The Randy Edelman Interview

by Andy Dursin

Teaneck, New Jersey native Randy Edelman never dreamed that his music would be heard around the U.S. in such cultural events as the Olympics and the Super Bowl, but the last few years have increased the exposure of Edelman's film scores in ways that few composers ever get to experience. You can hardly turn on the TV or go to the movies without hearing Edelman's stirring music in one form or another; his themes from Gettysburg and The Last of the Mohicans, among others, have appeared in countless network news and sports programs, not to mention in countless movie trailers that, if not actually containing an Edelman score, end up copying the composer's strong melodic style. His music is distinctive enough so that you know when you're hearing one of his scores; his trademark blend of synths and full orchestra is something that stands out in an era where most film music is virtually interchangeable from one picture to the next.

A "student of the classics" who attended the University of Cincinnati as a pre-med major, Edelman began his movie career by scoring the 1973 Burt Lancaster thriller Executive Action, but found that his successful work as a musician and songwriter at the time occupied too much of his energy, and dropped out of the medium for the bulk of the decade. He toured with artists such as Frank Zappa and found his songs being recorded by a variety of popular artists. Edelman found great success especially in England, with several of his songs and albums appearing consistently on the U.K. charts, leading to a number of television appearances there. In the U.S., Edelman's songs were recorded by the likes of the Carpenters, Patti LaBelle, and Olivia Newton John, and his "Weekend in New England" became a Top Ten hit for Barry Manilow around the world.

In the '80s, Edelman returned to his earlier interest by scoring several television series, most notably MacGyver. His film career received a major boost when he scored the 1988 comedy Feds for producer Ivan Reitman; this marked the beginning of a lengthy collaboration that included the comedies Ghostbusters II, Kindergarten Cop, Twins and the Beethoven pictures. While Edelman has always been noted for his melodic scores in successful comedies like My Cousin Vinny and While You Were Sleeping, he has also received acclaim for his work in other genres, from the epic battles on the fields of Gettysburg to the propulsive, driving music behind The Last of the Mohicans, a troubled production that nevertheless became an instant classic upon its release in October 1992. His recent scores have included the popular Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, the fantasy Dragonheart, the just-released Sylvester Stallone adventure Daylight (all for director Rob Cohen), the moving children's fantasy Indian in the Cupboard and the Sharon Stone flop, Diabolique. However, all you have to do is turn on any NBC sporting event (the Olympics or even the Super Bowl) and you'll hear any one of a number of Edelman compositions, whether it be his original theme for NFL Football or the theme from the failed Fox comedy-western series, The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.

Upcoming for Edelman are scores for the spring-release Anaconda (yes, it's about a big-time snake), the Touchstone thriller The Sixth Man, and the oft-delayed comedy Gone Fishin' with Joe Pesci and Danny Glover. For the long-term, Edelman hopes to score more dramatic works, as well as become more involved with a variety of other pursuits, including more conducting (his concert-hall suite from Gettysburg was first performed by the Boston Pops last June), a long-planned historical musical, and possible multimedia projects. But for that to happen, the composer says, the grueling pace he's keeping up with in the film music world would have to slow down, and that's not something he wants to do right now. He enjoys the excitement and the opportunities that film composers face, and even though in a few years his energy might wax and wane in the field, right now it's happily occupying his interests.

The composer and I talked on November 15, 1996, a few weeks before the release of Daylight. As always, I would like to thank Mr. Edelman for taking time out of his hectic schedule to talk about his career, his method of film scoring, the Mohicans controversy and why NBC Sports has become home to so much of his music.

Andy Dursin: Did you ever expect to become a film composer in the first place?

Randy Edelman: No. I never had any inkling, or interest, about doing that.

AD: You worked for a long period with producing records and writing songs, touring and all that. How did you make the leap into scoring films?

RE: Well, you have to have a lot of time, I can tell you that. First of all, I was a classically trained musician and I did a lot of things, arranging and conducting, which eventually gave me the tools to be able to do this. Everybody kind of comes to do this from a different place.

