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Posted: |
Dec 2, 2021 - 12:42 PM
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By: |
c8
(Member)
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I feel like I'm borderline spamming this thread so I apologize.
One thing this thread also got me thinking about is that we really haven't discussed "Sing the Wee" at all.
So when I've been referencing the shooting script, I've been looking at this: https://www.figmentfly.com/legend/script3c.html
By all accounts that is probably the script that was filmed with some minor dialog edits here and there (and certainly different songs/lyrics as My True Love's Eyes is slightly different and Bumps and Hollows completely missing). It can be inferred from the different cuts and evidence in the editing (especially in the DC) that anything missing was probably meant to be there and anything out of order was indeed shuffled in the editing booth.
That said, Sing the Wee. I always wondered what that was about. I'm guessing whatever sequence it was to be featured in probably was shot and cut given that Goldsmith went out of his way to record an album version of it and integrate it into his end credits.
Sure enough there's a place for it in the script between "The Riddle" and "Forgive Me" in the score. The lyrics are different, but after Jack and the faeries drink to his solving of the riddle, they were supposed to set off to find the unicorns. Instead of "Forgive Me" starting (tracked with the main title) and Jack calling out for Lili, the faeries were supposed to sing on their trek to the unicorns (!).
GUMP
That we must. But first, we better
see that no harm's come to the
unicorns.
SCREWBALL
I sadly fear the worst....
Gump claps his hands and everyone is magically
holding luminous flower lanterns.
46C-46D DELETED
47 EXT UNICORN DEATH ARENA NIGHT 47
The faerie procession moves out of the woods onto
the frozen meadow.
FAERIES
(singing together)
What can you do when there's
Nothing to be done?
Sing a little song
And have fun, fun, fun....
The Silhouette of the ice-glazed unicorn is
glimpsed in the glow of the faerie lanterns. The
mare stands guard
Led by Jack, the faeries run towards the recumbent
stallion.
Gump stoops and picks up an arrow dropped by the
goblins.
GUMP
(studying arrow)
This is goblin's work....
Revised 6 June 1984
Suddenly the mare charges. Gump runs for cover.
I didn't agree with many of Scott's changes (the extended script is a fascinating read) but cutting "Sing the Wee" was the right call. Its darn near ludicrous where it was intended in the film and I'm sure the song would slow the forward motion of the film to a halt.
Basil, to your point about Tom Cruise, I always thought his performance got better the more he was given to do down in the dungeon. Sadly, if you look at that script, that's where Scott seemed to chop up the film the most. Instead, he dwells far too long on the parts where Cruise just stares dumbfoundedly into the camera at the start of the film.
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Ahhh I see. So the Arrow Blu-ray that I have includes the U.S. version and the Director’s cut.
Yes, and I was mistaken about the Psycho II bits being exclusive to the UK.
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That said, Sing the Wee. I always wondered what that was about. I'm guessing whatever sequence it was to be featured in probably was shot and cut given that Goldsmith went out of his way to record an album version of it and integrate it into his end credits.
I've long believed "Sing the Wee" as heard on the album was just a demo -- the singers are all performing in trained, operatic style; they're not trying to mimic the characters in the film. I suspect Ridley Scott after hearing the demo ultimately decided "Thanks, but no thanks" and abandoned it -- but Goldsmith was so fond of the song he used it in the end titles, and included the demo on the album.
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I've long believed "Sing the Wee" as heard on the album was just a demo -- the singers are all performing in trained, operatic style; they're not trying to mimic the characters in the film. I suspect Ridley Scott after hearing the demo ultimately decided "Thanks, but no thanks" and abandoned it -- but Goldsmith was so fond of the song he used it in the end titles, and included the demo on the album.
I agree with him. I often do, obviously, but here, specifically, keeping it in the score just because it's great music is justified by how great the music really is. It makes the concept of "music inspired by" feel less inherently criminal.
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Finally gave myself an opportunity to listen to this music. So far, the main thing I have to say about this music is where has this been all my life it’s so beautiful, though the synths take a little getting used to. Thank you, Yavar, for directing this music my direction.
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That said, Sing the Wee. I always wondered what that was about. I'm guessing whatever sequence it was to be featured in probably was shot and cut given that Goldsmith went out of his way to record an album version of it and integrate it into his end credits.
I've long believed "Sing the Wee" as heard on the album was just a demo -- the singers are all performing in trained, operatic style; they're not trying to mimic the characters in the film. I suspect Ridley Scott after hearing the demo ultimately decided "Thanks, but no thanks" and abandoned it -- but Goldsmith was so fond of the song he used it in the end titles, and included the demo on the album.
