Co-founders of NYC’s Flavorlab, Erik Blicker and Glenn Schloss scored the HBO documentary Wild Card: The Downfall of a Radio Loudmouth, which follows the rise and fall New York sports radio personality Craig Carton. Carton had co-hosted a radio show with former Jets quarterback Boomer Esiason for years until he was arrested and charged with conspiracy, wire fraud and securities fraud in 2017. He was convicted and began serving a 42-month sentence in federal prison in June 2019.

Glenn Schloss

Wild Card was produced and directed by Martin Dunn and Marie McGovern of StreetSmartVideo and includes interviews with those who were closest to Carton, including Esiason and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

Here, Blicker and Schloss talk us through some of their favorite scenes…

Which scene was your favorite to work on for Wild Card on HBO?
Erik Blicker: After meeting with directors Martin Dunn and Marie McGovern, as well as the editor, Jason Schmidt, we got deep into the characters and the story. Based on that back and forth, we wanted to find “Craig’s Theme” and build out the score from there.

Erik Blicker

After presenting five themes that embodied both the boisterous and hidden, damaged sides of Carton, they picked one and we built out the score from that. Our favorite scene was music taken from a suite of five pieces about gambling addiction. The scene happens right after Craig explains his lifelong secret that he was sexually abused, and a gambling therapist explains how gambling is the perfect drug.

Glenn played mallets on drum kit toms, I played piano and we improvised several pieces. Then we took those pieces and built out the gambling scenes from there.

Describe this scene and the significance it has to the rest of the movie.
Glenn Schloss: There is a shot of Carton gambling by himself with a dealer one on one. He would lose $4 million in one night and win $2 million the next night, all with other people’s money. It’s the moment in the story when you realize how deep in and over his head he was, juggling all of his commitments while also going deeper into debt.

Wild Card: The Downfall of a Radio Loudmouth (Credit: HBO)

Which tools or plugins did you use to create this scene?
Blicker: Funny story. I was dropping off some speakers at Glenn’s place. As I was putting them in his garage, I came across an Oberheim Matrix 1000 that I lent him 10 years ago. We used that a lot. We dug hard into Craig’s Theme, and the piano is playing the lead voice. We also used Paulstretch to create high-pitched tones using clips from the actual radio show.

What technical challenges did you encounter while working on this?
Blicker: The biggest challenge was navigating how changes in the cut would affect the music timing. The editor sent us AAFs so we could see where he cut the picture, which was extremely helpful. Once I’d imported that AAF, I could see where the WAV file of the music was cut, which allowed me to adjust my timing of the cue to the new picture edit.

Craig Carton (Credit: HBO)

What was the dialogue like between you and the series’ director or showrunner regarding this scene?
Schloss: We had many creative, collaborative discussions with the directors, especially about Carton’s character. We wanted to tell the story behind the story and highlight the duality of his life. One side of him is a radio personality — he lights up a room; he’s big, boisterous and funny. The other side is darker: he’s in pain; he’s lonely, secretive, insular and seeking refuge in his vices. We had to honor the Carton everyone knows, but the film pulls back the curtain on his other half, so the overall palette had to be darker and more driven by that underlying despair. The editor told us to think of the music as its own character.

Blicker: The element of the theme we really went back and forth with the directors on was instrumentation. Is the instrumentation working, or is it distracting? Much of our communication with them involved making sure the theme struck the right balance: It had to be emotionally variable yet musically cohesive and not be overused or draw too much attention.

At the end, they called us looking for a period music track for the end credits. We gave them access to our music licensing catalogue, Producer’s Toolbox. They found “Rush Hour” by one of our composers, Sam Morrison, which worked perfectly for the end.