Five Composers Who Need a Sabbatical

Simply by the title of this article, you must realize that I will be stepping on a few toes somewhere. Besides the actual composers and their families, I mean. I want to preface this entire thing by saying that I have very little to no musical ability, and I think the film composers working today are some of the best that have ever worked in film. We are in a golden era of film music that probably won't be appreciated until they are long dead or retired. But, as a fan of film music, I also think that it is my duty to speak out when I think someone may need a wake up call or little reminder. I think all artists (especially those involved in filmmaking) need a truthteller around as an antidote for the numerous brown nosers that Hollywood seems to attract. The criteria of this list is that the composer must be steadily working and have been around for at least a couple of years. Well, here I go. Wish me luck....

JAMES HORNER: All right, let's get this one out of the way right now. I, for one truly think Mr. Horner is a talented man. Every time we write him off, he comes out with something like Braveheart making us rethink our whole opinion. My annoyance with his work started when I heard his Aliens score and some music on it that sounded suspiciously like an Aram Khatchaturian piece called The Gayne Ballet. Then that not so original piece turned up again almost unchanged on Patriot Games, which of course turned up again in Clear and Present Danger. Then there was the low piano forte riff that started with Sneakers. Some people think this sounded quite similar to something John Williams used quite effectively in JFK. He did, but Mr. Horner go much more mileage out of it, using it again in The Pelican Brief, Apollo 13, and Ransom. Mr. Horner seems to come through best on emotional stories, like Glory and Field of Dreams. After seeing the trailer for Titanic, perhaps we should give him just one more chance, like we have done many times before.

RANDY EDELMAN first grabbed my attention with Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story and kept that attention with Citizen X, and While You Were Sleeping. Then, 1996 started and he wrote two of the worst scores of the year, both for the same director. He started off the summer with the utterly forgettable Dragonheart and capped off the year with the wimpy Daylight. But then again, neither Rob Cohen film was a masterpiece. The makers of Anaconda had the right idea when they had him turn up the percussion and the volume.

MICHAEL KAMEN: The composer of Die Hard and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen has been kidnapped and replaced with a more derivative version. Whether it was the clunky 101 Dalmatians or the overrated Mr. Holland's Opus the '90s have not been kind to Mr. Kamen (or is it vice versa?). How come there is no album out for the first Die Hard but we can get the almost undetectable Die Hard with a Vengeance? Mr. Kamen is still the master of the hit single, but I think his best work is done on straight scores. Maybe he should bite the bullet and put up with Terry Gilliam one more time and take a little vacation from Bryan Adams songs.

HANS ZIMMER: The quirky, savvy scores that Hans Zimmer made a name for himself with are almost non- existent. The music for Rain Man signaled a new voice in movie music. It lasted for a few years with Driving Miss Daisy and Regarding Henry following suit. Then the heavy handed stuff started to creep in. Backdraft had style, but not so much that we needed to hear it again, recycled as Crimson Tide, The Rock and the action parts of The Lion King. In addition, Renaissance Man, Point of No Return and The Preacher's Wife seemed to register. I would love to see some more of the inventiveness that put him on the map, and made a brief appearance in Beyond Rangoon.

JAMES NEWTON HOWARD really blew me away with his score to The Fugitive. With it he proved not only can he do the big action films, but also the more intimate dramas like Prince of Tides and the tragically underrated (movie and score) The Man in the Moon. Ever since 1993, it seems Hollywood has been making do Fugitive-like scores for everything with a stuntman in it. Wyatt Earp in 1994 was really his last good score. Since then? Junior, French Kiss, Space Jam, The Juror, Just Cause...Then again, maybe he just needs a decent movie to score.

Best of luck to all these talented composers and see you after the sabbatical...

Next time from Mark Loughlin, the sequel: Five Composers Who Are Doing Just Fine.

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Addendum by Lukas:

I know some people are going to fly off the handle with this article—how dare we suggest when someone work and not work, yada yada yada. I have had a certain amount of exasperation with all of the above composers, and yet when I talk to them, or similar composers, I get a sense that they are just as fed up.

Composers get typecast into genres, and get stuck working on films they don't like. Consider how hard it is to turn down a job: Besides the potential of making a quarter million dollars or much more for a month's rapid if grueling work (I sure could use that!), you have to keep up relationships. When the Don is refused one favor, he seldom returns to ask another!

Furthermore, many of the above composers do lay low from time to time, specifically Michael Kamen, who has refused assignments in the action genre he finds so thankless. Hans Zimmer, for better or worse, has turned jobs away from himself and into the hands of his Media Ventures co-workers.

Because of schedules, composers can seem to be nonexistent for a year, and then have four movies open all at once—this comes from some of them getting pushed back. Consider Mark Mancina, who had Con Air and Speed 2 open in back-to-back weeks. Outside of The Devil's Own we haven't heard from James Horner this year— but that's because he's been tied up on Titanic.

Any thoughts? Send them in for my Friday/weekend round-up.

Lukas@filmscoremonthly.com