ALEX WURMAN Hollywood Homicide

Excerpted from FSM Vol 8., No. 5, on sale now...

Alex Wurman may not be the most widely recognized name in film composing currently, but he has scored more than two dozen projects in the past decade, including films like 13 Conversations About One Thing, Play It to the Bone and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. With Ron Shelton's buddy cop movie Hollywood Homicide, however, Wurman is set to jump into a different league entirely. Hollywood Homicide stars Harrison Ford and Josh Hartnett as cops investigating the murder of a rap group that may or may not have been set up by the president of their record label. While the score started out adapting a hip-hop sensibility, Wurman very much wanted to keep a strong orchestral presence in the mix and the result is one of the more elaborate, action-driven comedy scores in recent memory.

"I have a real tendency toward post-French impressionist and twentieth century [writing]; that's all coming out right now and I'm becoming more of a classical type person," Wurman says. "I was going to be a contemporary jazz musician/film composer, and then I discovered that film composition was much bigger than I had thought it was. I always loved film music; the first record I ever bought was Star Wars, and Close Encounters was my favorite score from back then. I understood the music in a certain way but when I started to actually do it I realized just how huge it was so it took me a while to get into it. The first score I did was for an absolutely horrible movie, and the music supervisor took a lot of the money from me and basically ripped me off. But he also showed me how to do what I was doing, so it was an interesting experience."

Wurman's arranging work with Hans Zimmer led to him writing some music on a Zimmer project called Younger and Younger in 1993, a project that eventually led to the composer's work with director Ron Shelton and, ultimately, Hollywood Homicide. "Ron Shelton is a friend of Percy Adlon who directed Younger and Younger," Wurman says. "Ron produced a small movie directed by Marias Balchunis [1999's No Vacancy] who is a friend of Ron's, and I got that job and I worked closely with Ron because he knew more about dealing with a composer than the actual director did. We had such a good time that it was a very easy thing for me to get on my first movie with Ron, Play It to the Bone."

Bigger indie hits like 13 Conversations About One Thing and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind put Wurman in a good position to work on a high-profile project like Hollywood Homicide. "Ron loves songs and he likes combo kind of music; for Hollywood Homicide I ended up doing combo music that grew into a massive orchestral score," the composer says, noting that Shelton managed to insulate Wurman from an oversensitive studio mentality on such a big movie. "Ron protected me as much as he could. He actually fought for me. I worked on Hollywood Homicide for a long time, and we took that score -- Ron and I have worked on three movies and two TV projects together and we've hung out a lot, and Ron sees me as very diverse. My reel is very diverse and this score is diverse. With Hollywood Homicide we started with the idea that it would be kind of a Dr. Dre thing, and mix that with other influences, one of which was John Adams. Ron liked that Dr. Dre sound and I came up with a lot of things that were working in one way. We ended up with some very different music; it was like Shostakovich and Gershwin when it blew up into a big thing."

Wurman started out with an electronic core to his music that was appropriate for the subject matter and the lighter feel of the film's opening reels, and gradually layered his orchestral approach on top of that. "I have a fairly strong knowledge of Pro Tools and sequencers and loop software that plays back certain two- and four-bar grooves, and I knew that side of production and I could balance the ingredients," he points out. "I knew that there needed to be an orchestral presence in all of the music, so I wrote a string riff that was supported by the winds and found a way to make that feel good with the loops that I selected. As the action and the drama and the momentum of the movie increased the orchestra increased. I'm a believer that you can't support big action solely with electronics; in a really classic Hollywood film the orchestra is a voice that's just unbeatable."

The composer worked with orchestrator Conrad Pope (who's worked on numerous John Williams scores) and Tom Calderaro to detail the orchestral elements of the score. "I use a sequencer; I kill a bunch of birds with one stone here," Wurman explains. "I'm producing the electronic part of the score, I'm writing the orchestral part of the score into the sequencer, and I'm creating demos for the director and producers to hear so they know what they're getting. The big problem with working with a computer and not writing it on the page is there is so much to be understood with regards to the sound of the orchestra and to put it in the most simple way, an orchestra doesn't like to play parts that are very keyboard intensive. Fortunately I've been able to listen to orchestral music all my life and I understand it, and I could orchestrate it myself if I had enough time -- I'm nowhere near as fast or as skilled as Conrad. But if I were to sit down to do it myself I could do it, so when I write the music there's an understanding of the orchestra there so that when Conrad gets it, it makes sense. It's not piano music played by a string section."

Concert composer John Adams, a notable influence on Don Davis' Matrix scores, also inspired some of the approach to the Hollywood Homicide score. "There was one piece of music called 'Fearful Symmetries' which is an unusual piece that sounds like a swing orchestra with a little high hat, and these unusual dramatic harmonies, which end up being funny. I ended up writing something for one scene that's sort of a big-band, Gershwin orchestral sound." Wurman says that he tried to avoid the usual pitfalls of scoring comedy on the picture. "I think one of the key words is intelligence. If there's a piece of music that has depth to it, it's usually incorporating a lot more than just comedy. Comedy is much more than the actual act of doing something funny; it's about being in the situation that creates that funny moment and what led you to be there, and the whole backstory is what gives you that sense of irony. I feel like film scoring is sort of a similar thing where you don't want to play the actual moment but you need to play the character of that situation and I think it requires a more mature sound to be able to do that. You don't need to replay what's on film in most situations but there are situations where you do need to bring it to life."
 

For the full story, check out FSM Vol. 8, No. 5...

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