Film Music

Paul Tonks

The Pocket Essential

FILM MUSIC

www.pocketessentials.com

First published in Great Britain 2001, revised 2003 by Pocket Essentials, P O Box 394, Harpenden, Herts, AL5 1XJ, UK

Distributed in the USA by Trafalgar Square Publishing, PO Box 257, Howe Hill Road, N orth Pomfret, Vermont 05053

Copyright © Paul Tonks 2001, 2003 Series Editor: David Mathew

The right of Paul Tonks to be identified as the author of this w ork has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated, without the publisher’s prior consent, in any form or binding or cover other than in which it is published, and without similar conditions, including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publication.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 1-903047-63-3

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

Book typeset by Wordsmith Solutions Ltd Printed and bound by Cox & Wyman

For Rebecca, my ‘confoundedly attractive woman’

Acknowledgements
Glen Aitken, Steve Bartek, Jonathan Broxton, James Cox, Paul Duncan, Keiron Earnshaw, Robin Esterhammer, Michael Giacchino, Rudy Koppl, Ian Lace, Geoff Leonard, Paul Lewis, Dick Lewzey, Carl Ogawa, Matthew Peerless, Steve Race, Deanne Scott, Elliot Thorpe, Robert Townson, Michael Voigt, Mark Walker, Debbie Wiseman, the British Academy Of Composers And Songwriters, Garrett Axford Public Relations And Marketing, Mum, Dad, and all the directors/composers who have inspired my writing. ‘As much to the crew of the Enterprise, I owe you my thanks.’

CONTENTS

1. You Ain’t Heard Nothing Yet......................................7 2. The Golden Age........................................................11 3. Anything Goes.......................................................... 21 4. Commercial Instincts ...............................................36 5. Romance Ain’t Dead ................................................ 53 6. Millennium Falcons ..................................................75 7. Hitting The Right Note ............................................. 88 8. Reference.................................................................. 92

1. You Ain’t Heard Nothing Yet
Wheth er yo u’re someone who has just d iscovered film mu sic, someone ob lig ed to learn more for educational p urpos es , or a lo ng-stan din g geek fan, th is book is res pectfully y ours. Compiled h ere is an intro duction to the film compos er’s craft in chro nolo gical order. E ach chapter tak es a perio d in h isto ry and namechecks the writers who made a d ifference, and observes what was happening in th e in dustry to make differences warranted and po ssible. Th e names go by fast, but ho pefully with cro ss-referencin g and albu m recommen datio ns at the end, the most important ones stay in the memory. Whenever music is w ritten to s uppo rt so meth ing else it is called ‘applied’ as oppo sed to ‘p ure’. So its categorization as ‘applied music’ help s give a literal answer. For ou r purpos es , a more specific d efinition is that it’s music applied to su pport th e actio n of a theatrically released film. New so ngs are written, old ones are re-us ed , classical pieces are qu oted from, and so metimes the so und effects th emselv es are deemed mu sic. All of these will be mention ed in context, but it’s the wo rk of the film compo ser th at’s concentrated o n. Beg in b y as kin g you rs elf the following ques tio ns: w hat makes the title scroll o f a Star War s movie exciting? Wh y is th e tin y d ot o f a camel in v as t desert sand s s o beau tiful in La wrence O f A rabia ? Wh at’s so frig htening abou t a deliv ery van appearing on the horizon at the en d o f Se7en ? Wh y is Scarlett O ’Hara’s sun set s ilh ouette so heartbreak ing in Gone With The Wind? Wh y do we ju mp at Syd ney opening an empty clo set do or in Scream? In Ver tig o, h ow d o we kn ow that M adelin e is goin g to th row herself out the to wer wind ow and that Scotty wo n’t be able to sav e h er? The ans wer to each is the music. The composers manip ulate ou r emotions . By whatever method it is realised, film music is th e uns een narrative vo ice communicating everyth ing we need to feel. It can dup licate, contradict, or even act regardless of the actio n and dialogu e. Take it away, and it is miss ed . That said, it’s a curious fact that mos t audiences are n ev er aware of a film’s mus ic. L ight may trav el faster than sou nd, but do es th at excus e people’s general reaction o f n ot recallin g any music? Th is is the main reas on for an ongo ing dis reg ard for the film comp oser’s art. To th is can be ad ded d isdain fro m the clas sical realm fo r it no t bein g ‘pure’. Also a refusal to

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acknow ledge its unchang ing orchestral form by the ever-changin g p op music world . With s o much combined ignorance, it’s a wo nder it s tayed po pular in the ind ustry. Yet there are more orchestral scores being written and b eing released today than ever. Ano ther curiou s fact about co ntemporary audien ces is that 90 % leave the cinema (or stop the vid eo/DVD ) as soo n as the end credits beg in to roll. Unless there’s a rare con tin uatio n o f footage or so me b loo pers , no on e’s in teres ted in a list of names w ith mus ical backin g. It us ed to be th at comp osers w ere g iven this time for a score su ite. This time is now generally given to s ong placemen t. Fo r Titan ic (19 97), the big gest ever cin ematic and film music s ucces s story, that time went to ‘M y Heart Will Go On’. Its album so ld over 25 million co pies world wide, an d th e son g s tayed at Number 1 in US charts for sixteen week s. T he dis crepancies here are, how could a score be so popu lar if it wasn ’t generally no ticed, and h ow could a song do so w ell if few stayed in their seats to hear Celine Dion? Sin ce a larg e propo rtion of sales accrued prior to the film’s releas e, the an swer comes down to how the mark eting -o riented indus try wo rk s to day. To understan d that properly, we have to jo urney back b efore th e real-life ocean lin er s et sail.

The Rest Is Silents
Uncertain ty abo ut app lying so und to film dates back to th e beginn ing s of cinema, b efore the technology was availab le to make use o f it. Mus ical acco mp an imen t p receded the first ‘talk ie’ by a number of years thoug h. After the Lumière broth ers set th e wheels o f this new indus try in motion with footage of a s team engine (1 895), fickle au diences wanted more and more sp ectacle. Long er pieces o f film begat an entire sto rylin e, first in The Great Tra in R obbery (19 03). Arou nd that time it b ecame common to have a pian o improv ising to what was on screen (and neatly h iding the clanking projector n oise). Thou gh classicist Camille Sain t-Saëns was commissioned to pro vide a score fo r L’As sass ina t du Duc de Guis e (190 8), it was the 20 s before a music-pu blishin g clerk n amed Max Winkler devised a s hort-lived sy stem of providing pian ists w ith cue sh eets of ex isting pieces. Simu ltaneou s to th at taking effect, the major Hollywo od s tud ios began s pending vast sums of mo ney experimenting with s ound techno logies. Warner Broth ers us ed th e Vitapho ne s ystem to s ynchronise a soun d d isc of rudimentary effects to their p remiere of Don Juan (19 26). History

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reco rds an au dience reaction that w as cas ually ind ifferent to the experience. Th e followin g y ear the studios sig ned the Big Five Agreement to delay the in trodu ction of synchro nised so und until they agreed on one sys tem and were confid en t o f its us efu lness . Fortu nately they were almo st immediately reas sured o n all counts. M ere mon ths later, Warner again made histo ry with th e words ‘Yo u ain’t h eard n oth ing y et’ bursting fro m Al Joh nson in The Jazz Sin ger (192 7). It was a s traightforward demo nstration o f simple microph one placemen t, bu t it laid the gaun tlet fo r the in dustry. Wh ile d irectors like Alfred Hitchcock langu ish ed in attempts to h ide reco rding eq uipment in flo werp ots fo r Blackmail (19 29), the idea of a fully s ynchron ised ‘talkie’ was s uddenly po ssible and d es irable. It s eems inconceivable today that Leon ardo DiCaprio and Kate Win slet might have b een left mo uthing sweet no things w hile a screencard interrupted to ann ounce: ‘Iceberg , roigh t ahead!’ Classical pieces were the easies t musical ap plication with sou nd techn olog y in p lace. At th e s tart of Un iversal’s reign o f h orror greats, Bela Lugo si’s Dr acula (19 31) benefited from the s oulfu l strain s of Tchaik ovsk y’s ‘Swan Lake’. Some studio s went a step furth er and asked con temp orary class ical compos ers to write pieces to be ad ded later. Stravinsky an d Hols t both work ed o n s cores that never s aw the ligh t of d ay, but Sho stako vich graduated from years as an improvisin g pian ist to being as ked to write something to perfo rm alo ngside New Ba bylon (1 929). T hen he scored A lone (19 30), which was h is n ative Russ ia’s first soun d film. The real turnin g point came co urtesy of Austrian-born Max Stein er, affectionately dub bed the ‘Father of Film Mu sic’. He arriv ed in Hollywo od at the end o f a s treak of M usicals , which were one way the ind ustry had emb raced the use of s ound . At the start of th e 3 0s there w as still a co mmonly held con cern that cinema au diences wou ldn’t u nderstan d where a full musical underscore wou ld b e comin g from. It to ok the bravery of RKO produ cer David O. Selznick to get past that and instru ct Steiner to co mpo se one for Symph ony Of Six M illion (19 32). Th e result sh ook those no tio ns apart and almos t immediately led to th e creation of mus ical departments within th e majo r stu dio s. As res ident musical director o f RKO for several years (before moving onto Warn ers ), he had his pick of projects . It was his King Kong (1 933) that s ign ified the dawn o f a n ew era. Wh en ev er thanked by admirers fo r in venting film mus ic, Steiner wo uld brus h co mpliments away and point them in the direction of late German roman tic co mp oser Richard

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Wagn er (whos e work had ap peared in film as early as 19 15 with The Birth Of A Nation). In his op inion Wag ner would hav e been the fo remost film compos er. All of which is in referen ce to the leitmotif – th e idea o f linking th e appearan ces of a p ers on, place, or thin g togeth er with a recurring mu sical p hras e. It may seem commonplace an d commo n s en se to day, but for film it began with Kon g. T he ape’s th ree-note motif is as simple an idea as Jo hn Williams wou ld later create for Jaws . We feel and fear h is p resen ce when not actually on screen becau se of this mo tif. We su spend dis belief for th e sto p-motion pup pet because of its p ower an d no bility. Its importance for th is film, an d the craft from then on cann ot be s tressed en ough . It gave licen ce for the opening of a film to featu re a mus ical overture introducing principal themes. It also meant a brief repris e cou ld accompany the au dience’s exit, b ack in a Go lden Ag e when th ere were no long lis ts o f names to read .

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2. The Golden Age
‘The G olden Age’ is on e of several terms bandied about witho ut an yone really bothered with defining what it mean s, w hen it started , when it en ded, or why. Where film mu sic is concerned, it roman tically means a p eriod when its craft matched the artistry of the films themselves, uns ullied by commercialism or committee decisio n-making. Th at p eriod arg uably starts at Steiner’s King Kong with its in tellectu alised methods . It had an immediately ob viou s influ en ce on how scores were written . Ev ery thing that previou sly falls in to the Silent film category sho uld be s ep arated fro m the defin ition, bu t chrono logically this igno res much that sho uldn ’t be fo rg otten. Worth ies include the previo usly mention ed Mu sicals, the wo rk s of Ed mun d M eisel on Th e Battles hip Potemkin (19 25) and Octo ber (19 27), and even the en caps ulation o f American goo d humour desp ite its Depression Era in Charlie Chaplin’s sketched and h ummed tu nes for the likes of City Lights (193 1). Th es e all co ntrib uted to the s tyles and app roach es of later wo rk s. If Ko ng is to be taken as th e starting po int however, then it’s the richly dramatic style th at distinguishes its elf fro m wh at came before. Steiner went on to produce some o f the most memorab le film s cores in histo ry. He p ut th under under the hoov es o f The Cha rge Of The Light B riga de (1 936), and a go lden glow of emo tio nal beauty an d fortitude behind Tara’s life story in Go ne With The Wind (193 9). L ater he became inextricably linked to the b es t o f Humphrey Bog art’s career durin g th e popu larity of film noir. Virgin ia City (1 940), Th e Big S leep (1 946), Th e Treas ure Of The Sier ra Ma dre (19 48), and Key Largo (1 948) are all scores that s ustain the class ic imag e of Bogart as everybo dy’s favo urite gang ster/gu ms hoe. Steiner’s co ntrib ution to Casab lan ca (194 2) d emon strates jus t how pow erful mus ic can be. ‘As Time Goes By’ was actually w ritten b y Herman Hup feld fo r a Broadway sho w a decade earlier, but Steiner’s integ ration of th e melody into his underscore makes it inseparable fro m the film. The result is a son g th at acts as a s napsh ot o f a time, place, character, mood , and range of emotions that are in stantly recognisable and endles sly spoo fab le. He was n ot averse to being influ en ced himself of cours e. With The Ad ventures Of Don Ju an (1949 ) we find the real core of what’s con sidered Golden Ag e mus ic. In Errol Flynn, Hollywoo d discovered and developed on e of th e first Su pers tars. One word su ms u p the mu sic and th e man : sw as hbuckle. You’ll often hear abou t ‘Golden Age film compos ers ’ an d this

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refers to u p to a dozen names. Where Steiner is seen to have been influenced, co urtesy of Flynn’s career, is in th e style ins tig ated b y fellow Viennese compos er, Erich Wolfgang Ko rn gold. Captain Blo od (19 35) lau nched Ko rngold’s and Flynn’s careers and als o in itiated a new generation o f adventure epics . His style is characterised by furio usly fast action music domin ated b y b rass , and aching ly bittersweet lo ve themes domin ated by strings . It’s a robu st statement of regal grandeur combin ed w ith p as sio nate ro mance (in both senses ). The Adventu res Of Ro bin Hoo d (1938 ), The Private Lives Of Eliza beth And E ssex (19 39) and The Sea Ha wk (194 0) all carry the style. Wh en John Williams was asked for a particular s ound in the 70s , it w ould be to these that d irector George Lucas wou ld tu rn fo r inspiration . Place the main titles of Korngo ld’s King’s Row (194 2) next to Sta r Wars (197 7), and you have o ne of the most ob viou s examples o f stylis tic inheritance. When y ou con sid er h ow much the Sta r Wa rs trilogy has in tu rn influenced cinematic trend s, Korngo ld’s s ign ificance sho uld be very apparent. The amazing th ing is he o nly scored a to tal of 1 6 films, yet these core swashb ucklers affected the careers o f ev ery co mpo ser who follow ed suit. Alfred Newman w orked on man y co stume ep ics in an enormous career sp an nin g almost 2 50 s co res . In the immediate wake of the adv en ture epic’s po pularity he prod uced Th e Ma rk Of Zorro (1 940), S ong Of Fur y (19 42), The Black Swa n (19 42), Captain From Cas tile (1947 ), and Pr ince Of Foxes (194 9) to name only a few. Apart fro m s ustainin g the sy mph onic soun d, Newman is also respo nsible for so meth ing else Star War s owes a d eb t of th an ks to. His 20 th Centu ry Fox fanfare h as never seemed more at ho me th an in p recedin g the s pace trilog y. It was co mp osed du ring h is p erio d as Head of th e s tudio’s mus ic departmen t. Like Steiner at RKO, the position in volved collating co mp osers, instru mentalists, orchestrators and tech nicians togeth er u nder one roof. All this was in ad dition to writing his o wn scores, where something in the string writing often s ugges ted a religiou s sp irituality (altho ugh h e w as in fact a non-practicing Jew). In cond uctin g, he wou ld encourage a great d eal of ex pression an d v ibrato (exaggerated wobble) in the string performan ces. His score to The So ng Of Berna dette (19 43) came after a long line of s ucces sful work s where th is particu lar s ound can be h eard, such as : The Pr iso ner of Zenda (1 937), Th e Hurr icane (19 37), Wuth er ing H eights (1939 ), The Hun ch back Of Notre Dame (193 9), and

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How Green Was My Valley (19 41). With Ber nad ette however came a turning po int that touched many things simultaneously. Res earching th e imp ortant scen e o f a v ision of the Virg in M ary, N ewman hit upon wh at epitomises his imp res sio nistic s tyle. As op posed to Steiner’s more specific leitmotifs, Newman instead drew fro m the mood an d requiremen ts of scenes. The res ult o f th e impress ions comin g together for this score was an Academy Award, and so meth ing almos t completely unheard of even as late as the 4 0s: an albu m of th e dramatic underscore. Up to this po int, it wasn ’t p oss ible for anyon e to be a s ound track collector. So me vagu e no tio n of usin g popu lar s ongs in unison w ith a mo vie had begun in th e Silent era. Th e n otion g rew w ith the su ccess of Dis ney’s Snow Wh ite An d The Seven Dwar ves (193 8), which deman ded there be an album o f its sing-alon g s ongs . Disney w ould also be the first to call an album an ‘Original So undtrack’ w ith Pin occh io (19 40). Yet no thin g un til th is p oin t actually deserved that title, becaus e they were all new recordings and no t taken from what was used in th e film its elf. The S ong Of Berna dette was an importan t in dication that th ere was a p ublic demand for film music on record. Ano ther o f Newman ’s legacies is the family he left to carry o n the go od work . Brothers Emil and Lionel became Hollywo od compo sers , with the latter taking o ver as Head of Fox Mu sic when Alfred moved on . Working to day are h is two so ns David (Bill And Ted’s E xcellen t Adventure an d G alaxy Q uest) an d T homas (The S hawsha nk Redemption and American Beau ty), and his neph ew Rand y (The Na tur al and Toy Stor y).

Others Who Polished The Gold
Althou gh stylistically it’s o ften tho ught Victor You ng only periph erally belo nged among the Golden Age greats, that’s at the co st o f igno ring a great gift for melody and an understan din g of commercial po tential. He was another to pioneer the po ssibilities o f sou ndtracks on vinyl by re-recording his dramatic un ders co re to Fo r Whom The Bell Tolls (1 943). His career lifted off after recording pieces fo r s ilen t movies an d bein g snapp ed up for a lifetime of as sociation with Paramou nt Studios. Melo dic high lig hts th ere in cluded Th e U ninvited (194 4) and S amso n And Delilah (1 949). Elsewh ere, Rio Gr ande (19 50) and especially Sh ane (195 2) were at the forefron t o f the Wes tern genre of th e day.

