FILM SCORE FRIDAY 8/16/02

A warning: this column was loaded up a few days early as I am on vacation in Alaska, so I apologize in advance if any late-breaking news was missed.

New Line Records has apparently canceled its planned release of George S. Clinton's score to AUSTIN POWERS IN GOLDMEMBER. As a fan of Clinton's Powers scores, I would like to give my reaction to this news but I prefer not to print profanities on the website.

On September 10th, Milan will release Angelo Badalamenti's score to the TV remake of THE LATHE OF HEAVEN. Ursula K. LeGuin's classic science-fiction novel, about a man whose dreams come true, was previously made over twenty years ago for PBS with a catchy score by Michael Small. The new version, directed by Philip Haas (Angels and Insects) will air on A&E this September, and stars Lukas Haas, Lisa Bonet and James Caan in the roles previously played by Bruce Davison, Margaret Avery and Kevin Conway.

On the same day, Milan will also release Joe Hisiashi's score to SPIRITED AWAY, the composer's latest animated collaboration with acclaimed filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki (Princess Mononoke).

Paul McCollough's score to the 1990 remake of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD should be available shortly from Numenorean, and can be ordered at www.buysoundtrax.com. The label is still planning to release an expanded CD of Trevor Jones' score to THE DARK CRYSTAL.

Bedknobs and Broomsticks - Robert Sherman, Richard Sherman - Disney
The Happiest Millionaire - Robert Sherman, Richard Sherman - Disney
101 Dalmatians - Oliver Wallace - Disney

The Adventures of Pluto Nash - John Powell
Blue Crush - Paul Haslinger - Song Album on Virgin
Merci Pour Le Chocolat - Mathieu Chabrol
Possession - Gabriel Yared - Score Album on RCA due on August 20th
24 Hour Party People - no composer credited - Song Album on Rhino

BLOOD WORK - Lennie Niehaus

"There's something relaxing and thrilling about the way this movie just glides along on screen, with its sultry jazz score floating sinuously over the sunny views of San Pedro and Long Beach."

Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune

"As always, he [Eastwood] graces the film with a classic jazz score, adding to its timeless feel."

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post

"Lennie Niehaus' score is unobtrusively supportive when required, attractively jazzy when given some breathing room."

Todd McCarthy, Variety

SPY KIDS 2: THE ISLAND OF LOST DREAMS - John Debney, Robert Rodriguez

"The spark of wish-fulfillment has been snuffed out by Rodriguez's newfound affinity for corny computer-generated special effects, a muddled story line and a score so bombastic the concoction doesn't engage so much as enrage."

Robert Wilonsky, New Times

XXX - Randy Edelman

"Another [oddity] is the grab-bag music selections, ranging from Randy Edelman's cheesy score that quotes without much fun from '70s TV action series themes, to on-screen appearances by German metal band Rammstein, techno unit Orbital, zither player Michal Muller playing the theme from "The Third Man" and opera singers Martin Barta and Martina Bauerova rehearsing Don Giovanni."

Robert Koehler, Variety

Are You In There?
(Main Theme From the Motion Picture "King Kong")
Words by David Pomeranz, Music by John Barry

Are you in there?
Can you hear me?
Are you someone
I should know?

How can I tell
If you want me
If I rang the bell
Would there be
Welcome firelight
To tell me so

Originally published by Ensign Music Corporation

This week we span a century of cinema to link two composers who reached the top of their profession writing forthright orchestral scores often interpolating popular and classical themes - Herbert Stothart and Michael Kamen.

