As the founder of Kraft-Engel Management, Richard Kraft heads one of the leading agencies specializing in film and theatre music. With Laura Engel, his company represents such well-known and award-winning composers as Danny Elfman, Alan Menken, John Powell, Trevor Rabin and Marc Shaiman.

Together with his son, Nicky, Richard co-wrote and co-directed with Adam Shell the documentary Finding Kraftland. The film shows Richard and Nicky exploring the world’s roller coasters while expanding their collection of memorabilia. That treasure trove of collectibles has accumulated into the father-son duo’s own wonderland known as Kraftland.

Richard and Nicky were kind enough to speak with me recently about Finding Kraftland. The pair share their motivation for making the critically acclaimed documentary, while elaborating on experiences seen in and around the film. Furthermore, Richard and Nicky reveal their plans for another journey or two to Kraftland.

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Josh Armstrong: How did Kraft-Engel Management get started?

Richard Kraft: I started collecting movie soundtracks when I was about seven years old. By the time I was out of high school, I had thousands of soundtracks. I would also come to Los Angeles to interview film composers, when I was a kid. I idolized them!

Through a bunch of wacky misadventures, a number of composers asked me to be their agent. My first client was Danny Elfman. Jerry Goldsmith was my second. I built up that agency from there. Eventually, I teamed with my partner, Lara Engel. I’ve been an agent now for 22 years.

JA: What are some of the responsibilities you have with the company?

RK: We represent film and Broadway composers. Our job is to guide their careers, to make the right choices as to what movies they should be doing, to help put together the deals, and to hold their hands while through the process, because working on movies can be treacherous waters.

JA: I know you like to purchase collectibles. Why did you decide to start doing that?

RK: I always collected when I was a kid. We’d go to Goodwill, and buy toys and games and anything we could buy for under a quarter. Even though we did not have a lot of money, we had a lot of junk in our house, when I was growing up. Very little of it did I keep.

But then when I started making real money, I decided to reclaim everything I had as a child and get all the things I never got as a kid. Our house is a collection of a lot of my childhood memories, which I have now forced down the throat of Nicky.

Nicky Kraft: Right.

JA: [laughs] How do you decide which items to purchase?

RK: It’s usually stuff that’s tied to pop culture crap from the ’50s and ’60s: fast food items, board games with big plastic pieces… Things that are overly jolly, I like. Then the main part of our collection are pieces of Disneyland.

JA: Why Disneyland?

RK: I went to Disneyland once a year with my family. I had an older brother, David, who was ill his entire life. When he would feel well, we would take the annual trip to Disneyland.

After he died, I wanted to reconnect with memories of him. My happiest memories of him are being at Disneyland. So I started going there after he passed away.

Then I realized I could start buying pieces of the park. I sort of turned our home into Kraftland, which is a bit of a museum to Disneyland.

JA: What is one collectible you want but have never been able to get?

RK: I would say an Alice in Wonderland ride vehicle. It’s in the shape of a caterpillar, and he has a really smug look on his face. I just love the design of it. Once day, it will be in our house.

NK: There is only one source from them, because the attraction is only at Disneyland. So it’s ultra-rare. Never sent to Disney World or EuroDisney. It’s very special.

RK: What is one item you want, Nicky?

NK: I do not know… The teacups from the teacup ride, I think, would actually be a really nice table. The thing that you twist the actual cup with - we could sit in it and have drinks out by the pool on it. Probably not what it was intended for. But I think we could make it work!

JA: [laughs] I read, Richard, that after having surgery for a blocked heart artery, you rode 425 roller coasters. Were you nervous at all about that?

RK: No, it added a bit more of a thrill factor, to see if I would have a cardiac arrest on a ride. But I wasn’t too worried about it. I did not want to live my life in fear. So what better way of celebrating heart surgery than riding roller coasters around the world?

JA: What was your favorite roller coaster?

RK: My favorite wooden roller coaster is the Cyclone at Coney Island in New York. It’s like over 75 years old and causes bruise marks all over your body.

Nicky, what was your favorite steel one?

NK: Actually, after covering the entire world, we think the best steel one is here, in Los Angeles, at Six Flags Magic Mountain: X. It’s fast, and it’s a one-of-a-kind roller coaster. There is no other roller coaster with the same design.