When I first came to L.A., when I was very young, I studied with someone, did a few films, and made-for-TV films, learned the technique of [scoring], and also learned that it was a very extremely technical and difficult occupation to be in. What happened is that, when my songs and touring got very busy, I obviously didn't have time to be involved in scoring films. So there was about a 10 or 15 year period when I didn't [compose film music], but I was always interested in it.

It's actually pretty funny. People think that you're limited when you write anything for film because of the picture, whatever it is, and the timing of it, when what's on the screen dictates to you musically what to do. But I always consider it completely the opposite. I thought it was much more creative than almost anything else because, within the limits of that time-frame you have and whatever the image is on the screen, you can do really whatever you want. So I always knew in the back of my head that I wanted to get back to doing this, and eventually when I was discovering the limits of records and songwriting, that whole end of the business, I had in mind to get back to scoring.

I later started doing a lot of television series, like MacGyver, which was really very good experience in cutting your teeth, and that's when all my background as an arranger and a conductor [was helpful], even as a record producer, because you have to go into the studio very quickly when you're doing this stuff, and since you don't have the time to spend a month on the drums when you're doing a record, that's when that experience came in handy.

Eventually, it lead to me doing a lot of television and a couple of small features, then I guess about six or seven years ago, I did a small movie that no one saw called Feds, which Ivan Reitman was the executive producer of. That led to me being involved with Twins, Ghostbusters II and Kindergarten Cop, and all those big, romping comedies.

So that's sort of it in a nutshell! You know, I scored Executive Action, which was the forerunner to JFK, in 1973, so it was way back then when I [first] did a really serious picture. I just got away from it. But there were things around that time that allowed me to get my feet wet and introduce me to the craft and also how difficult and pressurized it was. So it goes back a while but there was this long period when I was doing other things.

AD: So, even though you weren't composing music for film and TV, you were out doing things that did help you out later.

RE: First and foremost, I [consider myself] a musician, even when I was performing in Europe and writing hit songs. That's all I ever was interested in being, that and writing music. And my background as a conservatory graduate and a conductor when I was very young, when rehearsing a band in Lake Tahoe and traveling all over the world, doing that with singers, that's the greatest experience you can have with whipping people into shape fast. And that's a very good tool to have for film scoring. So there are a lot of aspects to things that I have done that give you the chops to do this incredible amount of work under, you know, no time, like three weeks.

AD: Have you had many scores where you've had to write a lot of music under massively tight time-frames?

RE: Oh yeah, like every one. On some of the large ones, like Last of the Mohicans, which is an entire story unto itself, I was brought into that one with no time. I was brought into Indian in the Cupboard with no time. It depends on what the situation is, but on most of them, you just don't have time. You have to work in a climate that isn't the "ultimate," but in a way, to be honest with you, that's part of the puzzle and the excitement of it. Because the fact of the matter is that, if you don't have a lot of time, the director doesn't get a lot of time to screw with you. You give them a long time, and they'll want to putz around with you.

When you come into a film [as a composer], you're the last person in. When I get involved with something, especially one that has very little time, and everyone else has been involved with some of these projects for ten years, and I come in, I have four weeks and I'm making an important contribution. So you're always the outsider when you come into a film.

But what you have to do is to come in, condense your energy, and they have to understand that it's a lot of work, it's a main ingredient in their movie, and the back-stories to the movie, whatever the project is—and there's something that every movie has—don't really interest me. What interests me is what's on the screen, and I have X amount of time, so it's like, "I'm shutting the door, and if you want to come in and bother me, you're going to be taking away from the creativity." So it's an interesting position to be in with all these things going on.

AD: It's interesting that in many cases the shortened amount of time you have to work on a movie is actually an asset for your music.

RE: Basically when you do this, it's very funny, the composer works solely with one person. Forget the studio and the writer and the producers. You work with the director. It's his vision, good or bad. Hopefully they have a vision, and sometimes they don't. So you have to deal with one person, and basically that's who you're dealing with, so when I was saying, "They have more time [to curtail the composer's creativity]," it's really that the director has more time if you have two months instead of one month.

