Hulu Knows Who I Am

When independent filmmaker Tray White contacted Matt Resovich last year through MySpace to do the score for Impaler (a documentary on self-proclaimed satanic vampire Jonathon “the Impaler” Sharkey, who ran for Minnesota’s governorship in 2006), Resovich didn’t pay it much mind.

“When I first saw Sharkey’s face on the friend request, I thought it was a joke,” writes Resovich in an email. “Then I realized it was a movie.”

After playing phone tag with White for a few weeks, Resovich nearly lost the movie deal to Alan Sparhawk, front man for indie band Low. “I was irresistibly cheap and easy, and I had one tune the director really liked.”

After agreeing to compose the documentary’s score, the multi-instrumentalist (who splits his time playing in the Black Heart Procession, the Album Leaf, and his own project, Roll Film) sat down and watched Impaler every day — from start to finish — for a week.

“The approach was the fun part. Kind of a reverse storyboard, really,” writes Resovich. “It wasn’t difficult at all. I was fortunate to have a finished film with a single time code from beginning to end to edit to.”

Since the 2007 release date, the film has been nominated for several independent film awards, and a few large movie outlets — Target, Amazon, Netflix, SnagFilms — have picked it up for distribution.

More good news came in mid March, when Resovich found out the documentary was added to online television and movie website Hulu.com’s list of television shows and movies.

“I am pretty excited to see Impaler doing so well on Hulu.com. It’s even more accessible than Amazon or Netflix. It is nice when the execs at Hulu.com are talking about [your work].”

As for scoring more movies, Resovich is on the lookout, but...

“Honestly I don’t know where people go to schmooze for film gigs. Maybe if I start a ‘Cargo Cult’ or make a sacrifice to the MySpace gods, another job will come my way. Or, just maybe, someone will see Impaler and like my work. In the meantime, it’s kind of funny to book shows when your only official release is a movie soundtrack.”