After 425 roller coasters, a loop is a loop. It doesn’t matter how many times you go through a loop, it’s more or less the same. The running gag is that some of these coasters are the exact same coaster. They were built by the same company.

While riding some of the really lame coasters, my dad would explain plots of movies I haven’t seen. You know, we would be flying through loops, and I would be learning all about The Godfather Part II. So it was sort of a surreal experience. But X is great because it is one-of-a-kind. We like originality.

JA: I hadn’t thought about the coasters being the same but having different names.

NK: Yeah, there is this one specific type of roller coaster, and I think there are 23 of the exact same one in the country. So that almost became a chore. We actually was like, ‘Well, we’ve got to get a number for the book. We should be writing about this all.’

JA: And you can’t remember the name of that particular coaster?

RK: It has different names. But the basic name is a Boomerang coaster. You go forward, through a loop, around the other side, through a loop, back, and start back where you originally started. We thought it was extremely exciting the first four times. Then it became like going through a root canal after that.

For instance, every Six Flags park has a Batman ride. They tend to be the same. The only difference is how they’re decorated, slightly…

NK: Yes. Although with our favorite Batman coaster, they decided to take one of the ride tracks, and they just flipped it in reverse. We decided to call that ‘Namtab.’ A lot of creativity in that one!

JA: About Finding Kraftland, why did you decide to make that documentary?

RK: Well, Nicky was having his 16th birthday. Our birthdays are a day apart, so we always have very elaborate costume parties to celebrate.

But for his 16th birthday party, I decided to make a film to show at Paramount Studios, to show to 750 friends, and have a premiere and everybody dress up in red carpet dress. We hired fans to run up to all our guests and ask for their autographs, and paparazzi.

NK: Yeah, we hired fans. We hired friends to come to the party.

RK: Yes, we actually have no friends. [laughs]

We turned the backlot of Paramount Studios into Kraftland. We emptied out all the contents of my house and moved them to Paramount, so people walked around in a pseudo-version of our house.

This movie was just intended to show one time, at the birthday party. But then some people came up to us. They really liked it and suggested we submit it to film festivals.

We were up for an adventure, so we submitted it to the Santa Barbara Film Festival. We were surprised they accepted it! When we showed up, there were 300 people - none of which we paid to be there.

NK: Well, I didn’t want to tell you, Dad, but…

RK: Oh no! Really?! [laughs]

NK: I paid 300 people.

RK: [laughs] Then, because we do everything excessively, we submitted the movie to every film festival in the world that accepts documentaries. We’re up to about our 50th film festival.

JA: How many more do you plan to submit it to?

RK: We get accepted into about 1 out of every 3 festivals we submit it to. We’re running out of festivals. So I think we’re winding down. But as soon as I say we’re winding down, I get another acceptance. We’re going to Bologna, Italy this summer. I have no idea what people are going to think of this movie in Italian.

NK: We played the movie in Spain, actually, It was interesting to see all the stuff we were saying translated into Spanish - our favorite being, there’s a line in the movie where I refer to something smelling like Big Foot’s d**k. The translation in Spanish was, ‘It smells like the w**ner of the Yeti,’ which we thought was quite funny.

JA: Any other odd translations?

NK: I think the movie itself is an odd translation!

RK: It was interesting. I think most of the audience was shaking their heads, going, ‘Oh, those crazy Americans!’

Our movie played in China. It played on a beach in Turks and Caicos, where they set up a screening like a drive-in movie.

Our favorite screening… [to Nicky] Tell him about the tent.

NK: We were accepted to the Mount Rainier - I believe International - Film Festival in Mount Rainier, Washington. It was near my home in Oregon.

So we all packed up in the car and drove into the wilderness and ended up in this small town that had a film festival. We played in a yurt, which is a Mongolian-style tent. It was pretty roomy.

But the only audience was ourselves, the people showing the movie and a stuffed raccoon. Our favorite part was we won the Mount Rainier audience choice award. So that raccoon loved the film. He literally did not blink the entire film!

RK: Nor did we walk out!

NK: No, he was there for the whole thing.

RK: So we play very well with a stuffed raccoon audience!

