Summer Summary Part III: The Final Conflict

By Doug Adams

I feel remiss in my duties; Andy Dursin is already looking ahead to December films, and I'm still mulling over this past summer's crop. Such is life--I promise we'll be finishing up with summer 1998 this week.

En Garde!

One score we've hardly touched upon in this series of articles is James Horner's Zorro. It's funny, after the cultural explosion of the Titanic score, both the pro-Horners and the anti-Horners were ready to cry havoc with a barrage of "So there!"s. Thanks to Deep Impact and Zorro, both sides got a chance. Every "See, all Horner does is emulate empty-headed Romanticism" that Deep Impact generated was met with a "See, this guy can be original and exciting" spawned from Zorro. I don't know if either camp ever tempered the other, but it gave us a lot to talk about.

I think it's fair to say that Zorro represented Horner's most creative score in recent years. He may have leaned on the exoticism-via-Hispanic-music a bit much, but it leant the score an original central focus to go along with Horner's usual adept pacing and structuring. In other words, it was a Horner score that revolved around something real-something that Horner musically and dramatically brought himself. Horner's use of the Flamenco dancer's footsteps and clapping was one of the two most clever audio/visual pairings I saw this summer. (The other was the snare drum ruffs that accompanied each gravestone passing the lens in the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan. That lent an amazing sense of organic rhythm to a somewhat superfluous scene.) Now, if I were being really picky, I would feel the need to mention that Flamenco dancing is of Spanish descent, not Mexican.

However, I do have to mention this: Horner didn't compose the theme to this film. I'm ducking for cover already, but the theme to Zorro is a literal, note-for-note quotation of a famous Spanish melody. Unfortunately, I've blown a mental gasket and am unable to remember where this melody originally comes from. I've heard Placido Domingo perform an excerpt from a Spanish opera which uses this melody, but I don't know if it was originally from the opera, or if it was a folk song. I've heard another choral work use this melody, but it was an unpublished work, so I was never able to find out if the composer was surreptitiously borrowing the melody or if it was a purposeful set of variations. Either way, the recording I have dates from 1992, so it's not a Horner melody.

Does this matter to the score? Who knows. It's getting to be a tired argument. I'd recommend that everyone try to track down an interview that James Horner did this past spring in the French Horner-worship magazine, "Dreams to Dream...s". In this article Horner somewhat acknowledges that he quotes other pieces of music in his score, but claims that he leaves the sanctity of the original score intact since he's considerate enough to quote entire passages rather than just a few notes here and there. (He also says that Jerry Goldsmith borrows notes disrespectfully, and that only European audiences could ever understand his (Horner's) intents. If my American reaction to this creepy interview is any indication, he's right!) I the long run, I plan to ignore Horner's use of this melody-honorable or dishonorable. I also plan to ignore the quotation of the ostinato from Holst's Mars. Finally, I plan to enjoy the score as a well-written and fun work with some incredibly creative touches, but I don't plan on considering it Horner's most original. I still think that title probably falls to Brainstorm, or scores of that ilk.

"X"-amination

Speaking of originality, there wasn't much else this summer which sounded like Mark Snow's score for The X-Flies movie. (Again, I'm going to ignore the "That sounded like Aliens" skirmish.) I must admit, I was never a fan of Snow's early "X-Files" scores, but as the show has progressed, he's done a wonderful job of putting some creative and intellectual muscle behind all of his extroverted creepiness. As Snow is the first to admit, however, it's the "freak of the week" shows that call for more creative scoring. The mythology shows generally demand a more somber palette of soul-searching frustration and morbidity.

Still, I thought that the X feature did a good job of meshing the punchier side of the series with the far-reaching conspiratorial tone. If you watched--and more importantly, listened--very closely, it wasn't very hard to see how they did it. The film began with classic "X-Files" scoring-the pizzicatos, the pitch-bends, the drones and shrieks. That style played for the opening caveman scenes, which preceded the cut to modern day. Our FBI heroes are seen searching for a bomb, and once they spot it, the music returns. As this scene proceeds, we continually cut between the action outside the building and inside. The music takes on two voices: there is low-key, classic "X-Files" scoring for the situation inside the building (I think the music even dropped out occasionally), and big, movie-sounding scoring for the situation outside. So, not only was Snow blending his moody TV sound with a more booming film sound, but he was setting the stage early. It was obvious that this film needed to involve tons of exposition and dialogue, so Snow wasn't going to be able to thunderously back each verbal revelation. But by hitting these first scenes so strongly-so characteristically--and by connecting what would develop into the two major musical voices of the film, Snow left himself room to back off for a while. There was a major concern among the filmmakers that people were going to feel cheated-like they were just watching a TV show in a theater. To aid, Snow got in immediately with a cinematic sound, then dropped out. He didn't need to pummel the audience during the FBI inquisition scenes... so he didn't. He set up his sound and his scope, then waited to re-emerge when necessary.

This doesn't do much to address the artistry of the score, but I think it's pretty interesting to see how Snow was depended upon to properly adjust the scale of the film. By and large, I think he succeeded.

So that was our summer. Yes, there were other "big" scores like Godzilla, Lethal Weapon 4, and so on, but I don't think there was much else worth remarking on. I suppose I should mention that Out of Sight did a great job with a mostly song-based soundtrack and that it was fun to hear the original "Avengers" theme used in the feature--the only camp gag that even remotely worked in the film. It was an odd summer, not all bad or all good, but emphatically middle-of-the-road. Still, I'm looking forward to next year. Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment.

See you next time when we'll actually look at some currently playing films and scores.

Doug@filmscoremonthly.com