About The Asylum

One day I decided to go on the web and, for the hell of it, punch in my name and see what happened. Inevitably, each time a website under my name came up it was a guy in the midwest who builds trucks. The irony is that on his page the first thing you see is an animated picture of a blond guy, and to top it off, musical notes appear underneath with the caption, "Listen to some cool songs I downloaded." So I'm thinking, "Sheees, people are going to think this has to be me!" When you scroll down, the page becomes dedicated to the trucks he builds. For the record, I don't build trucks let alone change the oil in my car.

It is then I realized, I'd better put up a website. It always seemed like a pseudo-narcissistic thing, so I wanted it to have a slight sense of humor and an honest abbreviated look into my experiences. Dan Goldwasser had volunteered to design the site and be on my ass to supply him with information. In doing so, it's been like traveling down memory-lane, recalling experiences, trivia tidbits and memories of projects as they came to me. Some stuff may seem quite unimportant and ridiculous to include, but I thought, why not make this whole site unabridged and a place of posterity as well?

So have fun traveling through the insane world that is my life. What better way to represent it than a mental ward with all the characters (or inmates as we say) in its nooks and crannies. They have their own stories to tell about our work and theirs. The site will attempt to link subjects to related areas of the internet as we get it more refined.

On the serious side of the site you'll find the overriding theme that I take what I write very much to heart (perhaps too much so) in terms of its potential to perhaps live on. I have this psychotic mission to somehow get it out there in one way or another to be performed live or for CD. For example, a dream (or fantasy as it were) would be to have my score to Incognito adapted and performed as a concert piece. Since the film had zero commercial success, this really is a pipe dream. But at least it made it to CD. One more realistic, albeit less artistic, project would be to have my score to Public Access resurrected and performed by an orchestra and put on CD as an album. The expense of transcribing from the original midi files, orchestrating and copying parts and recordnig the score have delayed this project, unless some philanthropic wealthy soundtrack collector wishes to come forward to resuurect it. Write me!

These little extracurricular pet projects take forever, but someday I hope to be able to write independent pieces of music like I used to before I began scoring full time, and then have these things performed. Perhaps this is also why I use as little synth in my scores as possible so that there is always the possibility to realistically have the music performed. I'm elated that the Oregon Symphony recently performed the theme to the The Usual Suspects (its first live performance) with the help of John Waxman. I hope that more themes can be performed live in the future. It's a great feeling.

If you have any suggestions, comments (hopefully not too biting) or questions, please feel free to drop some mail in the Asylum's mail room (you'll find it). I can't guarantee fast responses from me, so don't take it personally! If it's not a direct e-mail to me, perhaps one of the characters in the Asylum can get back to you.

Thanks for snooping around.
- John Ottman
July 24, 2000

About This Website One day I decided to go on the web and, for the hell of it, punch in my name and see what happened. Inevitably, each time a website under my name came up it was a guy in the midwest who builds trucks. The irony is that on his page the first thing you see is an animated picture of a blond guy, and to top it off, musical notes appear underneath with the caption, "Listen to some cool songs I downloaded." So I'm thinking, "Sheees, people are going to think this has to be me!" When you scroll down, the page becomes dedicated to the trucks he builds. For the record, I don't build trucks let alone change the oil in my car. It is then I realized, I'd better put up a website. It always seemed like a pseudo-narcissistic thing, so I wanted it to have a slight sense of humor and an honest abbreviated look into my experiences. Dan Goldwasser had volunteered to design the site and be on my ass to supply him with information. In doing so, it's been like traveling down memory-lane, recalling experiences, trivia tidbits and memories of projects as they came to me. Some stuff may seem quite unimportant and ridiculous to include, but I thought, why not make this whole site unabridged and a place of posterity as well? So have fun traveling through the insane world that is my life. What better way to represent it than a mental ward with all the characters (or inmates as we say) in its nooks and crannies. They have their own stories to tell about our work and theirs. The site will attempt to link subjects to related areas of the internet as we get it more refined. On the serious side of the site you'll find the overriding theme that I take what I write very much to heart (perhaps too much so) in terms of its potential to perhaps live on. I have this psychotic mission to somehow get it out there in one way or another to be performed live or for CD. For example, a dream (or fantasy as it were) would be to have my score to Incognito adapted and performed as a concert piece. Since the film had zero commercial success, this really is a pipe dream. But at least it made it to CD. One more realistic, albeit less artistic, project would be to have my score to Public Access resurrected and performed by an orchestra and put on CD as an album. The expense of transcribing from the original midi files, orchestrating and copying parts and recordnig the score have delayed this project, unless some philanthropic wealthy soundtrack collector wishes to come forward to resuurect it. Write me! These little extracurricular pet projects take forever, but someday I hope to be able to write independent pieces of music like I used to before I began scoring full time, and then have these things performed. Perhaps this is also why I use as little synth in my scores as possible so that there is always the possibility to realistically have the music performed. I'm elated that the Oregon Symphony recently performed the theme to the The Usual Suspects (its first live performance) with the help of John Waxman. I hope that more themes can be performed live in the future. It's a great feeling. If you have any suggestions, comments (hopefully not too biting) or questions, please feel free to drop some mail in the Asylum's mail room (you'll find it). I can't guarantee fast responses from me, so don't take it personally! If it's not a direct e-mail to me, perhaps one of the characters in the Asylum can get back to you. Thanks for snooping around. - John Ottman July 24, 2000
Website Design Implemented by Dan Goldwasser Asylum Design convieved by John Ottman and Dan Goldwasser	Website Content Written by John Ottman Asylum Graphics and Artwork created by Dan Goldwasser
Thanks to our testers: Aaron Teske, Damon Intrabartolo, David Koran, James Barry, and Scott Selfon