FILM SCORE FRIDAY 6/13/03

Dreamworks Records will release Harry Gregson-Williams' score to the animated feature SINBAD: LEGEND OF THE SEVEN SEAS on June 24th.

I learned about this DVD/CD set from a magazine I highly recommend -- Video Watchdog. And I'm not plugging VW just because they've given complimentary reviews to many of our CDs -- I've been reading Video Watchdog since before I'd even heard of Lukas Kendall and his hideous plans for world domination. (I suspect I wasn't supposed to mention the world domination part. Sorry, Lukas.)

WITTMAN: Oh my God now I can pay my bar tab at Angus'. My mother took me to Radio City every Saturday morning when I was a kid and she used to say to me, "One day you'll be up there." I always thought she meant [as] a Rockette. I never knew it was going to be this. There are so many people to thank and, God willing, you'll meet them all tonight. But I have to say there's one special person who I share my life with, my laughter and all of my heart for an amazing 25 years -- Matthew Broderick [audience laughs]. No -- Marc Shaiman.

SHAIMAN: We didn't get the memo about the designated speaker. If anyone in the orchestra cuts me off there's a virtual orchestra at Hairspray on Tuesday! We have to thank Margo Lion. Margo Lion called me out of the blue, God bless her. I was as depressed as a man can be who gets to make music all the time and between her and the anti-depressants - Margo Lion, thank you for saving our lives. Our relationship was doing fine without you but it has never been better. And I love this man. We are not allowed to get married in this world, I don't know why, but I'd like to declare in front of a million people, I love you, and I'd like to live with you for the rest of my life.

And as many commentators have pointed out, Shaiman kissed Wittman on the air. This should surprise no one, as on-camera kisses between male songwriting partners are an inevitable part of awards show broadcasts -- just think of how many times Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen smooched during the Oscar-casts. And let's not forget the extended make-out session between John Barry and Don Black when they won the Oscar for "Born Free" -- they were still going at it after the commercial break. (Okay, these last two sentences are complete lies)

The Third Man - Anton Karas - Silva

Capturing the Friedmans - Andrea Morricone
Dumb and Dumbererer: When Harry Met Lloyd - Eban Schletter
The Heart of Me - Nicholas Hooper - Score CD released in England on Cube
Hollywood Homicide - Alex Wurman
Jet Lag - Eric Serra - Score CD Decalage Horaire released in France on EastWest
Rugrats Go Wild - Mark Mothersbaugh - Song CD on Hollywood

June 17
Hulk - Danny Elfman - Universal
28 Days Later - John Murphy - Beggars XI
Whale Rider - Lisa Gerrard - 4AD
June 24
Baby Doll - Kenyon Hopkins - DRG
The Buccaneer - Elmer Bernstein - DRG
Harlow - Neal Hefti - DRG
The Italian Job - John Powell - Varese Sarabande
Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas - Harry Gregson-Williams - Dreamworks
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines - Marco Beltrami - Varese Sarabande
Date Unknown
All This and Heaven Too/A Stolen Life - Max Steiner - Marco Polo
Amerika - Basil Poledouris - Prometheus
Battle Cry - Max Steiner - Screen Archives/BYU
The Dreamer of Oz - Lee Holdridge - Percepto
The Hellstrom Chronicle - Lalo Schifrin - Aleph
Invasion of the Body Snatchers - Denny Zeitlin - Perseverance
Mighty Joe Young, etc. - Roy Webb, et al - Monstrous Movie Music
Red River - Dimitri Tiomkin - Marco Polo
Seabiscuit - Randy Newman - Decca/UMG
A Summer Place - Max Steiner - Screen Archives/BYU
This Island Earth, etc. - Herman Stein, et al - Monstrous Movie Music

June 14 - Cy Coleman born (1929)
June 14 - John Williams begins recording his replacement score for The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing (1973)
June 14 - Henry Mancini died (1994)
June 15 - Meredith Willson died (1984)
June 16 - Fred Karlin born (1936)
June 17 - Jerry Fielding born (1922)
June 17 - Dominic Frontiere born (1931)
June 17 - George S. Clinton born (1947)
June 17 - Alfred Newman begins recording score to How to Marry a Millionaire (1953)
June 18 - Paul McCartney born (1942)
June 18 - Bernard Herrmann begins recording score to Blue Denim (1959)

WHALE RIDER - Lisa Gerrard

"Taking her cues from Lisa Gerrard's ambient score, [director Niki] Caro lets the film drift at its own pace, an approach which greatly enhances its careful journey to a predetermined destination."

Keith Phipps, The Onion

FROM: "Mark Neyrinck"

SUBJECT: The In-Laws
 
This is in response to Scott Bettencourt's comments about "The In-Laws:"

Although the film certainly didn't have a cohesive score (yes, a major drawback), I disagree that the songs were "tritely used." It is rare that the music plays against the action nowadays, and I think doing so here nicely established a comic tone. The film opened with an action scene, and using straight action music here would have made some people think that it was going to be an action movie (making this yet another movie which can't decide whether it's an comedy or an action movie -- it's kind of refreshing that they seem to have firmly decided on comedy in this case)

Yes, it probably would have been possible to achieve the same comic effect with a real score, but I think the songs worked nicely. And about the Good Will Hunting cue, yes, it was distracting to film score geeks, but I thought it was a well-chosen cue anyway. (And if there's no rest of the score for it to cohere to, does it really matter that it came from another movie?)