A Guy Named Joe - Frequency
The Human Comedy - Inventing the Abbotts
Mutiny on the Bounty - Crusoe
A Night at the Opera - Nothing But Trouble
The Robin Hood of El Dorado - Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
Son of Lassie - 101 Dalmatians
They Met in Bombay - Shanghai Surprise
They Were Expendable - Band of Brothers
The Three Musketeers - The Three Musketeers
Waterloo Bridge - Shining Through
The Wizard of Oz - The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

For those interested in learning more about how movies are actually made, as opposed to the puffy, this-movie-star-is-not-only-beautiful-and-famous-but-also-super-smart crap one often finds in Premiere, Movieline, and Entertainment Weekly, I would like to recommend three books:

EASY RIDERS, RAGING BULLS: HOW THE SEX-DRUGS-AND-ROCK-'N'-ROLL GENERATION SAVED HOLLYWOOD by Peter Biskind (published by Simon & Schuster) is the definitive look at the great filmmakers of the seventies, the classic films they created, and the personal havoc they wreaked.

GETTING AWAY WITH IT: OR: THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF THE LUCKIEST BASTARD YOU EVER SAW by Steven Soderbergh and Richard Lester, (published by Faber & Faber), alternates Soderbergh's in-depth interview with the talented and wonderfully modest Lester with Soderbergh's journals of trying to get his film Schizopolis released.

CUT TO THE CHASE: FORTY-FIVE YEARS OF EDITING AMERICA'S FAVORITE MOVIES, by Sam O'Steen and Bobbie O'Steen (published by Michael Wiese Productions) is another book-spanning interview, in which the late, great film editor Sam O'Steen tells spectacularly candid stories of the movies he cut, from classics like Rosemary's Baby and Chinatown to less beloved films like the remake of Hurricane -- the section on Hurricane alone is worth the purchase price.

The on-line magazine salon.com recently had a much deserved tribute article by Charles Taylor on the superb title designer Maurice Binder - specifically his work on fourteen of the James Bond movies. Binder's other credits (literally) include Charade, Arabesque, the original Bedazzled, and The Last Emperor.

Though I can't say I agree with all of Taylor's opinions, such as that Spy Who Loved Me featured Binder's greatest Bond titles and was one of the best Bond films as well (this from a critic who proclaimed Mission to Mars a "masterpiece"), the attention given to Binder is long overdue and more than welcome. (Personally, I think For Your Eyes Only was the Bond with the best Binder titles, followed by You Only Live Twice and Live and Let Die. However, Daniel Kleinman's titles for GoldenEye are superb, equalling and possibly surpassing Binder's seminal work while paying due homage.)

In interviews, Hans Zimmer has shown great appreciation for the way the late Stanley Myers mentored him in the early days of his film career, and expressed his desire to return the favor by mentoring other composers.

Mr. Zimmer seems to be as good as his word, for without Zimmer's support, it's hard to imagine a composer with as few credits as Klaus Badelt getting to do such mega-budget assignments as The Time Machine and K19: The Widowmaker.

So whatever one may think of Badelt's music (or Zimmer's), I think Zimmer should be applauded for his sponsoring of younger composers. And I'm not just saying that so young composers will storm the offices of Media Ventures.

From: John S. Walsh Spark654@aol.com
 

Morten Sagan can think Goldsmith has written lots of bland scores, but his Exhibit A--that Goldsmith hasn't won many Oscars--is pretty lame. Does anyone here really measure greatness by the number of Oscars a composer gets? If there's a more tone-deaf group than the Academy, it must be the Helen Keller Society.

He writes:

The man has made so many scores that it is quite natural that all of them can't be top notch. Is there not anyone out there who agrees?

Well, if you make such a broad statement, okay, not ALL of them are top notch. But there is no one and nothing that is ALWAYS top notch.

He then goes on:

John Williams has made fewer scores, and one can safely say that MOST of his scores are classics, exciting and totally unforgettable. He has tried to keep quality above quantity. Thank you John!

This is nothing but fan gushing. I admire Williams, but to me--and it's only to me, I can't speak for anyone else, and neither can you--much of his music is forgettable. (My "proof"? I've forgotten it.)

My point isn't Goldsmith vs. Williams, it's that no matter how these "debates" are phrased, it all comes down to I like this, you like that, and trying to objectively prove to someone that his/her taste is somehow "wrong" because someone else is blessed with more statues by a group of out of touch bores is just silly.

