Pop Collaborators
Letter & Reply by Lukas Kendall
Here's a new topic:
From: Zob10701@aol.com
I recently had the pleasure of meeting through a mutual friend the
producer of Billy Bob Thorton's upcoming film "All the Pretty Horses"
and during the course of our conversation me being the film music geek
that I am I asked who would be doing the film's score. He said "Well
you know, that's interesting because originally Daniel Lanois (who also
wrote the score for Thorton's "Sling Blade" and whose backround
in music is predominantly as a producer, most notably for Sting and Bono)
wrote a score that , while being really hip and cool, doesn't really work
for the film". Apparently, "All the Pretty Horses" has some
really breathtaking cinematography in addition to what he described as
a "powerful" scene of a cattle drive along the Rio Grande. He
told me that they had replaced Lanois score at that point (which he described
as being predominantly electric guitar) with a piece of Thomas Newman's
score from "The Shawshank Redemption" which convinced the filmmakers
that what the film really needed was a huge orchestral sound. So I said,
"Cool, why don't you get Williams or Goldsmith, or if you can't afford
'em, Don Davis or Bruce Broughton?" to which he replied, "Well,
I'm interviewing Danny Elfman next week and John Williams shortly after."
But what's interesting is, not as candidates to do a replacement score,
but as someone to help Lanois get the orchestral sound that's needed for
the film. Herein lies my point since I just read today on Cinescape.com
that composer Richard Gibbs would be doing this exact same thing with Jonathan
Davis of Korn on "The Queen of the Damned".
Where is this trend coming from? A similar occurence happened on
"Stigmata" with Billy Corgan and Elia Cmiral. While the producer
explained to me that they were keeping Lanois on "Horses" out
of their desire to keep his musical sensibilities in the new score as well
as Thorton's loyalty to him, I can't help but wonder that in the other
cases, Hollywood suits are hiring these well-known pop stars to write music
for films, discovering that they don't know how to subvert their identities
in order to write a score that works, and then bringing in a sort of mentor
to help shape a score that serves the film. Perhaps they think that they
can open a new market in score album soundtracks if consumers see a name
that they know on the cover. Did this work with "Stigmata"?
What's your take on this? I've never seen this kind of thing discussed
on any film music website, and although film music fans are no stranger
to replacement scores or more than one composer on a film ("The Last
of the Mohicans" comes to mind, but at least Trevor Jones and Randy
Edelman were allowed to do their own thing) I don't remember us seeing
anything quite like this before.
Actually this has gone on for a long time. Bernard Herrmann refused
to score Lolita because he did not want to have to incorporate a
pop tune by another composer. In the Golden Age of cinema, legendary figures
like Alfred Newman would do wonderful adaptations of musicals with songs
by the original creators. As late as the mid-'60s, John Williams (then
Johnny) did the adaptation and underscore for Valley of the Dolls,
with songs by Andre Previn. Come think of it, Williams did a very famous
one in the early '70s: Fiddler on the Roof.
As far as the modern equivalent -- big pop star paired with Hollywood
arranger -- I think it rarely works. Today's big-name musicians are not
Broadway composers but pop artists who have to be uniquely cast to work
in a movie. Prince can provide songs for a weird art movie he stars in
-- but not Batman. (Remember that? Of course Danny Elfman was a
rock star before he was a film composer, but he was interested and willing
to reinvent himself for the new requirements.) I have not heard any of
the recent pop/film composer collaborations because they do not interest
me. You get on the one hand discombobulated versions of the rock star's
shtick, and the other watered-down orchestrations by a film composer trying
to make dramatic sense of it all. Plus, as a practical matter, I've heard
horror stories of how non-film composers are not used to the schedule and
find it hard to adapt to the discipline that film requires.
So, to answer the question, I think any filmmaker who wants to use a
rock artist for his music should immediately realize the following: probably
9 out of 10 movies need something that said musicians cannot provide. Get
it right the first time; if you need a film score, hire someone with the
sensibility to write a film score.
Readers, send your ill-informed opinions that will get me in trouble
with important people reading this column. Thanks.
MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com
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