The San Francisco International Film Festival invited us to score a silent film for their 2001 edition. We batted around ideas for awhile, and then someone suggested the underwater documentaries of Jean Painlevé. We weren’t familiar with his work, but as soon as we watched them on the VHS tape the festival provided, we were sold. Beautiful and hilarious . . . but not silent. Not to worry, they were the next best thing: French. Thanks to subtitles, we had the option of turning the sound off, sparing the audience the work of hacks like Pierre Conté and Darius Milhaud. Our performance, dubbed The Sounds of Science in a transparent attempt to fool people into thinking the Beastie Boys were involved, took place 13 years ago today at the Castro Theater. Georgia and I did a little location scouting the night before, enjoying the pre-show medley of organ hits, followed by Cobra Woman introduced by Kenneth Anger. In fact, the whole festival was a blast–the highlight may have been when we found ourselves pretty much the only people not dressed for the opera at a reception for Clint Eastwood at a Bulgari store.