Film Score Friday 7/7/00

by Lukas Kendall

"An Evening with Marc Shaiman" is kicking off Outfest 2000 here in Los Angeles this Sunday, July 9th, at 7PM. Shaiman will share his insights and stories about film scoring -- along with probably some musical performances and special guests. The event is promised to be "an entertaining (and very gay) look into the art of film music." It's at the Village at Ed Gould Plaza, 1125 N McCadden Place, call 323-960-0618.

Film Score Monthly extends its warm welcome and thanks to our many gay and lesbian readers. You are good customers and passionate fans. Even Marc.

News

The Japanese branch of Warner Bros. Records, WEA, is releasing the first-ever CD of Twilight Zone: The Movie (Jerry Goldsmith, WPCR-10768) on August 23rd. Also coming on that date are a reissue of Under Fire (Goldsmith, WPCR-10771), Sunset 77 (Warren Parker) and James Dean Films (Rosenman/Tiomkin). It is doubtful there will be any previously unreleased music. It will be fantastic to have a CD of Twilight Zone: The Movie.

Taylor White's Percepto Records -- which teamed with FSM on the Mad Monster Party CD -- is releasing a limited edition disc of two classic Ronald Steiner scores, The Haunted Palace and The Premature Burial (AIP/Poe films directed by Roger Corman). These are from the original soundtrack recordings. The CD will be available exclusively from www.percepto.com (under construction) and specialty outlets.

The next club CD from Promethus Records is John Barry's Hammett, never before available.

There will be a promotional CD forthcoming of Richard Marvin's score to U-571 -- get it from the specialty outlets only, like www.screenarchives.com and www.intrada.com.

Michael Whalen has a new documentary score CD coming up, Lost Liners -- to be available exclusively online. See www.michaelwhalen.com.

Concerts

The world concert premiere of Hans Zimmer's Gladiator will be under the baton of John Mauceri at the Hollywood Bowl, July 14 and 15.

Bruce Broughton is conducting the Metropolitan Winds in two film music concerts this Sunday, July 9th, at 2PM and 7:30PM at Meyerson Symphony Center, Dallas, Texas. The concert will be hosted by Joe Bob Briggs. Bruce's wife Belinda will make a cameo performance as well, playing violin on Young Frankenstein -- and there's even supposed to be a guest theremin player. Call Ticketmaster at 214-631-2787. Here's the program:

FIRST HALF

1. Airport (Alfred Newman) Main Title
2. The Sea Hawk Suite (Erich Korngold)
3. Bride of Frankenstein (Franz Waxman) "Creation of the Female Monster"
4. Young Frankenstein (John Morris) Main Title
5. North by Northwest (Bernard Herrmann) Main Title
6. High Anxiety (John Morris) Main Title
7. The Wind & the Lion Suite (Jerry Goldsmith)
8. The Pink Panther Theme (Henry Mancini)
9. The Phantom Menace (John Williams) "Duel of the Fates"
10. Captain from Castille (Alfred Newman) "Conquest"

SECOND HALF

(All selections by Bruce Broughton)

1. JAG Theme
2. Miracle on 34th Street Selections
3. Baby's Day Out Main Title
4. O, Pioneers! Suite
5. Homeward Bound End Credits
6. Young Sherlock Holmes Suite
7. Lost In Space (Main Title)
8. Harry and the Hendersons Main Title
9. Silverado Suite

Finally, it's not exactly a soundtrack event, but the local film center in San Rafael, CA is having an evening with Ray Harryhausen on July 23rd, two Sundays from Sunday. Jason and the Argonauts and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad will be the feature presentations. Thanks to Steve Stromberg for the info.

Tora! Tora! Tora!

Our new CD of this classic Jerry Goldsmith OST is now available!