What I've found is that, when you get a certain work situation going, you get up at five in the morning and go for it, break for lunch, and by the end of the day, you have a certain amount done. Whereas the next day, guess what, you're facing more, and it's not that they're bothering you, it's in getting the best possible end product. But they have to understand that you have X amount of time, and you don't want to look at something and write it while you're looking at it. You may want, you know, five minutes to actually think about what you're writing.

The Nature of the Beast

AD: Another element that composers feel curtail their creativity are temp-tracks. Do you think that they're the devil incarnate as some composers do?

RE: Let's put it this way: the temp-track of a movie score is what filmmakers live with for most of the time. They've previewed with the temp-track, they've shown it to the president of the studio, their friends, etc. And what goes on is that you don't have a lot of time to argue with them, and you can't argue with them, and when they use a certain piece of music that has a certain energy, whatever that is, then it is real hard to get them off the feel of that music. Now, you can write a completely different piece of music in thematic form and harmonic structure, but the mood of whatever that piece is, if they believe in it, then you're never going to get them off it. If they open with Barber's "Adagio for Strings," you know the sense and the mood that they want, and you can't get them off that dime so to speak, so you have to deal with it. I just sort of listen to it and understand that, unless I am completely convinced that the mood of the piece is wrong with their film, then you just better not even talk about it, and you know what they're going for. I don't study it, I listen to it once, to hear the pacing of it, but it's very difficult to get them to move off the feeling of all this temp-music. You don't really have time to think about it a lot, it's like breathing to me. There's always a temp-score.

And the other thing that's just as difficult as the mood of the piece is the spotting of the music, because they don't want music where they didn't put it in the temp. You can write the greatest cue in the world, and it can work like gangbusters, and you can record it with a 100-piece orchestra, and in the end, they removed that piece of music because the director got scared. You see the end result and it's like, "What happened?" And then you remember, "Oh yeah, that section of the film didn't have music before," and I find this happens in scores that have a lot of music, which most of them do that I write. You find that they'll say, "We have 50 cues, and we didn't use this one even though it worked great because it's a place where they don't need music," and invariably they'll call me later because I'll always put that piece of music on the soundtrack, and they'll say "You know, we really fucked up!" [laughs] And I'll say, "Well, you know, it's your call."

AD: Have you had many instances where you wish you could have gone back in and changed how the score worked in the finished film, if you had the chance to mix it or spot it differently in the finished film?

RE: Well, you know, I can't really get into that. I can't make a film, Andy, I can only deal with what they did. Every film that I do, I want it to be better. In other words, in every film that I do, I know the director, let's say, who I would have wanted to do it. I wish I could get very specific with you but I probably shouldn't.

So, I'm always scoring the film I want it to be. But by the same token, I can't score something that's not on the screen. But I usually know what the intent was, and that's what I score. I'm trying to score the highest quality without scoring something that's not there. If it's a thriller, I want to imagine it being the best of that genre. If it's something that's magical, I want to score it the same way if it were E.T.

So, I always see things that could have been executed better, but part of my job is to musically enhance it [and] try to help a certain scene that may not have been executed in the "ultimate" way, for whatever reasons. They have problems making films, they have time pressures and all that. I do a lot of things with special effects, like Anaconda which is about a giant snake [due out this spring] and I did Dragonheart, and sometimes I'm dealing with effects that aren't done. I know what the length is and most of what they're trying to do, but the end result is something I may not see, but I've got to score it even when I don't have it all in my hands, because those things always happen at the last moment.

AD: There always seems to be a strong central theme present in your music, something that comes out of the film score that you're able to bring home with you from the theater after the movie is over. Would you say that building a central theme is the cornerstone to your creative approach?