Also, the use of "Live and Let Die" over the opening car chase only managed to remind the audience that we were watching yet another movie car chase without making the scene any more exciting. One of the biggest problems with the In-Laws remake is that they tried to make it more of a traditional action film but they hired a director with no particular skill at action scenes, so all the action setpieces just seemed like time-wasters.

(Another problem is that they grafted one of those horrible professional-man-learns-to-be-a-better-dad plots onto the story [a la Liar Liar, the Dr. Dolittle remake, etc.], but there isn't enough time here to go into all of In-Laws' problems. On the other hand, it's still a much funnier movie than Bruce Almighty, which is like Groundhog Day remade by Patch Adams)

And since Good Will Hunting was an immensely popular film, grossing $138 million in the U.S. and winning two Oscars (as well as nominations for Best Picture and Best Original Dramatic Score), I don't think it's only film music geeks like myself who'd be distracted by hearing its main title music pop up as a score cue in The In-Laws.

The first part of Luke Goljan's series of columns on the influence of temp tracks on original scores inspired a barrage of letters: so many that I've put off printing them until now:

FROM: "Chris C. Tilton"

He says,

I used to love John Debney's music until I expanded my soundtrack collection. It seemed I kept finding music that was written before his that sounded much too similar. Of course, his music still stands on it's own, but its suspect roots now show, tarnishing my enjoyment of his work. End of Days has a main solo choral theme that can be found in Harald Kloser's The Thirteenth Floor during a quiet moment in track 10. The "Agnus Dei" repeatedly chanted throughout the score has earlier origins as well, it's a classical piece I've heard in too many places to count (it even popped up on a cd by Norwegian goth-metal rockers Tristania!).

That theme from End of Days is actually the opening notes of the "Dies Irae," an old Gregorian chant sung back in the days before classical music. It essentially means "death" in musical terms and has been overused in film music, mostly by Zimmer, as he puts it in virtually EVERY score he writes. Interestingly, the phrase used for the End of Days theme is also found in the sample library "Symphony of Voices." This library contains, in addition to basical choral patches, royalty free phrases that you can use as you so desire, and one of them is the first 4 notes of the "Dies Irae," sung by a solo boy and sounds EXACTLY like End of Days. In fact, who's to say that that isn't the actual sample used in the score. Talk about generic. Actually, I've always said that John Debney is the king of generic music, consisting only of other composers' table scraps. This example just further proves my point. Anyway, my main purpose of this was just to inform Luke Goljan that the "Dies Irae" is much more widely used than he thinks.

I'm afraid I'm going to have a rant, and I'm sure I'll live to regret it. However, without wishing to seem either stupid or just plain mean, my main question in response to Luke Goljan's article on sound-alike cues and scores is "so what?" What is the point you are making, Mr Goljan, or will the "to be continued" get away from this seemingly endless listing of observations and maybe even draw a conclusion or two? Whilst I have always understood and sympathized with the extent to which composers can feel overly constrained by the tyranny of the temp track, the fact is that sometimes sound-alikes serve a real purpose in film music. I would be the first to admit that overly familiar music can be desperately irritating: Elliot Goldenthal, a composer whose music I generally love, had my spitting nails over the rehash of every little trick and texture from all his other scores in a film devoid of saving graces, the appalling "Batman and Robin". But the same composer had me smiling to myself when he referenced his cue for Lestat being burned (apparently to death) in "Interview with the Vampire" in a scene in "Michael Collins" when Collins sets fire to his office. In both scenes, people chuck about some lamp fuel, set the place on fire and run away, and by using remarkably similar music, the fire setting of one film is superimposed on the other in a way that I found aesthetically very satisfying. Likewise, my other favourite composer, Danny Elfman, works in a seriously cheeky little reference to Grieg's "In the hall of the mountain king" towards the end of the "Beetlejuice" main title. The Mountain King is a troll - cf the troll-like Beetlejuice himself - and superimposing the troll king onto the character of Beetlejuice brought new dimensions to the story (for me) that would not have been there without that little musical borrowing. Such is the joy of intertextuality, one of the mainstays of cinema and literature and music in the modern age. Movies reference each other all the time, and so does film music - Brian de Palma's "Carrie" has references to "Psycho" at numerous levels (disturbed adolescent with a very unhealthy relationship with their mother, great big kitchen knives, etc etc) and the music for "Carrie", bless it, borrows Herrmann's shower scene 'stab' gesture for every time Carrie herself does something psychic - the "Psycho" music becomes the "psychic" music. Yes, it's a kind of musical pun but it serves a purpose. By understanding the visual, narrative and musical references to "Psycho" in "Carrie", we have a different understanding of what the film is about. It's not necessarily a better understanding, and someone who has never seen "Psycho" is still going to know exactly what's going on, but if you see its relationship to "Psycho", you understand it on additional levels. It is, in part, a sophisticated little game for film buffs, but I suspect many of us get a good (slightly smug) feeling from recognizing these references: it's human nature. I could undoubtedly go on for pages about how films and film scores make references to each other as part (not all, but certainly part) of the way that they communicate their meanings to us; and similarly there are plenty of examples of borrowings which don't seem to contribute anything to a film. Why, for example, does Zimmer's "The Rock" endlessly quote the theme from Fauré's Pavane? However, although it's so obvious it borders on the banal, the reference to Holst's "Mars" from "The Planets" makes perfect intertextual sense in the context of Romans going to war in "Gladiator". Temp track or composer's decision? Who knows? Frankly, who cares? If it works, both as functional film music and/ or as intertextual reference, fantastic. If it doesn't, then worry about the fact that the music isn't serving the film well. And that, at the end of the day, is why I start getting annoyed by people bemoaning the way some film music sounds like other film music. Not all sound-alikes are simply laziness or the fault of the temp track: some are actually there for a very good reason.