NK: It’s a good market to have! It’s a niche market but…

JA: You should next screen the film at a Build-A-Bear.

RK: We haven’t thought of that! [laughs]

Part of having a movie and being a collector is, we had to make collectibles of the movie. So we designed and made Finding Kraftland bobble heads of Nicky and I. We now are immortalized as bobble heads!

JA: What was the budget for Finding Kraftland?

RK: Originally, there was no budget. I thought, ‘Oh, this will be just like a cheap little home movie.’ Then, we kept adding more and more to the movie.

Another important detail: we went to Disney World, and in the hotel room, when you stay as a guest, there is an endless 20-minute video loop of a thing called Disney World’s Top Seven Attractions. It shows the top attractions, and it’s hosted by this really perky hostess named Stacey. We were there for a week, and we got transfixed looking at this video every night and every morning. Nicky came up with the idea of ‘Hey, why don’t we make Kraftland’s Top Attractions?’

Then I thought, ‘Hey, let’s go find Stacey, track her down and hire her to come host our movie!’

NK: Or collect her, more or less.

RK: [laughs] So we tracked her down. Her name is Stacey Aswad. She lived in North Carolina. We flew her out for the shoot. Then we started putting this movie together, and the scope of it got much grander.

NK: It was like a nice little home movie.

RK: Between the cost of the movie and the premiere it was crazy expensive. I think we’ve lost essentially more, because of going to 50 film festivals. We usually end up taking the audience out for dinner afterwards. But you only live once.

JA: Was it difficult convincing Stacey to do it?

RK: At first, she was a little nervous to do it. I called her agent. To her, she was like, ‘Well, there’s this guy out in Hollywood making a home movie who wants you to be in it.’

But then I sent her some articles about me - the Wall Street Journal and things that pretended to make me legitimate. She came out but she made sure to call her family a lot to let them where she was at.

Subsequently, she had such a good time doing it, she moved to LA and now has quite a good career out here doing commercials and stuff. She has become one our best friends. So a happy ending for that story.

NK: However, we pay her to be our friend!

RK: [laughs] You pay her also?!

NK: Sorry!

JA: It sounds like you guys did have a pretty big budget on this film, after you had to pay everyone!

NK: Yeah, that was the real cost.

JA: About Adam Shell, how did he become involved with the project?

RK: Adam Shell is the co-writer and co-director. He’s someone I have make some promotional videos for my clients occasionally. When festivals and things like that do tributes to one of my clients, they usually show a five-minute reel highlighting their career. I knew Adam’s reputation for being a really great editor, so we worked on those together.

Then I conned him into doing Kraftland. We weren’t that good of friends when we started. But by the end of the adventure, he became a great friend! I pray, Nicky, you’re not paying him.

NK: No, I don’t want to tell you what I have to do to keep him here.

RK: [laughs]

JA: How did you decide who to interview for the project?

RK: We went to a bunch of my clients - who I thought would act sort of as the Greek choir, commenting on my madness - and various people from our lives. I was not there for the interviews. Adam would go off and ask them tons of questions.

What was very surreal was watching the footage to edit it. It was like hearing about yourself from a bunch of people talking behind your back. It was a strange experience, going through all of that footage.

Even though this was a ridiculously over-the-top experience, I think, on a much more modest scale, it would be something fun for anybody to do. Instead of scrap booking - most of us have old photos of us and old home movies - going out and interviewing your friends and putting it together. I mean, it is a very, very fun and therapeutic experience - sort of, ‘Well, if I had to tell my life story, what would I say about it?’

I had no idea what the movie was really going to be about. By the time we were finished with basically a movie about how Nicky grew up and I didn’t. It is about sorting through all the things and collectibles in my house and discovering my son in the process. It’s basically kind of a family love story.

JA: In the film, Marc Shaiman sings a song titled ‘Yes!’ How did that come about?

RK: Marc Shaiman is the only person on the planet who’s a bigger ham than me. We told him, ‘We’re going to send a film crew to interview you.’ Of course, he had to make sure he had the best interview. So he put together this song.

He’d done a little of it before, but he did this version for the movie. In like two hours, they shot a music video. It’s on YouTube, and it’s been watched like ten thousand times, which shocks me.