From: christian lauliac <christian.l@ideale-audience.fr>

I must congratulate you folks at FSM for once again providing us with another superb Jerry Goldsmith score. I think Jerry's WWII scores rank among his best efforts. But until today I used to think Tora! Tora!Tora was only a 15 minutes score. Little did I know! I have been a fan of Goldsmith's exotic scores and with this year's release of "The Challenge" and now "Tora! Tora! Tora!, I am simply overjoyed. By the way, I think you should send a copy to Michael Bay, director of the upcoming "Pearl Harbor". Maybe Jerry will score the movie next year instead of some lame Media Ventures clone. But seriously, let's get back to Jerry. Once more, bravo, and I am looking forward to receiving my CD and savor every note of it. I hope this release is not the last in your Goldsmith projects. Sayonara!

Of course not! More Goldsmith to come...

From: Sean Nethery <SNethery@cpr.org>

Having just ordered my copy of "Tora," I wanted to send you my official appreciation for your release recently of "Beneath the Planet of the Apes." And more, to try to help convince any fence sitters to BUY THESE FILM SCORE MONTHLY CDs if you have any interest in (or even just curiosity about) the material.

When you announced Beneath some weeks ago, I was pleased, but also hesitant. I have most everything of Rosenman's that's been in print over the past ten years or so. His music is usually quite challenging - and also more similar in effect from work to work than many artists - and I find I don't listen to his work as often as more accessible works (though I should stress that I've been sympathetic to avant-garde music for decades). So I wasn't sure I really needed any more, especially since I already have Fantastic Voyage, and have frankly found that a difficult album to get through.

Still, I was always hopeful that Rosenman's Apes scores would be released - they blend his sophisticated compositional style with raucous rhythms in a way I find both exciting and disconcerting - and I love that feeling. But what I expected to see was a single release featuring both scores, since neither Beneath nor Battle for the Planet of the Apes seemed to have that much music.

So when you came out with your Beneath release, I was glad to see it, but also disappointed that instead of combining both scores you essentially coupled two complementary - but mostly duplicative - versions of just one score. So I watched my copy of the movie to listen to the music, went back and forth for a couple of weeks, and finally ordered the "Damn, Dirty" thing.

Boy was I wrong. Your release of Beneath the Planet of the Apes is, in a word, fabulous. The presentation of the score as heard in the film is probably the most enjoyable of Rosenman's more extreme scores - more variety, more moment-by-moment interest than I at least find in Fantastic Voyage. And what a wonderful solution to end the score segment (when the score doesn't really end at all) with Brett's organ slaps - it's not only a perfect punctuation, but it artistically reflects the surprisingly jarring, nihilistic end of the movie. (Talk about something you don't see any more.)

And then, after a significant pause, and a few minutes of transitional bleeping and blooping (which is also quite cooly representative of the wonderful experimental trend in film music at the time), we enter into the world of 1970s concept soundtrack albums, and it's like a whole new work! I'm a fan of Miles Davis' Bitches Brew (which came out around the same time as this), but I'm telling you what, it sounds like Burt Bacharach compared to these "Lenny and the Fuzz Creepers" rock and roll arrangements of this frankly experimental music. It reminds me that I saw the original album once in a used record store selling for a premium at a time when I wouldn't pay collector's fees. Jeez, how could I have missed this for so many years!

But that's not all. I open the CD case, and on the back cover of the booklet is this wowzer poster art (for the original album) that looks suspiciously like the same hand as did the Star Trek TMP poster. Just the head of General Ursus and Lady Mutant back-to-back in the center of the image, split in half by the Alpha Omega missile - and a huge orange flash of what I still think of as 1970s ABC Movie of the Week colors (by way of 2001, by the way). I love this so much I had to turn the booklet around so the front of the box always shows me this crazy image.

So, when I saw the order form for Tora Tora Tora this morning, I didn't deliberate (yeah, I have the re-recording, I just bought The Challenge - how much bad-tempered Asian Goldsmith music do I need?). I just ordered it. Cause I know I'll love it. And I know you'll have put it together very well indeed. Just like you did with Rio Conchos. And - no, I'm not going to list any more. Just like you've done with everything I've bought.

Thanks!

