by Mark E. Waterbury

Maureen Crowe's parents loved the theater, and since they lived on Long Island they were very close to that theatrical mecca of Broadway. They brought the recordings of the shows they saw home to Maureen and her siblings, who would act out the plays on their own since they did not get the chance to see them in person when they were younger. Throughout her childhood and on into college, Maureen became involved with several plays and theatrical presentations. She attended Marist College of Communications for two years before transferring to the Syracuse University New House School. While at Syracuse, she was involved in various aspects of putting shows together, particularly the post-production process, and also worked at a local television station. After graduation she decided that she wanted to go out to California to see if she could get involved with the television or film industries. "I always wanted to be involved with entertainment, there was never a question about that," Maureen recalls. "Whether it would be documentaries or theater...I used to love theater, but I didn't feel that I could make a living at it."

When she arrived in L.A., Maureen volunteered to work on some movie projects for students at the American Film Institute. One of the students had been working with the TV show "Fame," and when that person could not return for the second season, Maureen went to work for the show. "That's when I realized that in regard to music and theater, there was this career possibility in working with music and film. It ended up being a very natural fit for me." Maureen started working on the "Fame" set, watching lip-synchs and performing other tasks. Ken Ehrlich, one of the producers of the TV show taught her a lot about the intertwining worlds of music and film, and when he decided to find other sources for music supervision beyond the one company they had been working with, he asked Maureen to find those music sources. "That's basically how I learned to be a music supervisor. Dealing with publishers, talking to songwriters, and every week we had different needs for songs and materials on the show. I was used to working with the various aspects of music theater when I was growing up, and in the format of a show like 'Fame' which requires a song to bring the story forward, or sell a particular scene or moment, that was something I was very familiar with and it was also my passion."

After "Fame" Maureen thought she would become more involved with post production. But she had already gained a bit of a reputation for her work with "Fame" and also made some good connections, and as a result music supervision work started coming her way. Her first feature film project ended up being the follow-up to "Footloose". "I worked with a lot of big songwriters and producers, and it was a great intro to the film world for me. I had realized very quickly that it was a job where we had to be creative to some degree, and you worked with all of the key creative people. Then when you get into feature films you work much more with marketing, advertising, videos and record companies. For me, I thought it was a perfect completion of everything I loved about entertainment." Gary Lemel from Warner Brothers and Kathy Nelson were happy with the work Maureen had done, and as a result they tapped her to work with "The Bodyguard" followed by "Wayne's World," two very popular movies that were also very music intensive. "In 'Fame', the whole goal of that show was to be very contemporary and very much in touch of what was happening in the current music scene, so we used a lot of different genres. So when I got into feature films, I had not worked with that level of producers before, but in terms of the genres of music and what types of songs were on the radio and what kind of artists and songwriters were involved, it was something I was very aware of and used in the films. It was just a series of events to help me move ahead, and some great people believed in me and were very supportive of me when I was starting out."

Even with her reputation growing as a music supervisor that could be counted on, Maureen decided after "Wayne's World" that she wanted to know more about the music industry. She worked for three years at Columbia Records primarily with soundtracks, and was about to go back to films when Arista Records asked her to come work for them. She spent three years there as well, learning a great deal about the industry that her career path most decidedly intersected with. When she came back to the movie industry, Gary Lemel as well as Doug Frank at Warner were quite supportive of her, and Maureen began doing the music supervision for several A-list movies including "The Replacements," "The Perfect Storm" and "The Banger Sisters". "I tell a lot of people when you are starting out is to just keep going; like if you want to shoot movies, shoot movies and then keep on going. For me maybe some of the early films were not the best films, but Gary was the head of music at Warner Brothers and he wanted someone to help him out and get the project to work as far as what the producers wanted, and he realized I was someone he could rely on."

Currently, Maureen is finishing up working with the movie "Chicago," which was made by the same people who provided Maureen with her first music supervising job with the "Footloose" sequel, and "The Guy Thing" at MGM. In the future Maureen, would like to be involved with a project like developing a musical, or working with animation or other new technologies. For the time being, she is quite happy with what she is doing, putting the musical stamps on some very well regarded movies. "The best thing I like about it is to really deliver for the director in terms of what he wants to say in the movie. Try to make it as painless as possible, deliver things on time and have the right type of music. It's being part of the whole storytelling process."

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Maureen Crowe's advice for submitting music to Music Supervisors
"For indie musicians the best thing to do is send only their best material, and only a small amount. It's very difficult when someone sends a sixteen cut album. And keep in touch with things so you target your submissions. The internet can be a very good source for this. If there is a movie that is a romantic comedy with a young cast in it, sending something appropriate to that age group is important. Try to find out what the story is about so you send something appropriate. If you have music that you feel can compliment a movie, send one or two of your best tracks, no more than three. The more specific you get the bigger impression you can make. If I you send me three songs and I hear three good songs, I may then want to hear the whole album. But if you send me a whole album and I don't like the first song chances are it's going to be hard for me to go through it."