March 8 - Bruce Broughton

Image courtesy magazine.scoreit.org

On this day, in 1945, Bruce Broughton was born in Los Angeles, California. As the grandson of a composer, the nephew of a songwriter and the son of musicians, you might think it natural that Bruce has become an award winning composer himself, but he laughingly calls it more of a default position, not one he aspired to. He wanted to be an animator when he grew up but since there wasn’t a lot of support for that dream in the family, he dutifully studied music when he entered the University of Southern California. His act of rebellion was, since he felt he was already a good enough piano player, to study composition instead of piano. But it wasn’t until one day, after listening to a song that riled him up and he realized that he could write music to make people feel things, that composing started to become a lifelong passion. It helps that he had plenty of talent to back that passion up.

Image courtesy hulu.com

Bruce began his professional career in television, a medium he admits most composers don’t like because of the quick turnaround time (but he really enjoys). His first credits came in the early Seventies on shows like Gunsmoke and Hawaii Five-O.  He’s worked steadily on the small screen since then. Some of his longest running gigs include Quincy (64 episodes), Dallas (52 episodes) and Tiny Toon Adventures (11 episodes as well as the main theme). Over the years, he’s been nominated 22 times for an Emmy, winning ten of them. His latest work can be heard on the current Fox show The Orville (Bruce composed the main theme and scored the first several episodes).

Bruce made the leap to the big screen in 1983, scoring The Prodigal. Two years later, he earned an Oscar nomination for his work on the Western Silverado (he lost to Out of Africa). Since then, his work has been heard on dozens of projects as diverse as the remake of Miracle on 34^th Street to the experimental Michael Jackson film Moonwalker.

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Bruce is no stranger to the symphony concert stage either, even though he feels it’s harder to engage the audience with nothing visual to help out. He’s written 12 full orchestral pieces, 32 compositions for chamber groups and another dozen concertos and the like for symphonic band ensembles.

For his first Disney score in 1990, Bruce was given the task of creating music for the first theatrically released animated sequel in the company’s history, The Rescuers Down Under. This meant he not only had to incorporate elements of Artie Butler’s work from the first movie but then had to translate it into a sweeping adventure set in another country. He was more than up to the task and began a long relationship with the studio.

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For the silver screen, Bruce has scored Disney pictures including Honey, I Blew Up the Kid, Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey, Homeward Bound II, Betsy’s Wedding, Shadow Conspiracy, Krippendorf’s Tribe, The Three Musketeers (the animated version with Mickey, Goofy and Donald) and Bambi II (which technically was a direct to video project but is still feature length). For Fantasia 2000, Bruce was conductor and musical supervisor for the Rhapsody in Blue segment.  He also scored two episodes of The Wonderful World of Disney and both made-for-television movies based on the Eloise books (winning an Emmy both times, thank you very much).

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Bruce’s most often heard compositions, though, were the pieces he did for various Disney theme parks (even if, sadly, most of them are no longer operational). If you ever experienced any of the following attractions, you’ve heard one of Bruce’s scores: The Timekeeper (known as From Time to Time in Paris and Tokyo), Cinemagique (Paris), The Making of Me (Wonders of Life pavilion, Epcot), Honey, I Shrunk the Audience (Imagination pavilion, Epcot), Ellen’s Energy Adventure (Universe of Energy pavilion, Epcot), One Man’s Dream (Disney’s Hollywood Studios), Seasons of the Vine (Disney’s California Adventure) or Golden Dreams (Disney’s California Adventure). The one place you can still hear his work is on Spaceship Earth in Epcot (so I suggest you run right over there and take a listen before they change everything on us).

In between all his composing, Bruce has managed to find time to be the Governor of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the Oscar people), the Governor of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (the Emmy folks), President of the Society of Composers and Lyricists (they don’t give out any awards) and is currently on the board of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP). He is also a lecturer at USC and still actively writes music. Who knows, the next time you find yourself in a darkened theater, you just might see the words Music by Bruce Broughton.

January 26 - Ellen DeGeneres

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On this day, in 1958, Ellen Lee DeGeneres was born in Metairie, Louisiana. Shortly after her parents divorced in 1974, Ellen's mother remarried and they relocated to a small town on the western edge of Texas called Atlanta. Her older brother Vance stayed in Louisiana with their father. She graduated from Atlanta High School in 1976, returned to Louisiana to begin attending the University of New Orleans, made it through one semester and dropped out. She began working a variety of jobs, doing anything from clerical work in a law firm to being a waitress, all the while performing as a stand up comic wherever someone would give her a microphone.

By 1981, Ellen had made enough of a mark on the local comedy scene that she was working as the emcee at Clyde's Comedy Club in New Orleans. She began touring nationally and, in 1984, was named Funniest Person in America by Showtime. As the Nineties began, Ellen supplemented her stand-up career with appearances in (mostly) forgettable movies like Goodbye Lover and Mr. Wrong. It wasn't until she hit the small screen that she truly became a household name.

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In 1989, Ellen landed a one episode role on the Fox sitcom Duet. When Duet was cancelled shortly thereafter, her character from that episode became a recurring character on the spin-off show, Open House. The second show only lasted one season, but was great exposure for Ellen. Two years later, she landed a role on the ABC sitcom Laurie Hill. That show only lasted five episodes, but Ellen was generally praised as being the single bright spot. When the producers of Laurie Hill created another show in 1994, These Friends of Mine, they included her as one of the four friends. By the end of the first season, Ellen was clearly the most successful character on the show so focus was shifted to her and the show itself was renamed Ellen.