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In slightly high er reg ard is Hu go Fried hofer. His technical excellen ce was often sou ght ou t by Alfred N ewman to score p ictures at Fo x, an d als o by Korngo ld and Steiner to as sis t orchestrating their wo rk. He th an kfully foun d time to app ly his wo nderful ab ility for h armonic in vention an d stark colo uratio n to scores of his o wn. Starting in 193 7 with The Adventu res Of Marco Po lo (another sw as hbuckler), no tables include: The Lodger (19 44), Bro ken Arro w (1950 ), Seven Cities Of Gold (1 955), The Su n A lso Rises (195 7), and Th is Earth Is Mine (1 959). Th e Best Year s O f Ou r Lives (19 46) is Friedhofer’s greatest achiev ement. Apart from pub lic favo ur and winning an Oscar, it’s to b e acknowledged for b eing the first time a film s co re was well received b y general mu sic critics. That’s no t to say it ch an ged their elitis t o pinions forev er, b ut it’s another ind ication that the G olden Age style had the po wer to affect much arou nd it. Like Korngo ld b efo re h im, German compo ser Franz Waxman fou nd hims elf persuaded to fin d safer haven in Ho lly wood with th e imminent o utbreak of World War II. Almo st immed iately he had an eno rmou s effect on th e in dustry with his g rand ios e score to The Brid e Of Fra nken stein (19 35). Us ing th e ond es martenot in strument (similar to th e theremin - see b elow), he gave an orig inal and p eculiar atmo sphere to th e d oomed ro mance. The orchestra performed in an impress ionistic way to doub le the soun ds of the stran ge lab oratory equip ment. T here had been s eq uel mo vies and scores before (Stein er was ru shed into d oin g S on Of Ko ng in 193 3), b ut none had th e s ame degree of su ccess an d res pect. Univ ers al too k its mon ster mo vie series into ov erdrive. U niversal als o rewarded Waxman with a two -y ear contract as music d irector. He then skipped to M GM fo r an other s ev en -y ear contract (and later Warner Bro thers) as o ne of several resid ent compos ers . The Waxman sou nd is fu ll of brass fan fares; it has a languo rous softn es s to his romantic themes . He had tremendou s succes s with Su nset Bou levard (195 0), A Place In The Sun (1 951), d elvin g in to d errin g-do w ith Prin ce Valia nt (1954 ), and in to sexual rep res sio n with Peyton Place (1957 ). A stro ng in dication of the man’s ability is that the clas sics Rebecca and Th e P hiladelph ia Story were written in tand em d uring 194 0. T he former was th e first of four p ictures fo r Alfred Hitchcock. With Su spicion (1 941), The P arad ine Case (1 947), and R ea r Win dow (19 54) all follow ing, Waxman enjoyed one of th e d irector’s numero us doo r-op en ing w orkin g relation ships. Hitchcock demons trated tremendo us musical s av vy thro ugho ut his career, selecting compos ers who were almost always p erfect for the job .

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Rózsa beat both Newman’s So ng O f B er nadette and You ng’s Fo r Wh om The Bell Tolls to viny l w ith The Jungle Boo k, which was re-recorded for an experimental commercial sales ventu re in 194 2. It may n ot have had its original tracks, b ut w ith out that ex perimen t others wo uld have been slow to follow. He go t to make h is mark at the oth er end of th e decade any way with th e world ’s first complete underscore alb um releas e for Ma dame Bovary (194 9). In and arou nd these land marks, he develop ed a preference fo r mu sical research and a bo ld op ulent sty le with: The Th ief Of Bagh dad (19 40), That Hamilto n Wo man (19 41), Do uble In demnity (1 944), The Los t Weekend (194 5), and The Red H ouse (1947 ). Th es e were two decades of prodigiou s achievemen t, but wo uld be eclipsed by his historical and religious epics of th e next ten years . T he Os car award ed to the mu sic for S pellb ound (19 45) do es n’t begin to acknowledge th e achievement of Hun garian composer M iklós Rózsa. It mus t have been an eno rmou s ch allenge bein g given a Hitchcock, Gregory Peck, and In grid Berg man h eadliner with material tackling Freudian ps ychology and incorporating dream sequ ences d esign ed by Salvador D ali. Neverth eless, h e proved h is w orth b y test scorin g a sequen ce us ing the theremin to depict Peck ’s parano iac tend en cies . Th e eerie wailing so und of the electronic in strument was s ubsequ en tly asso ciated with any form of cinematic p sychos is. Integrated in to a score that also featured a beautiful lov e theme, Rózsa later adapted the material in to the ‘Spellbou nd Concerto’, which has b een a concert hall favou rite and had many album reco rding s. There was a more popu lar mo ment of record indu stry history in 194 4. Fox Stu dios were inun dated with requests for th e mus ic to their s tylish murder mys tery Lau ra. The follow ing year, five vers ion s o f a so ng with n ewly commissioned lyrics w ere in th e US Top 10. Co mp oser David Rak sin made a g reat impression o n the way things were going. It w as a welco me indication that audien ces could n otice an d app reciate a score, but th e unw elco me result was a co ntinuation o f corporate th ink ing that the material w ould only sell in so ng format. T he g reater shame is that the frequently ou tsp oken Raksin was completely again st applying lyrics to his theme. One infamou s tale that illus trates his philos ophical an d ethical n ature is from the same y ear for H itchcock’s Lifeboat. Originally co ntracted to s co re, his work was stopp ed before it started when a message from Hitch anno unced th ere wou ld be no mu sic. The director felt th at for a film s et entirely on a small bo at no one wo uld un derstand w here th e music w as co ming from. Raksin

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sent back a reply to say h e’d ans wer that when s omeon e exp lained wh ere th e cameras were. As a resu lt, th e scoring duties went to Hug o Friedh ofer. His style mig ht not neces sarily accord with the swash buckling definition of bein g G olden Age, yet La ura , The Ad ventures Of Sherlock Holmes (19 39), Fo rever Amb er (1947 ) and Th e B ad And Th e B ea utiful (1 952) all poss es s so me of the mo st pleasin gly memorab le melodies of th eir time. Among st thes e essential years of career composers defining th e Golden Age with their prolific o utpu t, there were several in dividual co ntrib utions to be con sid ered. Since so much sto ck is placed in the Academy Awards these days , it’s worth mentioning that the first Oscar ceremo ny too k place in 19 35. The Best M usic Sco re categ ory was wo n by Victor Schertzing er and Gus Kahn for O ne Nigh t Of Love. Schertzing er was also the film’s director and his so ng-writing talent mad e a star o ut of Grace Moo re with ‘Ciri-BiriBin’. Th e film’s music was largely an exercise in makin g popu lar the rarefied w orld o f opera, so it’s interesting to note how right from the s tart d ramatic und ers co re went ign ored by th e Academy. M ax Steiner was no minated for Th e Lost Patrol over a lis t o f nearly thirty o ther films he work ed on in th e s ame year, and also over a similarly bus y Alfred Newman. Perh ap s fin ding its feet for a few years, th e Acad emy g radu ally made amen ds ack nowled gin g Steiner in 193 6 (Th e Informer ), Ko rn gold in 19 37 (Anthony Ad vers e), and Newman in 1939 (A lexander ’ Ragtime Ban d) when s th e category was opened out in to three for Original Score, Scoring, and Song . Being a Hollywo od v en ture, the Os cars at th at time co uld n’t help bu t ov erlook what was happening els ewhere in the world. In E nglan d, Sir Arth ur Bliss wrote what is cons idered a major lan dmark in film scorin g with Thin gs To Come (193 6). For this first fu lly realised cinematic science fiction (based on H.G. Wells’ no vel), th e ambitiou s piece was largely written b efore th e film was made. As such, th e th ree 7 8-rpm reco rds can’t qu alify as d ramatic und ers co re to be the first of its kin d releas ed . The cen tral ‘March’ was almost immediately divorced from th e film anyw ay and became a concert hall favourite. A similar fate often befell the s co res of con temp orary class icists w ho were cajoled, if only briefly, in to the cinematic limelight. Two more En glis h compos ers to make fleetin g Go lden Ag e cameos were Ralph Vau ghan Williams whos e Sco tt Of The Anta rctic (1 948) is far b etter k nown as his ‘Seventh Symphon y’, and Sir William Walto n who se Shakespearian adaptation s

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of Henr y V (1943 ) and Hamlet (1947 ) have often been recorded and p erformed as concert s uites . In America, Aaron Copland ’s directn es s an d folk tu ne s en sibility led to a handful o f film s cores that made s en se of the word American a mo re than an y other. Our Town (194 0) is th e quintess en tial portrait of small-town USA, and has been emu lated ever sin ce. Brassy fanfares, simp le harmonics, and p atriotic prid e were the s taples of his music for both concert stag e and s creen, and were the perfect fuel for th e nation entering WWII (especially his non -filmic piece ‘Fan fare For The Commo n Man ’). Sergei Pro kofiev’s as tonishingly po werful Alexa nder Nevsky (1938 ) was another example of war propaganda in spiring great cinema. L ike comrade Shos takov ich’s earlier w orks, the Russian epic wasn ’t wid ely seen in America at the time. The music b ecame far mo re internatio nally familiar in edited form as a cantata (larg ely vo cal work) for perfo rmance, as op posed to again st d irector Serg ei Eisenstein’s awe-insp irin g visuals . Th e 2 visionaries re-united in 194 2 for the only s lig htly less breathtaking Ivan The Terrible. Prokofiev ’s en ergetic tempos coupled with affecting use o f wordles s v oices may h av e been u nappreciated in its time. It has mo st definitely been red iscovered and paid homag e to in the work of contemporary A-list Hollywo od compos ers h owever. For example, several of Dann y Elfman and J ames Horner’s works are rich er thanks to the pairin g of Prokofiev with Eisenstein. Th ey have had their o wn g reat comp oser/director relationsh ips , as we sh all see later. This rare working metho d has always produ ced the very best in film mu sic, an d with no more g littering ly obvious res ults than in the career of o ne of th e g reatest arch itects of cinema’s Go lden Ag e. The name Bernard Herrmann today comes almost inseparable from Alfred Hitchcock’s. T here was well over a decade of cinema from th e co mpo ser before th ey got together thoug h. A t the very start w as a collaboration th at had just as pro fo und an effect on the ind ustry. Herrmann had been work ing w ith Orson Welles for so me time already in radio (think War Of The World s), w hen Ho lly wood beckoned . Togeth er they crafted the univ ersally accep ted masterpiece that is Citizen Kan e (1 941). Above all others, Herrmann was the on e compo ser w ho trans cend ed the Ages . No genre of film was closed to him. He wo uld later tack le a new form o f the swash buckling adventure epic when the fantasy genre was re-invented for mo nster flick s featuring Ray Harry hausen’s s top -motion animation such as Jas on An d Th e A rgona uts (1 963). Yet when faced w ith an indu stry almos t entrenched in a unifo rm approach to film scoring at th e s tart of the 40s, H er-

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rman n typically chose to fly in the face o f conv en tio n. The mus ic o f Kane covers n ew sreel pastiche, an op eratic ex tract, a homely dialo gue scene sp un acro ss a montag e o f years, an d plen ty of the brooding turmo il characterising Charles Foster Kane. T he film opens with an explo rative jo urney around the Xanadu man sion . Th ough darkly lit, it co uld jus t b e a For Sale promo were it n ot fo r th e guttural brass co mbinin g w ith sighin g and moanin g wo odwinds. In o ne fell swoop , Herrmann to ok the Go lden Age style and applied it in a shocking n ew way. This was a score for atmosp here. From the very beginn ing s of h is career, a dark co lour s haded his w ritin g. In many o f the films he is more pop ularly know n for, th is colour h elped with the setting an d pre-empting of atmo sph eres. A superb example is Cape Fear (196 2), w hich was more vis cerally interpreted fo r a modern audien ce in 19 91 by M artin Sco rsese. Elmer Bernstein adapted the orig inal score for th e new version. In both it makes fo r a ch illing ride o f terror in the ‘M ain Titles’ alo ne. Dark colours were particular to H errman n, b ut co pied by o thers in ch aracterising s omeon e’s un spok en psycho log ical state (coining the term ‘Herrmann es que’). Simplicity and economy were evid en t in his score pages, an d as David Rak sin o nce put it, ‘Benny w as a g enius with the repeat sign.’ Man y o f h is score pages had the appearance of small cells of mu sic endlessly falling back on themselves. Non e of this is to say that he revo lutionised music, but he rev olu tio nised its relation ship to the s creen. Thro ugh the rest of th e decade, H errman n wo rk ed on films that indulged his musical an d priv ate personality. His 194 2 Os car for All That Money Can Bu y (a.k.a. The Devil And Daniel Webster) was th e o nly time he’d be ho noured by the Academy, an d w as really in apo logy for not being ab le to acknow ledge th e politically incorrect Ka ne. The p ro ject was a 1 9th Century tellin g of the tale o f Faus t’s pact with the dev il, and this combination o f p sychological complexity in a his torical settin g suited the co mpo ser p erfectly. The Ma gnificent Ambers ons (1942 ), Jane Eyre (1943 ), Han gover S quare (194 5), An na And Th e King Of Sia m (19 46), and Po rtra it Of Jen nie (19 48) all followed w ith similarly imp res sive resu lts . The Gh ost And Mrs . Muir (194 7) was his favourite score h owever, summing up every thing Herrmann wanted to s ay. With th e earlier Jane Eyre, he’d fou nd a very person al identification with a time and place. It in spired h im to write his only opera (Wu thering H eights), and it thrilled him to further apply his g othic extravagances and poetic morbid ities to wh at was really a co mp an ion piece in the gh ostly tale of Muir’s Gull Cottag e. T here are legend ary s tories abo ut Herrmann’s

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gruff irascible manner, but non e surroun d this project. His preoccupation with solitu de and death are all realis ed in a lyrical b acking fo r th e roman ce betw een G en e Tierney an d Rex H arris on’s gho stly sea cap tain. M ore than in any oth er of his s cores , Herrmann mak es us e of the leitmotif. Galloping woo dwin ds pull the tides, clarinets offer nautical whimsy for Captain Gregg, and s tring s defin e the d oomed lo ve affair. He p layfully referred to it as his ‘Max Steiner score’, thereby acknowledgin g the Golden A ge style in us e arou nd h im.

From Gold To Silver
In exp an ding th e definition of th e term Gold en Age to und ers tand w hy it is con sid ered to h av e ended and been rep laced by s omethin g else, H errman n’s role is es sential. He tran slated his personality into an artform that otherwise capitulated to an entrenched s tudio sy stem. It w as enoug h of a change in th ink ing to allow bigger changes to follow. In 194 9 Co lumbia Record s intro duced the 33 &1/3-rpm format onto the mark et, followed by the 45-rpm s ing le fro m RCA Victor. Releasing fu ller leng ths of a mo vie s co re was o f course h ampered b y the smaller format before th is. The single was the mo re influ en tial fo rmat with th e new branch of p op ch arts it created . An ton Karas ’ ‘H arry Lime Theme’ from The Third Man (1949 ) stayed at Number 1 for elev en week s the followin g year. It was an immediate indication o f ch an ge in popu lar an d studio th inking toward film mus ic. Mo re p ertinently, being a score fro m an u nkno wn Viennes e p erformer play ed entirely on an equally unkn own ins trument (the zith er), this was a big ger ind icatio n th at studios (British Lio n/Lo ndon Films) were changing their th ink ing ab out the applicatio n of music. It’s a coinciden ce th at Orson Welles is in the film, but is it a coin cidence that su ch a radical departu re in sty le followed a decade of u nconvention al ins trumen t combination and application fro m H errman n? No sin gle s co re marks the end of one A ge and the beginning o f the n ex t. What I’m su ggesting is that th e w ord Age is a little redu ndant or misleading in the w ay it’s us ed. At the end of the 4 0s and begin ning of th e 50s, mus ical id eas expand ed rapidly and we b as ically have a trans itional period . As k so meon e to wh ich era Mikló s Ró zs a's Ben-Hur o r Alex N orth’s Cleo patr a belo ngs and inv ariab ly it’ll b e to th e Golden Ag e, yet th e former w as 19 59 and the latter 1 963. From th e o ther perspective, ask abou t Karas’ Third M an

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or even Herrmann’s th eremin-rich The D ay The Ear th Stood Still (19 51), and the w aters get mud dy b ecaus e their sty le leans toward what is d ifferentiated as being Silver A ge. Wh at are being referred to , therefore, are sty les of music as opp osed to strict timeframes. The Gold en Ag e style h as never gone away. It has enjo yed s everal period s of renewed favou r. Yet in the 5 0s, record indu stry chang es, th e loo ming advent of rock ‘n’ roll, and es pecially w ith television mo nopo lis ing au diences, the orchestral fo rm w as politely asked to take a sid es tep for o thers to try their h an d.

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3. Anything Goes
If Gold en Age was tough to d es cribe, Silv er Ag e is even more so. No later Bronze Age has been id en tified , so p erhaps this second era never really ended. Silver is a descrip tio n of a particular area of musical sty le clearly differen t from Gold en . The wo rd Age is again mis leadin g, because th e distinction between the tw o is no thing to d o with an y start or stop in time. Fo r the pu rp oses of chapter break down ho wever, it’s a happy fact this changeover happ en ed over a measu rable number of years. M ovin g in to the 50 s, s ev eral cinematic trends en joy ed a period of fav our th at encouraged compo sers to find new means of express ion. Film Noir had appeared in the 4 0s, and as previously mentioned, M ax Steiner helped Bogart immens ely. Th ere were also s ome in ventively dark humoured scores coming out of Lond on’s Ealing Stud ios : Pas spo rt To Pimlico (Georges Auric) and Kin d Hearts And Coron ets (adapting M ozart for murder) in 19 49, and later for Auric’s The La vend er Hill Mob (195 1) and Tristram Cary ’s The Ladykillers (1 955). An y trend originatin g from with in the ind ustry could only ho pe to affect s mall chang e at this time. Cin ema as a wh ole was reeling far hard er fro m an ou tside attack – the increasing popu larity of telev ision. Exp eriments had been cond ucted all o ver the world , notably in the 20s by Jo hn Lo gie Baird in Lon don an d Charles Fran cis J en kins in North America. It took u ntil the 30 s for the pu blic to cau tio usly show interest. While 4 00 sets in th e New York area were receiving broadcasts from the Natio nal Broadcas tin g Company (NBC) in 1 939, there were many tens of th ousand s more in Eng land receiving from the British Broadcasting Comp an y (BBC). All o f which h ad an enormo us impact o n cinema attendance. The o utbreak of World War II had an even bigger impact for d ifferent reas ons of course, and resu lted in television p ro duction in America s top ping alto gether. It only allowed for a temp orary resu rgence of interest in the big screen thou gh. A po st-war economic b oom 6 y ears later meant th at sales of telev ision s ets su ddenly soared. T he US figures goin g in to the 50s are truly as tou ndin g. Th e n umb er o f h ome s ets went fro m aroun d 700 0 sets in 19 46, to 10 million in 195 0, to 22 millio n in 1952 , then half of all American ho mes just one year later. Cinema attendance figures drop ped in almos t direct prop ortio n. Add the fact th at b oth CBS and NBC anno unced they were d ev eloping colo ur television at the end of the 40 s, Hollywoo d cons idered itself in seri-

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ou s trouble. Stud ios therefore racked their brains for ways to encourage audiences back into movie th eatres. Their overall answer remains the same to this day, and that’s to spend obs cene amounts of money on bigger sp ectacle. It didn ’t take long to rush the technology into place, an d s o in 19 52 This Is Cineram a app eared with a cu rved s creen six times no rmal size. It w as a travelo gue o f the w onders of th e ag e, opening with a black and w hite miniscreen reminder of TV d imen sion s, and th en exploding into colo ur for a po int of view ro llercoaster ride. Th e mu sic was des igned to be just as awein spiring to remin d v iewers h ow their televis ion s’ so litary sp eaker paled in compariso n. Original music was credited to Howard Jack son, Pau l Sawtell, and Ro y Web b. M usical Director Louis Forbes had M ax Stein er secretly compos e th e great majority o f th e grand orchestral w ork however. He was un der con tract to Warner Brothers at the time, but didn ’t w an t to mis s the op portu nity to wo rk on yet another hig hly in fluential p ro ject. That same year, Un iversal unv eiled 3-D with Bwana Devil. Victo r Yo ung had to w ait for a b roader can vas for Cecil B. DeMille’s Os car-win ning The Greates t Sh ow O n Ear th, wh ich was a year early for Paramoun t’s VistaVision. He did kn ock ‘em d ead later with the introd uctio n of TOD D-AO 7 0mm and Aro und The World In Eighty D ays th ough .

