Randy Spendlove, 1982 GHS grad, will be the keynote speaker Friday, April 6

Published in the March 28 – April 10, 2018 issue of Morgan Hill Life

Photo courtesy Getty Images
President of Motion Picture Music at Paramount Pictures Randy Spendlove and composer Hans Zimmer arrive at the premiere of Paramount Pictures’ “Rango” at the Regency Village Theater Feb. 14, 2011.

Life’s adventures eventually led Randy Spendlove from Garlic City to the City of Angels. Today, the 1982 Gilroy High School grad works with some of Tinsel Town’s most creative musical artists and filmmaking talent as the president of motion picture music at Paramount Pictures. He returns to his hometown of Gilroy next month to meet film fans and aspiring movie makers at the Poppy Jasper International Film Festival.

“I’m just so excited to come back. Both Gilroy and Morgan Hill are considered home to me because it was considered one place when I was growing up,” he said. “I’m just thrilled to come back and having a couple of nights with new friends and friends I’ve known a long time.”

Spendlove will give the keynote address at downtown Morgan Hill’s Granada Theater the evening of Friday, April 6. He’ll describe to the audience his life adventure in entertainment that got started working as a backstage crew member for the Gilroy Community Theater (which evolved into the South Valley Civic Theatre). His interest in theater and music started when he was at Brownell Middle School in Gilroy and expanded when he attended Gilroy High School where he performed in the band as well as the jazz group and also acted in a few plays.

“It was this really great thing,” he said. “The theater seemed so magical and huge to me. I remember spending a lot of time at that community theater…. It was such a good foundation, and little did I know it was going to be a foundation for my whole life.”

After graduating from Gilroy High, he decided to skip college and started performing on the guitar, piano, bass and drums in a variety of music groups from Monterey to San Francisco.

“For a short time, I was working in radio in San Jose. I worked at KSJO and KOME and I was selling air time and realized I was getting further away from my dream of working in music and I was sort of getting close to working in advertising and I wanted to work in music,” he said.

After learning about an opening at A&M Records for a promotion person, Spendlove asked the program director at KOME if he would make a call for him to sit down for an interview.

“I really prepared myself for that interview as to why I thought I would be great working in the music industry and promoting music,” he said. “It’s part of a long story but I was able to get that job in 1990 at A&M Records and sort of turned the corner on my performing path and stopped gigging. I went into the business side of the music business.”

He worked with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis — producers with singer Janet Jackson — at their production company inside A&M Records. That led him to move to New York City with A&M.

There he met the Miramax Films producer Harvey Weinstein who eventually hired him to be his president of music at the production company. Spendlove’s first movie was the 1997 drama independent film “Good Will Hunting.” He continued working for Miramax until 2005.

“It was a terrific time to be in that moment of film history. We made ‘Shakespeare in Love’ and ‘Chicago’ and ‘The Aviator’ and ‘Gangs of New York,’” he said.

He gained an appreciation of the importance of music in adding emotion and tension to the cinematic storytelling process. Randy Spendlove oversees all aspects of film music at Paramount. He is involved in creative pursuits with artists such as Beyoncé, Linkin Park, Green Day, and U2.

“It’s always been a huge honor for me to work with musicians. And being a musician, I feel that I uniquely understand them,” he said. “I find myself in the presence of greatness, and by that, I mean John Williams or Hans Zimmer, these incredible world-class composers. We get a chance to work with the greatest musicians in the world, here and abroad. It’s never lost on me what an important responsibility and what an honor it is to be in charge of delivering music for our films.”

He looks forward to meeting the filmmakers attending this year’s Poppy Jasper and encouraging them in their dreams to share their stories through cinema, he said.

“What I’d really say to young people who are aspiring to work in the media business is, quite frankly, don’t ever give up on your dream. And don’t let anybody tell you it’s out of your reach,” he said. “You control your destiny if you believe in yourself. You can really accomplish the dreams in the areas of your life that you want to pursue. It’s really about never giving up and continuing to believe and have a passion for what you want to do, whatever you want to do.”