RE: You know, I have a strong kind of melodic background, and that must play into what I do, but I don't go about it that way. Everyone says that about my music, but I don't go about it that way. I go about it in a functional way, but I guess it's sort of part of what I do, without even thinking about it. I think the best film scores are things that you can come away with a musical motif that ties in with the film, no matter if it's a comedy or an adventure or whatever it is. So I guess I naturally do that, but when someone said the other day, "Doesn't everyone do that?," I thought that there are some wonderful composers that isn't their strongest suit, and maybe something else is. But it's not something that I'm conscious of, I just do it naturally.

As I said, it doesn't matter if it's The Mask or My Cousin Vinny, which are fun comedy things, I probably write them the same way thematically as I write Diabolique or The Last of the Mohicans or Gettysburg, which have strong themes in all of them even though they're different. I don't really think about doing The Mask with Jim Carrey running around with a green face, and that he's going to need a funny theme. Or Beethoven, about the dog, and that the dog is going to need a theme. I just sort of do it, and it's sort of obvious to me that there are certain elements that are going to have strong thematic elements.

AD: Another component to your music is its distinctive blend of electronics and orchestra. How do you work your synthesizers into the composition and recording of your music? Are they done separately?

RE: First of all, I do it all myself and I do it all as I'm writing at home. When I do an orchestra, it's a complete live orchestra, there are no keyboards or anything else. So it's part of my background as a pianist and a keyboard player that I love doing that, and I play everything and do everything as I'm writing it, and in the end, all the ingredients are used. But it's never mixed with the orchestra. The orchestra goes on top of the whole system that I have. And everything I do, no matter what it is, I do it in exactly the same way. If it's an Eddie Murphy film with an R&B kind of sound, or something that takes place in the 17th century, I have the same system of doing it even though it sounds different.

The electronics are recorded when I'm writing. I sequence everything, write it and lock it to the picture, and one of the reasons I do that is that I don't like surprises. You don't have room or time for surprises, which will get you into these disastrous situations, which, luckily, I haven't had yet! [laughs] But the reason for doing this is two-fold. First, it serves so that the director can come over here and hear exactly what it's going to be. If he doesn't like it here, the emotion of it, the style, the melodic content, etc., he's not going to like it with a 100-piece orchestra. That way I always find out right away if there are any problems. And if there are any problems, I change it immediately.

So, that system works in a couple of ways. I've just always enjoyed playing, and I also orchestrate everything that way so I play every part. It's just kind of a system that has evolved that is working for me. There have been a couple of times that I've done it differently where I just go in and do it live, but this is sort of the ultimate, controlling way of doing it. There's no room for slip-ups, and everything's locked to the picture. When I go in with the orchestra, it's like having a Mack truck behind me. I also don't have to deal with any intricate things electronically or with the rhythm section because I've done all that before and it's locked with the picture.

AD: Going in specifically to some of the films you've done, you've worked on a lot of terrific comedies with Ivan Reitman and Jonathan Lynn. How hard is scoring comedies compared to the other genres you've dabbled in?

RE: Oh, it's the hardest. Anything else is extremely easy compared to that. In writing a drama, you know the film more or less dictates what you have to come up with. With a comedy, it's like "What is it? What are you writing here?" You don't want to write funny music and it's much more difficult. I like when I'm working on a comedy to also do something else that's more serious at the same time because it gives you some breathing space. Comedies take a lot more thought because first you have to decide what the style of the music is, and that sometimes can be difficult.

In something like My Cousin Vinny, the music doesn't even sound like a score. It's more of a southern rock-and-roll thing that I did and it wasn't meant to sound like a score. But it's very hard to do, and much harder than writing a straight-ahead, large orchestral score, or even something like The Mask where there's a lot of fun going on but I want to surround that with darkness, and also, what's the year that it's taking place? You know, I don't know when it was, and I still don't know when it was! [laughs] So, the music is so important because it gives all of these things a world to live in, and you'd better be right from the beginning, because if you're not, you could throw the whole thing off. I find that it's much more difficult to do than writing something that might seem more complex and adventurous. You know if you're writing Diabolique that you are trying to scare the shit out of somebody. You know what that is, just like if you're writing The Last of the Mohicans or Gettysburg. You know when it's taking the place, and you have a sense of a certain function that you're very clear that the music has to do, and that's not true with comedies.