Golden Remnants
In 19 53 th e real prize for in novation wen t to 2 0th Century Fox’s CinemaScope fo rmat (it won a special award O scar for adv ancement in film techno logy ). Fo x mad e the decision to apply it only to films th at would truly benefit from it. Premiering the garg an tuan screen ratio was The Ro be, a su mp tuou sly s caled tellin g of Christ’s life fro m the perspective o f Richard Burton ’s Roman trib une. Alfred Newman’s score, lik e The So ng O f B er nadette, was an examp le of th e compos er treating religio us su bjects with ab solu te res pect. The result is among his g ran dest acco mp lis hments, with a principal th eme for the cru cifixion bursting with heavenly g lory fro m chorus an d orchestra. It also benefited from the new 7-track s tereo phon ic sou nd sy stem that expand ed wh at an aud ience cou ld hear o f an orchestra’s make up co nsiderab ly. The religio us/s word and sandal/his torical cos tume epic was the important genre as far as continuation o f the Golden Age s ymp honic sty le was

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concerned. Other styles w ere encroaching , but with The Ro be Newman was again res pons ible for so meth ing for others to follow. The indu stry’s respo nse was swift and ov erp owering, leav ing us with enou gh afternoon TV class ics to literally fill a mon th o f Sun days. All o f th e Golden Age film compos ers wou ld tackle at leas t one p icture from the genre after this point, bu t for M ik lós Rózsa it b ecame an area of career definitio n. Quo Vadis (195 1) preceded the big ger s creen ratios, bu t followed several sp ates o f his torical/adventu re films. The difference was in a composer puttin g everything into historical accuracy. Newman would take pain s th e fo llow ing y ear to res earch ancient Heb raic mus ic for Th e R obe, bu t for Vadis Rózs a ob tained every pos sible s crap of reference material from all ov er th e w orld. Th e Roman Empire had never been so co nscientious ly investigated fo r its mu sic. In d oin g so, he effectiv ely created a brand new so und which 50 years later d efines a time and place, as believ ab ly as any that is lo st to us. Full of h ymns an d fanfares , it was a blueprint for method carried through all that fo llo wed o f his o wn (and many others’) work . He continu ed practicing the metho dolo gy with Ivan hoe (195 2). 12th Century sources were eq ually hard to come by, yet h e managed to perform a similar miracle in definin g the Sax ons an d No rmans in thrillin g battle scenes. Then it w as b ack to the Senate fo r Julius Caesar (19 53), which he chos e to in terpret in Elizabethan terms like a co ntemporary stage pro duction of Sh ak es peare’s p lay. Th en back-to -b ack in 19 56 came 16 th Century romance for Kin g Hen ry II in Dia ne, and eas ier to research back groun d for th e 19th Century life of Vincent Van Gogh in Lus t Fo r Life. A ll o f these applied Ró zs a’s Golden Age thin kin g, but in the eyes of enth usias ts of the craft th ey merely pav ed th e way for what is inarguably o ne of the mos t impo rtant s co res of all time – Ben-Hu r (195 9). It is the best repres ented o f all film scores o n record (in all fo rmats ), and th at has aided its reputation en ormo usly. Its influ en ce is to b e admired with so me awe too. Sev eral extracts w ere ad ap ted into hymns for church choir, and there are endles s examples of d erivativ e fanfares an d march es us ed for sp ortin g events and processional o ccasions . With in the in dus try, it stand s alon gside the heroic s co res of Korngo ld as being most influ en tial when anyon e wan ts to elicit regal splend our or military mig ht. Once ag ain we can sk ip ahead to Star Wa rs and s ee stylistic compariso ns. With Th e P hantom Menace (199 9), the compariso n of Williams’s ‘Flag Parade’ w ith Ró zs a’s

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‘Parade Of The Charioteers’ is unmis takeable. George Lucas was specifically emulatin g one o f his fav ourite mov ies after all. Fo r nearly a decad e the in dus try had been building toward stag ing something on the s cale of this Tale Of The Christ. Jus t shy of 4 ho urs long , the film employed 50,0 00 actors, constructed an eighteen-acre set, ap peared in a ratio w ider th an anyth ing seen before, and su cceeded in res cu ing M-G-M Studio s from bankruptcy. Ró zs a laboured fo r an incredib le year and a h alf on the score, wh ich is ev ery b it as epic as the movie. Th ere are half a dozen marches, endles s fanfares for stages of the ch ariot race, a magnificent Christ theme utilising pipe org an , powerfully strident music for Ro man might, and softer Jewis h material for J udah Ben-Hur’s love story w ith Esther. So many sequences illus trate the v ery best that mu sic can do for a film. There’s an ex ample of ‘Mickey-Mo usin g’ (caricatu ring s omethin g in mu sic) with a musical portrait of a galley sh ip accelerating to ramming s peed. Th e Christ theme is us ed to remind u s of him w hen he is n’t th ere, draw compariso ns with Charlto n Hes ton when h e offers him water (mirrorin g an earlier ev en t), and even act as his vo ice w hen distance prevents us from hearing h im g ive the Sermon from the M ount. For all these reasons and many more, Rózsa fully deserved h is O scar among the un precedented eleven wo n by the film. The 5 0s w ere a decade of luxury fo r Ró zs a in allowing h im to ind ulge in histo rical research. So it’s no t s urprising he su bsequ en tly cons idered it a mistake to immed iately follow Ben-Hur with King Of Kings (196 1), wh ich covered extremely s imilar territory. The score is nevertheles s a rich wo rk of Greco-Ro man melo dies, with fou rteen th emes co mpo sed in just a few weeks! It w orks almo st in tand em with h is oth er popu lar Heston epic from th e s ame year – El Cid. Culminating in Th e Las t Days Of S odom A nd Gom orra h (1 962), th is was a perio d of eno rmous o utp ut for the compos er. Th e h istorical epic h as never attained su ch heigh ts s ince. Rózsa’s tale has tak en us beyo nd the Silver Age starting poin t, b ut we can return to it by pausing at o ne mo re s word and sandal ex travaganza from th e end of the decade. Spa rta cu s (1960 ) w as director Stanley K ubrick’s contribution to th e genre and was ev ery bit as sp ectacularly o versized as th ose th at preceded it. The sch izophrenic score from Alex North is con sidered another of the finest ever written fo r film (in fan opinio n, a close cousin to his Cleopatra of 1963 ), and happ ens to be the all-time favourite o f Steven Spielberg . Altern ating betw een metallic and staccato (s hort separate burs ts) rhythmic march es and a bittersweet three-note lov e theme, it’s a wo rk that

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collides in tricate complex ity with delicate simplicity. Depicting the barb aris m of th e glad iatorial ring, No rth uses percuss ion to show the s ame emotional detachment as the aren a’s on loo kers . It d emon strates the so rt of in tellectu al process th at had attracted him to K ubrick, an d by which we can travel back a d ecade to pinpoint on e of the clear in dications of film mu sic enterin g its Silver Age.

The Sound Of Silver
At th e start of the 50s , studios felt larg e screen cos tume dramas weren’t gu aranteed to make their money b ack, so they also went for s maller d ramas. Stage play ad ap tations were a more viable financial v en ture, and a d es irable contras t in brin gin g the theatre’s edge of realism and s ocial themes to cinema. Sometimes bu dget was kept right down by th e s elf-con tained format of so meth ing like Twelve Angr y M en (1 957), wh ich didn’t need expans ive sets, or music cues. Where po ssible, studios wanted to replicate the subs tantial su ccess of Arth ur Miller’s Death of a S alesma n (195 1), which North scored for both stage and screen . Wh en director Elia Kazan decided to ad ap t Tenness ee Williams’ A Streetcar Named D es ire th at same y ear, th ere was no on e better qualified to figure o ut how to in terpret the exp losive lives of Kow alski, Stella, and Blanche. Jazz was North ’s answer. New O rlean s jazz was a who lly American ised meth od co mp letely alien to cinemagoers’ ears. Composer Jerry Goldsmith (who later b efrien ded North ) had this to say: ‘To me wh en I first heard it, it w as the p ivotal poin t in film mu sic where it all changed. Mus ic had been totally Europ ean . Late 19th Cen tury, early 20th Century Eu ro pean . French an d German in sty le. All of a su dden it became very American. What A lex w ro te was very o rigin al and his ow n s tyle, successfully fusing elemen ts of jazz and s ymphon ic writing. There was no qu es tio n th at it p ushed the envelo pe harmon ically an d sty lis tically. It was revolutionary. In the mid-5 0's film mu sic d efinitely came of age stylistically.’ Yo unger co mpo sers called h im ‘Th e Boss ’, th eir respect foun ded o n far more than Streetcar saying it was okay to us e jazz if you wanted. It made everyone realise anything was p ossible. North co ntinued to prov e it by captu ring the morbid sense of fatality in th e 1952 ad ap tation of Les Miserables, his M exican rhy thms for Viva Za pata ! the s ame year, an d depictin g chilling ho micidal ten dencies in a yo ung boy fo r Th e Bad Seed (1956 ). None o f this

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sh ould ignore his more melod ic achievements of course. Ch ief o f which is Unch ained (195 5), w hose theme went o n to be a hit for The Righteou s Brothers a d ecade later, and ag ain for the sup ern atural romance of Ghos t (199 0). One o f the y oung er compo sers happily lib erated by the examp le of Streetcar was Leonard Rosenman. In 19 55, th e firs t year of his career, he prod uced three scores o f significan t imp act. Th e first was East o f E den, which came abo ut when Ros en man’s p iano s tud en t, J ames Dean , reco mmen ded him to director Kazan. To ch aracterise adoles cent an gst, the co mpo ser emplo yed disson an ce (play ing n otes that don ’t quite harmon ise to gether) and ato nality (off key notes). It became a mark o f his g en eral writin g style, but here in its first full use in a film s co re th e effect is strikin g. Followed up with very similar story lin e co ncern s b y Rebel With out A Caus e, h e added a bluesy folk element to play u p the tragedy. Then came The Cobweb, a tale of patients in a p rivate mental clinic seeming s an er than th eir docto rs . Ro senman opted to play by a similar rev ersal of the no rm with a 12-to ne atonal score. This co mp lex meth od of pre-determining a limited range o f ton e and p itch was q uite a sho ck to th e Hollywoo d s ystem. By the end of the d ecade w hen D uke Ellingto n laced American jazz in to Ana tomy Of A Murd er (1959 ), au diences were welcomin g th es e n ew sou nds openly. Elmer Bernstein was an other comp oser to have their career kick s tarted by these years of increas ing o pen-mindednes s. The M an With The Golden Ar m (195 5) is regarded as a landmark in jazz s co ring. Althoug h the su bject matter concern s a jazz d ru mmer, it begs the ques tio n of wheth er the film (let alon e the s co re) would have come abo ut without Streetca r. Th e previously tabo o su bject o f d rug addictio n had no preceden t in mu sic, bu t the spare use of ly rical jazz rhy thms (coup led with Frank Sinatra being the jun kie) was enou gh of a soften ing effect to b e n ot to o offen siv e for the time. The followin g year, Bernstein found himself in as polar o ppos ite a direction as po ssible when pas sed an oth er genre baton to carry for Cecil B. DeM ille’s religiou s epic – Th e Ten Co mmand ments .

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Silver On Record
Bern stein ’s Go lden Ar m receiv ed a full albu m and s tayed in the charts for several w eeks . Th e idea th at cin ema could s upport, promote, and b en efit from popu lar mu sic was extremely d es irable for the stu dios . Still feeling the effect of television, they were k een to try any meth od of reco upin g costs. Es pecially since bigger screen fo rmats w ere potentially o nly o f short-lasting in teres t to v iewers cons tantly awaitin g the next techno logical develo pmen t. One thin g prick ing up theirs’ and every one els e’s ears was the advent of rock ‘n’ roll. Ch ro niclers even cite its b eg innings in so me part to cinema. When Bill Haley And The Comets released ‘(We’re Go nna) Rock Arou nd Th e Clock’ in 1954 it hardly made an imp act. When it app eared in th e titles of The Blackboa rd Jungle the fo llo wing y ear how ev er, there were riots of enth usias m. It hit th e Number 1 pos ition immediately, s pawned a mo vie named after the so ng and a whole sub-genre devo ted to teens. This was als o th e year the RCA label in trodu ced stereo to vin yl recordin gs. Hollyw ood h ad been payin g atten tio n thro ugh all th e p hases of p op music and its commercial pos sib ilities. Since the Silen t era there’d been on e-off ex amples o f a film so ng find ing an ex tra leas e of life on rad io and reco rd. As far back as 1 928 people were caugh t u nawares by the su ccess of Ra mona, whos e title song (a w altz for th e tale of racial prejud ice) wo und up with fou r co ver vers ion s simu ltaneou sly in American charts. J ust prior to th e rock ‘n’ ro ll explosio n, United Artis ts had a tas te o f the larger ex ploitative poten tial with Russ ian compos er D imitri Tiomkin ’s H igh No on (195 2). Thanks to a delay in openin g the film, his b allad completed its reco rd negotiations and was released in ad vance. A pair of v ersions retained th e film title, bu t throu ghou t the picture it’s b etter k nown as ‘Do Not Forsake M e, Oh My D arling’. This was the first succes sful ex ample of a mo vie bein g p ro mo ted b y s ong. It w as als o the first time one was used so frequ en tly and p ro minently in a film. Almost every time Gary Coo per s trolls alon g th e street it seems to be filtering o ut o f someone’s wind ow. The lyrics and mo urnful ton e are a constant remind er that th e 90-minu te runn ing time is all he has befo re a sho oto ut to the death . Tiomkin worked within the timeframe an d general s tyle o f a Gold en A ge compo ser, but his p hilo sop hy belo nged v ery much to the Silv er Ag e. After winnin g tw o Oscars for High Noo n (So ng and Score), he s ubsequ en tly won tw o years later for the character stu dy on a doomed p lane that

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was The H igh And The Mighty. At the Award ceremony, he b oldly anno unced, ‘I wou ld lik e to thank Beeth oven, Brahms, Wagn er, Straus s, Rimsky -K orsakov… ’ Anyo ne else on that lis t was los t to the sou nd of up ro arious laugh ter from th e au dience. T his was a co nsid erable fau x p as as far as h is co ntemporaries were concerned. Clas sical p urists w ere o ffered an in dication they were right all along an d film music merely plun dered the class ics. It was just p lain sp eaking, not arrogance on Tiomkin ’s part. In all aspects of his career h e demo nstrated it by being a cann y s elf-p ro mo ter and bu sin es sman . Earlier s ucces ses includ ed romantic an d wh imsical scores for Fran k Kapra’s films Lost Horizon (1 937), M r. Smith G oes To Washington (193 9), and It’s A Won derfu l Life (19 46). He als o scored four o f H itchcock’s films , namely: Sh adow O f A Do ubt (1943 ), Strang er s O n A Tr ain (195 1), I Confes s (1 953), and Dial M For Mu rder (1 954). Later s till, he wo uld have th e dubious hono ur of scorin g what would be th e last o f the Sword and Sandal epics with the appropriately named The F all Of The Roman E mpire (196 4). The others were too early fo r marketing by son g, as was h is firs t epically s caled Western, Duel In Th e Sun (1 946). Fo r that, he endu red more th an his peers wo uld by waiting o ut an audition process fo r produ cer David O. Selznick to find the perfect composer. Unable to turn d own a p ro ject, Tio mkin ins tig ated a lasting asso ciation with th e Western gen re. Red River (194 8) follo wed, th en H igh Noo n, The Big S ky (195 2), Gunfigh t At The O.K. Corr al (1 957), Rio Bravo (1959 ), The Ala mo (19 60), an d th e immens ely po pular Rawhide TV series th eme. Throug h all th es e, his catchy melod ies with unexpected rhythms (and cro ss-rhythms) s hine throu gh, an d w herever a single o r album was p ossible h e’d pursue it ten acio usly. High No on really ch an ged H ollywood pro ducer’s id eas and motiv ation s abou t the co mmercial v iability o f movie related mu sic. They began asking compos ers to craft marketable s ongs regardles s of wh ether o r n ot one was su itable for the film. A s ong on radio b efo re a film’s releas e was great promotion. It only co st a little mo ney to mak e a lot back, so wh o cared if the so ng had little to do with the film? It would take a few mo re years for this new p hiloso phy to tak e hold. Th an kfully there w as plen ty more go ing on in th e mid-50s fo r co mp osers no t to be overly concern ed jus t y et. Big screen adaptatio ns of Broadw ay M usicals were pop ular ag ain, havin g had on ly marg inal s ucces s since the untoppable Th e Wiz ard Of Oz (193 9). The new wave was ano ther way the stu dio s tried th e sp ecu late-toaccu mu late approach to w in back view ers lost to TV. T his was a reassu ran ce

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th at mus ic was an imp ortant part of at least one genre of film. O ften yo u’d fin d one of the comp osers alread y mention ed h idd en away in the arrangemen t cred its of a M usical, such as David Rak sin on The Harvey Girls (194 6) and A lfred Newman on S outh Pacific. Th e big record album successes o f the decade were Oklaho ma! and The King And I in 1 956, an d Gig i alon gside Sou th P acific in 1958 . Incidentally, this ch apter’s title tak es its name from the 1956 Bing Crosb y film of Cole Porter ’s earlier Broadway sh ow.