JA: Yeah, I watched it a couple of times last night actually. [laughs]

RK: He’s quite, quite funny.

Then there’s a song at the end of the movie, which Nicky composed. Tell them about that, Nick.

NK: A few years ago, before the movie came out, basically I was working around on the piano, writing a piece. My dad said, ‘Hey, I really like that! Make that a song, and we’ll throw it in the movie.’ I said, ‘Okay!’

So I composed that piece. Then we went to Warner Bros.’ studio. I played that, and then we spiked in a bunch of - sort of recapping the movie - home footage of my grandparents and uncle.

RK: It’s called the ‘Kronicles of Kraftland.’

JA: I remember reading about that. Weren’t you 15 when you composed that?

NK: Yeah, it was like an ongoing project. But I had written the basic chord structure - I don’t even know when - and sort of worked around on that. Then when I was 15, I sort of turned it into an actual song.

JA: Do you do a lot of other composing?

NK: Yes and no. I mean, I play bass in a band, and we write our own stuff. I write a lot on the piano. But I definitely have ADD of composing. I’ll write one little thing and then start playing something else. So I’ve got a few hundred unfinished things, which I guess could potentially be ‘Kronicles of Kraftland 2,’ if we make another movie.

JA: Do you think you will make another one?

NK: That’s the running joke, that the second one will be called Selling Kraftland. At the end of that movie, Richard dies and becomes Obi-Wan Kenobi for the third movie, where I raise my son and he gives me ghostly words of wisdom from beyond the grave.

RK: Hopefully, that will be a few years from now…

NK: Right.

RK: But I do think it’s a trilogy. The logical thing would be for the third movie to be about what Nicky does as a parent, having grown up in such a crazy environment. I’ll be dead, but I’ll still be here. [laughs]

NK: What I don’t get is, we keep adding new footage to Finding Kraftland. I think we’re doing something now, where we’re about to add footage to it. We just went skydiving, actually, and we asked for the DVD, so we could add footage. I don’t when the adding footage stops and the collecting of shots for Finding Kraftland 2 begins.

RK: For Nicky’s eighteenth birthday, we jumped 13,500 feet. I am not going to put that footage in the movie. That’s Finding Kraftland 2 footage.

NK: That’s the start of it. I’m now officially a man.

RK: And this interview will now be in that movie.

NK: There ya’ go.

JA: So you’re serious about this sequel, right?

RK: Oh, absolutely! You can’t have lived this and then go, ‘Well, that was the end of it!’ A lot has changed since the movie finished. For example, there are now another two inhabitants of Kraftland: my girlfriend, Liz, and her 18-month-old son, Julius. So Kraftland is now childproof. It’s quite strange to see baby barriers surrounding Bob’s Big Boy.

JA: I bet! About the marketing for Finding Kraftland, you got some fantastic artists to do the posters for it, like Drew Struzan… How did you get them to design the posters?

RK: Being a collector, one of the things I collect is movie posters. I was always obsessed by the artists. I’d try to find the signatures and go, ‘Oh, the guy who did the Raiders of the Lost Ark poster also did Back to the Future!’ I learned the names of who these people are.

When I was making a movie, it was like, ‘Well, I need movie posters.’ So I went on the website for Drew Struzan and e-mailed him and introduced myself. He came over and asked what we wanted to do. We said, ‘Would you do a poster that’s like Raiders of the Lost Schlock?’ He was like, ‘Okay!’

So we went out in front of our house. He posed us like two explorers going through a cave. Instead of carrying torches, we were carrying mops, which he then drew as torches.

NK: We didn’t have any torches on hand.

RK: [laughs] I think I now do, actually.

NK: I don’t doubt that!

RK: It was amazing how he would take these photos of us and then, two weeks later, a finished, gorgeous piece of art showed up. The talent of these guys is absolutely amazing!

The one that I particularly like is the one done by Matthew Peak, which is Nicky and I soaring over Kraftland inside of our Dumbo. To me, that really captured the spirit of the movie.

JA: Do you think Finding Kraftland will be released on DVD soon?

RK: I don’t know. First of all, it was intended for a birthday party. Then, I think it’s perfect for film festivals. But to actually think of it as having a commercial release, who knows.