I've tried to get away from comedies, and unfortunately, [it hasn't happened]. When I did The Mask, I didn't even know who Jim Carrey was. Ace Ventura had just come out, and I had to make a decision. The reason I did it was because this guy was very interesting and brilliant, that was part of it, and then he just exploded so that by the time the movie came out, people were saying "You did The Mask because this guy was so hot," but it wasn't that way. And the same thing happened on My Cousin Vinny, where nobody knew who Marisa Tomei was. I just did them because I thought they were fun, but last year I did While You Were Sleeping, which turned out to be very successful, so it seems that when I do these comedies, they tend to do very well, even though I'm trying to get away from that and do more dramatic stuff.

AD: And with that, how much selectivity do you have in choosing your projects now? What are you looking for?

RE: You know, anybody that doesn't tell you that you can't be very selective [isn't telling the truth] and I'll tell you why. On most of these projects, it's not like someone hires you. The few times when you work with a director, when they greenlight a project a year before they actually need you [and contact you anyway], you know that you're going to do it. But on most of the projects, though, you don't know that you are going to do them before a very short time before you're called, and when you're called, you don't have a lot of time to make up your mind. So, it's kind of like, "Are you done with what you just did? Do you want to do this?" There's not much time and normally you have to make a very instinctive decision and they need the answer right away.

So, you try to be selective in determining, "Is this something that you see musically that can be interesting?" And the answer to the question is sometimes yes, but is the film that well done? The answer then can be no, but [determining the selectivity relies on whether or not] you can do something with it. I just brought up The Mask, because whether or not I thought the film was that well-done [is not important]. What interested me was this character and this guy who I thought was doing this amazing stuff. What interested me about Diabolique was mixing the thriller genre with some of my background in French impressionists. You know, Debussy and Ravel meet Bernard Herrmann. That's what interested me. So as long as I can see what I would like to do, and as long as there can be some kind of interesting musical bent [to the story], sometimes that's why I do it.

People sometimes say, "Why did you do that film?" and the answer is sometimes that I had, at the time, the schedule to do it and I thought musically there was a path to go down that was interesting. That's what's happening on Anaconda, where I don't have much time to see the snake and to analyze it. What I know is that it's something that takes place going down the Amazon in Brazil, and I'm really interested in doing something like that. That's my reason for doing it, and so you can't second-guess these things. You don't know if they're going to do well, [if they have] all the elements, and I have to make a decision without having all these things at my fingertips because the bottom line is that you don't have all the answers when these things come up. It's not like you can sit around and completely pull it apart and go through every reason "to do or not to do it." It's very fast, sometimes it's literally hours you have to decide. As I said, my whole background comes from a musical place, not coming from a place that's like, "Is this film going to be successful? Can I call 14 people to find out about the director?" It's not like that. Most times it's pretty quick.

When I did Gettysburg, I didn't want to do that at all. I mean, it was originally a mini-series and with 15 hours of music, it was a complete nightmare. But I saw the faces of these officers, at the beginning of it, and it completely turned me on. I knew I was going to have to do it.

From the Gettysburg to NBC Address

AD: How much of Gettysburg did you originally score before it was cut down to feature length? How much longer was it?

RE: Originally it was done as a mini-series for Ted Turner. I remember going down to the beach and meeting him, because I always wanted to meet him. I insisted before I said yes to this thing, because he fascinates me, and I didn't really want to do it. It turns out that he was in town for something, so I went down to the beach and I met him. He said, "Oh, I'm going to release this as a feature," and I'm like, oh God, it's six hours long and it was done as a mini-series. What happened was that, when I spotted the music, I could only spot it to what they had shot, which was like a 3 or 4 part mini-series. And I knew that I wouldn't have time to get involved [with the subsequent editing]. It was something that they were going to have to edit because I didn't have the time to go in and re-spot it when they cut an hour or two out of it. So I did it as it was originally intended and then they put it together and had to make certain changes.