Silver From Outer Space
Ano ther genre to take off in th e mid-50 s was th e sci-fi mon ster mo vie. Nothin g better demonstrated American paran oia about a Red menace than th e su dden ap pearance of malevo lent alien bein gs. Before independent s tudios began churning ou t micro-b udgeted flicks using stock mu sic (such as Ed Wood ’s ultra-kits ch Pla n 9 From Ou ter Sp ace in 195 8), there were plen ty o f inn ovative sto ry lin es and s co res . No movie better d emons trated th e g en re th an In va sion Of The B ody Snatchers (195 5). It pres ented its imagin ative renditio n of the M cCarthy Witch hun ts with s ubtlety and intelligence. A few s imilarly themed films preceded it like Th e Th ing F rom An other Wo rld (19 51) with an eerie score from D imitri Tio mk in, th en The Beas t From 20 ,000 Fa tho ms (1953 ), Them! and Crea ture From The Bla ck Lago on (both 195 4), Taran tula and It Came From B en ea th The Sea (both 19 55). Asid e from captivatin g titles and a g en eral th eme o f constant attack from space, sea, or ato mic laboratories , th es e shared a sens e of adventu re in th eir scoring wherev er they weren ’t comp iled from exis tin g material. The names Herman Stein , Irving Gertz, and Henry Mancin i wou ld crop up repeatedly in credits, and they were among several pio neers of ex perimen tal otherworldliness in film mus ic. The theremin was an easy way of creating an un settling atmo sphere, and th e trio’s score for It Ca me F rom Outer Spa ce (195 3) is a terrific examp le. It was Un iversal Stud ios’ firs t sci-fi invasion picture, an d the composers were recruited to do more than merely jolt the audience at every 3 -D effect. Th eir u se o f it w as abo ut as far as electro nic enhancemen t could go at th at point. 19 56 was the watersh ed for non -orch es tral s co ring, when American couple Louis and Bebe Barron ap plied cy bernetic techn olog y to provide a co mpletely electron ic score for Fo rbid den Planet. Called ‘Electron ic To nalities’

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in th e credits, it w as for all inten ts an d pu rp oses a replacemen t of orch es tral leitmotivs w ith sou nd effect ones . Lov eable Robby The Rob ot h as his o wn, and so d oes the inv isible id monster. The soun ds came from unp redictable no ise emissions fro m p urpos e-bu ilt experimen tal circuit bo ards . Althou gh argumen ts aboun ded as to w hether it truly con stituted music, no o ne could deny there’d never b een any thing like it befo re. Wh at made it a more important step w as that any one who wan ted to develop the id ea furth er had almos t a full d ecade to w ait before Rob ert Moo g would produ ce the firs t sy nthesiser. While Hollywoo d ex plo red mons ters of the futu re, th e British Hammer studio revived interest in s upernatural terrors of the p as t. Sp ecifically, they exhu med the ch aracters U niversal Studios had enjoyed success with two decades earlier. Fo llo wing in the lu mb ering foo tstep s of Bela Lug osi and Boris Karloff came Christoph er L ee, usually with Peter Cus hing in hot pursu it. Hammer had b een arou nd in o ne form or another fro m the 30 s, bu t th eir colour d eb ut The Qua terma ss Experiment in 1 954 truly made their name. Joh n Ho llings worth was recru ited as music supervisor for the studio, a role akin to th ose at the Hollywoo d music departments . He in turn laun ched the career of gentleman compos er James Bern ard, who s tayed on bo ard for an astonishin g 25 y ears, p ro vid ing d ozen s of scores and alway s seeming to g et th e best o f the class ic monsters and their man y sequ els. T hat first Qua terma ss was followed b y X The U nknown (19 56) and the u nimaginatively entitled Quatermas s 2 (195 7). These th ree scores are an amazing display of wh at we n ow lab el modernis m, with sp are u se of a s mall percussion and s tring en semb le. It was a sou nd th at perfectly co mp lemented the cold scientific paranoia on display. Turning every thing aro und for all inv olved was The Cur se Of F rankenstein (19 57). It was a h uge intern ation al success for Hammer, pos itioning th e studio ’s name among st the major p layers. For Bernard it w as a momen t of sty lis tic definitio n. His predilection for thematic title music created a melody lin e that’s a sing-alon g of th e film’s name. As the s tudio became kn own as ‘Hammer Horror’, he became th e ‘Hammer Horror Comp oser’. Th is was s ettled for go od the follow ing year with their adaptatio n o f Dracula. Co ntinuin g the idea o f musical no tes as s yllab les of the title, his main th eme is as id en tifiab le a s ign ature motif as an y in cinema. Bernard carved his dis tinctive style into th e minds o f horror fan s w ith a seemin gly endles s su pply of dizzyingly fas t string s cherzos an d tend er love th emes. Follow-

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up s to Dra cula an d Fr ankenstein con tin ued in to the 60 s, d uring which time he als o brou ght to life The Gorg on (19 64), Sh e (1 965) w ith a trance-like ethereal th eme, The Plague Of Th e Zo mbies (1 966), and The Devil Rides Out (196 8) with so me genu inely unnerving b acking for Satanic worship. At Hammer’s entry p oin t in th e mid-50s , it was q uite a novelty fo r international films to be s o h ap pily chang ing hands acro ss the ocean. Britis h prod uct o ccasio nally foun d favour in America, but Hollywo od s tudios were still jealous ly gu arded o f th eir territory. Thos e that did find dis trib ution began to ch ange that. RKO managed to piq ue curios ity abou t J ap an es e cinema by dis trib uting Akira K urosawa’s Ra shomo n in 1952 , with a g en tle score by Fu mio H ay as ak a full o f ethn ic instrumentatio n that fas cinated the Wes tern ear. In many ways it was ‘T he King Of T he M ons ters’ w ho made enou gh noise fo r cult fan dom to deman d mo re in tern ation al fare. Godz illa (195 4) was insp ired by The B ea st From 2 0,000 F ath oms from the y ear before, bu t was unlike any mon ster seen b efore. T he guy -in-a-s uit approach mad e fo r a cheesy cin ema experience, but you cou ldn ’t help bu t take a lo t of it s erio usly d ue to th e straig ht-faced mu sic from A kira Ifuku be. Later du bbed ‘Th e J ohn Williams Of The J ap an es e Film World’, his imperiou s ‘God zilla M arch ’ b ecame the th eme for th e s till o ngoing s eries of films . At the end o f the d ecade, an oth er examp le o f cin ematic immigration began fillin g U S theatres with the begin ning s of the French N ew Wave. In 19 59, th e release of Francois Truffaut’s Les Quatre Cents Co ups (Fou r Hun dred Blo ws) and Jean-Lu c God ard ’s A Bou t De S ouffle (Breathless ) tu rned eyes and ears toward Europe. Poss es sed of a cas ual, detached manner in their character o bservatio n, th e genre s at perfectly alon gside the rebellion o f James Dean an d rock ‘n’ roll. It’s important to note th e beginnings of the genre here in the con text of changes contributing to th e birth of th e Silv er Age. We’ll return to international film and the great directo r/co mp oser relationsh ips that formed and cemented in the 60s in Chapter 4. Now, courtes y of mentionin g Truffau t, with wh om Bernard Herrmann w ould scorch won ders for Fahren heit 4 51 (196 6), we can tu rn to the most important collab oration in film mu sic.

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Silver Psycho
Alfred Hitch co ck had been fligh ty in associating with co mp osers th rough out his career. We’ve cov ered lots o f th ose n ames b efo re Herrmann already, but it’s worth s tressing at th is halfway p oint in th e chron olo gy of film mus ic that these tw o men jointly influenced th e ind ustry far more than is generally realised. Th eir firs t collab oration w as for The Troub le With Har ry (19 55), a jet black co medy about Shirley M acL aine and friends desperately trying to dispos e of a corpse. Fo r his o ne and on ly co medic score, Herrmann had fun mimickin g th e p ratfalls and macab re sh enanigans . The sens e of humour fit bo th th eir perso nalities perfectly, cementing their relations hip. Hitchcock w as un ab le to thin k of working with another composer for the next decade. T hey to tted up ano ther seven films in th eir 11 years to gether. With Vertigo (195 8), the directo r and co mp oser made us e of many similar tricks, an d even invented so me n ew ones. It’s th e mo st pers onal film for th em b oth. Themes of ob session an d death were app ealing, and fou nd romantic expression in wh at is regard ed as on e of the greatest motion pictu res o f all time (des pite bein g mildly maligned in its day). Scottie Ferguso n’s ph obia, lon elines s, an d infatuation are ex plain ed to u s almos t exclu sively th rough mu sic s ince there are long sequences w itho ut dialo gue. At the climax of th e thrilling roo ftop ch as e that opens the film, the firs t d isplay of J ames Stewart’s v ertigo is illustrated with o verlappin g harp glissando s (rap id s lid ing up and down scales). In th e ex tended s eq uence trailing M ad eline (Kim Nov ak ) aroun d San Francisco, it’s en tirely d own to the music that we’re drawn into th e my stery of what’s happening instead of bein g bored b y a silen t car tour of the city. The art gallery scene is a brillian t sh owcase of Herrmann man ipulatin g ou r understan din g of w hat’s going o n. Th e portrait o f Carlotta bears ph ysical resemb lance to M ad eleine, so is she su pernaturally pos sessed o r jus t in sane? The score prov ides b oth an swers simu ltaneou sly. The mo st famo us cue from the score, en titled ‘Scene d’Amour ’, has in spired coun tless references and spo ofs, such as a great visual gag in co rp orated in to Twelve Mon keys (1 995). N ovak reappears as Ju dy, and th en magically tran sforms back into M ad eline. T he magic is evok ed as much throug h s urreal co lou r saturation an d imagery as by o ne of Herrmann ’s mo st heartfelt compositio ns cap turing the very ess ence of yearnin g and desire. Nex t came a remake of th e d irector’s own w ork with

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The M an Who Kn ew Too Much (1956 ), with James Stewart an d D oris Day emb roiled in th e wo rld of kidnapp ing and es pion ag e. Alth ough Herrmann wrote a comp aratively sho rt score, h e was g iven one of the most promin en t on -s creen cameo s any film comp oser has had. Du ring an as sassination attempt at The Royal Albert Hall, the camera lin gers on a p oster adv ertising his name, befo re cuttin g to show him autho ritatively con ducting the Lond on Symphon y Orchestra. His appearan ce is a vis ual cue fo r the film’s finale to begin an d the stage/screen music becomes n arrato r for the action . It was a strong indication Hitch co ck appreciated the contribution of Herrmann’s music. Use of the s ong ‘Qu e Sera, Sera’ w as an in dication that even the great d irector was subject to th e beginn ing s of stud io pressure to plug co mmercial song s. Th e same year they released The Wrong Man , with Henry Fond a reliv ing a true s tory of mistaken id en tity. Taking the character’s job as a jazz b as sis t to beg in w ith , th e score is co ld an d claus troph obic, managin g to infer the co nfines of impriso nmen t. Although the film may b e ov ersh ad owed by what follo wed, it has many scenes illustrating the way mu sic can pre-empt danger and tell an au dience what a ch aracter is thinkin g. Paramount Stu dio s d idn ’t s ucceed in persuading Hitchcock to make use of a son g fo r Vertigo than kfully. Althoug h h e wanted to su stain that p rincipal fo r Nor th B y Nor thwest (19 59), th e interlu de mu sic (a rep rise of th e love th eme) became a reaso nably popu lar tune. It was certainly a better idea than a song called ‘The Man On Lincoln ’s Nos e’. The film is cons tantly on the move, either literally or b y p lot twists carry ing audien ces dizzyingly alon g. What Herrman n did for the chase movie w as have fun with it. Th e fand an go of th e main titles is an u npredictab le piece built on rh ythms that swirl around one an other witho ut reso lution, and are th e fo undation to a motif equally elus ive and ton gue-in-cheek. There are two s cenes within the film performing o ppos ite functions to o ne an other. Scrabbling o ver the face of M ount Ru shmore fo r the finale, the action con tin ues withou t dialogue for so me time. It’s left to the score to mak e this interesting (in the same way as Scottie’s pursuit o f Maddy in Vertigo ), and this is where the title’s fand an go pays o ff as a mu sical device. Hand-in -hand, Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint skip an d climb the ro ck face, and the ed iting maintains a rhythm to which the furious dance is perfectly s uited . T he other in famous s cene is of Grant being ch as ed down by a crop du ster, which is d ev oid of mu sic. Directo r an d composer agreed a heigh tened reality was achieved b y allowin g natural s ound effects to guide the ear. Only when the plane cras hes do es the

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music strik e up. Knowing wh en to tell the mus ic to shu t up later led to their big experiment in us ing none at all for The Birds (19 63). So we come to Psycho (19 60), a film that perhaps more than an y other sh ows how film music can live outsid e th e film. Reg ard less of whether th ey ’ve seen the film or not, kid s of all ages k now wh at soun d to make when th ey tease abo ut stabbing one ano ther. TV adv erts, movie spo ofs, an d ho mages hav e k ep t th e s hower murder mus ic aliv e in po pular culture. What a lo t of p eo ple do n’t kn ow is that Hitch co ck did n’t want mu sic for th e scene, and th at Herrmann wrote and record ed the p iece in s ecret. W hen th e director mad e the cho ice to sho ot in b lack-an d-white (despite studios by then insistin g on co lou r to make subs idiary sales to telev ision easier), Herrmann made an intellectual leap to compos ing ‘a black-and-white score’ by restricting hims elf to on ly using the s trin g s ection of an orchestra. Fo r the mu rd er, which required w hat he adroitly called ‘terror’, the sh rieking effect came from part of a v iolinist’s tuning-up routine. So simple a dev ice has beco me th e most mimick ed mus ical effect in cin ema his tory. The res t of the score work s to the picture’s benefit just as well however. Herrmann’s unn erv ingly chaotic op en ing title mus ic actually insp ired the animation from Saul Bas s. M uch more importantly, the script left long sequences witho ut d ialog ue and on ce ag ain the directo r/comp oser in tended the mus ic to act as an emo tio nal and psycho log ical narrator. Mario n’s anxio us d rive having stolen so me money is a s eq uence often cited by mus icologis ts fo r this technique. Switch off the vo lume, and th e s hots of Janet L eigh at the wheel could be taking her anyw here. Tu rn the v olu me back u p, and the u rgen t score makes it qu ite clear that the movie title is goin g to pay o ff so on. The film was re-made in 1997 by G us Van Sant, an d that allowed for a brand n ew digital recordin g of the s co re. It w as affection ately adapted by Herrmann ’s b igg es t fan w orkin g to day, Danny Elfman, to who m we’ll return in detail in later chapters w hen loo kin g at influences in contemporary scoring. There are several factors to blame for the eventu al sp lit between H errman n and H itchcock, an d un fortunately music had a lo t to do with it. After th e experimen t o f Th e Bird s, and th e all-round failu re of Mar nie (19 64), everyth ing came to a head with Torn Curta in (1966 ). The stu dio s h ad been nibbling away at Hitch to get him to stick commercial song s s omewh ere in his films. On top o f th at, he’d g one from being respectfully grateful of the exten t to which Herrman n’s music improv ed h is work, to being do wnrigh t

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resentful. It all ex plod ed at th e Curtain reco rding s es sio ns when the mu sic tu rned out to be as far away fro m the pop s tyle reques ted as pos sib le. Everyon e thou ght they were ind ivid ually right, and for s uch a mediocre movie it’s a sh ame non e o f them were. Thro ugh this transition al Silver Age perio d, Herrmann h ad contributed to th e start o f the alien invasion genre w ith on e of its b est films and scores – The Day The Ea rth Stood Still (19 51). He’d also contribu ted to the religiou s epic genre with The Egyptian (195 4), sp littin g cues b etween hims elf and music d ep artment ch ief Alfred Newman. It proved to be his mos t prolific perio d, and was ro unded out by boisterou s fun for a b rief flirtation with mons ter movies in the su b-categ ory of the fantasy genre. Th e Seventh Voyag e Of S inb ad (19 58), Jou rney To Th e Centre Of Th e Earth (19 59), The Three Wo rld s O f Gulliver (1 960), Mysterious Island (1961 ) and Jaso n A nd The Argo nauts (1963 ) mus ically defined on e mons ter or anoth er, su ch as the xy loph one for the skeleto n warriors in S inba d. When y ou add together rock ‘n’ roll, new technologies in s ight and so und, the influ en ce of in ternatio nal mus ical styles , flavou r-of-th e-month exploitation g en res , the start and end of Hitch co ck and H errman n, an d the fact th at 195 5 was the year v ideo tape was in trodu ced, what yo u get is a perio d of ch an ging styles that’s clearly differen t from the more self-contained so und of the Golden Ag e. Enterin g the 60s , the Silv er A ge gradually pu shed away what s omeo ne like Herrmann could offer. Th e seeds h ad been so wn, largely o ut of financial necess ity with the stu dio s, and now they wanted as commercial a prod uct as p oss ible.

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4. Commercial Instincts
One of the b etter things to come from 50s ’ tech nolo gical advan cemen t was bring ing intern ation al film into greater focus outsid e its coun try o f origin. The previously men tio ned French N ew Wav e w as one of the bes t examples since it was con sid ered a tren dsetter in its reb ellious nature toward s so cial and filmmaking attitu des. D uring th e course o f the 60s, whenever Hollyw ood couldn’t en co urage new mu sical sou nds it h eard fro m overseas in to its o wn films, it encouraged the co mp osers to cros s ov er themselves. Georges Delerue was on e émigré from France. A fter a coup le of years w ork, his career was lau nched with S hoot The Pian o Player (1960 ) fo r director Fran ço is Truffau t. It began a ten-picture collaboration. Th eir secon d, Ju les An d Jim (19 61), has remained their most admired an d well known with its collis ion of carefree meets catas troph e. D eleru e’s carnivalesqu e ‘M ain Title’ wo uld go on to help define the co medic writing sty le b oth in its o wn decade, and again in the 8 0s (see Dann y Elfman, Chapter 6 ). Their relationsh ip continued with Love A t 2 0: An toine And Colette (19 62), The Soft S kin (196 4), Such A Gorgeou s Kid Like Me (1971 ), Two English Gir ls (19 71), and o n to their oth er most affection ately revered p iece, D ay F or Nigh t (197 3), with its stunning chorale (h ymn-lik e tu ne) for an aerial view montage o f the set fo r fictio nal film ‘M eet Pamela’. Ano ther ho me tu rf s ucces s th at similarly p layed the film-within-a-film id ea was director Jean-Luc G odard’s Contemp t (1 963). Deleru e provided stormy emotional turmoil fo r strings as we watch the disso lution of a marriage o n set. Jus t b efore Ho lly wood en ticed h im away completely, the decade also heard some delig htful period E nglish mus ic for th e h istorical tales A Man Fo r All Season s (196 6) an d Anne Of The Thou sand Days (196 9). Th ro ugh all these works , he display ed not ju st an ear for instru mentation and locale, but that h e was o ne of the finest melo dy writers film mu sic ever knew. It was this he’d be called upo n repeatedly for in th e 70s an d 80 s on American pictures like Oliver Sto ne’s S alvado r and Plato on (both 19 86), and Steel Magn olias, B ea ch es, and B ilo xi Blu es (all 1 988). As a French ambassado r, h e was sligh tly beaten to it by the charming antics o f comic genius Jacques Tati. Mon sieur Hu lot’ Holida y found an s in ternatio nal aud ience in 19 53, an d with it seemed cemented forev er the asso ciatio n of pian o, accordion, and guitar w ith the French . This was care of compos er Alain Romans wh o went on to co -s core Tati’s My Un cle (19 58)

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with Fran ck Barcellin i. A decade later, Francis L emarque remin ded the in dus try of the comedy stereoty pe with Playtim e (1 967). The Cannes Film Festival b ecame the place to make foreign territory d iscoveries. It took abo ut 20 years for Ho lly wood to pay seriou s attention to th e event, but when A Ma n And A Woman won the Palme d’or in 1 966 it changed th e careers of d irector Claud e Lelo uch and compos er Fran cis Lai. Th ey too would carve out a lasting working relations hip, with Live For Life (196 7), And No w My Love (1974 ), Bolero (1 981), and two s equels to A M an An d A Woman. Its extremely popu lar score album las ted in US charts fo r 93 weeks! Clearly s omething in the combination of ‘d a-b a-da-ba-da’ lyrics and acco rd ion fell righ t in to p lace with the new wave of po p music listen ers . Lai was an other to end up w orking on American films, with his big gest succes s bein g Love Story (1970 ), w hich sp awn ed several vers ion s of ‘Wh ere Do I Begin?’ and won h im his only Academy Award. Eclipsing the award s in Hollywo od and France, the ch art s uccess es, the leng th of ten ure with a d irector, and p opularity with pu blic and critics alike is Nino Ro ta. Th e Italian compos er began wo rking with Federico Fellin i in 19 52 on Th e White S heik, an d led to six teen films o f which at least six are cons idered mas terpieces of cinema an d its mu sic. Th e brightest jew el has always been La Do lce Vita (196 0), wh ich fo llo ws a jo urnalis t observing Rome high life. Ro ta offers an enormous mu sical rang e fo r scenes of a b ustling metropo lis contras tin g with decadence behind closed doo rs . Th e jazz/ po p fusion foun d immed iate fav our with th e s ocial type it portrayed, and the audience who asp ired to th at lifes tyle. Next came 8½ (19 63), autobiographically depositin g the life o f a film director into an un predictable dreamworld. Of all th e co mp oser’s circus-styled march es , th ose here have remain ed th e mos t admired and influential. Along with Delerue’s Ju les A nd Jim, it wou ld co ntribute much to the co medies of the mid -80s. Going on to th e variable su ccess es of Juliet Of Th e S pir its (1965 ), Satyr icon (19 69), The Clowns (197 0), R oma (1972 ), Am arcord (1 973), and Ca sano va (19 76), the compos er and d irector wou ld end u p having sh ared n early 30 years of screen time. His work in Europ e con tin ued elsewhere too of co urse. For director Lu ch ino Viscon ti he provided grand his torical po rtraits for Rocco And His Bro thers (1 960) and The Leo pard (19 63). For Sergei Bond archuk there were waltzes on and off th e battlefield in depicting Napoleo n’s Wa terlo o (19 70). For Franco Zeffirelli, two Shakespearian adaptations led to him in ev itably

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bein g whis ked away to the States. The Ta ming Of The Shrew (19 67) w as a sp irited comedic turn to his g ift fo r melody, but with Romeo And Juliet (196 8) th e ab ility to con jure time an d place (here mock-mediev al) foun d its fin es t v oice with w hat may well be the defin itive romantic lov e theme. The albu m s pent 74 weeks in US charts. A ‘Lo ve Theme’ single was a Number 1 hit as ad ap ted by Henry Mancin i (who we’ll meet b elow). It has also seen man y spoo fs in film, as well as found many new h omes in adv ertising and med ia (e.g. endles s play on UK radio). Director Francis Ford Cop pola was much enamoured with the piece, and bolstered with their sh ared Italian h eritage, mad e Ro ta th e perfect ch oice for The Go dfather (19 72). It los t o ut on an Acad emy Award o ver a s mall controversy that th e th eme had been u sed before in ano ther gu ise on an earlier sco re. Developing the infamo us mafia family’s th emes for the sequ el, The God father Par t II (197 4), he wo n an Os car th en ins tead, wh ich is a unique achievemen t in sequel scoring .