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Ellen itself was a modest hit that ran for five seasons. The highest ratings it ever got for a season put it at the number thirteen show but it was nominated for a slew of awards in those years. Ellen herself was nominated for everything from Golden Globes to SAG Awards including the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy four out of the five seasons. The series won the Satellite Award and GLAAD Media Award for Best Comedy in 1988. The thing Ellen is remembered most for, though, is its fourth season. Ellen had come out as a lesbian on Oprah in April of 1997. Naturally she felt it was important that her television character do the same thing. ABC agreed and the show experienced a surge in popularity leading up to the coming out episode. I would argue that the string of shows where her character danced up to and around the big announcement are some of the funniest episodes ever on television. Then the fatal episode actually aired.

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Ellen crashed and burned, in my opinion, for two reasons. While ABC (and its parent company Disney) should be lauded for green lighting the first sitcom with an openly gay lead, once they had that show, they no longer knew what to do. They got scared of backlash and began running a parental warning before every episode, not something that bodes well for a comedy. They also became super sensitive (and highly defensive) towards any criticism. I know this was all pre-Will and Grace but the network executives clearly got a bad case of buyer's remorse. The ultimate reason Ellen was ultimately cancelled though was that following the coming out episode, it became a whole lot less funny. It limped through an entire fifth season with rapidly dwindling ratings. Disney had clearly lost interest in it as well, as they didn't do hardly any promotion for it and seemed pretty relieved when they could finally pull the plug in 1989.

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After another try at a sitcom in 2001 that only lasted eight episodes, Ellen changed tactics in 2003 by joining a growing list (at the time) of celebrity hosted daytime talk shows. The main difference with The Ellen DeGeneres Show, of course, is that it's still on the air (and still as popular as ever). Her talk show won a total of 25 Daytime Emmy Awards in just the first three seasons (it has a total of 59 now). Almost universally heralded as a bastion of good will in the wasteland of television, the show has garnered legions of fans and made Ellen one of the most beloved celebrities in existence, with a YouTube channel consistently in the top twenty. She's hinted that her run as Queen of Talk Shows may come to an end in 2020, but we'll worry about that later.

Ellen cemented her place in the Disney family in two big ways after the demise of her sitcom on ABC. One was as the star of the revamped Universe of Energy attraction at Epcot, Ellen's Energy Adventure (the Audio-Animatronic of her alone will live on in infamy). The second was when she voiced the befuddled blue tang, Dory, for Pixar's 2003 classic, Finding Nemo. Ellen won that year's Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress, the first time a female had won for voice work. 13 years later, she returned as Dory for the delightful (and even more successful) sequel, Finding Dory.

What will Ellen do once her talk show wraps up? Probably anything she wants. She recently returned to stand-up with a special on Netflix after a 17 year hiatus. She's hosted multiple awards shows including the Emmys three times and the Grammys and the Oscars twice. She's currently acting as producer on several upcoming projects. If we're lucky, we might see her return in another theme park attraction or Nemo sequel. Or she might just relax for the rest of her life with her wife, Portia. But I think that's about as likely as Dory getting Nemo's name right.

September 15 - Ellen's Energy Adventure

On this day, in 1996, Ellen DeGeneres began having an Energy Crisis in the Universe of Energy pavilion at Epcot.

You heard that right. When the revamped ride reopened that fall, Ellen's energy was in full crisis mode. It didn't last long. Almost immediately, she got her act together and Ellen's Energy Crisis was renamed Ellen's Energy Adventure. No explanation was ever given as to the nature of the crisis, we're just glad it got resolved.

The original Universe of Energy was fairly serious and utilitarian. Educational films informed guests about different kinds of energy and a trip through prehistoric times let everyone know where fossil fuels came from. It even got not one but two songs. Straightforward, not terribly exciting stuff. That all changed in version two, mostly due to a bad wig but I'm getting ahead of myself.

As attraction updates began to focus more on humor and celebrity faces, the Universe of Energy was ripe for an overhaul. And who better to use than folks with current hit projects. Bill Nye, the Science Guy would lend credibility to the presentation and Ellen would provide a perfect comic foil to all the sciency stuff. Add in Alex Trebek and Jamie Lee Curtis for a Jeopardy showdown like no other, and you get the adventure we'd been waiting for. Don't get me wrong, Ellen's Energy Adventure was still quite informative, as Future World pavilions should be.

The ride system itself didn't change from the original. Guests watched a short preshow in which Ellen dreams she's on Jeopardy losing against her old college nemesis and Albert Einstein. That led into a theater with four large ride vehicles. After getting seated, the vehicles rotated for another movie that showed Bill Nye offering to help Ellen learn a few things during the commercial break. The vehicles then moved through the area with dinosaur animatronics, again letting guests know where fossil fuels came from. The experience ended back in the theater it started in with Ellen using all her newfound knowledge to totally kill Final Jeopardy.

It was in the area with the dinosaurs that the real highlight of the attraction was found. No one knows for sure who dressed the Ellen animatronic figure, but it quickly passed into the hall of fame for unintentional guest favorites. Whether it was the absolutely terrible wig or the fact that Ellen was trying to fend off a dinosaur by poking a stick at it, a little part of all of us died when the figure stopped working and was removed from the ride in 2014. The adventure stopped altogether on August 13, 2017 as the Universe of Energy pavilion went dark in anticipation of version three featuring the Guardians of the Galaxy. No word yet if the dinosaurs will still be a part of it, but we can always hope.