AD: Are you happy with the way it turned out?

RE: Yeah, there were a couple of aspects [that didn't work], but the more important element is that, with that project, regardless of what I'm going through and the time pressures and dealing with someone who has a very set thing in their minds because they've spent so much more time [on the film] than I have, is that the music exists and what has happened with Gettysburg is completely amazing. That music closed the Olympics, the Boston Pops debuted the symphonic suite in June, it opened the Super Bowl... I just never dreamed of that. And the CD, the sales of it, were unbelievable for a Civil War thing, something that wasn't a successful feature film. So it's great that you can have something that really strikes a chord, and it can be so successful completely on a musical end and that's terrific. That's just an example of a project that I never dreamed would happen with that music.

AD: Would you call that the big landmark score in your career thus far?

RE: No, Last of the Mohicans was a Platinum album. I wouldn't call it a "landmark" because I have been lucky to have a lot of stuff that's gone on, but it's certainly nice to know that something that, let's put it this way, isn't "commercially" thought of [can have this happen to it]. That the music can have such appeal and across-the-board emotion to people in all areas, and to watch that happen... it's not like you write something and say, "This is going to be used for every American event." I mean, the Army used it last year for this unbelievable documentary they did. So those kind of things have happened, and then you watch the Super Bowl, and out of all the music in the world, [they picked Gettysburg] and you say, "Why are they using this?" And obviously there's something about the triumphant quality of the music in that film that they hooked onto and that's great.

So it's just sort of nice that you go into a room, and you create something on your own, and the music [lives on]. And it's true for many other composers as well, that film scores now have a life independent of the film though that's not what you're thinking about [initially]. Obviously, the film dictated what you created, but it's nice that the music can have a life of its own, and certainly that's happened with my scores, [and even] from films that weren't necessarily successful at the box office.

My most used score is from Come See the Paradise, which was an Alan Parker movie I did about the Japanese internment camps. Everybody knows that music, even though they may not know what it's from. So it's just nice that a certain element of that music struck a chord. The same for Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story... [Canadian skater] Elvis Stoyko won the gold medal to this music in a wonderful martial arts skating performance in the Winter Olympics. It's just nice that this music exists on its own.

AD: How did your whole partnership with NBC Sports develop? I can't turn on a sporting event, be it the Olympics or NFL Football, etc., without hearing some of your music on TV.

RE: That came as a result of what I was just talking about. I didn't even know that they were using so much of my stuff [at first]. I'd turn on the World Series or whatever and it'd be there. I didn't really know it was happening. [laughs] But those guys are great, and that's kind of a neat area. [Later], they had called me and I was in New York, so I went by there, and I ended up writing this theme for their football coverage. And that's how that happened, and then they started using everything. But I actually wrote a specific piece of music for them, which we had a blast recording. It all came out of them responding to about, maybe, a half-dozen scores that I had done that had a certain feeling about them.

AD: I even hear The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. theme frequently...

RE: Well, that was the Olympic theme this past summer. That was an example of either me or my engineer including that [in a package to NBC] and they didn't know it. They liked the fact they didn't know it, it was something that they hadn't heard of, so they ended up calling Warner Bros. who originally owned the music to that. It was originally a Fox series that ran, I suppose, maybe two months. So, they use it as their overall sports theme, but they started using it for the Olympic Trials, and they liked it, and then they used it for the Olympics, and now it's their "nobody knows what that is" [musical theme].

AD: When NBC or whatever network starts using music from your film scores, like Gettysburg, or Kindergarten Cop or whatever, do you get residuals, does the studio get most of them, how does that whole process work?

RE: You get the BMI and ASCAP residuals. For the composer and the publisher, it's like splitting two cents. You get a penny, the publisher gets a penny. On all these situations that you're asking about, the publisher in most cases is the studio. So, everybody participates in it and it's great for everybody. The musicians are compensated in a funny way that goes into a fund that filters down in a different way, but basically it's the composer and the publisher. So it's always that you're compensated even though it may be a few cents every time it's played, and that's how that works.

