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There was one song he came up with that he was singing to his wife and she reminded him that that it was the theme song from a Spanish soap opera that had been playing on TV. And so it was my job then to take that and completely rewrite it so it sounded nothing like that.

So it's fun working with these guys as a team. Even with the score, I write the score but Phil has such an ear for what he wants to hear emotionally that he'll send me a CD full of comments or he'll be at home watching what we just watched and making his comments in a tape recorder—"let's try this here: da, da, da."

What goes into writing the songs?

We love to research them. I mean, for the Barbara Manatee song we wanted a tango, so we researched by watching a couple of tango movies and bought some tango CDs. I mean really, the song is an authentic tango and that's the fun part of it. But really if you just heard the music, there's no humor in that music. But it makes the humor of the situation that much more funny. And that's the fun part of that: being a straight man to the humor in the words and action.

I was just talking with a guy yesterday who said, "those polkas you wrote, you must have that in your blood." I directed German bands in high school and I've got a German family and so I love to really dig into whatever style we're trying to create.

It's a lot of fun to bring depth to it, instead of just making it strictly for kids. My whole family is a family of musicians and often times I find myself asking, "Would my older brother respect what I'm doing in this?" I want there to be depth to it.

My brother lives in Norway and so for Lyle the Kindly Viking, he sent me over several different songs that were ancient Norweigan Viking songs. And there was this one that it turns out was the first song in existence that anybody has found written down that has harmony and triads. So we used it as Junior's theme in the video. That's a 15th century Viking song. I love that sort of richness.

I think that's so cool that somewhere out there, somebody is going to hear that and say, "Wait a minute!" It could be one person in a million but I love doing that.

One of the things that we're using in Jonah is that when we hear about mercy and God's grace, one of theme songs that we use is a hymn that I found. It's an old hymn that I had never heard before. We never sing those lyrics in the movie but they're played by instrument and they're hummed at times by a choir. But knowing that that reference is there, somebody is going to pick up on it.

Todd Hertz is assistant online editor for Christianity Today.

Copyright © 2002 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Also appearing on our site today:

Runaway Asparagus | Big Idea's Jonah is both wholesome and hip.

The Top Tomato | Phil Vischer's tenacious campaign to dominate family entertainment.

(The Voice of) Larry the Cucumber Speaks | "Nobody thinks growing up that they're going to be a cucumber."

The official site for Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie has activities and offerings for kids plus movie information, pictures, and trailers. The corporate site has more information on the company.

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September (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46