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Jerry Goldsmith said Leviathan was a better film the last time he scored it (when it was called Alien.
When I met Goldsmith after a concert I mentioned to him that I had liked the Leviathan score, and he said "Thanks. It was a terrible film though!"
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Posted: |
Aug 10, 2021 - 7:11 AM
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By: |
connorb93
(Member)
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Richard Kraft related that when he started as Goldsmith's agent, all of the offers he was getting were bad movies from people who had a history with the composer. His loyalty to his collaborators, although admirable, is what kept him stuck doing bad movies for J. Lee Thompson, George Cosmatos, et al.
I definitely think this is a big part of it. I'm pretty sure agreeing to do LINK is what kept him from doing AN AMERICAN TAIL which he was really disappointed about.
On the other hand, it's just shit luck! A script for a thriller like THE SALAMANDER may sound decent on paper and you can agree to it in advance of seeing just how they handle the material. By then you're locked in! The flipside of that is I recall someone saying that he did KING SOLOMON'S MINES because it was silly and fun.
Overall, you're extremely lucky to be asked to work in Hollywood. It is what it is! I'm a bit surprised a movie like HOLLOW MAN would warrant a composer commentary, but he clearly had some things to say about it. And the last thing he says is "I don't think there will be a sequel. If there is, I hope I do it!"
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I'd work with the people I enjoy, that's more important. Get a good paycheck and work with people you enjoy having around... best thing that can happen to an artist.
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It's also what you get offered. No matter how big a name you are, everyone gets pigeon holed. Goldsmith was the sci-fi-action composer (and he did it amazingly well) and no matter how many Pappilion's or Rudy's he did, those were the scripts he got in the mail.
Theres a story Joe Dante tells about working on Explorers. They just finished spotting the film and Joe was ... not feeling the film (its production was a huge mess). He asked Jerry outright "Do you just go on autopilot when you see this sort of thing?"
"No," Jerry said, "it means I have to try that much harder."
My takeaway from that is a great movie is relatively easy to score - but a bad one, you really gotta dig in.
I think that speaks to how the music score is really the last line of defense, the one and only chance to fix things that just cannot be resolved editorially.
Randy Newman had tons of quotes on this as well, which, even though Randy Newman is quite sardonic, are still telling the truth:
"I think I helped fool people that a movie was better than it was sometimes, like ‘Awakenings’. A good score will not make a movie great but it can improve its IQ by a couple points. ‘James and the Giant Peach’ made a bundle and maybe I was responsible for $340,000 of it. It wasn’t a successful movie but I helped it."
"The way I choose what I’m going to do, of the offers that I get, is how much music matters. There are great movies where it doesn’t matter what the music is … I was going to say ‘Beautiful Mind’, but in that case James Horner did a good score for it. He fooled you a little bit into thinking that movie was a little classier than it was. It does happen."
"Alex North was one of the great film composers of all time. ‘Cleopatra’ was not a good picture but it’s a great score."
In some cases the film score can elevate a movie while in other cases it really makes no difference.
My own perspective of HOME ALONE is it is an uncharacteristically well-made, low-budget movie that easily could have had an inferior score that would have made it a basic John Hughes classic and nothing more. Williams' score really elevated the film far beyond what it really was. However, the film also wouldn't have had staying power with Williams' music alone if it also hadn't been good in and of itself - cinematography, editing, acting, script, production design, all of it.
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Posted: |
Aug 10, 2021 - 4:14 PM
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By: |
John Smith
(Member)
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I remember Jerry Goldsmith's 1989 concert at the Barbican, which was broadcast live on the radio.
JG: "Who here is a Star Trek fan?"
Crowd cheers
JG: "Well, I'm not one."
I’m afraid this is a misrepresentation of what Goldsmith actually said at the concert. I’ve listened to the radio recording many times and have his comments down pat.
His Barbican appearance was a couple of months after the release of Star Trek V; so, not surprisingly, he began the concert with music from this film. After the piece ended he turned to the audience and said: “Thank you very much. Thank you. Are there any Trekkies out here?” The audience reacted with cheers and shouts of “Yeah!” Goldsmith responded with the following: “Oh, that’s terrific! I’m not one. I don’t understand the stories - that’s my problem.”
So far from being dismissive of Star Trek, Goldsmith actually complimented the Trekkies in the audience (unless, of course, you consider his words to be sarcastic). In his usual self-deprecating manner, the composer imputed his lack of obsessive interest in the franchise—Goldsmith specifically mentioned “Trekkies”, not run-of-the-mill ST fans—to a problem he himself had with ST “stories”.
It would be injudicious to see these particular comments as an attempt by Goldsmith to express dissatisfaction with working on the ST movies as composer.
Cheers.
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I listened to, and recorded, the BBC Radio 2 broadcast of the 1989 Barbican concert and what I remember distinctly was this episode:
JG: "Who here is a Star Trek fan?"
Crowd: Cheers
JG: "Well I'm not one!"
But as I've said a couple of times in this thread, these are professional composers, not people who get up in the morning and have to check how they feel before they decide if they can write anything.
They don't have to feel a connection to the work to do their job well, just as I don't have to in my profession.
Cheers
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My guess is while Goldsmith may not have "understood" the Star Trek films or they weren't his "type" of movie, he still got the emotional and dramatic cores of them and was able to score great music for them. I think he just may not have liked the Williams-esque swashbuckling sound that he was asked to establish in the original film, but I think he still enjoyed the craft of putting the music together.
Once your spotting session is done, while you can still review the movie in playback, it was mostly, in those days, about fitting the rhythms to the timing established in spotting. At that point it's pure compositional craftsmanship which Goldsmith clearly enjoyed.
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