A mate of mine showed me a VHS of 'Total Recall' whilst it was still in post-production (how he came by the tape, I have no idea), and it was a fascinating viewing of a work in progress. Some of the final score was in place - such as the main title - but after about the forty minute mark, the film had the temp tracks and most of the FX work was incomplete, which meant there were a lot of shots of actors standing around in front of blue screens.

I can't remember which temp track were used, apart from one - it was 'The Cloud' from 'Star Trek: The Motion Picture' - or it may have been 'Vejur Flyover', used in the film where Goldsmith would eventually supply 'The Mutant' cue. It must have been especially challenging to be faced with a temp track with an earlier score from your own work, and still try to come up with something new.

Great article Luke,
 
I may be stretched it a bit, but I remember getting that little chromatic string effect used through The Relic stuck in my head for weeks after seeing the film, and, one day I was listening to Goldsmith's Basic Instinct, and heard a nearly if not totally identical theme.
 
It's so brief it's gotta be coincidence, but you never know. I don't have a Relic promo, but I can tell you the 'theme' appears at 2:40 in the track "Pillow Talk" from Basic Instinct.

It is worth mentioning that director Joe Dante ditched Goldsmith's sound-alike Morricone music for Tom Hanks' character in The 'burbs and just went with the original temp-track, whose origins I'm embarrassed to say I can't remember.

That would be the track, "Se sei qualcuno E' colpa mia" from Morricone's score for My Name Is Nobody, which parodies his "Man With A Harmonica" music from Once Upon A Time In The West.

SUBJECT: Planet of The Jumanji
 
JUMANJI and APES both reference Prokofiev (er, which piece? Not sure).

SUBJECT: Temp Score Extravaganza Part 1/4 - Michael Kamen
 
A little addition: It should be noted that the opening sequence of Disney's 1993-version of The Three Musketeers was obviously temped with Carlo Gesualdo's famous Renaissance motet "Moro, lasso, al mio duolo". In the final cut Michael Kamen did re-arrange the original version slightly and sacrificed the italian lyrics (and didn't give Gesualdo a credit).

Hello, just one comment about this bound-to-be-controversial article!

Michael Kamen's insistence on including snippets from Peter and the Wolf or "Winter Wonderland" in his scores won't get mentioned further here, but it's evident that somebody involved in making Frequency liked James Newton Howard's score to Outbreak a lot. Kamen's music for the opening firefighter rescue is almost identical to Outbreak's track 11. It's also one of the only pieces of score in Frequency that sounds like it was performed on synths.

This piece was not in fact written by Kamen, but by the living legend J. Peter Robinson. I have no idea why, but it was, and it is credited as such in the end titles.

So there.

I don't think the firefighter rescue music for "Frequency" was composed by Michael Kamen. I believe it was the work of J. Peter Robinson. It appears to be the only cue that survived after Robinson's score was rejected, which would explain why it seems completely different from the rest of the score. If memory serves, the cue gets its own credit at the end of the movie. Still, you're very right about the similarity with "Outbreak"!
 
What about composers being forced to repeat themselves because of temp-tracking? I'm pretty certain this must have happened to John Williams on "Jurassic Park" because "Dennis Steals the Embryo" is so similar to the composer's own iconic "Conspirators" track from "JFK". This probably isn't news to anyone, but I thought I'd throw it into the pot.
 
Great idea for a feature -- made me think!

When reading the temp-track article I just have to say three things:

1, The Fire Truck chase in the beginning of Frequency is NOT Michael Kamen, it's actually credited to J. Peter Robinson

2, You may take Mark Mancina in part two or three but I thought that his score to Domestic Disturbance sounded like Basic Instinct, his score to Man of the House sounded a lot like Forrest Gump

3, Graeme Revell's score to The Hand that rocks the cradle sounds very similar to Sleeping with the Enemy