Film Score Friday 11/13/98

by Lukas Kendall

Jerry Goldsmith is scoring DreamWorks' The Haunting of Hill House (a remake of The Haunting), directed by Jan De Bont. Dave Grusin is scoring Random Hearts, directed by Sydney Pollack - not John Williams, as erroneously reported by the otherwise wonderful Internet Movie Database.

Goldsmith will be conducting a concert next summer at the Hollywood Bowl, in lieu of his planned "Filmharmonic" production of writing music to a new short film directed by Paul Verhoeven, which has yet to get off the ground. Goldsmith premiered the theme for Star Trek Insurrection in concert last Saturday (11/7/98) in Seville, Spain. He also conducted a concert of music by Bernard Herrmann. The concert of his own music had the following program (thanks to Sergio Hardasmal and Leo & Andres--don't have their last names, sorry--for the info):

Fanfare for Oscar, 1998

Star Trek: Insurrection, 1998 (Suite)

Mulan, 1998 (Suite)

"Tiny Creatures" (Small Soldiers, 1998 - Gremlins, 1987)

Planet of the Apes, 1968 (The Search Continues - The Clothes Snatchers - The Hunt)

The Edge, 1997 (Main Title - Finale)

First Knight, 1995 (Fanfare - Main title - Camelot - Arthur Farewell)

The Agony and the Ecstasy, 1965) (Roma - Florencia - El Crucifijo - Los Gigantes de Piedra - La Agonía de la Creación) [I'm assuming this is the Alex North score, not the Goldsmith prologue?]

The Ghost and the Darkness, 1996 (Suite)

"The Generals" (MacArthur, 1977- Patton,1970)

plus encores: Air Force One and The Ghost and the Darkness (again)

By the way, I'm told Goldsmith was on Entertainment Tonight earlier this week, shown conducting some of Star Trek: Insurrection. The soundtrack album to this newest Trek score will be out from GNP/Crescendo in mid-December.

Score Albums

At the moment, nobody knows if there will be a full score album of the Danny Elfman-recorded version of Bernard Herrmann's Psycho. The song album, due Dec. 1, includes only three Herrmann cuts: "Prelude," "The Murder" and "Finale."

No info on whether there will be a score album to I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (John Frizzell). I would like to reiterate my opinion of the first I Know What You Did Last Summer movie, which I found to be the most astonishly dull and awful movie of last year, and I think anybody who likes it must be arrested... of development, that is. The next one should be called, I Constantly Know What You Did Last Summer.

The Trouble with Trouble

From: Preston Jones

Just got back from New England, a vacation for which I had prepared myself, in part, by playing "The Trouble With Harry" as often as I could. I was surprised that Jeff's review today makes no mention of the glitch which is necessitating Varese's re-doing the disc.

Oops. We completely forgot. To make this news pretty near useless, I can't remember what the glitch is on the first pressing of this disc, but supposedly the second pressing fixes it. One of my buddies at a mail order dealer says collectors are buying the second pressing to get the correct master, but also keeping the first, because they think it will be a collector's item. Wow, what a way to sell records...

Film Scoring School

From: "Jim Perry" <superherojim@hotmail.com>

This letter is in response to Brian Ralston's E-mail about the University of Arizona Film Scoring class.

In the Spring semester of 1998, I had the privilege of attending MUS 494 at the University of Arizona. I regret that due to my own lack of communication and laziness, I did not complete a project. There were technical difficulties with the newer equipment/software, but nevertheless I accept the responsibility.

Jeff Haskell is an absolute genius, and I'm sure everyone who reads this says, "sure, some wierdo who lived in Arizona thinks so... so what?" I would definitely reccomend the class to anyone considering attending U of A. The technical support is excellent thanks to Wiley Ross who runs the U of A recording studio, and Lee Furr, also a very active individual in technical assistance in nearly every aspect of the recording/visual arts at U of A.

Consider this a second to Brian's reccomendation.

See column 1 and column 2 on this topic, which recently ran on the site.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture

An article on the new, yet-again-postponed release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture appeared on Aint It Cool News the same day that we ran one: see http://www.aint-it-cool-news.com/display.cgi?id=2473. Some letters we got:

From: Tbsis1@aol.com

I have the promo too, and I hate that fake interveiw second disc. It's meaningless when compared to the music of the first disc. Sony should of just all the music on two discs and called it a day. And you're right: the music is truly beautiful!

From: Chris Kinsinger <76263.2355@compuserve.com>

Thanks to one of my Message Board friends, I am now listening to the Sony expanded release of Jerry Goldsmith's "Star Trek: The Motion Picture". He found a few of the advance promos at a CD store in Manhattan and nabbed one for himself, and one for me! How does this happen? And why? Do you have any idea how many of these promo copies are floating around out there? I'm just curious about the facts and the motives behind "leaking" a small number of advance copies of this release. This new recording is the one that I dreamed about having back in December of 1979, and all I can say is that it certainly is worth waiting for! The sound quality is even better than the original; never before have Goldsmith's finely-detailed layers of music and sound been so clear and distinctly heard. Now I won't have to keep watching the movie just to hear this incredible music. Although I do wish this expanded release included ALL of the cues that Jeff listed in his review.

