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William Kraft -- a scoring career way too short. Four movies, one miniseries, and episodes of "Ripley's Believe It Or Not".
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Posted: |
Jul 31, 2013 - 6:07 PM
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By: |
orion_mk3
(Member)
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I'm surprised no one has mentioned Cliff Eidelman yet. He was working steadily in the 90s and early 2000s, but major work seems to have completely dried up for him. Too bad, as he's talented and could really use a hit.
I agree with Shire--one of the last living composers from his era still able to work, incidentally--, Shearmur, Davis, Newman, and especially Goldenthal. It's especially depressing in their cases since, even if they didn't always have the best projects, each man had a distinctive voice and the circumstances are distressing. Industry fatigue, Zimmerization, and traumatic brain injury are never kind fates to undergo...
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According to IMDb, Pipes has been scoring since 1989, and he has three scores this year.
I guess after having a score tossed on "City of Ember", he probably took a year and-a-half off.
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Posted: |
Jul 31, 2013 - 10:19 PM
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By: |
manderley
(Member)
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David Shire, who, IMO, can kick the booty of "almost" everybody else named above!
I remember in the 1970s that Hugo Friedhofer once told me he thought Shire was one of the very best of the (then) new generation. His name was brought up spontaneously by Hugo so I know that he had certainly been thinking about him in a positive way.
I'd say a recommendation by Hugo Friedhofer was a pretty good thing to have on your resume.
But I also think one of the issues no one has really brought up yet is ageism. Unless you're already in the stratosphere with your career---like a John Williams, Ennio Morricone, and, earlier, Jerry Goldsmith, your age plays a major part in whether you're hired or not.
From my own experience, it seems to me that you need to really establish yourself by age 35, be fully developed and successful by 40, and then coast on this success for the next 10-20 years if you are able. The separating out of the men from the boys then starts to begin around mid-50s, and if you are not one of the very top people in your craft by this time, your career simply continues slowly until the work gives out and you either retire or are forced out of the business by inactivity.
Remember that the key figures in the business who might hire you are young---from their mid-20s to their 40s. If you're too much older, with long-term experience, that experience often works against you because you already know all the shortcuts, and do not need to learn everything all over again alongside your young producer, director, or other staff, who are just learning and encountering the production problems for the first time. If you supply the answers to them, you are considered arrogant because you have become, in effect, their teacher instead of their employee---and they already had teachers like you, and of your age, in film school. 
Just for the record, I looked up the names of some of the composers suggested in this thread.
Here are their ages:
Edward Shearmur ("the baby" ) - 47
Graeme Revell - 57
David Newman - 59
Randy Edelman - 66
Bruce Broughton - 68
David Shire - 76
Dave Grusin - 79
Quincy Jones - 80
Francis Lai - 81
Stu Phillips - 83
John Morris - 86
Laurence Rosenthal - 86
I have a writer friend who was VERY successful in the business, particularly in television. He is now 74. Every time we'd go to visit him for dinner, the evening would be taken up with his conversations about his latest production and script ideas for a Broadway musical that he was currently working on. He was ALWAYS working on a new idea for a new Broadway musical, and many of them were good ideas. But it was always so depressing for me to hear these tales every time we visited because he couldn't see the handwriting on the wall: He was too old and he would NEVER be able to do a Broadway musical---and that was his dream.
One day an industry friend of mine called and said he'd talked to a young producer of a TV series about me and had set me up with an interview to talk to him about shooting it. I was about 43 at the time. I went to talk with the producer, we had a nice conversation, he was interested in my credits, and would get back to me. When I got home, my friend called me and said, "How did it go?" I told him I didn't know though everything seemed positive. He told me, "You know you DIDN'T get the job, don't you?" I was surprised to find that he had already heard about my interview. "No, I didn't know." And he said, "Well, you didn't get the job and do you want to know why?" I said, "Sure." He said, "It was your hair. (Pause for effect.) Your hair was gray, and the (young) producer didn't think you'd be able to work a full 8-hour day!" !!!!!
I'm telling you all---age, or perceived age---has a lot to do with continuing to work in the entertainment business---even behind the camera.
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William Kraft -- a scoring career way too short. Four movies, one miniseries, and episodes of "Ripley's Believe It Or Not".
Again, a composer primarily active in concert music.
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The ones I miss the most (and yes, I know some of them are scoring some TV/DVD stuff and the occasional low-budget film but I still don't get to hear much by them) are...
BRUCE BROUGHTON
LEE HOLDRIDGE
CLIFF EIDELMAN
DAVID NEWMAN
STU PHILLIPS
JOHN SCOTT
and I would have loved to hear more scores by
EDMUND CHOI and
DAVID BERGEAUD
but their careers seemed to stall before they even started properly.
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Jan Hammer (seems he could easily make a comeback with the type of scoring some films are getting these days)
Yes, it has been frustrating to follow Hammer's "career" this millennium. He has only been doing two projects, Red Cap and Cocaine Cowboys. He is 65 now, so I guess he is kind of retired.
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and I would have loved to hear more scores by EDMUND CHOI and
DAVID BERGEAUD but their careers seemed to stall before they even started properly.
I used to talk to Edmund Choi on Facebook every now and again, and he is as frustrated by his lack of career progress as you are - if not moreso. He seems to have resigned himelf to never really scoring much ever again, and is now (I believe) teaching somewhere in the Midwest.
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