Jon and Al Kaplan
Encyclopedia
Jon Kaplan, aka Jonathan Z. Kaplan (born April 6, 1976) and Al Kaplan, aka Alexander Kaplan (born July 23, 1978) are American composers, lyricists, comedy writers and brothers. In a career spanning two decades, the Kaplans have found success and fame creating musical versions of classic films including Silence of the Lambs (Silence! The Musical; 2002) and various Arnold Schwarzenegger films such as Conan the Barbarian, Predator and Commando. Their most successful projects were born on the internet, with early viral sensation SILENCE! The Musical
expanding into a live stage production in both London and New York City.
and grew up on Staten Island
, several minutes drive from the Fresh Kills Landfill
, at the time the largest garbage dump on the face of the earth. The Kaplans' father Nathan was a music teacher/composer-turned dentist, who exposed his sons to concert music, film music and musicals at an early age, before eating himself to death. Their mother, Elizabeth Kaplan, now referred to as Liz Alt, continues to teach chorus at P.S. 53, and was furious that a rival Staten Island elementary chorus was chosen to perform at the 83rd Academy Awards
, until she saw how awful the 2011 Academy Awards were.
Jon and Al moved to Los Angeles in 1996 to study concert composition and film music at USC with aspirations of becoming the next John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith. After surviving three brutal years under the film music-hating faculty, they finally made it to the film scoring program and graduated in 1999 and 2000, respectively.
Fresh out of school, Jon and Al went to work at the offices of Film Score Monthly
magazine, where they did everything from write and edit articles to stuff thousands of subscription renewals into envelopes. This period would see the Kaplans pursue screenwriting, with the brothers penning several spec scripts, none of which sold. Their most notorious project was Peni5 (1999), later titled Bigger, the story of a high school student with a small penis who takes black pills to make his penis gigantic, but he overdoses and his penis keeps growing and starts to murder people.
and Myspace
had not yet taken hold, Silence! quickly became a viral sensation, appearing in magazines such as Entertainment Weekly
and Maxim
, and on radio shows like Opie & Anthony and Howard Stern
's 100. The musical's popularity endured for years, with the show achieving a cult status.
In 2005, the brothers composed several new songs and expanded Silence! into an actual musical. They wrote an Airplane!
-styled screenplay, Silence! The Musical, that was adapted for the stage by Hunter Bell
, and the show was mounted by director Christopher Gattelli
at the 2005 NYC Fringe festival, where it won the "Overall Excellence Award" for Outstanding Musical. In 2010, Silence! re-opened in London at the Above the Stag Theatre to positive reviews. In June 2011, Silence! returned to New York, opening Off Broadway at Theatre 80, starring Brent Barrett
as Dr. Hannibal Lecter and Jenn Harris as Clarice Starling.
and social networking sites.
channel "Legolambs" that would feature entire movies distilled into single songs in a matter of three to four minutes. The most successful of the videos featured Al performing the singing voice of the legendary Austrian superstar Arnold Schwarzenegger. Conan the Barbarian: The Musical, Predator: The Musical, Terminator 2: The Opera, Commando: The Musical and Total Recall: The Musical are among the Kaplans' most widely seen works to date.
in RoboCop. Some commercially unsuccessful Jon and Al musicals include Schindler's List and Rocky IV, which the Kaplans often cite as their finest artistic achievements.
. (They were hired by another composer who was a fan of Silence! The Musical.) In 2007, they scored (for clarinet, violin and piano) the John Ford
silent film entitled Just Pals
, which was included in the Ford at Fox DVD Box Set. The Kaplans also wrote all of the Super Nintendo-styled underscore for G4's cartoon series Code Monkeys
, which ran for two seasons.
In 2010, Jon and Al scored The Hills Have Thighs, the controversial erotic film that aired on HBO, Cinemax
, Showtime and TMC
, and also co-scored with Chuck Cirino the Syfy
Channel original film Dinocroc Vs. Supergator, for which they delivered the spaghetti western theme that plays during the main title and several other times during the picture.
, where the final show featured their Best Song presenter patter for Leighton Meester
and Lil Wayne
.
, Jon and Al arranged Andy Samberg
's "Lonely Island Medley," which was performed by LeAnn Rimes
, Chris Isaak
and Forest Whitaker
. Mega-producer Mark Burnett
was so pleased with the result that he ordered two of his development execs to meet with the Kaplans the following week. The brothers were so boring at the meeting that the only subsequent job they were offered was to write "fart jokes of the week" for a toy company website. After the Kaplans offered an unreasonably high quote for authoring the fart jokes, their emails were no longer returned.
.
