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I realize that IMDb is 100% Fan Based. And Sometimes..Fans get it truly wrong on events during the filming of movies and TV...but ran across this info on Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Anyone out there know if this is true?
Nicholas Meyer initially wished to use Gustav Holst's "The Planets" as the music for the film, but found that it would cost far too much in royalties and be far too tedious to edit into the film. He then asked James Horner, a composer to whom he gave his big break with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), to return and wrap up the original series. Horner stated his career had outgrown "Star Trek" and declined. Meyer then went to Jerry Goldsmith, who flatly refused after the failure of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989). Finally, Meyer asked for demo tapes to be submitted, and he chose the theme of unknown composer Cliff Eidelman because it combined the best of "The Planets" with the styles of Horner and Goldsmith, while still sounding "fresh and original."
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I never knew he approached Horner AND Goldsmith, but did know about the Planets and having demos submitted. Interesting.
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Off topic, but speaking of Mr. Meyer and Star Trek music, a few Sundays ago, responding to a remark in an article the L. A. Times Calendar section had run about that concert of Star Trek scores, Meyer sent a letter which the paper printed implying that Alexander Courage had cribbed his famous fanfare from of all things Robert Farnon's score to CAPTAIN HORATIO HORNBLOWER. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, and a letter in the following Sunday's Calendar set the record straight and successfully preserved the late Mr. Courage's sterling reputation. (For one thing, three notes doth not a theme make.)
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At a concert I attended in 1993, Goldsmith spoke to the audience after opening with the end titles to Star Trek V. He said that he would love to score more Star Trek movies, but he hadn't been asked. This was after Star Trek VI but before First Contact. And yes, he also said he didn't understand Star Trek.
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Posted: |
May 6, 2016 - 8:12 AM
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By: |
johnbijl
(Member)
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At a concert I attended in 1993, Goldsmith spoke to the audience after opening with the end titles to Star Trek V. He said that he would love to score more Star Trek movies, but he hadn't been asked. This was after Star Trek VI but before First Contact. And yes, he also said he didn't understand Star Trek.
Interesting that he would confess to not understanding Star Trek, whatever that means, and yet he could still produce excellent scores for them. Some kind of genius, perhaps?
Or rather a communicative director*. And I wouldn't call the last two scores he did 'the work of a genius'. And The Final Frontier, even how pretty it is, is more excellent craftsmanship than anything else, exactly what you would expect form a film composer with decades of experience. First Contact's best cues are from his son.
Maybe The Motion Picture is the only score that qualifies as the work of a genius. Musically is leans to much to Vaughn-Williams, but yes, how Goldsmith created a stately, even stiff, fanfare is wonderful. It is still my favorite arrangement of the theme. Goldsmith handles V-ger perfectly with the odd soundscapes and balances the score nicely with Ilia's theme.
Still, it doesn't hold a candle to the counterpoint Horner used in the Genesis Countdown in Star Trek II. Or the way Spock's theme develops over Star Trek II and III.
I would have loved to see him return for both IV and VI.
* Actually, I think Goldsmith was teasing the audience. There were quite a lot of trekkies there — and he even jokingly invited them to explain Star Trek to him after the show. There were a couple of exited screeches when he said that 
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I agree that Goldsmith was teasing about not understanding Star Trek. But I can't see a reason he would say he wasn't asked to do others if he had been. Given all the second-rate stuff he said yes to over the decades, what's one Star Trek more or less?
Rory's "genius" remark is I think intended to simply refer to the dumb neighboring thread on the subject. I'm not one to start a debate about which scores are better or better-composed. I'll just point out Horner's tendency to lift music wholesale from other composers (and himself) versus Goldsmith's tendency to compose freshly in lots of pre-existing idioms. Both are smart, one is more creative.
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In other venues - including in his memoir, "A View From The Bridge" - Meyer seems to say that he couldn't _afford_ Horner or Goldsmith for the picture, not that they refused to do it. That sort of jibes with the fact that ultimately he went with a relatively "new" composer who probably wasn't terrible expensive.
Yes, "The View From The Bridge" is recommended reading for some insight into what was going on at Paramount around that time. Their film department was losing money, films flopping one after another, as did ST5. When Meyer was hired for ST6, Frank Mancuso, then Paramount CEO, promised him a budget of $30 million, the same budget as ST5. By the time the script was done and ready to shoot, Meyer was suddenly told in a meeting with some execs that the budget was now $25 million. Meyer told them that was simply impossible to do, took them through the numbers, and later had to do the same for Mancuso. Mancuso then canceled the film.
The next day, he heard Mancuso had lost his job, and Stanley Jaffe and Sherry Lansing were now running things at Paramount. Jaffe uncanceled ST6, and gave them the $30 million budget. But that budget still meant every penny had to be saved, so there was simply no way to hire Horner or Goldsmith, who were established composers with a certain price.
The plan to license Holst's "The Planets" went so far as the Holst estate folks even visited the set during the filming of the dinner scene. But what killed that plan was that Paramount wanted the rights to "The Planets" in perpetuity with permission to use and reorchestrate the music for whatever else they liked. The estate of course wouldn't go for that.
So Eidelman got the job due to Meyer liking the style in his demo tapes and being very cheap to hire.
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