Spellbound

From: spsaudiomixers@webtv.net (Steven Schwartz)

Just wondering if anyone else was as surprised and delighted as I was with the recent "restored" presentation of SPELLBOUND on AMC's continuing Hitchcock "festival". What surprised me was the inclusion of a music-only "overture" (over 5 minutes long), and also a similar, but different music-only "Exit" music piece before and right after the film itself, with just a still-frame showing (along with a cg time "count-down" readout in the corner)!

The two music pieces were of the same vintage sound as the rest of Rozsa's great score, so they were undoubtedly recorded and produced at the same time as the film's score. But I had never heard those two versions of the main themes in those particular arrangements on the many, many albums and concert renditions I've heard, seen printed music for, and even performed. My question is, does anyone know if the movie was presented in theaters (in it's first runs in 1945) with those two musical interludes (before and after the feature) like the "overtures" and "intermission" music segments in some of the recent big "road-show" features, (of the past 40 years, or so) or not? If so, I guess the composer's BEN HUR and EL CID-vintage overtures weren't his first such pieces to be heard in a darkened theater by audiences before the actual movie began, not to mention as "exit music" after the final credit had rolled. A refinement I certainly wish would return to more larger scale pictures in the present.

That's cool -- I didn't know that. Can anyone write in to help?

A note about the Bernard Herrmann roundtable we mentioned as being at AMC's website, www.amctv.com -- we forgot to mention the writer/editor of the roundtable, Julie Kirgo, a regular on FILMUS-L, the film music mailing list.

Intermissions

From: Robert DiMucci <rdimucci@erols.com>

I have to agree with Michael R. Goolsby's comments in the June 26 Film Score Daily that today's longer films need intermissions. I thus disagree with Lukas' response that "audiences would [not] tolerate an intermission anymore; nor would theater owners wanting movies to be shorter, so they can cram in more screenings per day." Last weekend, I attended the 3-hour movie "Sunshine", and I'm sure most people in the audience would have welcomed an intermission. As Mr. Goolsby noted, everyone benefits. Many in the audience can get a needed bathroom break. (Who dares buy one of those quart-size sodas, knowing the ordeal to come?) The theater owners would have a second opportunity to sell refreshments to everyone (which is where most of their profit is made). And no showings would be lost. A theater typically cannot schedule more than 4 or 5 showings of a 3-hour film in a day. Adding a 15-minute intermission to each would add only 60-75 minutes per day. Eliminating the intermission cannot yield enough time to squeeze in an extra show. As for audiences "not tolerating" an intermission, I can't believe that they will tolerate bad projection, lousy sound, and high prices, but be driven screaming from the theater by an intermission. I don't see a downside.

My only disagreement with Mr. Goolsby (sadly), is that even with an intermission, we film music fans are unlikely to get the musical playouts and entr'actes that we desire. Few theater owners could stand to lose a minute of time during the intermission in showing their slide show advertisements and playing their paid-for popular music radio feeds. Thus, the intermission, which can be used to add considerably to the mood and grandeur of a film, would end up being the ultimate mood destroyer.

On a brighter note, despite the loss of overtures and intermissions, we modern audiences do have one musical advantage over earlier movie generations. In the '50s and '60s, exit music was limited to a few road-show productions. But today's endless credit scrolls guarantee that EVERY film has considerable exit music. Even if you first have to sit through some "inspired by" rock song, most credits run long enough to allow the composer to provide a significant reprise of the film's underscore. If you ever want an indication of how few film music devotees there are in the world, look around and see who's remaining in the theater to listen to the last notes of the score at the end of the credits. You'll invariably be alone with the clean-up crew.

Well, OK, but I doubt we'll see any intermissions -- not a single one -- in any upcoming movie in the foreseeable future. I just think moviemakers don't want to give audiences any chance to leave the theater.

Links

See Cinema Concerto (http://members.aol.com/marcgothic) for a review of our Beneath the Planet of the Apes CD.

Randy Salas wrote a great piece on our FSM CD series for the Minneapolis Star Tribune; here's the link for the story: http://www.startribune.com/cgi-bin/stOnLine/article?thisSlug=fsm25

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