's "Must List" in 2004: "Cannibalism is deliciously served up in this tuneful and crass re-telling of Silence of the Lambs." On the Opie & Anthony Show in 2004, Jim Norton
said "['Put the Fucking Lotion in the Basket'] is your 'Welcome to the Jungle'...it's fantastic." In reference to the 2005 staged production of Silence!, Rob Kendt of The New York Times
called the songs "terrible (and vulgar)." The reception of the London run of Silence! was met with considerable praise, with Carole Gordon of whatsonstage.com declaring, "****. Totally crack-pot, yet brilliantly hysterical parody of the multi Oscar-winning movie." Clare Webb of totallytheatre.com said of the same Above the Stag run, "****. Uproariously funny and jaw-droppingly outrageous in equal measures, and chances are you will never again see anything quite like it." Reaction to the Kaplans' Schwarzenegger songs has been even more enthusiastic, with favorable write-ups in Salon.com
, perezhilton.com, ew.com, ifc.com, toplessrobot.com, io9.com, cinematical.com and many more.
SILENCE! The Musical
SILENCE! The Musical is an award winning musical created by Jon and Al Kaplan as a parody of the 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs. The project began in 2003 as an internet musical made up of nine songs that retold the entire story. The audio tracks became popular to the extent that a live show...
expanding into a live stage production in both London and New York City.
Early Life and Family
Jon and Al Kaplan were born in ManhattanManhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
and grew up on Staten Island
Staten Island
Staten Island is a borough of New York City, New York, United States, located in the southwest part of the city. Staten Island is separated from New Jersey by the Arthur Kill and the Kill Van Kull, and from the rest of New York by New York Bay...
, several minutes drive from the Fresh Kills Landfill
Fresh Kills Landfill
The Fresh Kills Landfill was a landfill covering in the New York City borough of Staten Island in the United States. The name comes from the landfill's location along the banks of the Fresh Kills estuary in western Staten Island...
, at the time the largest garbage dump on the face of the earth. The Kaplans' father Nathan was a music teacher/composer-turned dentist, who exposed his sons to concert music, film music and musicals at an early age, before eating himself to death. Their mother, Elizabeth Kaplan, now referred to as Liz Alt, continues to teach chorus at P.S. 53, and was furious that a rival Staten Island elementary chorus was chosen to perform at the 83rd Academy Awards
83rd Academy Awards
The 83rd Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences , honored the best films of 2010 and took place February 27, 2011, at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles beginning at 5:30 p.m. PST / 8:30 p.m. EST. During the ceremony, Academy Awards ...
, until she saw how awful the 2011 Academy Awards were.
Jon and Al moved to Los Angeles in 1996 to study concert composition and film music at USC with aspirations of becoming the next John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith. After surviving three brutal years under the film music-hating faculty, they finally made it to the film scoring program and graduated in 1999 and 2000, respectively.
Fresh out of school, Jon and Al went to work at the offices of Film Score Monthly
Film Score Monthly
Film Score Monthly is an online magazine founded by editor-in-chief and executive producer Lukas Kendall in June 1990 as The Soundtrack Correspondence List...
magazine, where they did everything from write and edit articles to stuff thousands of subscription renewals into envelopes. This period would see the Kaplans pursue screenwriting, with the brothers penning several spec scripts, none of which sold. Their most notorious project was Peni5 (1999), later titled Bigger, the story of a high school student with a small penis who takes black pills to make his penis gigantic, but he overdoses and his penis keeps growing and starts to murder people.
Silence! The Musical
In 2002, Jon and Al composed, performed and produced a nine-song Silence of the Lambs musical, Silence! The Musical, which they put online so that they didn't have to burn CD-Rs of it for their eight friends. Despite the fact that social networking sites like FacebookFacebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
and Myspace
Myspace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
had not yet taken hold, Silence! quickly became a viral sensation, appearing in magazines such as Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
and Maxim
Maxim (magazine)
Maxim is an international men's magazine based in the United Kingdom and known for its pictorials featuring popular actresses, singers, and female models, sometimes pictured dressed, often pictured scantily dressed but not fully nude....
, and on radio shows like Opie & Anthony and Howard Stern
Howard Stern
Howard Allan Stern is an American radio personality, television host, author, and actor best known for his radio show, which was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2005. He gained wide recognition in the 1990s where he was labeled a "shock jock" for his outspoken and sometimes controversial style...
's 100. The musical's popularity endured for years, with the show achieving a cult status.
In 2005, the brothers composed several new songs and expanded Silence! into an actual musical. They wrote an Airplane!
Airplane!
Airplane! is a 1980 American satirical comedy film directed and written by David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker and released by Paramount Pictures...
-styled screenplay, Silence! The Musical, that was adapted for the stage by Hunter Bell
Hunter Bell
Hunter Houston Bell is an American book author and one of the stars of the musical [title of show].-Early life:Bell was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and was raised in Wilson, North Carolina until the seventh grade, when he moved to Atlanta, Georgia. He moved to New York City in 1993, and currently...