When they use something for a specific purpose over and over, then they have to get something called a "synch license." So when they take something like Brisco County they can't just play it and pay for the royalties to ASCAP or BMI. They actually have to, for an undisclosed fee, make a deal to use it as an I.D. for something that's theirs. And that's sort of a fine line, and on a lot of those things, they do it without negotiating those rights, and eventually someone will catch them.

AD: So Brisco County is different because it's played over and over again?

RE: No, it's because they're using it in conjunction with a visual image that identifies NBC Sports.

AD: Then when you're going to a commercial and the music comes up while the NBC Sports logo and graphic is on-screen....

RE: Exactly. When it's used in that way, they have to [pay the synch license], and they did.

It's kind of a gray area to say the least, and though normally they want to do it the right way, sometimes these things are put together at the last minute. With the Olympics, they didn't know what they were going to play even three hours before it [aired]. In the end, when they called me about [using] Gettysburg at the very end of the Olympics, where they were doing a 50-minute recap, [someone pointed out that] they always had played Beethoven's "Ode to Joy," and there was a big fight going on down there! [laughs] They wanted to end with Gettysburg, but they had always used Beethoven, but in the end I think they used three minutes from "Ode to Joy" and something like 12 minutes from Gettysburg.

The Last of the Mohican Confusion

AD: There have been lots of rumors and misinformation about how Michael Mann worked on the music with you and Trevor Jones on The Last of the Mohicans. What was the whole story?

RE: First of all, that whole situation was a nightmare. The movie was over budget, there was a mess with the studio, etc. The only reason Morgan Creek got the rights to not just the music and the album but all the overseas rights is because the whole situation was out of control. Even though Daniel Day-Lewis was so great, he wasn't a box-office star, [and the feeling was that] you had this big, three-and-a-half hours long period epic without anybody in it, and this was what I was thrown into. So, basically, this is a known thing.

There wasn't even supposed to be any soundtrack CD. When I put all the music together, not just my music, I was very clear that I put all my stuff on one side of the record and all of what remained of Trevor Jones's music on the other side, so it was very clear [whose music was what] and it has remained that way.

What happened was that Trevor, who I don't really know at all, was the composer on the project and, without getting into details because I don't even know about details or care about them, there were problems. And I was brought in by Fox when I say late in the game, I mean at the 11th hour, and ended up not collaborating, but recommending what to include [from the original score because] I didn't have time. I had to write a shitload of music, and do it quickly, which I did. It ended up a 50-50 split, and that's what happened.

AD: Did you re-score the entire movie?

RE: No, no. I scored what I scored, and they used every second of what I scored. It was just funny, because when we got nominated for the British Academy Awards and the Golden Globes, there was all this stuff out there but it was always clear [whose music belonged to whom]. It wasn't clear what had happened, but as far as my involvement went, it was very clear what I did, which is why I made sure my half-hour or whatever it is of music on that CD is clearly Randy's and the other tracks are clearly Trevor's. There was a lot of stuff that went on with that, but the bottom line is that the movie was a tremendous success, the record is Platinum, and everyone should tip their hat to me instead of giving me a lot of shit. Do you know what I mean? I was the guy who was placed in this terrible position to come in with no time and write a lot of emotional, big stuff, and what I got, and this was not from the participants or Trevor or anything, I got all these strange kind of reactions like "What is this? What happened?"