This shouldn't be considered a "leak" at all - it's an advance promotional copy, exactly how it is labeled. Oftentimes labels will not get releases back from the pressing plant with the final artwork until late in the game as far as marketing, so they'll issue an advance version (with minimal packaging) to generate interest amongst record stores, radio stations, and yes, magazines and the media. I don't know how many of these were made, but it's usually difficult to press less than 1,000 of anything.

The Origin of Halloween

Okay, who says you don't learn anything here at FSM? Rec'd the following re: recent columns which mentioned the origin of Halloween:

From: "Cunningham, Owen" <Owen.Cunningham@fmr.com>

The origin of Halloween (which is an elision of the archaic All Hallows Evening) is a festival in which neighborhood children dress up in grotesque costumes in order to *frighten away* the evil spirits that seemed to be such a commonplace danger back then. Therefore it is anything *but* a "celebration of evil," a term I I would feel much more comfortable applying to any program broadcast on UPN.

Radio Show

From: Timothy Kurkoski <kurkoskt@OIT.EDU>

Happy November! It's been snowing here in Klamath Falls, Oregon (see " middle of nowhere" or "hicksville" in the dictionary for a definition of the town). I'm a college student at the Oregon Institute of Technology and I host a radio show every Sunday at noon on the campus radio station. It's called 'Music That Goes Bump in the Dark' and it's a three hour long journey into film and television music and other themed goodness. It's hard filling a show for three hours, especially when I only have limited number of CD's to share (college students ain't rich).

I'm writing is to let you know that the radio station, KTEC 89.5fm, is now airing on the web via RealAudio. It's sort of a tentative thing. The server is currently the program director's computer in his dorm room. It has a tendency to crash unexpectedly. We're still working out the details and trying to get a budget for a cheapo computer to install the RealAudio server on permanently. But it does run most of the time and definitely while I'm on. The program director's show is right before mine.

So now you can listen to my show: go to www.oit.edu/~ktec/ to catch our home page and link to the .ra file. You'll need RealPlayer G2 to run it. Next week's show is going to feature the new Close Encounters CD and also Poledouris's Conan score. This week's show featured Saving Private Ryan (hey, I just got it) and Lalo Schifrin (sort of).

Check it out! I would, if "realaudio radio show" wasn't another way of saying "crash your entire system and be miserable" for me.

Up Your Pipes

From: Kate Birkel <hudunit@radiks.net>

I'm probably the 999th person to write in, but the reason Horner used the Uillean pipes in Braveheart is because the great pipes hadn't been invented in Wallace's time. If you look closely, the great pipes have three drones, the Uillean two. That third drone was not added until a couple of centuries or so later, so the pipers of Wallace's time would have been playing something close to the Uillean pipes.

Thanks!

The Many John Williamses Postscript

From: "John ALTMAN" <THE-ALTMANS@classic.msn.com>

I regret that I recently killed off 50s jazz pianist John Williams, who has come out of retirement very recently and begun gigging again with original Stan Getz colleagues bassist Bill Crow and drummer Frank Isola (they were in the UK two or three weeks ago.

Poll City

From: "Mark Bagby" <bagby@calcot.com>

In today's column, you had this bit of info:

From: Chris Kinsinger <76263.2355@compuserve.com>

Howard Liverance & I BOTH voted for the 60's. And, no matter WHAT you say, we were RIGHT!!! The best of Bernard Herrmann, Miklos Rozsa, Alex North and Alfred Newman occurred during that decade. Not to mention the birth of Goldsmith & Williams... OK, OK, so I'm a sore loser. No, he's not a sore loser, but the '60s? Heavens, no! I think he means the '50s, which is what I too voted for...the '50s are such a pivotal decade in film music. After the first couple of pioneers (Steiner and Korngold) pretty much had died out, the rest were just hitting their stride...Newman, Waxman, Herrmann, and the newer guys, like Raksin, North, Rosenman, Moross, Bernstein (both of 'em), Duning, Goldsmith, Mancini, and even a lad named John Williams, were all very active and turning out phenomenal works. Everything since has been--with a few exceptions--pale imitations.

And though much maligned, the movies of the '50s sure offered a lot more in diversity and quality than today's movies. Which is probably why the scoring did so much...

After the '50s, I'd have to say the late '80s and early '90s fall into the next really great period of film music.

I hope people continue this discussion of which decade is best to our message board.

Check out our newest poll (on the home page), which I've just entered to satisfy my curiosity. If you have a suggestion for a poll, let's hear it! We'll run it. And congratulations to John Williams, as his Earthquake was far and away the favorite cheesy score of the five listed in the last poll... my pick was Game of Death.

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