Mail Bag Monday

by Lukas Kendall

I'm away from the office so here are the emails received over the weekend for public broadcast. Most of the letters refer to last Friday's news/mail column.

What Lies Beneath

re: FSM's new Beneath the Planet of the Apes CD

From: Kevin F Dick <baleywik@tgn.net>

Outrageous!! Your best release yet! Thanks for finally releasing something I requested! I bought this LP during my college years and dubbed it to cassette so I wouldn't have to play the crunchy vinyl so much. To hear the original score alongside the LP set is truly a revelation. I didn't realize I was missing so much music. The stereo is glorious by the way. Cranked it up and shook the house, the wife, the dog, whatever. I tried the mind control effects on my wife but they didn't work. Oh well...Keep up the good work!

Gladiator

From: "Flodehyld Hip-Hjem" <flodehyld@hotmail.com>

Since it looks like a neverending discussion, I can't help adding my thoughts on Hans Zimmer's Gladiator. As a long time fimmusic enthusiast and collector I was really looking forward to this one, of course, and after my first listening I was so disappointed on Zimmers own ripp-offs. And where were the Roman fanfares? The grand themes? And Zimmer himself explains that he has newer used so many synthesizers before, and that for a movie which takes place 2000 years ago. I'm getting so tired. After looking forward to the movie almost as much as the score, I wondered if the score would spoil the movie totally.

Well, then I watched the film. It was great. And the music was great! Perfectly capturing the mood and the drama of the story and images. If Zimmer wouldn't have written at least ten scores like this before it would have been a sensation. Now I see that the score is great, and it grows after a few listenings. Lisa gerrards music also blends in perfectly with the film and with Zimmers score. No one could have ever guessed that you could score a film about the Roman empire like this, but you can. I'ts a pitty that this isn't Zimmers first score that sound like this. And I can't stop wonder how a score by Trevor Jones would have sounded.

Question

From: "eve koehler" <e_koehler@email.msn.com>

Anyone know where to find translation to Jennings' Swahili lullaby "Windsong" lyrics to Horner's music for Mighty Joe Young?

Desperately Seeking: Susan K, Milwaukee WI

I told Susan I didn't know but that I'd ask the readers. Do any of you know?

The Total Alfred Newman

From: John Winfrey, Ranger7774@aol.com

This is in response to Mr. Snedden's fine article awhile back on FSD on Academy Awards and Nominations on film music:

After consulting with Mr. Snedden and doing further research on several different lists and from several books I now concur with him that Alfred Newman did work or was connected in some way, with over 425 films. Darby and DuBois' book was very insightful and added many new titles to previous lists from other sources such as Keeping the Score, STAR's listings Ken Darby's interview and list and others on net and other sources over the last 20 years. Based on all research and discussions I correct the statement that he worked on 250. It was much closer to that stated by Mr. Snedden. This includes all films he was associated with as adaptor, arranger, conductor, MD, composer, co-composer, subordinate composer and supervisor(to those he assigned out) and some films that were tracked with his music also.

One of the problems with this research is that on many of the films, good records are not kept and there are few people who know specifically who worked on what still alive, especially from the 1930's and 1940's. Newman had many uncredited works and we are discovering more all the time that he worked on such as those uncovered by Mr. Morgan and Stromberg and the BYU archives for Roots of Heaven and Broken Arrow respectively, that Newman did at least one or more cues for.

This is all very interesting and I wanted to correct the former number. It should be noted however that in many of the films where he was MD in both musicals and other films he adapted source/traditional songs or numbers/songs in the musicals and there is little or no original music in many of those. The number of 425+ also includes a large number he assigned to others to do where he supervised the projects but did no music himself for.

Disney Comments

From: Randall Derchan <DSPY007@aol.com>

One of the articles stated that Alen Menken made us forget how wonderful the old Disney scores were. What a load of rubbish. Why is that Alan Menken's fault. Was he on a crusade to make everyone of us forget about the history of animated music? It's unfair to the composer that such comments are made. Is Goldsmith responsible too with his wonderful Mulan score? Or Mancina and Zimmer? Menken wrote some lovely music for the Disney films and seriously help ressurect the animated film which was Disney's life blood. You should listen to the scores for the early seventies films Pete's Dragon, Sword and the Sorcerer, Fox and the Hound.Those have really bland scores.

Email: MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com