Woodstock multi-instrumentalist Zach Djanikian was onstage with Graham Nash in September 2024, preparing for soundcheck, when his cell phone rang.
The call was from his childhood friend, Ben Feldman. Years earlier, as Djanikian set out on a music career, Feldman became an attorney before making a sharp turn to pursue filmmaking.
Now Feldman had a new project: a documentary about the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He wanted to know whether Djanikian would write the score.
“He said, ‘Hey, are you still composing music?’” Djanikian, 40, recalled. “I said, ‘Yeah. I write music all the time.’ He said, ‘Do you want to score my next film? It’s about the Red Hot Chili Peppers.’”
Djanikian told Feldman he was all in.
“I hung up the phone and quickly realized,” he said, “I have no idea how to do that.”
At the time, Adam Minkoff—a Brooklyn multi-instrumentalist, friend of Djanikian’s, and fellow member of Nash’s band—was scoring a film for actress Renée Zellweger.
“He was well-versed in this,” Djanikian said of Minkoff, with whom he has often performed at Levon Helm Studios in Woodstock. “So I said, ‘Is there any way you’d want to do this with me?’”
Minkoff was all in, too.
“And,” Djanikian said, “I learned how to score a movie by doing a movie.”
“The Rise of the Red Hot Chili Peppers: Our Brother, Hillel” premieres Friday on Netflix.
“This candid documentary traces the formative years of the Red Hot Chili Peppers,” Netflix says on its website, “and the profound influence of original bandmate Hillel Slovak.”
The documentary centers on Slovak, the band’s original guitarist, who died in 1988 at 26.
The project also reflects the long relationship between film and music in Woodstock, a town known for its creative community.
Woodstock musician Tony Bruno knows that process well. He collaborated on the score for the 2025 documentary “Billy Joel: And So It Goes” with Tommy Byrnes of Millbrook, Joel’s longtime guitarist.
Bruno said composing a film score can be an exercise in nuance. The sound of an instrument can evoke a specific emotion, he said, and if that sound does not align with the dialogue and characters—or fails to create the right contrast—the composer may need to change direction.
“The tricky thing about a score is, you don’t want it to take away from the characters and the dialogue,” Bruno said. “You don’t want it to be something they bury so low in the mix because it takes away from the story.”
Djanikian said scoring a film is very different from writing a song. Even though the documentary is about the Chili Peppers, he said, the goal was not to compose music that sounded like songs written by the band.
“The score can hit you harder because it is so different from the actual music they made,” he said.
At times, though, he said, a moment might call for a subtle nod.
Feldman’s documentary offers a fresh perspective on the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Los Angeles band whose hard-driving sound brought it major success in the 1980s and 1990s. Its hits include “Scar Tissue,” “Give It Away,” and “Behind the Sun.”
“The Rise of the Red Hot Chili Peppers: Our Brother, Hillel” is not authorized by the band, but it also underscores the group’s ties to the Hudson Valley.
The Chili Peppers headlined Woodstock ’94 in Saugerties.
In December 2010, drummer Chad Smith attended a Midnight Ramble at Levon Helm Studios in Woodstock and sat in on drums with the former member of The Band. Smith joined the Chili Peppers after Slovak’s death.
Djanikian was there that night. A longtime member of Amos Lee’s band, he was performing with Lee, the opening act, years before moving to Woodstock or becoming part of the community around Levon Helm Studios.
More than 15 years later, Djanikian now brings a singular perspective to the Chili Peppers and to a documentary he helped shape musically.
And while he said he has never considered himself a Chili Peppers “super fan,” he described them as “An inescapable band—a true original.”
John W. Barry is a reporter for The Overlook. Reach him at john@theoverlooknews.com.