverse content. Obviously, Squid Game was a massive success and was not something that was made for a Western audience. It was just made to be what it is and was incredibly successful. Similarly, Parasite. These are Korean-made pieces of entertainment, not necessarily checking boxes for a specifically Western audience. They’re just being what they are. And then you have people like BTS and Blackpink becoming the biggest stars in the world!
So I do think studios and creative executives are beginning to notice that. And I will say, one of my Netflix shows is very specifically an Asian-American story with very specific Asian-American nods in the score. That show I’m working on now would not have been made ten years ago. No question. A Western studio, an English language show, with all of these foreign references. I get to write songs in a foreign language for it. I get to write songs in Korean! I get to use that part of my brain for this, for a Netflix series, which is an amazing thing to say.
I think just the fact that I’m doing that says that something is moving forward in a way. It’s not all the way there yet. I mean, 7% for women in top-grossing films is a terrible number. And I don’t even know what the percentage is for minority composers. I haven’t even looked because I just assumed that it’s not going to be anything that I want to see. [Laughs] I will also say that I’ve seen projects go to various other friends of mine that also have that diverse creative voice in mind. So that’s very heartening to see. I just continue to hope that it’s going to continue rolling that way, that these projects come out, they’re successful, and they’re going to see that there’s an audience for this sort of stuff.
FC: I’m so happy to hear that. Diverse stories and diverse voices are so important.
BHK: My wife and I are a little bit behind in our TV watching, and we’re watching She-Hulk right now. And Amie Doherty’s score, that one is amazing. And you see Natalie Holt, her incredible score for Loki, her incredible score for Obi-Wan Kenobi. Dara Taylor is crushing it right now and is doing beautiful work. Chanda Dancy, who did the Devotion score that is amazing, and that’s an action-drama. She was able to buck whatever stereotype there was in front of her to be able to score a movie like that. There shouldn’t be this 7%, as you said.
I’m also grateful that, in my own career…[pauses] The Netflix AAPI project that I’m doing now is admittedly the first Asian project that I’ve ever worked on for a studio, which is also because a lot of them just didn’t really exist over the past 10 to 15 years that I’ve been doing this. I think I have been lucky in that nobody looked at me and was like, “Oh, that guy should probably score martial arts.” Or, you know, “That guy should just work in anime.” Or any sort of blanket racist statement that would come in that way. I’ve gotten to work on a really diverse slate of projects. I know that’s not the case for everybody, so I will say that I’m grateful that was not the case for me early in my career, as I do see that happening to other people.
Focus Features’ Spoiler Alert is now playing exclusively in theaters nationwide. Additionally, Kim’s score for the film is now available to stream on all major streaming platforms.