I love this song. It reminds me of how Mahler treated folk elements in his symphonies.
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The last copies are available, according to Music Box Records on Facebook.
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Depending on exactly how soon it sells out, this may go through 2000 copies even faster than Varese's Lionheart DE did last year... for anyone on the fence about picking this up for only 4 more minutes or so of music, we discuss (and substantially play) the previously unreleased music in this podcast episode with new notes writer Jeff Bond and old notes writer Paul MacLean* both joining us.
https://goldsmithodyssey.buzzsprout.com/159614/9568664-odyssey-soundtrack-spotlight-legend-1985
Yavar
*from the Silva expansion three decades ago!
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Posted: |
Oct 24, 2022 - 9:33 PM
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By: |
c8
(Member)
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I’ve been doing some playing around with the music not in the movie (Director’s Edition) and have some ideas. Save for the Goblin opening, faerie dance, an elongated armoring, and maybe a more coherent trip in the dungeon, the movie Goldsmith scored may not have been as distant from the director’s cut as it might have seemed at first blush.
Theory: Darkness Arisen, Playmates/Fry Pan Fight, Playmates 2:42-end, and the first 1:52 of Oona were to play back to back to back. More to follow.
*Darkness Arisen clearly goes with a slightly longer scene where Darkness commands Blix and Pox to get the mare. The female choir would go with a longer shot of dawn coming. Indeed the script calls for dawn to creep into the forest as opposed to a (clearly out of place from the ending) shot of the sun rising; quite possible Scott never got the shot due to the fire and Goldsmith wrote the female choir to a "scene missing" card. Anyhow, if you start the male chanting with Pox’s line “its essentially true….on the other hand” (started while we still see dawn) then it syncs perfectly to Darkness going on becoming increasingly agitated. The male choir increases in intensity and volume as Darkness lectures the goblins. Then, the synth stinger and the end of the cue perfectly syncs both in time and imagery as Darkness slowly flys off and commands the Goblins to get the mare.
*I didn’t realize there’s an ostinato that Scott excised from the movie. It appears in the first part of Oona, the first part of Forgive Me, and the last 30 seconds of Playmates. It seems to be associated with Jack and the faeries trekking through the snow to get to Darkness’ lair. And it gives these scenes some much needed momentum. Scott shot himself in the foot and slowed things down to a crawl by his mucking with the music. He seems to favor a slower, gloomier approach by misappropriating the main title and The Freeze. I never appreciated this until I synced it all back up.
*Anything for the lair (Playmates/Hall of Columns, The Jewels, the second part of Oona, The Dress Waltz) seems to be far more mystical and haunting in nature. You always hear fragments of “The Dress Waltz” floating around in the dungeon music. This becomes relevant a few points later.
*It seems like the consensus is that the first part of Forgive Me goes with the trek through the snow prior to Jack finding the unicorns. I agree though I just had some user error in getting it to sync. I love the urgency in the cue. The use of the main title here is just so distracting. Goldsmith’s music has a direly needed urgency that Jack and the faeries’ journey needed.
*The consensus is that the opening of Oona accompanies the trek to the Great Tree. If you start the opening of Oona (which I'm calling "The Swamp"; its its own cue entirely unrelated to the actual Oona cue and should not be joined together) at Gump’s line “we follow the tracks in the snow” it syncs perfectly up to the appearance of Meg (as was said before). The remainder of the Oona cue then plays out in the proper place in the movie when Jack reveals that Oona is not as she seems after Jack and co fall into the dungeon. "The Swamp" works unbelievably well over the trek to the great tree and adds a sense of urgency but also mystery and playfulness with Screwball “going first." Its tragic Scott didn’t use this cue. The slowed down “The Freeze” is just so inappropriate here, especially given how blatantly the cue was messed with.
Now to answer a question that hasn’t been answered yet.
