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While I look forward to hearing Lambro's CHINATOWN score someday, I find his comments on the affair amusing in the extreme.
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. . . I keep hoping that someday we'll have a release of Lambro's Chinatown - I think people will find it interesting . . .
I think it's interesting that Mr. Lambro seems to have a relationship with Mr. Kendall, if only by e-mail perhaps. Does this mean that an FSM Lambro "Chinatown" is more than a mere pipe dream?
Or . . .
"Forget it, Jake. It's Paramount."
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. . . I keep hoping that someday we'll have a release of Lambro's Chinatown - I think people will find it interesting . . .
I think it's interesting that Mr. Lambro seems to have a relationship with Mr. Kendall, if only by e-mail perhaps. Does this mean that an FSM Lambro "Chinatown" is more than a mere pipe dream?
Or . . .
"Forget it, Jake. It's Paramount."
Unless Mr. Lambro provides the tapes and hopes Paramount will just look the other way, no.
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It seems to me that Lambro's argument is entirely with Polanski and Evans, who were even more "there" at the time than he was! Those two are in essential agreement about what took place with the replacement score, all of which happened after Lambro had completed his work. HE'S the one with secondhand knowledge about that process, since he certainly wasn't present for any of the discussions about the dumping of his score. Perhaps Polanski lied to him in order to soften the blow--professional film composers recognize that and roll with the punches. It's sad that Lambro is still reeling from this, but bringing his poisonous little grudge to our fan forum is both wrongheaded and undignified.
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Posted: |
Mar 15, 2008 - 5:48 AM
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By: |
Ag^Janus
(Member)
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But, having synched his score to several of the sequences in the film where it belongs (the spotting for the two scores is very similar), the score just doesn't work as well as Mr. Goldsmith's. It's very different, of course, but it does not evoke the emotion that Mr. Goldsmith's does, at least IMO. That doesn't mean it's bad, because it isn't, it just means that it doesn't work with what's on the screen as well as the score that replaced it.
These 'grey' zones are best tackled by the artists. Every case needs full explanation and argument on artistic, technical and other grounds. I can't envisage anything useful being forwarded otherwise. As it always ends up in the otherwise, one man's opinion is stacked against another with no means of judgement.
I recently to in a viewing of Kurosawa's THE LOWER DEPTHS, based on the Russian Maxim Gorky's play. Some amusing character work there, the actors do well, the "demon bitch" is particularly vile. Just looking about I see Jean Renoir also made a film based on Gorky's play, LES BAS-FONDS.
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Jerry was very frank about meeting Polanksi at his Q and A session at the Barbican centre in London for his last concert there.
If memory serves - and I'd appreciate if theres anyone on this board who was also there can concur what they heard him say - but when asked directly by someone in the audience whether he had met Polanksi on Chinatown, JG quipped that when he met Polanksi, the director was more interested in asking him about lube !!!!
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This topic sends me remembering a splendid article in PREMIERE about 12 years back entitled, "THE LONG ROAD TO CHINATOWN", detailing it's genesis and creation. It made me wish for a book about the film's production, because it's a story in itself. Little or no mention was made of the Goldsmith score, and none of Lambro's part in it.
It would still make a tremendous read.
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Posted: |
Mar 17, 2008 - 11:21 AM
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By: |
Morricone
(Member)
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Having worked on quite a few films and made a few shorts myself the one thing you have little perspective on is the film you are working on yourself. Think of any masterpiece you love, and find out how it came together and what the top of the creative team thought at the time. The creative process isn't easy.
I know CHINATOWN was a box office disappointment at the time. But at a $6,000,000 budget (forgot whether by that year they had reached 2 1/2 times the budget as a formula for breakeven on the ever-creative books)and US rentals were
$12,400,000 and $30,000,000 rentals worldwide without any ancilliary money involved this probably didn't even lose money. If Nicholson wanted to make a sequel to THE KING OF MARVIN GARDENS I don't think Columbia would have green lit that, but Paramount did THE TWO JAKES.
Hey I love THE ROBE but my favorite cut comes from THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME. And ON THE WATERFRONT is fantastic but no more inspired than STREET SCENE or DEAD END, it is just attached to a better movie.
And speaking of WATERFRONT the story of the best scene in that film is a classic. They make a mock-up of a taxicab, but place it in a small industrial building with brick walls all around. The crew shows up and screams there is no place for lights, the camera, anything! The response is "how should I know what you need? You shot the whole movie on location with only these two interiors." Gotta think. Someone suggests they once saw a cab with slats in the back, like Venetian blinds. Then they can get lights to move from the side windows to recreate the car's movement. But the camera cannot show the outside of those windows. The camera has to be facing front on the two actors or be in close-up. This forces the two actors to sit unnaturally facing each other and very close together. On top of that Brando has a toothache and is in misery doing his scene with Steiger. As soon as he is finished he runs off to the dentist leaving Steiger to play his scene alone. Steiger is totally upset that Brando would do this to him. He uses that emotion in the scene.
How much is art and how much is circumstance?
No one knows this stuff and no one cares.
It's a great scene.
How much of a masterpiece is CHINATOWN I leave up to you. But most can accept it does have a certain power and so does Jerry's music, no matter how quickly tossed in there.
Ah, hindsight.
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