Riding The Sixties Side-Saddle
The Western was on e of cin ema’s original genres and has o nly truly d isappeared from s creens over the las t few decades. As Tiomkin ’s o utpu t sh owed in Chapter 3 (esp ecially with High Noo n), aud iences s till loved the pretence of Cowb oys and Indian s as the 50s became the 60 s. Compos er J erome Moro ss scored les s th an twenty films, wo rk ing instead behind the scenes as an orchestrato r. An asso ciation with Aaron Cop land led to him creating his own brand of American a which is nowh ere b etter illus trated th an in The Big Coun try (19 58). T he rolling melody of its main theme is as perfect a d es cription of the o pen sk ies and sp rawling deserts of the Old Wes t as th e film title itself. The same y ear he also produ ced The Prou d Rebel, The Jayhawkers! (1 959), and the theme to TV’s Wago n Train. His Big Coun try music w as to be the definin g work of h is film and co ncert hall career th ough . In a pu blic p opularity contes t for the most memo rable Western th eme th ere are o nly two o ther conten ders . Elmer Berns tein’s hero theme for The Mag nificen t Seven (19 60) became an instan t template fo r an yone wanting to musically conjure n oble team spirit. With hin dsight, its re-use for a long-runn ing series o f Marlb oro cig arette ads w as n’t all th at flattering! Th e other immortal Wes tern theme belongs to How Th e Wes t Was Won (196 2) by Alfred Newman. There’s an u nparalleled op timis m in the piece th at canno t help but make the listen er smile. Years later, its all-ro und go od

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cheer pleased director Robert Zemeckis so mu ch th at desp ite R omancing The Sto ne (1984 ) being his first collaboration w ith comp oser Alan Silvestri, he wo uld settle for nothing else to open the movie o n. The other Italian compos er to make their international mark durin g the 60 s was E nnio Mo rrico ne. His work for d irector Sergio Leon e w as ins tantly declared to be its own gen re. Th eir Dollars trilogy turned man y conven tion s on their head s, and remain w holly indiv idu al from some four hu ndred movies th at tried cop yin g them. Hollywo od dubb ed them ‘Sp ag hetti Wes terns’, which is lacking as a description . Starting with A Fis tfu l Of Dollar s (19 64), th e films were desig ned to dazzle, with Mo rrico ne creating music to act as a character. Ou r intro duction to Clint Eastwo od as the M an With No Name is via so lo whistler, whip crack s, bells , animalistic cho ral gru nts, and electric gu itar. This co mbinatio n o f layered elements is so abstract fro m the v isu als yo u have to pay attention to it. Since the experiment worked, it was taken further for the s eq uels. For A Few Do lla rs More (19 65) keep s the w histler, adds the tw an ging o f a Jew’s Harp (a strip of steel yo u bite and strum), then fires u p snare drums to mimic ho rs eback ed riders at full gallo p. On e ex traordin ary set p iece fo r the cue ‘Pay ing Off Scores ’ has a mus ic box , unp recedented lev els of hard gu itar tw an ging , castan ets, Mexican ho rns, and church o rg an . T he qu irky orchestrations go fu rther still for The Go od, The Bad, And Th e Ugly (19 66) wh ich has always been the real cu lt clas sic. Here some of th e elements seem to fuse and talk to o ne an oth er. The whistles work in tandem and the crazed coyo te-howl motif is answered by w hat s eems lik e a su ck er-pun ch reply of ‘wah wah-wah’. It all builds u p to a balletic fin ale w hen the go lds eeking trio sq uare o ff at a g rav ey ard an d th e mus ic takes o ver co mp letely. One more collab oratio n from the 60 s has main tained a cult s tatus , thank s to M orricon e lo ad ing natural s ound and o bscure stylistic co llisio ns with omin ous meanin g. Once Upo n A Time In The Wes t (196 9) is a fo nd farew ell to th e Co wboy ’s West. The g hostly female so prano v oice given to illu strate th is impendin g loss is one of the most emotion al respon ses to a film’s ov erall th eme a compo ser ever mad e. There’s also th e most prominent example of his method of grow ing s omething org an ically from the fabric of the movie. Charles Bron son’s shocking revenge motive isn ’t revealed u ntil the very end. O nce s een, repeat viewing s make every no te of his ‘Harmonica Th eme’ all the mo re chilling.

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M orricone’s daring juxtapo sition of soun ds and lay ers of rh yth m had a wide effect on contemporary mus ic. Record ing technology wasn’t available to do what’s p ossible today, b ut by looping the layered elements he was for all intents and purp oses applying the principles of sampling. In later decades, it w ould b e rare to find th es e p rinciples in his work. Instead h e’s become mo re app reciated for th e ro mantic highs of The Mis sion (1986 ) and Cinema Pa radiso (1989 ) or the action/thriller s uspens e of Th e Untouchab les (198 7) and In Th e Line Of Fire (1993 ). A cou ple o f addition al in fluential compos ers deserve mention h ere. Firs t is M ikis Theo dorakis fro m Greece, who se political activities led to a p eriod in pris on and a ban on his music b efo re release and exile. Durin g th is p eriod he no netheless produ ced h ighly memorable wo rks for Elektr a (196 2), Phaedr a (1962 ), Zor ba The G reek (1964 ), and Z (196 9). The last of th ese w on several Os cars, bu t ig nored the exciting s core for bo uzouki an d orchestra. Of real in fluence to chart music was Bla ck Or pheus in 19 59. Brazilian co mpo ser Luiz Bonfa to gether with Anto nio Carlos J obim intro duced jazz samba to a wo rldwide audien ce, an d in so do ing made the bo ssa n ova a musical trademark for the next decade.

Making The Sixties Swing
With the es sential you th market caugh t up in a world of mu sic they’d emb raced as their own, Hollywo od w as keen to pu rsue every financial avenu e. Giv ing pop stars th eir own movies was one way of d rawing au diences in and gettin g su bsid iary reco rd sales. Elvis Presley h ad been th e b igg es t proo f with the alb ums to G.I. Blu es (1 960), Blue H awa ii (19 61), Gir ls! Girls ! Gir ls! (1 962), Fun In Acap ulco (1 963) an d R oustabou t (1 964). Then Th e Beatles did th e same th ing for both the UK and America with A H ard Day’s Nigh t (1964 ), Help! (1965 ) and Yellow Subma rin e (19 69). The only prob lem th e studio s had with encouraging more of these was th e spiralling costs o f the stars an d th eir music. Inevitab ly, they turned to film co mp osers to pull rab bits fro m hats. Fortun ately th ere were s ev eral n ew talents more th an up to the challeng e. As a res ult of th es e feelings , his po st-60 s career divers ified far more into other genres. Prio r to the decade of swing, he’d wo rk ed on a lo t of mo nster pictures and th e odd excursio n into dark p sychological territo ry (e.g. Touch Of Evil in 195 8). All too s uddenly the comed ic lab el he’d b ecome stuck

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with proved hard to shake. Especially when more s erious 70 s fare failed at th e b ox office. H e’d alw ay s had a terrific s en se o f d rama and imagination for instru mentation , but applying it to Th e Molly Maguires (197 0), or Silver Streak (1976 ) d id him little favours . A lot of his wo rk in the 70s therefore returned him to his roo ts in T V, prov idin g themes. A way of killing two birds w ith one s tone was to poach co mpo sers from th e realms of televisio n. By 1 965 TV p osed an oth er threat with the ad vent of continu ous co lou r and in ternatio nal trans missions. A n eas y target was the au tho r o f the Peter Gu nn series theme, wh ich had a Grammy-win nin g LP. Henry M an cini s ubsequ en tly b ecame one of the mos t importan t names in music du ring th e 60 s. Th is sparse economy of orchestration in Gunn meant he w as encouraged to differ noticeab ly from the Gold en Age so und. His hip, swingin g, Hammo nd organ and flu te combo is a q uintessentially d efining s oun d fo r the d ecade. He w on h is first pair o f Oscars with Breakfas t A t Tiffany’s in 1 961. The enormous popu larity o f the song ‘M oon River’ en sured th at fo r almos t every sub sequent pictu re he scored, the s tud ios exp ected an other hit. Th ro ugh his prolific as sociation with directo r Blake Edwards (you ’ll be gath ering b y n ow that these relationsh ips are rath er important!), Mancin i man aged to keep stu dios reg ularly happy. The Pin k P anth er (1963 ) is ample proo f. Its saxo phon e tune is one of the mos t celebrated motifs in film mus ic. As an alb um it spent 88 weeks in U S ch arts, and has ap peared on cou ntles s compilation s from the p eriod. Seven sequel films followed, all still with Ed ward s. His other doub le Oscar win came with Ha tari! (1962 ) fo r director How ard Hawks. The so ng ‘Baby Elephant Walk’ was a boog ie-woog ie sensation d es pite the film’s fairly serio us tone for an African safari. Mancin i was a great prop onent of his belief th at music s hould be heard in film. It contrad icted a lo t of what co mp osers who came before b elieved, b ut it’s one of th e thin gs th at sin gles h im out as at the forefron t of a new way of thinking abou t th e indu stry. He deplored the fact th at jazz w as applied inapp ropriately in film an d T V after his P eter Gu nn stint, and liked it even less when th e s tudios tried to squeeze every drop of commerciality out o f p op mu sic applied to film. Almos t pas sing one ano ther th e baton in the 60 s, th e next name lifted from TV credits was Lalo Schifrin wh ose jazz-laced w ork s potligh ted so meon e with a gift for rh ythm and percuss ion . Co min g from a class ical and jazz backgroun d in his nativ e Bueno s Aires , he was th e perfect choice to apply both to the Steve McQueen pok er mo vie Th e Cincin nati Kid (19 65).

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Indu stry ears really p rick ed up the fo llo wing y ear with his TV theme to M ission: Imp ossible. It’s as well kno wn to day as then b y virtue of its oftenmimicked b eat, and als o two recen t big b udget featu res with Dann y Elfman adapting the theme in 19 96 and Hans Zimmer in 20 00. His ab ility to effortles sly create authentic s ound ing geo grap hical backgrou nds in co mbination with any number of mu sical styles made him highly sou ght after. In 196 7 he pu t southern blu eg rass b en eath the feet of Pau l Newman as Cool Ha nd Luke. Then w ith a minute ens emble of ten instru ments he implied s ex ual tens ion betw een two ladies’ lives interrup ted b y The Fox (19 68). T hat y ear als o saw the releas e o f the seco nd of Sch ifrin’s cult s ucces ses (ag ain with M cQ ueen ) fo r Bullitt. It’s th e mos t well kno wn us e of jazz in film. Its po pularity was resurrected by a car co mmercial in the late 90 s, which prompted a premiere CD releas e of th e score and chart sin gle. Its laid-back cool for big band jazz ensemble, dramatic cou nterpoint, and hand fu l of rad io sou rce pieces (th e term for mus ic playing so mewhere within a film) is a brillian t example of s co ring a film from every intellectual angle. The third o f the high pro file projects that Schifrin is famou s for is the Dirty Ha rry series, for which he scored four o ut o f the fiv e starting in 197 1. Electric piano gave Harry Callahan a tough edge to match Clint Eastw ood’s sn eer, an d w ordless female vo ices echo ed the madness ragin g ins ide serial killer Scorpio’s head. Both mad e for an eerie atmosp here, keepin g the o utcome of th e film open. The jazz/rock element made it very contempo rary to th e 60s (an d fashionable ag ain today), and along sid e Bullitt th e mu sic mak es San Francisco seem lik e the most happening place on Earth! Bruce Lee’s ex plo sive introd uctio n to mains tream Western au diences was E nter The Dra gon (1 973). Schifrin used trad itional Chinese scales alon gside his trad emark fu nky b ackb eats to keep th ings au thentic yet purpo sefully tongu e-in-cheek , as Lee d isp atches whole armies o f goo ns. Contrasting style, b ut n ot his preference for research, was The Fo ur Mu sketeer s (197 4). The air of high adventure via late-Renaiss an ce perio d mu sic sh owed th at Go lden Age th ink ing still had its place. Th at said, he did also comp ose th e Plan et Of Th e A pes and Stars ky A nd Hu tch TV themes the s ame year…

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Making The Sixties Sing
Studios loved any one who cou ld combine sty les in the ways M ancini and Schifrin d id. With tho se financial p ro blems foremos t on their minds however, they really lov ed anyon e who cou ld o verlap with the pop mus ic scene. From this p ers pective, the indis putab le king of son gwriting throu gh the 60 s was Bu rt Bach arach. H is work as musical director fo r Marlene D ietrich led to teaming with lyricis t Hal D av id. Tog ether they’d already p enned in numerable clas sic tunes wh en Hollywo od gave them Wh at’s New Puss ycat? and A fter The Fo x to play with in 1 965. Puss ycat has a waltz-like und erscore, which throws a k azoo into its unpredictable mix. The title so ng was cleverly giv en to Tom Jon es , who ’d on ly just hit the big time with ‘It’s No t Unu sual’. A Dionn e Warwick track (‘Here I Am’) secured Bacharach’s work ing relationsh ip with her for many years. Fox was less o f a son g-oriented film, with on ly The Ho llies ’ title tune to back th e upb eat yet melo dic un ders core. Bacharach’s next demons tratio n o f what mad e th e 60s sw ing was the James Bond spoo f Ca sin o Royale (1967 ). With Dav id N iven, Wood y Allen, and Peter Sellers playing for laughs , the music is made surreal in atmosp here by Mickey-M ous ing th e madcap antics. Due to the film’s b ox o ffice misfire, its title track remained an in strumental in stead of being ad ap ted with lyrics . ‘T he Lo ok Of L ove’ s ung in sen sual fas hio n b y Dusty Sp ringfield has remained one o f th e co mp oser’s many w ell k nown tu nes n onetheles s. Far ou tweig hing these others (an d all that followed) was B utch Cass idy An d Th e S unda nce Kid (1 969). ‘Raindrop s Keep Fallin ’ O n My H ead’ was a Number 1 hit, and wo n Bacharach two Os cars in conjunction with his jaunty original s co re. Th e u se o f con temp orary metho d scoring an d track ing a scene by son g was s een as inap propriate in so me qu arters for a mo vie abou t 19 th cen tury cowb oy bandits. It was exactly the s ort of thing Mancin i had ob served o ccu rring in film scorin g, and knew it wo uld on ly take a few money-mak ers to start making the traditional film composer’s role loo k ou t of p lace. As recognitio n for Bach arach’s contribution to the sou nd o f the 60 s, cou ld there be an y h igher p raise than cameoing as h ims elf in the th ree Au stin Powers mov ies with s poo f s cores from Geo rg e S. Clinto n? There were three other s ign ificant con tribu tio ns to the mo ney-grabbing ph ilo soph y ad opted by major stu dio s d uring the d ecade. First was the way The Gr adua te (19 67) was desig ned to b e scored b y acquiring the license to

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re-use existing p op s ong s. Th is meant lyrics and rh yth ms had n othing to do with the film. In stead they were chos en for th e ton e of a scene and as a part of w hat was hoped w ould be a best-selling album. Directo r Mike Nicho ls is cred ited with the idea. Th e fact th at the albu m, its o ne original so ng (‘M rs. Robinson ’), and Simo n An d G arfunk el’s next albu m (‘Boo kends’) all wen t straight to Number 1 seems to indicate that some p art of that idea was spo t on . Dave Gru sin provided an original s core, but it’s the last thing an yone remembers fro m th e film. T his s ore p oin t extends to th e s econ d of the decade’s fin an cial oversig hts . ‘Th e Win dmills Of Your Mind’ eclipsed no t on ly the fin e jazz/classic influ en ced score within The Thoma s Crown Affair (196 8), b ut also mo st of the rest of co mpo ser M ichel Legran d’s career o utside his native France. Tak ing things one step further was Easy Rider (1969 ), which cobb led to gether its soun dtrack from actor/director D en nis Ho pper’s record collection. It was on e o f the year’s big gest movies. Producers were convinced this was the way to go to encourage the d ispo sable income y outh group into cinemas . A slew of s imilar ph ilo sop hically disenchanted films followed, all with s ong playlists made up of chart s uccess es from recent years . It’s las ted th rough to p resent day as the bon e o f co ntention behind a co llecto r’s market ov errun with CDs th at have n oth ing to do with the films they promote (about which there’ll be mo re in Chapter 6). Now let’s loo k at th e decade from anoth er p ersp ective. Th at of a co ntinuation of the Silver Age’s combination o f mus ical styles an d experimen tation by compo sers whose commercial in stincts were s eco ndary to th e d ramatic pu rp ose by which they s erv ed a film.

