I was hired to write this film score, to be recorded in February and released in September of 2005, but I got fired a few weeks before recording was to begin.

It's an outer-space-Western-horror-action-comedy, written and directed by Joss Whedon, best known as the creator of "Buffy The Vampire Slayer." This is the first feature Joss has directed.

While the project was challenging I thought it was going well. Joss' responses were sometimes positive, sometimes not, but it seemed we were getting to a score he liked.

What made the job difficult was that the score needed to reflect whatever was happening on screen moment by moment. And there were a hundred minutes of those moments.

This is a traditional role for film music - "what you see is what you hear" - but it's the opposite of my usual approach, which is to find something for music to say which is not otherwise there. Of course I have often worked in the traditional mode, but I do find it challenging.