, and the show was mounted by director Christopher Gattelli
Christopher Gattelli
Christopher Gattelli is a choreographer, performer, and director for the theatre. He has been nominated for the Tony Award for Best Choreography for South Pacific and the Drama Desk Award, Outstanding Choreography for Altar Boyz. He won the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Choreograper for...
at the 2005 NYC Fringe festival, where it won the "Overall Excellence Award" for Outstanding Musical. In 2010, Silence! re-opened in London at the Above the Stag Theatre to positive reviews. In June 2011, Silence! returned to New York, opening Off Broadway at Theatre 80, starring Brent Barrett
Brent Barrett
Brent Barrett is an American actor and tenor who is mostly known for his work within American theatre. Barrett has performed in musicals and in concerts with theatres, symphony orchestras, opera houses, and concert halls internationally...
as Dr. Hannibal Lecter and Jenn Harris as Clarice Starling.
24: Season Two: The Musical
In 2008, Jon and Al composed their second full-length musical, 24: Season Two: The Musical. Despite being a quantum leap above Silence! The Musical in terms of composition, conception, production and performance, the 24 musical was largely ignored by the public. One reason for the show's colossal failure was due to the Kaplans' ignoring of the rise of YouTubeYouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
and social networking sites.
The Schwarzenegger Musicals
In 2010, Jon and Al finally embraced society and technology, launching a series of viral one-off musicals on their YouTubeYouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
channel "Legolambs" that would feature entire movies distilled into single songs in a matter of three to four minutes. The most successful of the videos featured Al performing the singing voice of the legendary Austrian superstar Arnold Schwarzenegger. Conan the Barbarian: The Musical, Predator: The Musical, Terminator 2: The Opera, Commando: The Musical and Total Recall: The Musical are among the Kaplans' most widely seen works to date.
Other Musicals
Other successful Jon and Al musicals target Sylvester Stallone in Rambo: First Blood Part II and Peter WellerPeter Weller
Peter Frederick Weller is an American film and stage actor, director and lecturer.He is best known for his roles as the title character in the first two RoboCop films and Buckaroo Banzai in the cult classic The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension...
in RoboCop. Some commercially unsuccessful Jon and Al musicals include Schindler's List and Rocky IV, which the Kaplans often cite as their finest artistic achievements.
Film and TV Music
In 2006, Jon and Al landed their first television scoring assignment as two of several dozen composers providing uncredited music for the NBC reality show Starting OverStarting Over (TV series)
Starting Over is an American reality TV show that follows the lives of women who are experiencing difficulty in their lives and want to make changes, with the help of life coaches. It was the first reality TV show to be nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award. Six women at a time work to overcome...
. (They were hired by another composer who was a fan of Silence! The Musical.) In 2007, they scored (for clarinet, violin and piano) the John Ford
John Ford
John Ford was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...
silent film entitled Just Pals
Just Pals
Just Pals is a 1920 Western film directed by John Ford. It was Ford's first film for the Fox Film Corporation.-Cast:* Buck Jones - Bim* Helen Ferguson - Mary Bruce* George Stone - Bill* Duke R. Lee - Sheriff* William Buckley - Harvey Cahill...
, which was included in the Ford at Fox DVD Box Set. The Kaplans also wrote all of the Super Nintendo-styled underscore for G4's cartoon series Code Monkeys
Code Monkeys
Code Monkeys is an American animated television program created by Adam de la Peña. Set in the early 1980s, it follows the adventures of fictional video game company GameaVision....
, which ran for two seasons.
In 2010, Jon and Al scored The Hills Have Thighs, the controversial erotic film that aired on HBO, Cinemax
Cinemax
Cinemax, sometimes abbreviated as simply "Max", is a collection of premium television networks that broadcasts primarily feature films, along with softcore erotica, original action series, documentaries and special behind-the-scenes features. Cinemax is operated by Home Box Office, Inc., a...
, Showtime and TMC
The Movie Channel
The Movie Channel is an American premium channel owned by Showtime Networks, Inc., a subsidiary of CBS Corporation, which shows mostly movies, as well as special behind-the-scenes features, softcore adult erotica and movie trivia....
, and also co-scored with Chuck Cirino the Syfy
Syfy
Syfy , formerly known as the Sci-Fi Channel and SCI FI, is an American cable television channel featuring science fiction, supernatural, fantasy, reality, paranormal, wrestling, and horror programming. Launched on September 24, 1992, it is part of the entertainment conglomerate NBCUniversal, a...
Channel original film Dinocroc Vs. Supergator, for which they delivered the spaghetti western theme that plays during the main title and several other times during the picture.
Comedy Writing
After writing on several unsold pilots, Jon and Al were hired to write comedy for the 2009 MTV Movie AwardsMTV Movie Awards
The MTV Movie Awards is a film awards show presented annually on MTV . It also contains movie parodies that used official movie footage with hosts and other celebrities and music performances. The nominees are decided by producers and executives at MTV. Winners are decided online by the general...
