Though he's done some indie features before, Whipped is Montes' first major release. He never worked with Peter Cohen on commercials, "but somebody recommended me and we hit it off," he says. Montes describes the Whipped sound, which is frequently reminiscent of Booker T. and the MGs, as "a swaggering-cool-comedy-funk thing, and there's also a psychedelic aspect to it." As for the bummer reviews the movie has been lashed with, "it's not a critics' film, it's a people's film," he says.
One-day Crossing, by contrast, is a critics' darling. Set in Budapest at the end of WW II, Montes calls the music "uplifting and emotional," with traces of Ives and Shostakovich. And whether the film is long or short, Montes is thrilled to get out of the 30-second box for a spell. "Commercials can be confining," he admits. "A composer wants to stretch out now and again. When you have a big canvas in front of you, it's liberating."
The big canvas continues; Montes is presently working on the score to an ESPN high school football documentary via Radical Media, and he has a feature thriller coming up.
