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Posted: |
Nov 14, 2010 - 11:08 AM
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By: |
EB Bobban
(Member)
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Ok, so we discussed what the deal was with the music in John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) in this thread:
http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=72843&forumID=1&archive=0
I can become somewhat obsessive about these things, especially with personal favourites like The Thing… So I have done a thorough analysis of the score and wanted to share it with you guys. Since this is going to be a really big post, I feel that it’s easier if I just start a new thread instead of this being buried somewhere in the other one. Plus I can always go back and edit this first post if we find additional information 
Well, the question was how much of the music in the film is Morricone’s work and how much of it was scored by Carpenter and Howarth in the post-production?
Here is once again a little background on the process of scoring the film taken from an article in Fangoria #135, August 1994 (page 24-25):
"Carpenter flew to Rome and showed me his film," Morricone says. "He was very insistent, and I liked his movie, so I decided to do it. The thing is, though, we barely talked about what he had in mind. When I went to Los Angeles to record the score, I brought a tape along that contained some synthesizer music I had recorded here in italy. It was really difficult for me to understand what kind of score he wanted, so I composed an array of totally different things, hoping he would find something of particular interest to him. Now, I have been in this business for 30 years and I think I know what my clients want, and guess what? He picked the piece that mostly resembled his own personal compositions. That is of course the main theme, which can be heard throughout the movie."
Confirmation of this claim comes on the film's soundtrack, which contains a great deal of music which never made it into the film. The main theme is virtually the sole composition heard during the film, and collectors consider the album a rather peculiar one as a result. "I wrote an hour of music for The Thing, and I just can't believe the way it was ignored," he frowns. "So when they asked me what to put on the album, I recovered all the stuff we had previously recorded. You can't sell a soundtrack album with one theme only; it's like cheating your potential buyers!"
I just watched the film again and spent (some people would say wasted xD) some time taking notes of the musical cues. I then cross-referenced the cues with Morricone’s music on the Varese album and came up with a list of what music was used in the film. To summarize, out of the 10 tracks on the Varese album only 5 were used in the final film: Humanity (Part I), Solitude, Wait, Humanity (Part II) and Despair. That is not to say that the 5 tracks were used in their entirety – in many cases only short parts were chopped up and spliced in as cues. I think I can hear an element from Contamination as well, although we are talking a few seconds here and it’s mixed together with a bass synthesizer, so I’m not entirely sure…
As for the cues I found that could not be identified as music on Morricone’s varese disc, they are distinctly different from the others. You can clearly hear that they are done with a synthesizer and they definitely sound like work in the style of Carpenter and Howarth. Added up, there is approximately 10-12 minutes of synthesizer music in the film.
In my next post is the list that I came up with. I was watching the European PAL dvd, but I’ll post times that correspond to American NTSC and Bluray as well, so you can check it out.
First I’ve written what time in the film the music is heard. Then what track on the album it corresponds to (and if possible what part of the track it is taken from). And finally, in [], which scene we are talking about.
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Nice Guesswork..
HOWEVER,
Has anyone looked at the film's cuesheet to see who is credited for what cues?
That should settle a number of issues.
Ford A. Thaxton
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