Joel Sill, a music supervisor for more than 150 movies, including such cinema classics as Easy Rider, Flashdance, Forrest Gump and An Officer and a Gentleman, passed away Aug. 23 at his home in Thousand Oaks after a long battle with pulmonary fibrosis. He was 78.
Born in Santa Monica in 1946 to a musical family, Sill spent time as a teenager observing a young Phil Spector, who has been signed as a songwriter by Sill’s father, Lester Sill, as he was starting to build his career.
In 1967, after graduating from UCLA, Sill started work at Big-Three Music Publishing and eventually migrated Dunhill Records where he produced the soundtrack for the 1969 Easy Rider.
In his first professional milestone, Sill, then 24, was tasked with selecting the music for Dennis Hopper’s movie starring Peter Fonda at a time when the role of the music supervisor was not well established.
He packed Easy Rider with songs such as “Born to Be Wild” by Steppenwolf, “The Weight” by The Band, and “Wasn’t Born To Follow” by The Byrds in what was described as a musical commentary to the film’s adventure that became a key part of the movie’s cultural identity.
Sill had a massive hit with Adrian Lyne’s 1983 dance film Flashdance, complimenting the narrative with a series of musical sequences for what became a massively successful soundtrack. The film’s tune “Flashdance… What a Feeling” went on to win the 1984 Oscar for Best Original Song. He also helped pioneer the use of a hit single to launch a film.
In Robert’s Zemeckis’ 1994 Forrest Gump, Sill used music to punctuate the different time periods, with the double album soundtrack selling over 12 million copies.
Also at Paramount Pictures, Sill worked on Taylor Hackford’s An Officer and a Gentleman, which won a Best Original Song Oscar for “Up Where We Belong” –- helping to propel the career of young Joe Cocker (with Jennifer Warnes) — and on Warren Beatty’s Reds and Walter Hill’s 48 Hrs. with Eddie Murphy.
Over at Warner Brothers, he shepherded Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, The Killing Fields, Blade Runner, Purple Rain and The Color Purple.
Sill re-teamed with Hackford on the 5-times platinum soundtrack to the 1987 La Bamba and the Chuck Berry documentary Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll amongst others.
He also reunited with Zemeckis and helped develop a film and music sequence to create a reverse time stamp in the opening of his movie Contact starring Jody Foster where time goes backwards over the first three minutes.
From his earliest age, Sill, who studied marine biology at UCLA, had a fascination with the ocean. He loved deep-sea diving and pursued underwater photography, which has been published and repped by Jacques Cousteau’s Living Sea Corporation. He also worked as an ambassador for AltaSea, a marine preservation nonprofit based in California.
Sill and his wife of 24 years, Kimberly Sill, shared a commitment to animal rights and animal activism and found homes for thousands of lost animals through Kimberly’s venture Shelter Hope, a non-profit volunteer-based pet shop that showcases shelter animals available for in-store adoption. He co-produced Kimberly’s documentary film Saved in America, exploring the world of animal rescue, and their family included many rescue dogs to whom Sill was utterly devoted.
A celebration of Sill’s life will take place later this fall in Malibu, in recognition of his lifelong love of the ocean. He is survived by his wife Kimberly. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made in Joel’s name to Shelter Hope at the following link.