, where the final show featured their Best Song presenter patter for Leighton Meester
Leighton Meester
Leighton Marissa Meester is an American actress and singer. Meester first garnered attention for playing Blair Waldorf in the CW television series Gossip Girl...
and Lil Wayne
Lil Wayne
Dwayne Michael Carter, Jr. , better known by his stage name Lil Wayne, is an American rapper. At the age of nine, Lil Wayne joined Cash Money Records as the youngest member of the label, and half of the duo, The B.G.'z, with B.G.. In 1997, Lil Wayne joined the group Hot Boys, which also included...
.
The Lonely Island Medley
While working as comedy writers on the 2009 MTV Movie AwardsMTV Movie Awards
The MTV Movie Awards is a film awards show presented annually on MTV . It also contains movie parodies that used official movie footage with hosts and other celebrities and music performances. The nominees are decided by producers and executives at MTV. Winners are decided online by the general...
, Jon and Al arranged Andy Samberg
Andy Samberg
David Andrew "Andy" Samberg is an American actor, comedian, rapper and writer best known as a member of the comedy group The Lonely Island and as a cast member on Saturday Night Live...
's "Lonely Island Medley," which was performed by LeAnn Rimes
LeAnn Rimes
LeAnn Rimes is an American country/pop singer. She is known for her rich vocals and her rise to fame as an eight-year-old champion on the original Ed McMahon version of Star Search, followed by the release of the Patsy Cline-intended single "Blue" when Rimes was only age 13, resulting in her...
, Chris Isaak
Chris Isaak
Christopher Joseph "Chris" Isaak is an American rock musician and occasional actor.-Early life:Isaak was born in Stockton, California, the son of Dorothy , a potato chip factory worker, and Joe Isaak, a forklift driver. Isaak's mother is Italian American, originating from Genoa...
and Forest Whitaker
Forest Whitaker
Forest Steven Whitaker is an American actor, producer, and director. He has earned a reputation for intensive character study work for films such as Bird and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, and for his recurring role as ex-LAPD Lieutenant Jon Kavanaugh on the gritty, award-winning television...
. Mega-producer Mark Burnett
Mark Burnett
Mark Burnett is a British television producer and executive producer, based in the United States. He currently is the executive producer of five network television series with seven hours of network programming. Works with which Burnett is associated have won multiple awards and recognition...
was so pleased with the result that he ordered two of his development execs to meet with the Kaplans the following week. The brothers were so boring at the meeting that the only subsequent job they were offered was to write "fart jokes of the week" for a toy company website. After the Kaplans offered an unreasonably high quote for authoring the fart jokes, their emails were no longer returned.
Awards
"Overall Excellence Award" for Outstanding Musical at the 2005 NYC Fringe Festival: SILENCE! The MusicalSILENCE! The Musical
SILENCE! The Musical is an award winning musical created by Jon and Al Kaplan as a parody of the 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs. The project began in 2003 as an internet musical made up of nine songs that retold the entire story. The audio tracks became popular to the extent that a live show...
.
Critical Reception
Reviews for the songs of Jon and Al have been largely positive. The original nine Silence! songs made Entertainment WeeklyEntertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
's "Must List" in 2004: "Cannibalism is deliciously served up in this tuneful and crass re-telling of Silence of the Lambs." On the Opie & Anthony Show in 2004, Jim Norton
Jim Norton (comedian)
James Joseph "Jim" Norton, Jr. is an American stand-up comedian, radio personality, author, and actor. He is an on-air personality, often dubbed the 'third mic' on The Opie and Anthony Show, which airs on Sirius XM Radio...
said "['Put the Fucking Lotion in the Basket'] is your 'Welcome to the Jungle'...it's fantastic." In reference to the 2005 staged production of Silence!, Rob Kendt of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
called the songs "terrible (and vulgar)." The reception of the London run of Silence! was met with considerable praise, with Carole Gordon of whatsonstage.com declaring, "****. Totally crack-pot, yet brilliantly hysterical parody of the multi Oscar-winning movie." Clare Webb of totallytheatre.com said of the same Above the Stag run, "****. Uproariously funny and jaw-droppingly outrageous in equal measures, and chances are you will never again see anything quite like it." Reaction to the Kaplans' Schwarzenegger songs has been even more enthusiastic, with favorable write-ups in Salon.com
Salon.com
Salon.com, part of Salon Media Group , often just called Salon, is an online liberal magazine, with content updated each weekday. Salon was founded by David Talbot and launched on November 20, 1995. It was the internet's first online-only commercial publication. The magazine focuses on U.S...
, perezhilton.com, ew.com, ifc.com, toplessrobot.com, io9.com, cinematical.com and many more.