Rush Hour / Lalo Schifrin Report

by Lukas Kendall

I was going to run something boring today then thought, naw, I owe it to you guys to write something new. Yesterday I attended the first recording session for Rush Hour, the new film starring Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker, for which director Brett Ratner (Money Talks) has again enlisted the great Lalo Schifrin.

Schifrin is a real jack-of-all-trades who has done a lot more than urban chase music - he's a classical composer, jazz arranger and pianist, conductor, etc. - but we'll show our lack of culture by focusing once again on his cool seventies shtick. Regarding which, he's done it again! Unlike Money Talks, Rush Hour's title credits are devoted to Schifrin's score for a cool montage in which Jackie Chan infiltrates a Hong Kong crime stronghold. The theme is memorable and kind of a new version of the famous Enter the Dragon title theme - Enter the Dragon being director Ratner's all time favorite film score. Hopefully this will be on the soundtrack album this time - no word about a possible score album. (None of Money Talks was released.)

I didn't see a lot of the film - I wasn't there the whole day - but the trailer got a huge reaction from the audience when I saw it with Saving Private Ryan (off all things) in Westwood, and Rush Hour looks to have the same kind of wiseacre yuks and dark action setpieces of Money Talks. Schifrin's music is a perfect match for Ratner's directorial sensibility, placing it in a kind of retro world where Tucker's wisecracks are juxtaposed against physical jeopardy and movie-style violence.

One cool thing recorded was the opening of the Enter the Dragon "main title," used for the scene (prominent in the trailer) where Jackie Chan arrives on a plan in the U.S. The filmmakers temped this scene with Enter the Dragon as a cool introduction for the character and it works well; they wanted to do their own recording to tailor it to the specific timings. (They may end up rescoring it with the new theme Schifrin has written for Chan's character.) It was big-time COOL to hear that music played live by a big orchestra, with some of the soloists from the original 1973 Enter the Dragon sessions there to boot - like the gentleman who plays the theme, whose name I cannot remember (argh!). I always thought it was on some kind of primitive keyboard, but the melody is actually on a type of electric hawaiian guitar. As Mel Allen used to say, how about that?

Sidetrack: I learned something cool during this cue, which is how important musicians are to a film score. Now this probably seems like an obvious statement, but when we listen to a film score, we of course attribute it to Goldsmith or Williams or Schifrin or whomever, but the contributions of the musicians cannot be overstated. I think in particular the styling of playing is instrumental (forgive the awful pun) in the way things sound from the '50s compared to the '70s compared to today. For example, when Schifrin was re-recording the Enter the Dragon snippet, they (meaning the entire recording team) had to spend a bit of time getting the players acquainted with what they had to do... they brought one of the percussionists into the booth to hear the original, to say "play it that way." Lalo basically said that he wrote the part the same way in 1973 as he did just this past week, but for whatever reason the percussionist at the time interpreted it a certain way, he liked it, and that's how it became Enter the Dragon. Today things are interpreted just a bit differently, because of the entire state of contemporary music and film music and how it's performed, taught and understood. The genius of Lalo Schifrin's original pop/urban scores from the 1970s, his innovative masterpieces like Dirty Harry, is in how Schifrin captured that playing style and made it a part of what he was doing... It's terrific fun watching him re-enact this on a contemporary action comedy.

In any case, this is a huge reason why re-recordings are often disliked by fans. It isn't just the notes: it's the stage, the players, the entire style of playing and recording music that makes a film score. This is magnified a hundredfold for scores of a jazz or pop nature.

Have a great day! I'll be back at the Rush Hour sessions today and thank the folks there for their hospitality, from Brett Ratner and the filmmakers, to New Line's Paul Broucek, to the Schifrin family... and of course the awesome players. (You know what? I like my job.) Please send any questions or comments you have:

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