FILM SCORE FRIDAY 3/7/03

Composer-conductor-arranger Walter Scharf, a two-time Emmy winner and ten-time Oscar nominee, died of heart failure at his home in Brentwood, California on February 24th at the age of 92.

Scharf was born in New York City on August 10th, 1910, the son of Bessie Zwerling, a comic in the New York Yiddish Theater. He graduated from New York University and was one of the orchestrators for the original Broadway production of George Gershwin's Girl Crazy.

He moved to Hollywood in 1934 as an arranger for Rudy Vallee, and contributed uncredited music to many films of the thirties and forties. He received his first Original Score nomination for Mercy Island in 1941, and was also nominated for his scores to In Old Oklahoma and The Fighting Seabees, as well as for his adaptations for Johnny Doughboy, Hit Parade of 1943, Brazil, Hans Christian Andersen (his favorite film project), the classic Funny Girl, and the more-popular-than-ever Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. He also received a Best Song nomination for his most famous composition, the title song to the Willard sequel Ben (lyrics by Don Black), which became a number one hit single for Michael Jackson.

He was the musical director on five films for Elvis Presley (who always called him "Mr. Scharf") and scored several films for star-director Jerry Lewis, including The Nutty Professor. He also scored Frank Capra's final film, Pocketful of Miracles.

In the sixties he wrote many scores for television, including episodes of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., The Wild Wild West, Mission: Impossible and Hawaii Five-O, as well as sixteen National Geographic specials (whose classic theme was composed by Elmer Bernstein) and twenty eight Jacques Cousteau specials, winning Emmys for his scores to "The Tragedy of the Red Salmon" and "Beneath the Frozen World." He went on to score such mini-series as From Here to Eternity and Blind Ambition, and his final feature was Twilight Time, starring Karl Malden. His concert pieces include "The Israeli Suite" and a "symphonic portrait," "The Tree Still Stands."

Unfortunately, little of Scharf's film and TV music has been released on CD. In 1991, Bay Cities released a now out-of-print CD called Harold Lloyd's World of Comedy, featuring a suite from Scharf's 1959 score to the classic Lloyd silent comedy The Freshman as well as a suite from the Lloyd compilation World of Comedy. The recent Film Score Monthly CD The Man From U.N.C.L.E. features seven minutes of Scharf's score to the episode "The Project Strigas Affair."

Along with his ten Oscar nominations, Scharf was a frequent finalist in the music categories, for his original scores to The Birds and the Bees, Ben, Final Chapter: Walking Tall (he scored all three Walking Tall films) and Gasp (aka Backbone), and for his adaptations of Two Tickets to Broadway, Artists and Models, Bundle of Joy, Rock-a-Bye Baby, Cinderfella, and Tickle Me.

Memorial services were held at the Mt. Sinai Temple in the Hollywood Hills on February 28th. He is survived by his sister Deenah, his son Allen, his daughter Susan and his wife Betty -- he named his yacht "The Lady Betty," and composed much of his Cousteau music while sitting on its deck.

One week later, Varese will release a discount-priced four-CD compilation set to celebrate their 25th anniversary, featuring five hours of cues spanning the history of movie music, from The Adventures of Robin Hood to Far From Heaven.

Daredevil - Graeme Revell - Varese Sarabande
Darkness Falls - Brian Tyler - Varese Sarabande
The Day the Earth Stood Still - Bernard Herrmann - Varese Sarabande
The French Revolution - Georges Delerue - Disques CineMusique
The Quiet American - Craig Armstrong - Varese Sarabande
The Slaughter Rule - Jay Farrar - Bloodshot

Bringing Down the House - Lalo Schifrin - Song CD on Hollywood
Irreversible - Thomas Bangalter - Score CD due April 8th from Thrive
Laurel Canyon - Craig Wedren - Song CD due March 11th from Hollywood
The Safety of Objects - Emboznik
Tears of the Sun - Hans Zimmer - Score CD due from Varese on March 18th

March 11
The Hunted - Brian Tyler - Varese Sarabande
March 18
Children of Dune - Brian Tyler - Varese Sarabande
Tears of the Sun - Hans Zimmer - Varese Sarabande
March 25
Thunderbirds - Barry Gray - Silva
April 1
Dreamcatcher - James Newton Howard - Varese Sarabande
April 15
Identity - Alan Silvestri - Varese Sarabande
April 22
Varese Sarabande 25th Anniversary Collection - Varese Sarabande
Date Unknown
Amerika - Basil Poledouris - Prometheus
The Big Sky - Dimitri Tiomkin - Screen Archives/BYU
Captain From Castile - Alfred Newman - Screen Archives
Dr. Phibes Rises Again - John Gale - Perseverance
From Beyond - Richard Band - La-La Land
Invasion of the Body Snatchers - Denny Zeitlin - Perseverance
Mighty Joe Young, etc. - Roy Webb, et al - Monstrous Movie Music
Monte Walsh/The Crossfire Trail - Eric Colvin - La-La Land
The Spirit is Willing/The Busy Body - Vic Mizzy - Percepto
A Summer Place - Max Steiner - Screen Archives/BYU
This Island Earth, etc. - Herman Stein, et al - Monstrous Movie Music