For example, here is a list of some Elmer Bernstein's scores that many would consider memorable: The Man With the Golden Arm, The Ten Commandments, The Magnificent Seven, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Escape, Summer and Smoke, Hawaii, National Lampoon's Animal House, Stripes, Heavy Metal, Ghostbusters, The Age of Innocence.

And what did Bernstein win his ONE Oscar® for? Thoroughly Modern Millie. Remember that score? Me neither.

By the way, now that we're into a new century, I think it's time that Helen Keller be retired as the reference point of blindness or deafness in jokes and sarcastic remarks. Just a thought.

From: "Gunnar Grah" <gunnargrah@yahoo.de>

Dan Hobgood's series of articles and the "one style fits all" approach to film scoring represented therein leaves several things to be desired. First of all, there are a number of film genres where the scoring style advocated by Dan is either not desirable or simply impossible to apply. How about epic pictures like "The Lord of the Rings"? How should one central theme be able to accommodate the multitude of characters, places, story plots and underlying, universal themes, as they are present in a work of these proportions? Are episodically structured films not better off with a diverse score that accentuates the seeming unrelatedness of events, which is often not overcome until the final act? Also, there are films that throw their viewers in at the deep end, revealing only gradually where they are going to take them. Take, for example, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" - the absence of a main title as Dan wants them is instrumental in keeping the audience's emotions in limbo about the depicted events up to the finale. Focusing on Jerry Goldsmith's scores resulted in the appreciation of only one specific approach to scoring and thus rendered Dan's observations on how a film "should be scored" quite dogmatic. His statements didn't leave much room for the diversity that exists in film scoring today and which led to great film music outside Goldsmith's oeuvre.

Subject: Another very long response, I'm afraid!

I'm enjoying Dan's series of articles, if only because they're making me think about why I don't quite agree with him! Whilst I don't precisely disagree with what he's saying, my overall feeling is that he has a tendency to be a bit too reductionist, a bit like Aristotle, who empirically reduced all Greek tragedy to an idea of three unities, and in doing so eliminated from his appreciation of the genre all the variations and exceptions that allow genres to innovate and change. There's something strangely 'dictatorial' about some of the things Dan is putting forward: he seems to be saying "there is only one way to do this, and here it is." So, let me (annoyingly) put forward some examples of exceptions, then, and I realize that one or two of these could be argued to fall outside the remit of what he's talking about but they are nonetheless examples of music in film underscores and so, logically, ought to be subject to his rules too, in particular the idea that "unrelated musical statements or independent score cues should not appear intermittently during the course of an entire work". Firstly, a pop compilation score automatically takes on the form of apparently unrelated score cues: they're often written by different bands, they generally only appear once. Whilst I realize others may beg to differ, there is, to my mind, nothing incoherent about the music for, say, Thelma and Louise (mainly country and western songs, with what amounts to a single reiterated cue, "Thunderbird" by Zimmer) or Luhrman's Romeo and Juliet (with its wildly eclectic but very effective score that includes everything from Mozart to Radiohead). Similarly, Kubrick's score for 2001 is a terrific example of the use of apparently unrelated pieces of music. It's also a profoundly influential film soundtrack, and has informed how contemporary film composers musically conceptualize the idea of space and its potentially threatening inhabitants (from the abduction of the boy by aliens in Close encounters of the Third Kind, to the main title sequence of Alien 3) ever since.

