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My advice to those disposed to pursue a career in the music business
can be summed up in eight little words...
Get in...
Get lucky...
Get smart...
Get out.
—S.W. PHILLIPS, 2001
Thats good. Stu.
P.s Buck rogers music rocks. Although it may have been Erin Gray was the main reason i watched it!! 
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"Who is Bernard Herrmann and why do we have to keep hearing about him?" - FSM c. 1995.
"What do I sound like this time?" - J. Goldsmith on J. Horner (apocryphal)
"If I had wanted Jerry Goldsmith I would have HIRED Jerry Goldsmith!" J. Cameron (also apocryphal)
"I think I miss him almost every day." - O. Tallguy on J. Horner
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We've often said that Herrmann and Goldsmith would probably have been fine film directors.
We have? Based on what?
Herrmann is one of my very favorite composers, but I think with his people skills, the production would shut down in the first two days!
I don't disagree. But I'm sure I've heard of (successful) directors with worse people skills than Herrmann.
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Excerpt from a Letter to the Editor, written by Bernard Herrmann, published in the NY Times 1945, responding to a negative article by Erich Leinsdorf that had "belittled" film music:
"Music on the screen can seek out and intensify the inner thoughts of the characters. It can invest a scene with terror, grandeur, gaiety, or misery. It can propel narrative swiftly forward, or slow it down. It often lifts mere dialogue into the realm of poetry. Finally, it is the communicating link between the screen and the audience, reaching out and enveloping all into one single experience."
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Here's a good one. After a review called Joe Kraemer's score to the "The Man Who Killed Hitler and Bigfoot" mentioned the music as a "rousing Williams-esque score", the composer said on Twitter:
I can live with "Williams-esque" 
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"Music is my life." -Carlos12_123
Wins the prestigious Bill Carson Post of the day award and should go in favourite posts.
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I read somewhere quite a while ago, and I've never been able to track down the source, that Randy Newman once said, probably in the late sixties or early seventies, about film composers: "There's John Barry, and then there's everybody else." If anyone else can shed light this, I'd appreciate it.
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Just saw this on the madly thread. Not a quote about the business of filmscoring but i love composer anecdotes like this that give insight into legendary scores..
According to Francis Lai: "When I refused [to score Love Story] a second time, [actor] Alain Delon, who was in Los Angeles with Bob Evans, called me and insisted that I see the film. When I reminded him of my dislike of airplanes, he and Bob Evans flew to Paris and showed me the film on Alain Delon's screening room at his house in Paris. I came out of the screening incredibly moved. I went straight home, sat at my keyboard and wrote that theme that very night."
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Posted: |
Sep 14, 2023 - 5:51 PM
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By: |
Howard L
(Member)
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“I have been an admirer of Jerry Goldsmith from the moment I heard his score for THE BLUE MAX and A PATCH OF BLUE. Along with John Williams, these two men have dominated the arena of great movie music for nearly 20 years. Jerry’s scores range from the unforgettable PATTON to his Oscar winning music for THE OMEN. In between, there came such rousing challenges as STAR TREK—THE MOTION PICTURE, THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY, CHINATOWN, PAPILLON, ALIEN, over 100 scores.
Now with POLTERGEIST, Jerry has met his greatest challenge—to scare us nearly to tears and he has been remarkable in his efforts. Cleverly, the moments of greatest tension arise not from his brilliant off-rhythm ostinatos but more from a soothing tonal beauty.
Don’t trust his melodies. Something perfectly unworldly is due to occur the moment you let your guard drop and Goldsmith proceeds to feign and attack with no apparent rhyme or pattern. It’s to his credit that he has plotted every blow and designed a score of such shattering intensity that night time is perhaps not the right time to hear this album if you have seen the film. If you haven’t seen POLTERGEIST, Jerry’s music conjures many classical impressions of ferocious drive and at the same time, cathedral beauty. So…let the imagination wander. Pleasant dreams.”
Steven Spielberg
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Posted: |
Sep 14, 2023 - 11:21 PM
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By: |
oregstevens
(Member)
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For whatever reason, this excerpt from Arthur Knight's review of Lost Horizon (1973) has always stayed with me. The fact that movie critics rarely mention music or, if they do, it's to cast a cheap, negative dig [see Pauline Kael on Hawaii, or worse, John Simon on Obsession*] this analysis by Knight seems oddly specific and random:
"This is Bacharach the student of Darius Milhaud rather than Bacharach the hit songwriter. His mood is even more apparent in the extensive underscoring for the film, which includes an impressively intricate contrapuntal interlude that sets a dominant love theme against a gradually diminishing, harshly dissident countertheme. "
https://www.unz.com/print/SaturdayRev-1973mar24-00108/
* as I recall, Kael described Hawaii's music as designed to sell albums.
Simon said of Herrmann's Obsession: "I'm not sure what Herrmann died of, but I wouldn't rule out shame as a possibility." https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_B-QCAAAAMBAJ/page/n59/mode/2up
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“A film score will live longer than any other kind of music,” Herrmann was quoted as saying in "Listening to the Movies.
Scorsese on Herrmann's score for "Taxi Driver": "His music is like a vortex: it goes deeper and deeper and deeper. It has a feeling that it never comes to completion, and it starts all over again—just when you think it's finishing, it starts all over again. It's kind of like a whirlpool, a vortex, an emotional one, a psychological one—and it has deep psychological power."
The Oscar-nominated documentary on Herrmann, "Bernard Herrmann: Music for the Movies", is the source of the quote that others have cited about music saving a film, but not making the producers rich. Also, starting at approximately 38:55, the documentary has a wonderful quote as Claube Chabrol is being interviewed about the music for "Psycho." Here is a link to the documentary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36Bej6w8yXQ
It's a wonderful way to spend an hour with Herrmann, his colleagues, family, and artists who love film music.
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