March 7 - Miklos Rozsa wins first Oscar for Spellbound score (1946)
March 8 - Bruce Broughton born (1945)
March 8 - Jerry Goldsmith begins recording orchestral cues for Logan's Run score (1976)
March 10 - Charles Previn, head of the Universal Music Department, wins the Score Oscar for One Hundred Men and a Girl, for which no composer is credited (1938)
March 11 - David Newman born (1954)
March 12 - Georges Delerue born (1925)
March 13 - Hugo Friedhofer wins his only Oscar for The Best Years of Our Lives score (1947)
March 13 - Terence Blanchard born (1962)

FROM: "Ace Hamilton"

SUBJECT: "Jon Favreau is Daredevil's best friend Froggy, who despite his name is not a superhero."
 
Can you please let Scott Bettencourt know that the character in Daredevil is Foggy Nelson, not Froggy?

SUBJECT: Froggy!?!
 
While I'm sure I'm not the only person emailing you on this -- Favreau is playing "Foggy" Nelson, not "Froggy." There was a Spider-Man villain named the "Frog Man" who debuted in the mid 1980s - his powers stemmed from electrically powered leaping coils built into his boots which enabled him to jump 60 to 100 feet at a time. He wore a frog suit reminiscent of the one Max wore in "The Muppet Movie." He eventually turned from evil to good and joined The Defenders and then promptly quit being a superhero / villain altogether. I hope that helps clear up any confusion that resulted from your misprint.

FROM: "Robert Hubbard"

A very minor point, but one I had to make. Comerford comments that he wished that there was a release of Tomandandy's score from THE MOTHMAN PROPHESIES - the score did get a release, on a 2 cd set - one disc which featured the score and the other disc featuring "inspired by" music and the song over the end credits.

SUBJECT: Uhm, as you surely have noticed by now--
 
THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES was of course released, at the time of the film, on Lakeshore Records as a double CD (songs and score), or is there a secret score I missed somehow?

FROM: "bubba bubba"

SUBJECT: Another Page Cook story
 
When I was a youngster I would go to my local library and look for the new copies of Films In Review. I would head straight to the back and look for the outrageous Page Cook's reviews of Jerry Goldsmith, John Barry, and John Williams. While I don't remember all of Cook's assessments of these great composers, I had tons of fun while he ripped into their lack of composing skills!!!!

I would like the end of the year, when Page Cook would hand out what he thought was the best scores. I think in 1982 he handed out Poltergeist as the best score, and E.T. was his 4th choice, if memory is right with me. I WAS MAD!!!! E.T. not the best score of the year. Page Cook went on to say that while E.T. was good, it was not the most original score he had heard.

I really believe most of the time Page Cook never heard not one damn note. But still to this day, I get a kick out of rereading Cook's never ending rants about film music. That is what the guys and girls of Film Score Monthly should do, go find Cook's reviews of their favorite scores and read how Cook destroys their favorite scores and composers. It is great comic relief.

FROM: "Don Campbell"

SUBJECT: Your top 25 list

You have a right to your 25 favorite choices. While it all may, indeed, boil down to personal choice, which of us would hesitate, or refuse, to cite reasons for or against a particular choice?
 
I have been a Morricone fan for more than 25 years. Almost as much of that time has been spent listening to classical music. While no film composer fares very well in the estimation of hoity-toity musical elites, it is worth pointing out that Morricone fulfills two very important qualities seldom discussed (for no good reason) in articles about film music. Further, these qualities are cited as central to good film music, perhaps even good music period, by no less than Jerry Goldsmith and Bernard Herrmann.
 
Goldsmith has maintained that a strong melody is perhaps the most crucial element of a film score. Well, no one is better at it than Morricone. The sheer number of re-releases of his music compared to other film composers tells the tale.
 
As I've said, I find Goldsmith's work cold and lifeless on its own. Like Elmer Bernstein, his work has that vitiated quality that is the mark of a hack. Even those praising the originality of his PATTON score and its signature echoing trumpet would be in for a few surprises were they to play the first movement of Sir Malcolm Arnold's Symphony No. 1 from 1949.
 