*No one seems to know where the last 30 seconds of Playmates goes. Many have said it would go in the dungeon when Jack and the faeries are setting up the dinner plates. However, given my previous points, note that the ostinato doesn’t fit in any of the dungeon music Goldsmith composed. Its orchestration is so similar to "The Swamp" and the opening of Forgive Me that it seemingly only fits in the trek through the snow. I’d like to postulate it accompanies Jack and Gump’s return to Brown Tom and would play immediately following the “Fry Pan Fight” part of Playmates as I alluded to above. If you start Playmates at 2:42 in the movie where we cut to Gump running toward Brown Tom (after Lily is captured), the ostinato syncs perfectly to Gump and Jack running toward Brown Tom, then the Darkness “doy-ing” syncs perfectly to the cut of Brown Tom’s “corpse” (the second “doy-ing” just before the cut away from Brown Tom). The two "doy-ings" also tie back perfectly to the same "doy-ing" heard when Brown Tom is shot by the arrow in Fry Pan Fight (sounds like same synth patch played at different intervals). The urgent playing of the faerie theme perfectly syncs to Gump trying to rouse Brown Tom (though it seems slightly too urgent which may disprove my theory but then again Goldsmith may have scored the movie before the decision was made to have Alice Playten dub David Bennett and Bennett may have played it more urgently). The cue then also ends perfectly in sync with Brown Tom coming to.
Also, a side note, has anyone tried syncing Hall of Columns back up? Unless I did something spectacularly wrong, if you start Playmates at 00:46 while Darkness’s father is telling him to “woo her and make her one of us,” (the brooding start to the cue perfectly emphasizing that line) it still syncs almost perfectly. I’d read over the years it didn’t fit and thought so myself… but this didn’t seem to be the case at all. And it’s spectacular.
So in summary, my theory is that in the cut Goldsmith scored, this would have been the film order of the cues:
1) Main Title
2) The Goblins
3) My True Love's Eyes
4) The Cottage
5) The Unicorns
6) Living River
7) Bumps and Hollows
8) The Freeze
9) The Faeries
10) Faerie Dance (alternate)
11) The Riddle
12) Sing the Wee (see an earlier post of mine; the script calls for a faerie song here)
13) Forgive Me
14) The Armor
15) Darkness Arisen
16) "Fry Pan Fight" (:00-:45 of Playmates)
17) "Brown Tom Down" (2:42-3:20 of Playmates)
18) "The Swamp" (:00-1:52 of the CD track Oona/The Jewels; should be its own cue and not lumped in with Oona)
19) Oona
20) Hall of Columns (0:46 to 2:41 of Playmates)
21) The Jewels
22) The Dress Waltz
23) Darkness Fails
24) The Ring
25) Reunited
And as I noted in an earlier post, Goldsmith recorded synth pickups for My True Love's Eyes (though that may just be a demo version left in the film), The Freeze, The Faeries, and to bridge the hacked down ending between "The Ring" and "Reunited" that, obviously, do not feature in any release of the score. There also appears to be a synth stinger pickup for The Dress Waltz in the movie that comes before the one on the recorded track to accommodate some editing to when Lily is revealed in the black gown. I don't think this unreleased material would likely qualify for "alternate status" as they're just fragments meant to help a score work in a movie that was being butchered. As has been mentioned before, Goldsmith very likely did those pickups quickly and under duress and as such were not a part of principal scoring and thus would not have been with Mike Ross-Trevor's archives of the sessions.
It appears as well that Goldsmith indeed left the dungeon largely unscored (a wise move as the ambient sound design works very well in those moments). I'm in the camp that the dinner plate battle didn't really need music and was made worse by the inappropriate tracking of Psycho II and the library action stuff. Meanwhile, if you notice what Goldsmith did score in the dungeon, its only the scenes with Lily, Oona, or the climax. That adds gravitas to the story points centered around Lily.
When you resync the cues not in the movie, most of them still fit and paint a VERY different musical picture, one of more urgency and drive. You see Goldsmith's score functioning superbly where it needs to and staying out of the way when its not needed. Thus, I think it can be safely said that save for the examples noted above we are in possession of the entirety of Goldsmith's score for the movie and Music Box's release is as complete as Legend can and would ever be.
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The mastering on this soundtrack is wonderful. I always liked this soundtrack but I wondered why I didn’t love it. I do now. To me in the previous releases the electronics sounded harsh. They seemed like they were dubbed in and not part of the original orchestra. It now sounds natural and cohesive.
There are hardly any differences in sound between the Silva Screen and the Music Box (it is obvious that the music comes from the same source), though there are between the Up-Art and the later one releases.
I'm a die hard fan of the score and have several releases so far (the original Up-Art LP and CD, the Silva Screen, and now the Music Box). If you can get just one, of course the Music Box is the latest and overall "best" version of this score, but there is no need to upgrade from the Silva Screen unless you absolutely must have the additional 4 minutes of music and the correct opening for "The Unicorns". (Which personally, yes, I had to have those, I had to have the Music Box release. But sonically, the Music Box and the Silva Screen are pretty much on par. Not that there was anything wrong with the Silva Screen anyway.)
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)Goldsmiths.