Shaking And Stirring The Sixties
‘My approach to scoring a film is to look at the w hole thing at on ce,’ reveals J ohn Barry. ‘I id en tify an o verall mes sage or emo tio n and s co re that. I alw ay s go for a melod y first, b ecause it’s the most direct fo rm o f co mmunication dramatically. It has to be v ers atile tho ugh. It’s on e th eme being us ed in many differen t ways . Shos takovich said about music keep ing the emo tio n intact. Once yo u captu re that essence everyth ing else sprin gs from th at master file. Yo u g row with o ther h armonic material. Mayb e tak e fractions of the melo dy. Th at s tarts to dictate th e res t of the score fo r you . I do

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lo ve having a theme that wo rk s through out, alth ough it’s n ot p oss ible on every s ingle film of cou rse.’ This in sig ht from the Britis h compos er defines a 40-year career in film scoring that’s h ad o ne of th e largest in fluential impacts on the ind ustry. A combin ation of h ap py co incid en ces led to dovetailin g from h is jazzy b eat band Th e John Barry Seven in to Beat Gir l (196 0). His ear for arran gement of material an d fin ger-on -the-pulse of p opular s tyle w as exactly w hat studios wanted . In 196 2, the production team ov ers eein g the adaptatio n o f Ian Flemin g’s James Bon d character to big screen were very keen to ap ply some of Barry’s commercial s tyle. For 4 0 y ears th ere’s been a contentious is sue ab out own ers hip of the ‘James Bond Theme’. O nly some of the ind ividual mov ie albu ms and coun tless Bond compilation s o n sh elves credit M onty N orman, who scored th e whole of Sean Co nnery’s debu t in th e ro le for Dr. No (19 62). Barry was asked to w ork his arran ging wizardry o n material th at didn’t s uit produ cers’ ears . A M arch 2001 co urt case determined N orman w as unfairly dis credited in a newspaper article that implicitly identified Barry as th e sole writer. Rather predictably, the libel case was mistak en by th e p res s for a decisio n of own ers hip . Suffice to say, th e fan commun ity debate co ntinues. In many ways , the issu e is rather immaterial since it was Barry wh o went on to score th e bulk of th e rest of the series. From Rus sia With Love followed in 196 3. Althou gh it in trodu ced his ‘0 07 Th eme’ an d his id ea o f an overall theme bein g used within a credit sequence song , its s ucces s was comp letely o utdo ne by G oldfing er the follow ing year. Shirley Bass ey’s knocko ut v ocals for the title s ong contributed to making it a Number 1 hit album s tayin g in US charts far long er than in the UK. What w as clearly established w ith this second in stalment fro m Barry w as th at as well as his melod ic sens e and kn ack for jazzy arrangin g, he w as als o cap ab le o f rhythmically charged actio n mu sic. All to gether it formed a template for an yone wanting a hit film so ng, o r to s co re o ne of th e numerou s sp y movie w an nabes th at so on appeared. Thro ugh Thun derball (1965 ), Yo u Only Live Twice (196 7), an d On Her Majesty’s S ecret Service (196 9), his s tyle develop ed to the p oin t o f fo rming its own genre. With Diamon ds Are Forever (1 971) there was a sub tle gearsh ift in ton e to reflect changing attitudes, mak ing the mu sic more commercial than ever. The film’s score ackno wledged that po p was read y to go disco in a few years time, and early 70s fu nk was the s tylistic transitio n. Some of the lyrics penned by regu lar collaborator Don Black caused Barry

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mino r co ntrov ersy (‘touch it, stro ke it, and u ndress it’). Ev en if the so ng wasn ’t as big a hit as Goldfinger, it’s still one of the mo st w ell kn own o f the Bond son gs an d of Sh irley Bass ey ’s rep erto ire. Barry sub sequently skipped Live And Let Die (197 3) where th e fun k was laid o n in s pades by George M artin an d Paul McCartney’s so ng. T he Bond series has alway s been inextricably lin ked with Barry’s n ame regardless of oth er co mp osers’ entries th ough . T hrough the 9 0s this flatterin gly came down to the w ork of David Arno ld on Tomorro w Never Dies (1 997), The Wo rld Is No t E noug h (19 99), his concept alb um ‘Shaken An d Stirred’ (see Chapter 6) and D ie Another Day (20 02). Th is isn’t all there was fro m Barry in the 60 s how ev er. An on -s creen asso ciation w ith M ichael Caine b eg an in 196 4 w ith Zulu. M ore th an most of h is scores, this sh ows Barry’s economy with material to great effect in o nly 1 6 minutes o f o rigin al mu sic. Its central theme does a tw o-for-on e job, depictin g the bravery of both the Britis h infantry an d the native warriors. It was th e firs t op portu nity for Barry to prop erly flex his dramatic muscles, since he considered th e Bon d movies to be ess en tially cartoon -like. Then his jazz roots shon e th rough the s co re for y outh culture sens ation The Kna ck… An d Ho w To Get It (1965 ). For The Ip cres s F ile (196 5), h e sh owed off a H ungarian in strument almost no o ne kn ew of (the cimbalom) for the memo rable ‘A M an Alone’ theme characterising antihero Harry Palmer (Caine again ). His firs t two O scars came s ide-by-s ide in 1 967 for th e true story of E lsa th e lio n cub in Born Free (196 6). Both score and song (lyrics again by D on Black) were award ed and became enormous world wide h its as an album and s ing le. In fact, the song was covered by mo re than six hu ndred artis ts in a matter of months after in itial release, and even wound up as a natio nal anth em for o ne African state. H ere at the v ery height of his popu larity, Barry co mp osed w hat remains a p erso nal favou rite o f his. The Lion In Winter (1968 ) was an illustration of 1 2th cen tury English royalty clas hing policies w ith the Church of Rome. It’s a rare examp le of us ing ch orus in his career, and in writing two perio d-specific song s it show ed an alternate s ide significan t enou gh to win his other A cademy Award fo r the decade. That same year he go t to w ork in a s imilar w ay as H errman n did o n The Man Who Knew Too Mu ch by cond uctin g a concerto on screen for the finale of Deadfall. Barry w ro te his piece however, an d it was a mark o f indus try tru st he d id so in adv an ce of the film being sho t, which was then edited to th e music. There was an other s ong for Shirley Bassey (‘M y Love H as Two

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Faces’), bu t reg rettably the film failed to live up to its p romise an d so his ‘Romance Fo r Gu itar And Orchestra’ has remained unh eard beyon d the so undtrack. Ro unding o ut the decade was another of his favou rites, Midnight Cowbo y (19 69). As a conceptualis ed project it was a produ ct of the commercially orien ted times . By Barry’s input, it’s a very different beas t from the son g-track ed films men tio ned alread y. ‘It’s still sho wn at UCLA Film Sch ool as the b es t examp le o f s ong in film,’ s ays th e compos er with un ders tandable p ride. ‘We did n’t go o ut and just b uy a bun ch o f s ong s. It was all written es pecially fo r the scenes. It was literally a case of scoring with s ong s, and I to ok a lot of care w ith it. The s cen e where he steals bread and is s potted and s hamed jus t kills yo u. T he loneliness of that so ng (‘Old M an Willo w’ by E lephant’s M emory ) d riftin g dow n over it had an atmosp here I co uldn ’t h av e go t with a score. If it’s d one right it can b e terribly effective.’ Sadly it seld om is don e rig ht. Barry has avo ided accu satio ns of bein g one to do it wrong by never working on a film in th e s ame way as Cowboy again. A lth ough th e Bond pictures continu ed , each requiring an acknow ledgemen t of th e p op s tyle o f the day in their title song , he gradually became drawn to mo re romantically th emed projects. Escaping th e typecastin g o f being a teen/spy /pop culture composer, Barry ’s mu sic o f the 80s and 90 s is dis tin guis hed for its blend of flo wing melo dy, cleverly wro ught co unterpo int (s eco ndary melody ), an d tend er exp res siv en es s.

At War In The Sixties
Althou gh th e d ecade’s real-life war was the Vietn am conflict, it was to Wo rld War II th at Hollywo od repeatedly tu rn ed for the b ig s creen. Th ere had been newsreel propagand a exercises aplenty durin g the period of conflict. A few resp ectfu l adv en ture tales ap peared in the 50s to o, such as The Br idge On The R iver Kwai (19 57), with Sir M alcolm Arnold ’s Oscar-w inning s co re famous ly u sin g th e whis tle-alon g ‘Colon el Bogey M arch ’. No on e th ough t to glorify in th ings s pecifically from an American p ers pective un til the 60s thoug h. Since only so much his torical accu racy can be shoeho rn ed into 120 minutes, it would o ften fall by th e wayside. Th e most successful template to follow b ecame havin g a stellar cas t o f crack troop s s en t on so me d o-or-d ie miss ion . For compos ers , the miss ion was to characterise th e N azis in su itably villain ous fashion and the Allies as contemporary Roun d Table Knig hts of hon our. Scores to typify the g en re’s sudd en po pu-

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larity in cluded Sink The Bismar k! (19 60) from Clifto n Parker, th e G reektinged anthems fo r Gregory Peck defeating the w hole German army in The Gun s Of Navarone (19 62) from Dimitri Tiomkin, Ba ttle Of The Bu lge (196 5) from Benjamin Frank el, Attack On Th e Iro n Coast (196 7) fro m G erard Sch urmann , and th e o ther whistle-alo ng camaraderie-in-crisis anth em of The Great Escape (19 63) from Elmer Bernstein. If there’s o ne mus ical cons tant in war mo vies, it’s that the military mo ves to a b eat. It’s therefore n ot surprising that the compos er who came to score more WWII flicks th an anyon e else in the decad e was a percuss ion ist at heart. M aurice Jarre (father of Jean-M ichel) was o ne mo re international d iscovery wh o benefited from th e Silver Age’s open do or policy to ideas. After a d ecade of local fare, the French co mpo ser’s first exp los ive battle acco mpaniment was for The Longes t Day (19 62). Th at extremely noisy accoun t of th e Normandy land ings w as followed by Weeken d A t Dunkir k (196 4), then The Tr ain an d Is Paris Bu rning? (b oth 1965 ). A waltzing tone p oem fo r the latter hon oured the liberation of the Fren ch capital. Two y ears on he scored a reasonably fo rg ettable piece for The Twenty-Fifth Ho ur b efo re crafting on e o f h is most celeb rated works for The Night Of The Generals. With sin ister marches and a b ouncing waltz, Jarre conjured distinct un ease ov er wh ich of several Nazi generals mig ht be th e murderer o f a pro stitute. Cap ping his contribution to the 6 0s cinematic war effort was The Dam ned (196 9), an un settling p ortrait of a family falling apart und er Nazi influ en ce. All these scores sho wed off his p ercus siv e skills and h is pio neering of ethnic ins trumen tation, which audien ces wou ld be reminded of wh en h e returned to the war a decad e later for The Tin Drum (1 979). Althou gh this arsenal of bombast kept his profile high , it had initially been fired into the stratos phere b y workin g with d irector Dav id Lean. The leading co mp oser names o f th e day had been linked at one time or an other to Lawren ce O f Ar abia (19 62), s uch as M alcolm A rn old , Ben jamin Britten, Aram Kh achatu rian, Rich ard Rodg ers , and William Walto n. Jarre was brou ght in when Lean h eard his ex otic score for Sun days And Cybele (196 2). Wh at came abo ut was another of cinema’s great identifyin g motifs. Th e end uring desert th eme won h im his first Os car and co nsid erable recordin g ind ustry clout with a sou ndtrack albu m remaining in US ch arts for 86 weeks. Remark ab ly, th e director and co mp oser man ag ed to top the achievemen t with Doctor Zhivag o a year later. If the Lawrence th eme is the p erfect desert mus ic in the way that Psycho is the perfect mu rd er music, or Ja ws the

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perfect sh ark mu sic, then ‘Lara’s Theme’ from Zhivago mus t b e the p erfect tragic romance music. It won him another Os car an d spent ov er 3 years in th e charts ! Th ey later reunited for Ryan’s Daug hter (19 69) an d A Pass age To Ind ia (1 984).

Genre Gold (And Silver)
Back at th e fro ntline, wh en it came to the British perspectiv e on the Secon d World War, Ro n Good win w as the composer who defined stiff upper lip better than anyon e else. His mu sic fo r 633 Squ adron (196 4) is a p erfect encapsulatio n of aerial militaria. For the soarin g and s woop ing of a German munitio ns factory air raid, h e used French ho rn s to literally play the title (in 6-8 time, th e theme is six short notes followed b y th ree long ones). T he follo wing year he scored th e aerial comed y Th ose Magn ificen t Men In Th eir Flying Ma ch ines as if it w ere an actio n mo vie, and cemen ted a style th at has been paid homage to ev er since. Hollywo od was n ev er averse to bending histo rical rules b y way o f best-selling autho rs w ho’d don e so first. Alis tair M acLean’s leanin g to ward es pion ag e an d paran oia su ited b ig s creen adaptation tremendou sly. With Where E agles D are (1 969), Go odwin produ ced a fabulously memo rab le ten sion theme fo r Richard Burto n’s raid on a mo untaintop Nazi cas tle. Then he w en t b ack in to the air for a replacement score (more ab out which in Chapter 6 ) o n The Battle O f Br ita in (19 69), wh ere his mimickin g rat-a-tat effect s erv ed the Royal Airforce superbly. The leg acy of Silver Age freed om originatin g in the 50s was th at new careers o f the 60 s (and onwards) were free to s kip, create, and define wh ole genres o f film and mu sic. If any on e compos er can lay claim to bein g a master of all genres, it is Jerry Goldsmith. In 40 years , he has h ad a mus ical hand in jus t abo ut every con ceivable type of film th ere is . Progressing from years w orking in telev ision (writin g th e themes for The Man F rom U.N.C.L.E. and Dr. Kildare among st many others), it w as in the 60 s that his film career d emons trated it was poss ible to b e a J ack -o f-all-trades. Th ere were Westerns of varying quality, like R io Conchos (1 964), Sta gecoach (196 6), Hou r Of The Gu n (1967 ), Band olero! (196 8), and 10 0 Rifles (19 69). All feature a d ev elopment of his powerhous e action writing combin ed with folksy h omeliness . Later with Take A Hard R ide (197 5) some clear references to th e s paghetti western lick s of Ennio Mo rrico ne w ere ap paren t. Abo ut the only other time he was obv ious ly asked to emulate another style

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was for the Bond wann ab es w ith J ames Coburn as Our Man Flint (19 65). Both this and its seq uel In Like Flint (196 7) feature w inks an d tips of the hat with electric g uitar and keybo ards . He was far more draw n to seriou sly natu red pro jects tho ugh, frequently leading to go od critical notice. When y ou’re dealin g with racial issu es for A Pa tch Of Blu e (1 965) or the turbulent 1 920’s po litics o f America and Ch ina for The San d Pebbles (196 6), sub tlety is key. A small ens emble of mu sicians p lays o n each instead of full orchestra, and for Pebb les th e Orien tal colo urs and memorab le love theme led to the p opular son g ‘An d We Were Lo vers ’. Throug hout the 60s he was an oth er of th e compo sers who fou nd th emselves repeatedly immers ed in WWII. Th e only exception being his bo mbas tic yet balletic accompaniment for the aerial d ogfig hts of The B lue Max (196 6), which w as a rare glimpse of WWI. For the mo re po pular exploratio n o f WWII on screen, he prop elled the es cape fro m an Italian POW camp aboard Vo n Ryan ’ Express (1965 ). The same year two back-tos back p rojects meant he amu sin gly worked on the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbou r before the ev en t its elf. In Har m’s Way (1 965) dealt with the US Navy’s retaliatio n, an d then Tora ! Tor a! Tor a! (1 970) sho wed an un biased account of how they’d let it h ap pen. In th e s eco nd score, Go ldsmith work ed in as much J ap an es e patrio tis m (v ia approp riate Asian in strumentation) as h e did American flag waving . His mo st lastingly famou s war drama score is Patton (19 70). Go ldsmith’s ability with pared do wn instru mentation is at its b es t in th is accoun t of the legendary general. D ecid ing on a mere 30 minutes of mu sic in the cours e of 3 hours, he s plit the material betw een three aspects of the character: the religiou s (signified by org an), th e military (a s trong but sprightly march), an d the sp iritu al (trumpets th at echo away into s ilence). Th e last of th es e aspects was achieved with an echop lex, a device v ery much in v ogue in th e pop music world at the time. Its intellectual in tent was to reflect Patto n’s belief in reincarnation. Over th e years it’s been endlessly parodied for th e military, which of co urse miss es the point Goldsmith made with it. The film w as one of s ev en with directo r Franklin J. Schaffner. Perh ap s th eir bigg es t achievemen t (in ev ery cinematic sense, no t ju st b ox office) was Pla net Of Th e A pes (1968 ). As we saw in Chapter 3, s cien ce fiction mos tly kept itself to mu tant mo nsters an d alien in vasion s du ring the 50 s. On ly o ccasio nally did someone look to craft a social allegory or offer a warnin g about the fu ture. The 60s w ere a d ry p eriod for science fiction in

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any fo rm, with o nly the Fren ch seeming to have anything to s ay with La Jetée (1 963), Alphaville (1965 ), an d Fahrenh eit 451 (1 966). Ex perimen tal scoring approaches were ap plied to each fro m Trevor Dun can, Paul M is rak i, and Bern ard Herrmann respectively. Apes also came from a French sou rce (th e novel by Pierre Boulle) and gave Goldsmith an o pportunity to b e more experimental th an anyo ne had yet dared . Th e music is full o f harsh and complex rhy thms, moans, un iqu e percuss ion (e.g. kitchen mixing bow ls!), blas ts of air, echoes, and grind ing string work . It all su pports the b ackd rop of an arid alien landscape p erfectly, boun cing off cany on walls and drifting in terminably in to an uncertain horizo n. For the all-imp ortant ape revelation with the cu e ‘The Hunt’, Go ldsmith helped create one o f th e most visually sh ockin g moments in cinema. The clue was in the title, b ut a s lam-zoom acro ss a field to pick out a go rilla ridin g a h orse was an enormous su rp rise. Th e s urprise o wes mu ch to the build u p of percussion that leads to the bleatin g o f a ram’s ho rn backed b y a cuika (an instrument wh ich mimics the ‘ooh -ooh-oo h’ o f an ap e). One of the mo st remarkable things abou t the score is th at every effect is ach ieved acou stically and not electron ically. With p op mu sic increasing ly domin ating the music s cene, th is was a score to remin d th e indu stry it w as still poss ible to b e o riginal. The modernis t (aton al yet stru ctured) ap proach to sci-fi that Go ldsmith to ok w ith Apes an d later The Illustrated Man (1969 ) also ap peared in Leon ard Rosenman’s F anta stic Vo ya ge (1 968), and Lalo Schifrin ’s THX 1138 (1 970). Co llectively they sh owed s cience fiction to be a genre with in tellectu al po tential. 1 968 became th e his torical marker wh en it directly in fluenced the recording indu stry with Stan ley Kubrick’s 2001 : A Spa ce Odys sey. A lo ng-los t score by Alex North was resu rrected in the 9 0s by Goldsmith, b ut the mu sic everyon e knows only to o well from the film is Richard Strauss ’s ‘Also Sp rach Z arath ustra’. Th e piece has b ecome an anth em for cou ntles s spo rting events, stag e sh ows, and comedic spo ofs. North’s work w as los t to on e o f the firs t ov ert examples of a d irector falling in lov e w ith their temp track (a comp osite of exis tin g pieces to sup port a film while bein g edited). T he fact that the clas sical pieces chos en fou nd enormous favo ur w ith the record buy ing p ublic w ould s eem to indicate Kub rick made the commercially co rrect decisio n. The resu ltant alb um successfully cro ssed b oth pop and classical charts. It als o sp aw ned a s eq uel albu m with th e awful mon iker ‘in spired by’ that had no thing to d o with the film at all.