It hasn't yet been pointed out anywhere, as far as I'm aware, that music which has a "life" of its own outside the movie it was written for is, quite possibly, so much alive because it is inspired. My mind still boggles at people putting on a slough of Goldsmith albums, one after the other, and actually listening to them for their own sake.
 
Bernard Herrmann knew and insisted on the importance of orchestrating his own music. As Morricone said -- I have yet to see this refuted -- any composer who isn't interested in putting the finishing touches on his own work is either too lazy, doesn't have time, or doesn't know how. Morricone still works harder than most composers, and he finds the time. Perhaps because he takes it seriously and is not, like Howard Shore, doing it to experiment with large orchestras.
 
The whole concept of the Hollywood orchestrator is, arguably, the reason film music today is pathetically undistinguished. (I'm surprised you could list even five, let alone 25). It all sounds the same. But you are not likely to fail to recognize Morricone's music, even if you don't "like" it. This is another point to consider, really, in whether a composer deserves respect. Beyond a certain point, "like" and "dislike" are really just amateurish observations, and may actually count only when a work of art is saying so little that anything anyone feels about it, or reads into it, "counts."
 
Most negative comments about Morricone boil down, really, to "I just don't like his music." Pressed to elaborate on this unfailingly "trustworthy" gut reaction, they can only squirm. Morricone, I believe, is a musical prophet. Why? Because -- and here's another idea for an article -- he gets at the truth of a scene better than any other composer.
 
An example is: what is MISSION TO MARS really about? It's about the boundless optimism of the men exploring space. It is also about infinity, which anyone who travels in space will surely be aware of, and in awe of, all the time. No other film composer has even attempted to portray space from this point of view. As such, his score commits the unpardonable sin of telling us, not what we expect to hear, but what a highly-developed emotional and intellectual listener should hear. Instead of playing down to us, Morricone lifts us up, briefly, to a height most film composers aren't aware of.
 
How, for instance, would any other film composer segue into the scene, five minutes into the movie, where the first glimpse we get of Mars is the little six-wheeled robot collecting samples on the Martian surface? You can almost imagine them missing the whole point of what is really happening, and writing some "mysterious" piece about the almost-cute little machine doing its rounds on the "mysterious" Martian surface; a narrow and banal interpretation.
 
But Morricone never lets us forget that this robot, this toy, is the culmination of years of heroic human effort, and in some sense the embodiment of it, and his evocative music behind the scene actually does something to us, even when there isn't a single human being in sight! Why doesn't most film music today, really, do anything to us? It is because the same law that governs writing fiction is at work: "No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader." Morricone cares; not always, but enough that he -- you can't deny it -- stands out, and is controversial. And for that reason, he has earned the treatment a prophet, a law-giver, is wont to suffer: rejection and loud disavowal by those who should at least try to know better.
 
This unforgiveable sin has brought Morricone -- unsurprisingly -- resentment masquerading as disdain. He didn't win an Oscar even for THE MISSION, which composer David Amram called, along with SCHINDLER'S LIST, one of only two true masterpieces in film music in, I think he said, the last 40 years. (Amram probably forgot just how much Williams' main violin melody for SCHINDLER owes to, of all people, the Russian Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony, second movement).
 
But perhaps the most scathing rebuke Morricone offers to people who really think modern film composers are worth bothering about is this: The coolness and detachment of American film music "at its finest" is simply the wrong way to go, in writing any kind of music, and nothing less than a complete about-face is warranted, if film music is to be saved. (Part of the problem, admittedly, is the utter vileness of what's been coming out of Hollywood; but Morricone has written great scores for vile films.)
 
No wonder he is reviled by so many. He brings up emotions we no longer realize we have, distorted and soothed by Hollywood schlockmeisters, and pop music, to the point that those emotions have become not only unrecognizable, but positively abhorrent! Is it any surprise that we have arrived in a universe where Hans Zimmer wins an Oscar for music that doesn't even bother to disguise Morricone's SECRET OF THE SAHARA score as the the temp track for just-after the first battle scene? [Zimmer didn't actually win the Oscar for Gladiator; he was merely nominatedóSB] The most we get, emotionally, from film scores in American music is irony, depicted by a twanging guitar. Where's the enthusiasm?
 
Consider my spleen vented.

FROM: "Randy Derchan"

SUBJECT: Which Bond score most needs to be expanded?
 
The hardest decision of my life. Well, not really. But, especially after hearing the new Bond releases, I want all of the scores expanded. I chose Golden Gun because there are some wonderful cues that that are not the album. But the Spy Who Loved Me has some really great stuff in it too, even though the album is a horrid rerecording that doesn't do it justice. Maybe one day FSM could release an album of just the unreleased cues from Moonraker, View to a Kill, Golden Gun and Octopussy.
 
Just dreaming.