BIOgraphy

JON AND AL KAPLAN

Jon Kaplan and Al Kaplan are brothers who are composers, lyricists and writers. They created Silence! The Musical, a stage version of The Silence of the Lambs that has played in London, New York City and Los Angeles; the YouTube channel Legolambs, which features musicalizations of various Arnold Schwarzenegger movies such as Conan the Barbarian, Predator and Commando; and wrote the songs “Clown Cafe” and “It’s a Terrifier Christmas” for Damien Leone’s Terrifier 2 (2022) and Terrifier 3 (2024), respectively. Jon and Al also wrote and produced the hit Tubi Original film Lowlifes (2024), and co-wrote and scored the Shudder series Critters: A New Binge (2019), and the cult film Zombeavers (2014).

The brothers moved to Los Angeles in 1996 to study concert composition and film music at USC, graduating in 1999 and 2000, respectively. Jon and Al created Silence! The Musical as a labor of love in late 2002. What began as a set of nine songs eventually became a website with a cult following in 2003. Silence! was covered in magazines including Entertainment Weekly and Maxim, and aired on radio shows like XM's Opie and Anthony and Howard Stern's 100.

In 2005, Jon and Al composed several new songs and expanded Silence! into a live musical. They wrote an Airplane!-style screenplay, Silence! The Musical, that was adapted for the stage by Tony-nominee Hunter Bell; the show was mounted by director and Tony-winner Christopher Gattelli at the 2005 NYC Fringe festival, where it won the "Overall Excellence Award" for Outstanding Musical. In 2010, Silence! re-opened in London at the Above the Stag Theatre and had a successful run. The following summer, the show opened Off Broadway at Theatre 80 to rave reviews. The run was extended for three months, after which Silence! transferred to The 9th Space Theater at Performance Space 122, and subsequently to the Elektra Theatre on 8th Ave. and 42nd Street. The show also played a three-and-a-half-month run at the Hayworth Theatre in Los Angeles in the fall of 2012, and went on to win a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Score.

In 2015, Jon and Al created another live stage work, authoring the music, lyrics and book for Musical Thrones: A Parody of Ice & Fire, a satire of Game of Thrones, which would tour the U.S. in early 2018.

In addition to their stage shows, Jon and Al have composed completely unfunny music for the NBC reality show Starting Over; a John Ford silent film entitled Just Pals, which was included in the Ford at Fox DVD Box Set; and a series of Walt Disney web advertisements. The Kaplans also wrote two seasons worth of Super Nintendo-style underscore for G4's cartoon series Code Monkeys. In 2009, the brothers wrote comedy (not music) for the MTV Movie Awards, and arranged Andy Samberg's "Lonely Island Medley," which was performed by LeAnn Rimes, Chris Isaak and Forest Whitaker. Jon and Al next scored The Hills Have Thighs, the controversial erotic film that aired on HBO, Cinemax, Showtime and TMC, and the Syfy Channel original films Piranhaconda and Dinocroc Vs. Supergator.

In 2015, the film Zombeavers, scored and co-written by Jon and Al, was released in limited theaters in the U.S. and on VOD, after an international release in 2014. The brothers also scored and co-wrote Critters: A New Binge, released as a Shudder original in 2019, and The Drone, produced by Timur Bekmambetov, also released in 2019. Their short film, “Lego Star Wars With John Williams,” was twice featured at the Hollywood Bowl by John Williams at his annual Maestro of the Movies event (2013, 2019). The brothers’ original song “Clown Cafe” was used in Damian Leone’s breakout hit Terrifier 2 (2022), with their follow-up, “It’s a Terrifier Christmas,” featured in Terrifier 3 (2024).

In their spare time, the Kaplans have continued to pursue their first love of writing unstageable theater works, producing a series of viral video musicals on their Legolambs channel including Conan the Barbarian: The Musical and The Thing: The Musical.

In closing, the Kaplans' father always told them that the mouth is the most disgusting orifice on the human body. He was a dentist before he died, but he ran his practice into the ground because he hated the human mouth so vehemently. Instead, he followed his heart and went back to teaching music to children. This brings up the most important point: if you work hard, persevere, and follow your dreams, you will eventually die and turn into a skeleton like Dr. Kaplan.