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When yo u ad d togeth er th e similar thin kin g on Th e Gr adua te an d Easy Rider, you ’ll understan d th at th e co nventional Golden Age compo ser felt so mewhat threatened moving into th e 7 0s. The Silv er A ge meant being free to try new things , bu t h ow long wo uld it be before they ran d ry and Hollywoo d won its finan cially-motivated s trugg le to turn film mu sic into bestsellin g chart music?

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5. Romance Ain’t Dead
The 70 s began without an y clear sens e o f identity or belo nging. Studio music d ep artments had b een d iss olved fo r s ome time, so compos ers were roving freelancers. Youn g blo od was welcome. There w ould be careers to mak e a s tand in th e midd le of the free-for-all, an d w e’ll look at Joh n Williams, J erry Goldsmith, and J ames Horner sho rtly. As w e enter the d ecade ho wever, and determine what were th e no teworth y soun dtracks, yo u’ll s ee th at th ere’s never been a mo re w retch ed time for humdrum and miscellany. Let’s lo ok at some of the s tandou t cult highlights. In 1 971, Stan ley Kub rick ad ap ted the clas sics again for A Clockwo rk Or ange. The works of Beethoven, Ross ini, and Elgar fou nd nowh ere near the level of favo ur that 20 01 had on record thoug h, and th e film famous ly died a d eath of moral o utrage. A noth er expression of social dissatisfaction came in M ichael Cain e’s gritties t character role in Get Carter. The jazzy, h arp sicho rd -laced mu sic from British comp oser Roy Budd made th e veng eful thug seem even to ugher. It was a s co re that fou nd renewed appeal in th e late 90s when a series o f Bud d’s w ork appeared o n CD . Shaft was another co ol cat patrolling th e s treets that year, b acked by a tun e that was finger-clickin g good . Is aac Hayes won a Best So ng Oscar for the single and album that topp ed US charts. Jo hn Carpenter made h is sit-up-and -take-n otice debut as director and compos er in 1 973 with Dar k Star. His s implistic sy nth es iser scores would have tremend ous impact on a film mu sic scene rapid ly fallin g in lov e with electronic ov erlay s. The fo llo wing y ear Dav id Shire app lied th e 12 -tone method of compos ition (s ee The Cob web in Chapter 3) to the n ois y su bway heis t th riller Th e Taking Of Pelh am 123 . T hen in 197 5 came a surreal and kinky remind er th at the M usical co uld s till wo rk on big screen, with th e o utrageous R ocky Hor ror Picture S how. Vis ually (and o ften mus ically ) it follo wed in the fo ots teps of th e mon ster flicks o f the 50s , but its real legacy was in encouragin g audien ce participation to an unprecedented lev el. The decade’s other Ro cky came a year later, an d intro duced beefcake Sylvester Stallone as a box ing champ fro m the Philadelp hia s lums. Bill Co nti’s trainin g montag e fanfare is o ne mo re instan tly recogn isable motif to perfectly captu re an activity (ring fighting) and an emo tion (the loser triu mph s). 19 76 was also th e year of Bernard Herrmann’s final score. He’d been on e of the compos ers hit h ardest b y the move away fro m earlier mu sical sty les. Sadly

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he died jus t as he’d fo und a comfo rtable go-between of jazz-fused pop and orchestra fo r Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. The tortured saxoph one that po rtray s Ro bert DeNiro’s inner pain is a p oign an t trib ute. Not o nly d id he die befo re h earin g his mu sic to film and mis s the univ ers al acclaim it received, but if he’d lived on a few years h e’d h av e seen a retu rn o f th ose musical sty les and values h e deplored the lo ss o f. Bey ond th es e, th e few abou t to fo llo w, and w hat’s already been covered in scattered fash ion in Chapter 4, there really is n’t much more to talk abou t for th e firs t half of the 70s. Of far more interest w as a s eries of re-recording s th at ap peared on viny l as of 1972 u nder the baton of con ducto r, prod ucer, and film music aficio nado Charles Gerhard t. ‘The Sea Hawk: T he Clas sic Film Scores Of Erich Wolfg an g Korn gold ’ was a pheno menal s ucces s, peaking class ical charts rapidly. Clearly the record-b uyin g pu blic w ere keen to hear more than the general wash o f p op so ng collection s around at the time. Th e RCA label followed it with similar collectio ns for Max Stein er, Alfred Newman, Bernard Herrmann , Franz Waxman, M iklós Rózsa, Dimitri Tio mkin, a second Ko rn gold v olume, an d a few celebrity themed comp ilations (e.g . Errol Fly nn). Other record lab els jump ed ab oard th e revival of in teres t, and film music collectors sudd en ly found th emselv es able to actually have a co llection! It was a much-needed reminder o f the q uality o utpu t from the Go lden Ag e, an d most certain ly h elped th e career o f o ne you ng compos er...

The Force Is Strong With This One
Directo r Stev en Spielb erg fo und himself makin g a temp track for Sug arla nd Exp ress (1 974) from two s co res by ‘John ny’ Williams. The Reiver s (196 9) and The Cowboys (1 972) were th e s cores in question; a pair eschewin g p op for an orchestra. They w ere in o bvio us co ntrast to Williams ’s more high pro file flirtation with dis co and disaster for The Pos eidon A dven ture (197 2), The Towerin g Infern o (197 4), and Earthqua ke (19 74), wh ich acco rd ed to the general sty le of the day. After their fruitful collaboration on Su garland, there was n o on e better su ited to p lumb s ubmerged depths of fear for the film th at forev er chang ed the way s ummer mo vies w ere conceived. Ja ws (1975 ) was more than jus t the hit of the year. It made s o much money that Hollyw ood w as frantic to learn the secret of its s uccess . This was where concept was first cons idered, an d wo uld rap idly lead to the n ow

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pain fully p rev alen t concept movie. Its other s uccess the indu stry so ught to replicate was the album and single w hich prov ed an orch estral score (and on e ostensib ly for a h orro r movie) co uld scale charts desp ite stron g p op op positio n. Record sales, repeat viewing fig ures, and the Oscar that Williams won all say s omethin g to the powerful effect h is music h ad . Fro m th e o penin g pointof-view shot mo vin g thro ugh d eep w aters , we’re made to u nderstand this is n’t s ome holiday d iving fo otage o r aquatic documentary. Tho se lo w th udding notes leave us in no un certain ty that danger lurks. Britain’s Deb bie Wiseman told me that ‘as a film compo ser you kno w to avoid that repeated semitone p hras e since it is now forever asso ciated with s hark s.’ Several compos ers have made s imilar remark s, goin g to s how how large an impact it h as made if mu sician s con sciou sly steer clear of s omething in their writin g process . Two years later, Spielberg intro duced Williams to his friend George Lu cas who wanted h is new scien ce fiction film to h av e an emo tio nal familiarity s ince th e back drop o f creatures an d lo cales loo ked so alien. Star War s (197 7) is rightly hailed as th e Secon d Comin g o f film music. Every aspect of the film’s release was a genuine p henomenon, coining the w ord ‘b lockbu ster’ to d es cribe th e unprecedented level of queuing that cinemas experienced for tickets. The two disc album immediately became the b igg es t sellin g non-p op reco rd in histo ry (at that time), and s aw more cover version s and con cert performan ces than anyth ing else in film music’s history. Fan s who complain ed about the con cert suite presentation of the album would have to w ait until the Special Ed ition re-release of the film in 1997 . Williams h as always been perfectly clear about his practice of re-sequencin g his albu ms thou gh. ‘What I usu ally try to do, w hich may co me fro m years of mak ing concert programmes, is to mak e a musical prog ramme based on material I've g ot from th e film that will make the mo st rewarding lis tening experience in terms of entr’acte, ov erture, s oft, lo ud, fas t, slow, etc. So th ere's a gestalt o r con tou r to k eep the listener in teres ted.’ This level of succes s and adoration (and anoth er Oscar) d oesn’t co me withou t go od reason. Very simply, the wall-to-wall mu sic is flawless in s uppo rting the o n-screen ad ventu re, an d in commun icating emotion s that could easily get lost in th e s pectacle o f v isu al effects. Th ere is the endles sly cop ied op en ing of th e en ormou s Star Destro yer passing o verh ead. Witho ut Williams’s bo ld march you wouldn’t know that the little sh ip is the go od g uy. A

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few min utes later, witho ut the delicate ‘Prin ces s L eia Theme’ for flute, the scene o f her slotting the D eath Star plans in to R2 -D 2 could s eem like so me lady making to as t. Withou t the adagio (slow) v ers ion of the ‘Force Theme’ as Luke g azes at Tatooine’s setting twin s uns , he mig ht as well be birdwatching. With out the up beat, goofy ho mage to a 1 930’s Benn y Goodman sw ing band, th e Can tin a sequ en ce co uld seem pretty s illy w ith so many papier mâché pupp ets and ru bber masks . T he list go es o n w ay beyo nd this first th ird of the film of cou rs e. Apart from its jaw-d ropping record sales and textb ook demo nstration of every conceiv ab le way a score can benefit a film, the real success o f the music was in con vin cing stud ios th e late Romantic style w as n’t completely dead. T his was th e Gold en Age style at its very best, heark en ing back to the work o f Ko rn gold, Steiner, and Rózsa from the 30s and 40 s. Roman tic mean s large-scale orchestral mus ic ins pired for o ther th an purely mus ical reas ons . It refers to a 19th century of rich harmo ny, melody, an d p oetry which was exactly what Georg e Lucas wan ted, to be light years away from th e Disco craze swamp ing ev ery thing els e. There’s only ev er been o ne thing wrong with Star War s, and that’s the fact it has always comp letely overshado wed Close En co unter s Of Th e Third Kind, which came out the same year. Everyon e who’s seen it rememb ers the significan ce of the spaceship’s five-note mus ical mes sage (which took more th an tw o h undred an d fifty attempts to g et rig ht fo r Spielb erg). With only a partial relian ce on th e roman tic form, audien ces have never emb raced it as op en ly. It may b e atonal (not belon gin g to any k ey ) in places, y et it p erforms ju st as importan t a role in the film as in Star Wars. The film is larg ely abou t commu nicatio n via mu sic, so it wo uld be un thin kable to tak e aw ay the tuba and syn thesiser conversation of the fin ale fro m the blinkin g ligh t s how. All in all, there may never have been a more intellectualised cons ideration of th e use of music as an in tegral part o f a film. Williams’s next major pro ject broug ht s cience fiction down to E arth with th e arrival o f the g reatest superhero, and greatest s uperhero theme. S uperman : The Movie (19 78) features a ‘M arch’ o f such patriotic po mp it has remain ed the warm-u p of choice fo r s porting teams the world over. Williams doesn ’t put a fo ot wron g in characteris ing the alien politics o f p lanet Kryp ton with b ells, percuss ion, and synthesiser. Nor the folk sy farm life of th e Kent family in Smallville, th e bustle of city life in Metro polis, the bu mbling villainous life of L ex Lu thor an d O tis , or the lov e affair w ith modern

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gal Lois Lane. Th en the compos er shot back in to s pace to that far away galaxy for the sequel ado red by all film mus ic fans , Th e Emp ire Strikes Ba ck (198 0). M uch sp eculatio n su rro unds why this sh ould ho ld more appeal than its b racketing ch ap ters of the trilogy, an d even o ver these o ther scores mentioned h ere preceding or following. On e ans wer is th at it end s unresolved with s everal plo t threads in peril. Mus ically that’s tran slated into a much darker o verall moo d, w ith th e grand ‘Imperial M arch’ being at the h eart of all that’s su ddenly dis co vered to be wrong with the Skyw alker family. Th ere are lo ts of g rey areas in th e score, such as the brass rumble puttin g a question mark ov er the head o f bo unty h unter Bo ba Fett, the insin uatio n by strings o f pu re evil in the swamp cave when Luk e confronts his fears, and th e consistently sub tle tricks (such as no ticeable rare absences o f music) creating an air of something amis s at turncoat Lando Calriss ian’s Clo ud City. It’s temp tin g to ign ore Retur n Of The Jed i, wh ich followed 3 years later, s ince it devolved into a regu rg itation of material (some literally reus ed fro m Sta r War s) for a d isp lay of Mu ppets an d teddy bears. Luke’s emotional arc sto ry sh ould have remained at the forefro nt of thin gs, but does at least g et a satisfying pay-off s co red with th e firs t use of cho rus in the trilog y, g iving th e final light s ab re d uel a quasi-religio us feel. Mu sically and visually it’s an anti-climax to wh at was built u p, b ut as the o riginator o f the ph ras e ‘s pace o pera’, it do es make for n early 6 ho urs of the very best of Williams’s career.

Look At The Size Of These Things
In several circles of fando m, a line of dialo gue from Star Wars has been cheerily adapted to sum up th e co mp oser’s in fluence as the 70 s b ecame the 80 s: ‘Do not und erestimate the p ower of Jo hn Williams.’ Incredib ly, having men tio ned all these enormously p opular successes so far, there are s till two more. M ore incred ible is that in between he still had time to kno ck o ff acco mp an imen t to Alfred Hitchcock’s final mov ie Fa mily Plo t (1 976), and a march that o ften finds itself in co ncert repertoires for Midway (19 76). Jaws 2 (1 978) expand ed all the terror of th e o rigin al, while The Fur y (19 78) had an over-the-top ps ycholo gical waltz. He w as the firs t to sugg es t Dracula (19 79) was a misund ers tood roman tic, and th en gave Spielberg a comedic spark in his only real mis fire w ith 1941 (1 979). It is to Spielb erg w e turn

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again fo r the last two b lockb usters that rou nd ou t Williams’s decade-lo ng reign of sup remacy and influence. The final 80s treasure (an d Os car) with Spielberg was E.T. The E xtraTerrestrial (1982 ). It was another mass ive albu m seller, again conforming to Williams’s preference fo r con cert arrangemen ts of the princip al themes (one of which w as a sin gles chart success to o). Like each of th es e blockbus ters highlighted, it was reiss ued on an expanded CD. M ore than any of the o thers it s plits fan opinio n as to whether s uites or chron olo gical o rder best suit his albums. Sentimentality is E.T.’s general moo d, playing on the heartstrings of every ch ild who h ad an imag inary friend, alien or otherw ise. On ce familiar w ith th e film, an yone fo llo wing th e music can’t help bu t b e drawn to ward the astoun ding 1 5-minute bik e chase finale, which brims ov er with up -tempo cheer. E. T. by no means b ro ught any kind of an end to this p eriod of grand eu r, bu t no ne of what follow ed in the 80s ev er attained the same heig hts of popu larity. Wh ile some wou ld prove d ownrig ht forg ettable, at least th ere was Th e River (1 984), SpaceCamp (1 986), Th e Witches Of Ea stwick (19 87), Empire Of The Sun (198 7), The Accidental Tour ist (19 88), Bo rn On The Fou rth Of July (198 9), an d Always (19 89). Shifting records o ff sh elves, encouragin g repeat cinema viewings , and persuading the roman tic id iom back into film mu sic makes Williams a prin cipal architect in this perio d of big s creen his tory. If Su perman is th e ultimate sup erhero theme, th en Raiders Of The Lost Ar k (1 981) is the ultimate adventurer theme. In diana J ones ins tantly became a box office smash, and anoth er best-s elling albu m. Th rough out the film, there are examples o f music w orking ex actly th e w ay it s hould. Pizzicato (plu cked) strin gs give you the creeps as h undreds of tarantulas drop onto th e archaeolo gis t’s sho ulders. The orchestra M ickey-Mo uses his mad dash fro m the temple w hen everythin g s tarts fallin g apart, culmin ating in b ras s into nements o f doo m as a giant rock chases him b efore everyth ing comes to a d eafening cras h of silence. The crowdpleas ing fanfare serves as a musical pun ch lin e to rein fo rce a jo ke about him bein g s cared of a s nake after everything that’s just h ap pened. A gain, this is on ly a demonstration co vering the early part of the film. Later comes the awe-filled Ark theme, a love th eme fo r Marion , an d one of cin ema’s b es t actio n cues for o ne o f its b es t action scenes as J ones sin gle-handedly takes ou t a tru ck convo y of Nazis. Th ere’s no dialo gue for almos t 1 0 minutes, mak ing it a gift for the compos er to act as narrato r, telling us where everyon e is at any given mo ment, an d reassu ring us that the hero will co me

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th rough in the end. A pair of s eq uels follow ed : Temple O f Doo m (198 4) and The La st Crus ade (1 989), bu t by a s hift in ton e neither fu lly recap ture the exub erance of th e original. It took a decad e from 2 001: A Space Od ys sey to Star War s for the ind ustry to tru st scien ce fiction as a genre of legitimate financial worth . As always wh en Ho lly wood latch ed up on something, it was then rapidly done to exces s. T V rush ed out several projects, of w hich the most successful pair featured stron g orch es tral backing from Stu Philip s. In 1 979, b oth Bu ck Ro gers In The 25th Century and Battlestar Ga lactica fo und thems elves bein g to uched up for th eatrical release. Jo hn Barry aided Dis ney’s b id for sci-fi glo ry with The Black Hole (1 979), an d Elmer Bern stein experimen ted serio usly for Satu rn 3 (19 80), in an imated fashion fo r Heavy Metal (19 81), th en with tongu e firmly in ch eek fo r the hijin ks o f Spacehun ter: Ad ventures In Th e For bid den Zon e (1983 ). Other big n ames asked to work sympho nic mag ic in to s emi-s erious sci-fi includ ed Mikló s Rózsa for H. G. Wells’ romance in 7 0s San Fran cisco in Time After Tim e (1 979), L au ren ce Rosenthal fo r a late bid in the disas ter genre with Meteor (1 979), Ennio M orricone inexplicab ly rep licated director J ohn Carpenter ’s style for s hock mas terpiece Th e Th ing (1 982), and Henry M an cini d id h is b es t to res cue the limp hyb rid of s pace v ampires in Lifeforce (1985 ). The Star Wars-insp ired backing carried acro ss to most genres that s olidified into catego risation at the start of the 80s. Science fiction was the main on e to explore fus ing with the burgeoning capab ilities of electro nics. Rock and New A ge therefore tran smitted themselves into s pace co urtesy of Queen for the camp glitz of F lash Gordo n (1980 ), an d Jo hn Carp en ter ag ain with a hard -as -n ails anthem for Snake Pliss ken in Es ca pe F rom New York (198 1). Vangelis sug gested tranqu il in igno ran ce for the bleak futu re of Blade Run ner (1982 ), an d Wend y Carlo s eas ed us into the digital realm with Tro n (19 82). Brad Fiedel p ound ed metallic footfalls beneath Sch warzenegger’s b reakthroug h as The Terminato r (1 984), and Toto (and Brian Eno) mad e interiorised tho ughts and emotion s as openly app arent as the v as t deserts of Dun e (1 984). Maurice Jarre sho wed off being one o f the main sy nth es iser compos ers of the time for En emy Mine (1 985), an d Harold Faltermey er p ut a b eat into step aerob ics with ‘Captain Freedom’s Worko ut’ when Schwarzen eg ger sw itched in to goo d guy mode as The Run nin g M an (198 7).

