Brent Michael Davids, a Mohican classical composer with eighteen years of film scoring experience and over two dozen film scores to his credit, was the early favorite to score the film. A number of prominent Comanches, including educators Juanita Pahdopony and Leslie Whitefeather, recommended him. Robert Blackburn, the president of the OHS, praised Davids’s work on the film repeatedly and other employees of the OHS also at first believed Davids would score the film.
Enter white supremacist David Yeagley.
The reason for that threat of a lawsuit may be that, ironically, it was libel coming from Yeagley himself, or perhaps a Yeagley supporter, that caused Blackburn to drop the most likely, experienced, and highly recommended candidate, Davids, in favor of Yeagley. Blackburn has now entirely changed his story, and claims that Davids was dropped because he had no experience scoring films. Yet Davids has extensive experience, over two dozen film scores and eighteen years of experience, while Yeagley is an amateur who had absolutely no experience in film scoring. Blackburn had previously highly praised Davids’ proposal and partial scoring of the film as “a great job” and “highly professional,” indicating he had not only seen it and listened to it, but given it long and serious consideration.
This is unfortunate and disgraceful. Davids has much experience and is widely known in the Native community while Yeagley is despised to those who actually have heard about him and know what he's all about.
ReplyDeleteI really don't understand how this could happen. Good reporting.