Summer Summary Part II

By Doug Adams

In Summer Summary Part I, we finished up with a comparison of John Williams' Saving Private Ryan and James Horner's Deep Impact. As a general rule of thumb, whenever you write something about either Williams or Horner, you're destined to receive mounds of e-mail. Thank you to everyone who took the time to write me. Below are a couple of the more interesting letters.

Israel Groveman wrote:

As far as some people mentioning Saving Private Ryan's similarity to Horner, this is a specific reference to Horner's score to Courage Under Fire.

Listen to track ten of Courage Under Fire (all you need is about the first minute or two) and then track two of SPR. Or vice versa.

CUF may have been the very sound that Spielberg wanted - they used it for the trailer.

Who knows - maybe they made some sort of deal with Horner. I think the similarity could be, like you said, because American music is American music. Yet, I saw the film and I couldn't get CUF out of my head. I tried to hum the theme, and my brain wouldn't let me sing one without the other. I think the level of similarity between the aforementioned tracks warrants more than a judgement of simple coincidence.

This just goes to show that Horner is not the only soundtrack composer that we should pick on. (I know, you are not anti-Horner.)

Yes, last time when I said that people had been comparing Williams' work on Ryan to Horner's style, it was indeed Courage Under Fire I was referring to. I still feel that the two are only vaguely similar-more in style than content. As for Spielberg and Williams making some sort a licensing agreement with Horner, that's incredibly unlikely.

Owen T. Cunningham wrote:

I just read your Film Score Daily comparison of Saving Private Ryan and Deep Impact, and thought that the most noteworthy thing about it was that Williams's work sounded so much like Goldsmith. The intertwining-but-never- really-cooperating trumpet lines reminded me very much of the more contemplative moments of Twilight's Last Gleaming.

Obviously, aping Goldsmith is no big deal (what professional scorer hasn't at one point or another?), but the more reflective side of Jerry's work usually gets bypassed in favor of his odd-meter action stuff.

I personally think that this film should not have had any score, only main and end titles.

On a marginally related note---one of the more subtle reasons that SPR is so realistic is because it never uses slomo. How many action movies today rely on slomo to convey, "boy, this sequence is *really* life-threatening!" In SPR, the most unrealistic technique is to remove all sound except for a loud ambient hum (which happens only twice in the film).

Owen's Goldsmith comparison intrigued me, so I've been listening to Twilight's Last Gleaming to see if I can find what he's referring to. I suppose tracks like "A Reflective Interlude" and a few bars in "After You, Mr. President" bear a slight harmonic and textural resemblance to the Ryan score. However, nine times out of ten, if you want to hear where Williams' influences are coming from, turn to the concert world. Saving Private Ryan's closest relatives reside in Aaron Copland works like Emblem and, most obviously, A Lincoln Portrait.

By the way, I've been told that the nervous breakdown scenes from Saving Private Ryan were filmed at half speed, then every frame was printed twice. That's why things move strangely, but not in slow motion.

Mulan and Small Soldiers

Goldsmith's Mulan score got its share of press this summer as well. To many fans, this was the best score of the summer. However, others complained that it represented (literally) the Disney-ization of Goldsmith--a watering-down of his style for family-friendly purposes. Personally, I enjoyed the score quite a bit, my only complaint being that it seemed over-orchestrated at times. Goldsmith's colors were wonderful in the score, especially his exotic woodwind sounds. However, there were times where I just wanted to hear the string section ride a melody out. For example, in "Mulan's Decision" Goldsmith concocted a wonderfully voiced passage for stings. But it's so fleeting--sandwiched between a solo English Horn and a Chinese wind--that it ends up coming off like technically necessary filler. In fact, this happens throughout the score. While I found Goldsmith's colors fascinating, I wish that he had saved them for the more extroverted passages of the score. His harmonic writing is so delicate and fine that the orchestrations seemed to over-dress it at times. Maybe working for Disney means you have to lean on the "sell" button a little harder. Still, I enjoyed the score.

I also enjoyed Goldsmith's Small Soldiers, though not as much as Mulan. What tickled me most about Small Soldiers was Goldsmith's willingness to parody himself-and I'm not just talking about the Patton quotes. Small Soldiers was a parody score in every sense of the word. Every cue was written with a kind of knowing, post-modern sarcasm. It acknowledged its secondhand nature throughout with a "so what?" sneer. The fun was to hear this in the film, because it gave us pause enough to wonder what the film was really saying. Was it simply an exercise in Mattel advertising, or was it a film mocking its own toy-driven existence? The entire film was a brutal indictment of marketing, but in reality it offered us the same thing. Small Soldiers merchandise was on store shelves as the film hit the screen. Maybe I'm giving the film too much credit by assuming it was aware of or even exploiting its own paradox. After all, it was a pretty mediocre film regardless of its self-awareness or lack thereof. I do think Goldsmith was in on the gag, though. Every bit of his score is culled from bits of pop culture-including stereotypical Goldsmith action scoring. His own voice was a cog in this sarcastic wheel. And not only did this score parody through quotes, it also parodied quote-ridden scores. It was purposeful, bravura corniness. That said, the writing never approached the dexterity of Mulan. But I'm always glad to hear clever ideas.

Well, once again I've only covered a small bit of what I wanted to. Next time we'll try to finish up our look at the summer scores, including Zorro, The X-Files, and more e-mail.

Send me your summer picks. Doug@filmscoremonthly.com