Secondly, a film score very dear to my heart is Danny Elfman's Batman which almost takes the form of two film scores looked at through Dan's analysis: the well-made orchestral score with its famous, endlessly varied and rearticulated Batman theme, and then "all the other music" - the Prince songs, two "Strauss-goes-to-the-circus"-style waltzes at either end of the film; bits of Beautiful Dreamer; bits of pastiche easy-listening muzak (all, with the obvious exception of the Prince songs, composed by Elfman with the acknowledged assistance of Shirley Walker and Steve Bartek, and therefore very much part of the same score). In effect, Bruce Wayne/Batman's music is the orchestral underscore, and the Joker's music is a vast, irrational collection of different kinds of music. Their unrelatedness is part of his character's narrative positioning as a representative of the irrational in opposition to Batman's rationalism, his quest to restore all things to order. This makes the almost randomness of Joker's music a great example of an occasion when unrelated musical statements really should appear intermittently during the course of a work: it serves the narrative more effectively that way.

What Dan says is true in a general sense, but generalities always seem dangerous to me, too restrictive, too likely to render film scoring bland and standardized. Elfman is a case in point - his sheer inventiveness, and his willingness to experiment with the conventions of film scoring technique have produced some of the most innovative scores of the last decade. Good Will Hunting is a score very much not based on melody or themes as such, but on musical fragments that hang together like elements of a mobile moving in a breeze, constantly shifting and changing in relation to each other, coming in and out of focus - and again, this serves as a metaphor for the life of Will himself and the life of his mind, with all the different and often conflicting ideas that are going on in there: the purity of his intellectual abilities against the chaos and unhappiness of his emotional life; his genius set against his violence. The film's central narrative idea is reflected in the audible process of musical elements coming into focus, losing cohesion and refracting again, and occasionally finding some level of resolution in a highly imaginative and musically quite daring score. So, whilst I agree with Dan in a general way and he certainly makes many useful points, I think I would be happier if some of his ideas were a little less starkly stated: melody is often the best building block (but not always); a thematically unified score is often the most effective (but there are other coherent alternatives).

Dr Steve Halfyard
Senior Lecturer in Music
Birmingham Conservatoire

Jeremy Moniz (DeviantMan@aol.com) wrote in to inform me of one or two animated scores I left out of the recent FSM poll:
 

Akira - Shoji Yamashiro
All Dogs Go To Heaven - Ralph Burns
An American Tail: Feivel Goes West - James Horner
Balto - James Horner
Batman: Mask Of The Phantasm - Shirley Walker
Cool World - Mark Isham
The Emperor's New Groove - John Debney
Ferngully, The Last Rain Forest - Alan Silvestri
The Great Mouse Detective - Henry Mancini
James And The Giant Peach - Randy Newman
Oliver & Company - J. A. C. Redford
Once Upon A Forest - James Horner
The Pagemaster - James Horner
The Pebble And The Penguin - Barry Manilow
Pocahontas - Alan Menken
The Rescuers Down Under - Bruce Broughton
Rock-A-Doodle - Robert Folk
Rugrats In Paris: The Movie - Mark Mothersbaugh
The Rugrats Movie - Mark Mothersbaugh
Thumbelina - Barry Manilow
Transformers: The Movie -Vince DiCola
We're Back: A Dinosaur's Story - James Horner

Arabian Knight - Robert Folk
Asterix Conquers America - Harold Faltermeyer
Beavis and Butthead Do America - John Frizzell
The Brave Little Toaster - David Newman
Cats Don't Dance - Steve Goldstein
A Goofy Movie - Carter Burwell, Don Davis
The Iron Giant - Michael Kamen
Jetsons: the Movie - John Debney
Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius - John Debney
The King & I - William Kidd
Osmosis Jones - Randy Edelman
Pokemon: The First Movie - John Lissauer, et al
Quest For Camelot - Patrick Doyle
Return to Neverland - Joel McNeely
Rover Dangerfield - David Newman
The Road to El Dorado - Hans Zimmer, John Powell
Space Jam - James Newton Howard
Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron - Hans Zimmer
Tom & Jerry: The Movie - Henry Mancini
Toy Story 2 - Randy Newman
A Troll in Central Park - Robert Folk
Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust - Marco D'Ambrosio
Waking Life - Glover Gill

Who Framed Roger Rabbit - Alan Silvestri

MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com