And to be very honest with you, and it's true, I [still] don't know the specifics. Obviously, there was a problem with Michael Mann and the previous composer. It was my recommendation to keep the previous composer involved, because in this very short amount of time, you have no idea what's going on, or know how crazy it was [for me] to write so much music. I ended up having the best time with Michael Mann, even though everyone refers to him being so difficult. It was all about work, and we just burned 24 hours a day for that amount of time, and in the end, the thing was very successful and the music, right from the get-go, was just astounding. Everybody who saw that film walked out and went to a store to buy the CD, and guess what, it wasn't there! [laughs] Because nobody really ever wanted it to happen, but luckily, at the last second, after we were done recording, I put that album together not even knowing that it was going to be released. In the end, Morgan Creek, who really didn't even have a record label but who had bought the overseas rights to that movie, ended up doing my record, and thank God it was there even though it was a few weeks after the fact. Luckily, they stayed with it, and the album was massively successful, but you don't know how close it was to not happening at all or not being done within the certain amount of time that you can get it together. If they had literally waited for the movie to come out and the album hadn't been together and it was a question of waiting the eight weeks to put it together, it would have been much too late. So luckily, soon as everyone saw the movie and heard the score and realized how terrific it was, they went ahead and did it.

AD: Did they want you to re-score the entire film?

RE: You know what, I don't want to talk about that because there's been so much that's gone on with that that I'd rather not discuss it. Because it doesn't mean anything and I don't really know this other person and there's been so much weirdness going on that to get into... well, you have to remember that the movie wasn't released when it was supposed to. Let's put it this way, it may have been a different story had everybody known that at the time. It was supposed to come out in July. Well, it didn't come out until October, but nobody knew that at the time they were completing the movie. So, it may have been different, and it may have been the same.

It was just too bad that there was so much stuff going on about it but, in the end, all people have to do is look at the music, and look to the scores, and listen to the CDs, and it's very clear, and I'm really glad that I did it that way. Because it could have been like a hodge-podge of this-cut-to-that-cut or cues [pertaining to] the sequence of the movie, and that's the reason why I did it, because in literally five minutes, I had to make a decision on how I would [put the album together], because I was the one who put it all together. It doesn't say that, but basically I was the one.

AD: Did you ever think for a second that, given the horrendous back-story of the film and your experience on it, the project would be so successful in its reaction from critics and audiences?

RE: No, not in that case. I knew the movie was beautiful and wonderful. [However, I still think] that Daniel Day-Lewis never received any credit for what this guy did as an actor in that picture. Just for him to look that way... if you ever saw this guy, he's probably the meekest physically imposing person, he's so gentle. You look at him [in the movie] and you can't believe it. Just the way he moved and pumped himself up, I thought it was great and I never thought he got credit for that.

AD: I was surprised the movie didn't receive a handful of Oscars...

RE: I wasn't shocked. It wasn't one of these overwhelming, $100 million pictures. It did very, very well, but it wasn't like it was [a blockbuster]. So, I wasn't shocked when it wasn't nominated, or he wasn't nominated, or Madeleine Stowe, who was so great in it, wasn't nominated.

As far as the success of these pictures go, I try not to think about it and I really have no idea. I thought Diabolique was going to be very successful, and it was like, "Hello!" I would never have thought something like While You Were Sleeping would be this big, all-over-the-world commercial success. It was a nice cute movie. I thought Indian in the Cupboard was wonderful, and it would be very successful. You just don't know. I have Daylight coming out in a couple of weeks, and I have absolutely no idea how it's going to do. Is it good? Yeah, it's a wonderful ride and it's emotional, it has all the elements, but I really don't know how it's going to go over with all the other pictures that are coming out.

The nice thing about what I do, even though I'm in the pressure cooker, is that, by the time most of these things come out, you're completely engrossed in something else, and it's kind of nice because you're not on the edge of your seat.

For me, the kick of this whole thing is writing the score, going in the room every morning, and by 8 o'clock at night, you've written something that didn't exist at 8 o'clock in the morning. And that's the excitement, having those few moments where you're not blasted out by sound effects and they don't lower the music, a few moments in a movie that's created by so many people that, in the end, at the final mix or the premiere, you feel that you've done it. That's kind of neat, that you did that at three in the morning, not with someone screaming in your ear or by having the studio telling you what the numbers were or what the audience is for this score or that it has to be an urban kind of score or whatever. You have to sit there and make the decision, and it's your decision, and if it works well, in the right way, then in the end, the music adds that element that nothing else can add. That's really what it's all about. •