Part of me doesn’t want it to, because my real life is very much about business. This one is completely a folly. If it turns into a business, it may take some of the joy out of it. It’s a great boondoggle, right now. I don’t want to turn it into a piece of business. I’ve got other things, if I was going to do that.

So much of the joy of the film festivals is meeting the people who come. We’ve been able to milk this movie for years now and get new experiences. We’re going to Memphis this weekend. We’ve got film festivals in Sacramento and Phoenix coming up. It’s like a great new excuse to travel and meet people.

JA: Aside from the Finding Kraftland sequels, are you guys going to do any other documentaries?

RK: What do you think, Nicky?

NK: Um, I think we shot our w*d, on this one.

RK: [laughs] What has been great is, I think we are in the ‘Golden Age’ of documentaries right now, because of the relatively inexpensive ability [to make one]. People’s home video cameras are pretty good. We all can edit on our computers now.

When we go to these film festivals, the range of the documentaries is so good. There are such weird character subjects. There’s King of Kong, about competitive Donkey Kong players. Then there’s another one about following the lives of five people who make their careers making balloon animals. It was really good! We’ve seen so many.

There’s a movie about polka, and it was great! I never thought about what kind of people participate in polka. I am now knowledgeable about that subject!

NK: You could become an instant expert, like with Wikipedia!

RK: It used to be documentaries all had to be about big, important topics, tackling racism or the Holocaust or the Vietnam War. But now everybody seems to be sort of an amateur journalist and films whatever they think is interesting. There are great stories out there. The highlight of the film festivals for us is definitely the documentaries.

I think Hollywood movies have become so cliché. We’ve seen the same stories so many times. But when you go see a movie about people who make balloon animals for a living, you literally have no idea where that story is going.

NK: I think Stallone did a movie about balloon animals.

RK: [laughs] What is also interesting about the documentaries, including ours, is that they are seemingly about trivial and goofy things. You spend enough time, and you get to know the characters in them. Then there’s usually a surprising emotional center to them.

With our movie, even though it is wildly goofy, the audience has an emotional ride going through it. If it was just ‘Hey, look at the stuff we own!,’ it would get obnoxious and annoying pretty quickly. But the movie actually becomes much more universal, because it is a movie really about a family, and we can all relate to that dynamic.

As for the balloon animal movie, I mean, I was literally in tears. A girl put herself through medical school making balloon animals! She lived in a trailer park. She went from trailer park to doctor, all through making a giraffe.

It’s a great time for [documentaries]. It’s also a great time because there are so many film festivals. Everything has a film festival! Soon there will be a Kraftland Film Festival! [laughs]

NK: I’m waiting for it, by the way.

JA: Are you guys serious about a Kraftland Film Festival?

RK: You know what, you never know… We are doing something rather goofy, in a month: The Kraftland Ride-athlon…

NK: Of course! That is in a month, isn’t it?

RK: Yes.

NK: We are throwing the first annual Kraftland Ride-athlon, where we’ve invited a bunch of friends in teams of two. We’re going to Disneyland on a weekday. The first team to ride every attraction is the winner. I believe there are 54 attractions?

RK: I think there are 56.

NK: Fifty-six attractions in one day - the Kraftland Ride-athlon. We’ve got I-spy’s for extra points. So if you’re on Big Thunder Mountain, if you can take a picture of the goat, you get extra points.

You have to take a picture of yourself on every attraction. At the end of the day, we’ll have, I don’t know, 30 teams with 56 pictures of them on the rides. It will be a blast!

JA: You should make that into a documentary!

RK: We are!

JA: Oh good! [laughs]

RK: We are, because it is going to be like The Great Race, Disneyland-style. People are going to get really competitive and cranky.

NK: By ‘people,’ you mean you.

RK: Well, yeah. [laughs] I don’t know if it can be accomplished. But it will be interesting to see if we can literally do everything there is to do at Disneyland in one day.

JA: What will the winning team receive?

NK: Bragging rights.

RK: It’s far better than material possessions. [laughs]

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Finding Kraftland will be shown at the LA United Film Festival, on Sunday, April 20th, 2008. For more information on the film, please visit its official website: www.findingkraftland.com.

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