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There Is Another
Like Williams, Jerry Gold smith was one of the few exceptions to the rule who did excel for a clear p eriod of time. Th e J ack-of-all-trad es we identified him to be in Ch ap ter 4 w as enormously p ro lific durin g the 70s in to the 80 s. He applied imp res sion istic techniques to the scores for Log an's R un (19 76), Dam nation Alley (1977 ), and Caprico rn One (1 978), which is to s ay theirs was mu sic that never really b elonged to any one character o r emo tio nal story arc, but ins tead followed the drama itself. 1 979 w as the year of his main co ntrib ution to the s cience fiction g enre tho ugh. First came Rid ley Scott’s Alien , for which every con ceiv ab le asp ect of production lived u p to th e title. From the nightmarish organic loo k o f the aliens an d their env ironmen t design ed by Swis s artist H. R. Giger throug h to the heavily indu strialised visio n of Earth’s future habitat, it was a spectacle jus t as orig inal on the eye as Sta r Wa rs. O n to p of th at sits p ossibly the coldest o f s cores ever written for a film. As a stan dalon e lis ten on albu m, it is b ackg ro und mus ic for a haun ted hous e. It breathes and it sighs (an ech oing fou r-no te p hras e for woo dwin ds p inched for coun tless sub sequent scores ), then s creams and beats the walls with in novative percuss ion effects (e.g. lo g drums). No t only did it s et a template for the three mov ies that fo llo wed, b ut also for endles s rip -o ffs an d pastiches. Even more pop ular from the same year is w hat many cons ider to b e G olds mith’s finest work – Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The Star Trek franchise had b een mothballed a decad e earlier, bu t new p oss ibilities in special effects were too promising for Paramou nt to ig nore. Any one who thou ght the elaborate v isuals overstay ed their w elco me nick named it ‘The Slow M otion Picture’. Paradoxically, the tw o key sequ en ces this complaint is attrib uted to, are also the musical highlights. Number one occu rs as A dmiral K irk is ferried to th e newly refitted Enterprise. It’s mo st certain ly a case of s howing off th e FX, but the 6 minutes are mad e into a majestic ballet of movemen t by Goldsmith ’s glorious mus ic. Number Two is the far longer s equence of entering the V ’g er cloud ; o ne of man y sci-fi jo urneys remin iscent o f 20 01’s h allucinogenic fin ale. H ere the compos er seems to ad ap t Herrmann’s emo tio nal vo rtex from Ver tig o with an unresolvin g cy clic motif, perfectly capturing the op en-mou thed crew. Lo ts of creative effects are dropp ed on top of this sens e of awe. Of particular importance is the Blaster Beam, a s eventeen-foot metal bar strung with bridge cables and s panked, wh ich is th e clou d’s u niqu e leitmotivic device.

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Th ere’s o nly th e vagu es t of referen ces to the original 60s TV s eries theme by Alexand er Cou rage, w ho ass isted orchestrating (s ee Chapter 7 ) the score in cidentally. Goldsmith’s own theme has gone o n to be ev en mo re recogn isable, h av ing b een ad ap ted for the Next Generation T V series th eme, th en reus ed in The Fin al Fron tier (198 9), F irst Con tact (199 6), Ins urrection (199 8) an d Nem es is (20 02). He also co mpo sed th e main title theme for TV’s Vo ya ger. In total, it’s a b ody of work that makes h im more prominent in the genre than an y other compos er. Es pecially with what else we can add from th is timeframe. He scored rug ged men ace for th e Wes tern-in-s pace of Ou tla nd (19 81), his own bid fo r s uperhero success w ith a s oaring fanfare for S upergir l (198 4), an experiment in electronics for the killer robo ts of R unaway (198 4), music capturing the d ay dreamin g o f every scho olb oy fo r Explo rer s (198 5), and kinetic comedy for th e bio logy les son of Inner space (19 87). Th es e last two were for directo r Jo e Dante, with whom G olds mith has had another lo ng-stan din g wo rking relationsh ip. It began in 1983 with the anth olo gy of stories fo r Twilight Zone: The M ovie, to wh ich D an te contributed a s eg ment. As a genre cro ssov er, it fu lly utilis ed Gold smith’s versatility as th e compo ser wh o also led the field in the w orld of ho rro r. Dante immediately secured him for his b reakthrough mo vie Gremlins (1 984). It was another case of blu rring the lin es between film categ ories: part chiller, part comedy, but mo stly cute. What h ad really changed th e h orro r g en re perman en tly (w inning Go ldsmith h is only Oscar to date) was Th e Omen (19 76). In stead o f glo ssing ov er or cutting away from grueso me d eath s the film w as graphically direct, raising censo rs hip iss ues lasting to the present d ay. M usically it was a watersh ed in sty lis tic as sociation. The cho ral black mass (‘Ave Satani’) has become a template fo r anyon e loo kin g to depict d emonic activity. It’s often been mistak en fo r Carl Orff ’s ‘Carmin a Burana’ (thanks in the UK to TV sh ows like On ly Foo ls An d Hor ses), yet here in its original setting the effect is genuinely un nerv ing fo r the Antichrist’s tale. Gold smith adapted and occasio nally bettered the material in the two sequels D amien: Omen II (197 8) and The Final Con flict (198 1). Mo re than any other compos er, he seems comfo rtable to stick aro und as stud ios try re-bottling bo x office lig htning. Finis hing th e Omen s eries he moved straigh t o n to Poltergeis t (19 82), which is ano ther of his mos t respected work s. It’s a s co re o f frig htening contradiction s. A fragile b eau ty pervades the lullaby for Carol An ne, the little

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girl kidnapp ed by gho sts, and it speaks to the tragedy tearing apart a s uburbanite family. Then th ere are sho ck ing bu rs ts of dis son an ce and harsh textu ral elements for the su pernatural p yrotechnics, s uch as w henever the clow n to y appears. Th e dis mal P olterg eist II: The Other Side (198 6) follo wed. Roun din g ou t his wo rk in the 8 0s hous e of horror w as th e inevitable Ps ycho II (19 83) for which he wis ely avoided any p ossible compariso n with Herrmann ’s s emin al score. Outsid e the two princip al fan tasy g en res, Gold smith excelled in everyth ing else jus t as memorably. Chinato wn (1 974) remains his person al fav ourite, p erhaps as a mark o f prou d accomplishment hav ing been written in a rid iculo usly sh ort 1 0 day s. Th e roman tic trump et so los defined film n oir better th an any thing in th e genre’s 50 s heyday, and is a su bject of s tud y in man y film music clas ses. The Wind An d The Lion (197 5) is the best example of the co mpo ser’s trademark brand of p owerhous e action writing , here len t Arabic rh ythmic structu re. ‘Rais uli Attack s’ is one of th e mos t ferociou s pieces of music ever written fo r film, and makes th e s eq uence o f a horseback s word du el th underous ly exh ilarating. To these can be added: saucy hu mou r fo r The First Great Tr ain Robb er y (1 979), flu tterin g brass s tin gs for another late disaster en try with The Swa rm (1978 ), Wagn erian high adventu re fo r th e In diana J ones wannabe Kin g So lomo n's Mines (1 985), an d a sign that th ere might be a sense of hu mo ur at work with n umerou s self parodies for Jo e D an te’s The 'Bu rbs (1 989). Thro ugho ut the 80s, audiences were h ammered over the h ead with attempts to create Su perstar perso nas, and no one h elped Sylvester Stallone achieve that mo re than Goldsmith with his scores for the tes tostero ne-dripping Ram bo trilogy. The mu sic goes from plain tiv e melancholy (w ith o utbu rs ts of muscular b ras s) in Fir st Bloo d (198 2), to grizzled patrio tis m in Ra mbo: Firs t Bloo d P art II (198 5), to all-out orchestral war in tutti (all play ing s imultan eo usly) fash ion for Ramb o III (1988 ). N ev er let it be s aid Hollyw ood wo n’t squ eeze something for all its w orth (Rambo /Goldsmith, yo u decide… ).

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He Was But A Learner
James Ho rn er was th e big early 8 0s discov ery for genre mov ies. Produ cer/d irector Rog er Corman diverted him fro m aspiring toward a concert hall career, and dro pped Battle B eyon d The Stars (19 80) in his lap. Clearly designed to cas h-in on Star War s, and also clearly temp tracked with mu sic from Gold smith ’s Star Trek, it was noneth eless a massiv e feath er in Horner’s cap. To prove it, director Nicholas M ey er igno red th e borrowings and signed him up to do better o n Star Trek II: The Wra th Of Kha n (19 82). Full of n au tical allusions to creator Gene Rodd enberry ’s v ision o f Horatio Hornblower in space, this is robus t mu sic of epic p ro portions. Th e antith es is of his own beautiful new Enterprise theme is th e chaotic motif for Khan’s wrath, a whiplash ing series o f cracks and b ras s wails. T here’s s ubtle und erscore for the death of Sp ock, eerie p ercus siv e and electro nic effect for ‘Khan’s Pets ’, and no n-sto p high -spirited inv en tio n for th e taut s trategic game of hide and seek at the ‘Battle In T he Mutara Nebu la’. Leonard Nimoy retained Horner for his directorial debut o n the next ins talment in the series, Star Trek III: The Search For Spo ck (1984 ), wh ich ton ed the action do wn in fav our of a character stud y on ag eing and pseud o sp iritualis m. Elsewhere in the g enre, Ho rn er prov ed equ ally capable. Kr ull (19 83) didn’t kno w wh ether it was science fiction , Tolkien fan tasy, o r swash buckler. A ssumin g it wanted to be all of the abo ve, the score masterfully wove each appro priate s tyle to gether. With tips of the hat to the clas sics of Hols t and Prok ofiev, it’s an early example of how H orner happily deco nstru cts exis ting works for th e cons truction of his own (the one factor of the co mpo ser’s career fans arg ue stren uous ly about). Talkin g o f which , B rain sto rm from the same year has proven to b e a fav ourite of his ow n for re-using th emes later on. Cocoon (1 985) didn’t actually requ ire an y fantastical elemen ts, but h e d id g et to indulge in a pass ion fo r big b an d writing (als o in the 19 88 sequel, Cocoon : The R eturn). M ore th an his oth er work in th e genre, Aliens (1 986) became the o ne to set trends. Despite sh ad es of Kh achaturian and Goldsmith, Horner’s b rand o f militaria h as end ed u p w orkin g for anyth ing to depict U S Marines filmed sin ce. The cue ‘Reso lution’ was u sed in do zens of mo vie trailers, as well as inexp licably re-ap pearing fo r the finale of Die Hard two y ears later. In the ho rro r realm he su ggested a native histo ry to the ly canthropic tale of Wolfen (1981 ), made the sheer d aftness of Mich ael Caine’s d ismemb er-

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men t vaguely believable fo r The Han d (1 981), and brough t h eartfelt magic to the dark fantasy ride of Som ethin g Wicked This Way Comes (19 83). Th ro ugho ut the res t of th e 8 0s, Ho rner managed to accompany the brigh t start of several actors ’ careers. H e kept th ings nice and fu nky for Ed die M urphy in 48 Hrs . (1 982), and th udded electron ic foo tfalls b eneath the weig ht o f Schwarzen egger for Co mmand o (198 5) then R ed Heat (19 88). He ig nored the anachronism of s ynth esisers underlinin g Chris tian Slater’s 14th Century loss of virginity in The Name Of The Ro se (1 986), and scored the ultimate tearjerker motif for Hollywo od’s infatu ation with the line ‘I love yo u Dad’ in Field Of Dreams (1 989). He also patriotically p aved the way for ev ery black male actor s ubsequ en tly accep ted in the 9 0s by Hollywo od in the late racial apolo gy movie Glor y (1 989). Keepin g the kids h ap py on Satu rd ay mornin gs, Horner was instrumen tal in on e of the firs t n on-Dis ney animated ventures with An American Tail (198 6), especially w ith the h igh ly p opular son g ‘Somewh ere Ou t Th ere’. Willow (1988 ) wasn’t the start of his relationsh ip w ith director Ron Howard (Cocoon w as ), but the op ulent wall-to -wall s was hbu ck le he provided ensu red he’d be the co mp oser Howard w ould return to more than an y other. Subs eq uently they’ve collaborated on Apo llo 13 (199 5), R anso m (19 96), How Th e Grinch Stole Ch ris tmas (20 00) and A Beautifu l Mind (200 1). His las t children ’s film in th e 8 0s wo uld p ro vid e g rist to th e mill of all naysayers who d isagree with his tech niqu e of re-us ing material. Honey, I Shru nk The Kids (1989 ) landed Disney with a laws uit claiming one of Horner’s main th emes bo re u ncan ny resemb lance to a tu ne by Raymond Scott (the great Warner Brothers cartoo n maestro).

A Million Voices Cried Out In Terror
M ost co mpo sers agree that all music is decon struction, an d by turning no w to the b oom of the horror g en re fro m the 70s in to the 80s, th at s hould be very apparent. We’v e touched on the A-list s co res from th e triumvirate of Williams, Go ldsmith, and Horner. L ittle of their work s temmed from Hollywoo d’s exploitative agend a however. Th e Omen was cited as the firs t mainstream s howcase of g ore, bu t the und ergrou nd circu it natu rally beat it. For in stance, George A. Romero’s original Nigh t Of Th e Living Dead was 196 8. Th e gru es ome zombie comic appeared from nowh ere during a period that Chapter 4 identified as mostly concern ed with commercial efforts and teen

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fodd er. Ho lly wood soon sank its teeth into h orro r mo vies fo r all their exploitative wo rth, b ut no where near as d eeply as independent studio s. Early miles ton es inclu de director Wes Crav en ’s debu t Last H ouse On The Left (1 972), faith-tes tin g sh ocker The Exorcis t (19 73) w hich famous ly u sed M ike Oldfield ’s ‘Tu bular Bells’, and Th e Texas Chainsaw Ma ssa cre (19 74) with teeth-gratin g electronic soun d design. Horror mo vies req uire musical s leigh t-of-hand mo re than any other. For th es e 2 d ecades, electronic howls, s queals, icicle drips , and screams d id the jo b becaus e key boards and anyth ing electron ically off-the-wall were in. In Italy, d irector Dario Argento work ed with rock band Goblin for a screaming so undtrack to Deep R ed a.k.a. Profo ndo Ros so (1 975) and S usp iria (19 76). Th e mains tream proliferation o f sequencers and sy nth s came with Joh n Carpenter’s run away s ucces s on Ha llo ween (197 8). The score came fast and cheap, b ecause he was the composer too. His extremely simp le main theme (based on a b ongo warm-up exercise) has b een one o f the mos t imitated ph ras es of all time. For an early examp le, s eek out Fred Myrow ’s mus ic for Ph anta sm from the follow ing year. There were man y keyb oard contribu tion s to con troversial projects o f the day: Dawn Of The Dead (G oblin again), I Sp it On Your G rave, The Hills Have E yes (all 1978 ), and The Driller Killer (1979 ). An occas ion al orchestral effort fo und its way in to the genre s uch as Elmer Bern stein’s ton gue-incheek work o n An A merican Werewolf In Lond on (198 1). The 80 s otherw ise happ ily circumn av igated hig her bud gets w ith you ng, k een , and inexpens ive compos ers look ing for a break. Director Sam Raimi g av e one to as piring musician Jos ep h LoDu ca on Th e E vil Dead (1 983). Th e atmos pheres created on and off screen betw een th em has kept th em working tog ether ever since in film (s equels Evil Dead 2 in 1987 and Army Of Darkness in 19 93) and TV (H ercules, Xena , and American G othic). Dario Argento k ep t th e cult circuit undead by letting British composer Simon Boswell co ntrib ute cues to Demons (198 5) and D emo ns 2 (198 7) before tackling the who le of Deliria (1987 ). Guitarist Richard Ban d mad e his presence felt in cult horror with The House On So rority Row (19 83) and Re-Anim ator (198 5) where he laced a beat into Herrmann’s Ps ycho title music to allow the film’s exces ses to be perceived as b lack comed y. The 80s were a b reeding g round for h orror franchis es , wh ich in mus ical terms almost never meant development of thematic material. Chainsaw Mas sacre was th e first s platter movie to s pawn a sequel fo r its dubiously

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icon ic villain. Th en Halloween kept Mich ael Myers alive indefinitely via Carp en ter. Harry Manfredin i had the task o f resu rrectin g Jason Vo rhees in seven o f the eigh t Friday The 13th movies that b eg an in 1 980. T here was no su ch con sis tency for Freddy Krueger however, w ho after bein g introduced via Ch arles Berns tein’s tink lin g lu llaby in A Nigh tmare On Elm Street (198 4), wo uld be pass ed between Christo pher You ng, Angelo Bad alamenti, Craig Safan, J ay Ferg uson , Brian May, and J. Peter Ro bins on. You ng redeemed himself fo r Fredd y’s Dead however with the tw o 8 0s Pinhead movies Hellr ais er (1987 ) and Hellb ound : Hellr aiser II (19 88). Both are full of goth ic romanticism, b ut the s eco nd b reaks all man ner of g round with sn arling en ergy an d an orchestra bleatin g ou t G-O-D in M orse Co de!

We’re Caught In A Tractor Beam
One o f the b igges t su ccess stories was Step hen King, fro m w hom Hollywoo d couldn’t ob tain b ook rig hts fas t enoug h after Brian DePalma’s adaptation of Carrie (1976 ). It was a box office smas h th an ks to that most famou s of do uble-wh ammy endin gs, and the crafty misdirection of Italian composer Pino Don ag gio’s d elicate flu te th eme ripp ed apart by brass an d bells fo r the su rp rise. Then came Kub rick to once again sh ak e th ing s up with an amalgam o f musical sou rces for the s low-bu rning fus e of Jack Nich ols on’s p erforman ce in The S hin ing (198 0). T he anthology collection Creep show (198 2) allow ed John Harrison to play horror for laugh s, while Ch arles Bernstein accentuated every snarl and h owl o f b ad dog Cujo (1 983). David Cronenberg had to work witho ut his regular collaborator Ho ward Sh ore (s ee belo w) for s tud io reason s o n The Dead Zone (1 983), but in doing s o laun ched the career of Mich ael Kamen with his so rrow fu l music for haun ted ps ychic Jo hnny. J ohn Carpenter us ed keyboards an d guitar to keep killer car Christine (198 3) alive, and Jon athan E lias used ch ild ren’s cho ir to k eep the sp irit of th e field s dead in Ch ildren Of The Co rn (1984 ). T he d ecade wen t on with lots more electro nic terror for Fires tar ter (198 4) by Tangerine Dream, Cat’ Eye (198 5) by Alan Silvestri, Silver Bullet (198 5) by Jay Chats taway, and th e one and only time Kin g wo uld try his hand at d irecting with Maximum Overdrive (1 986) b y AC/DC. In 19 77, Paramoun t Pictures k ep t cash regis ters ring ing b y cap italising on the d isco craze w ith Saturday Nig ht F ever. It h ad come abo ut b y entru stin g a mu sic indu stry execu tiv e (Ro bert Stigwoo d) to p ro duce the film. The

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assu mp tio n was h e’d k now how to tap into contemporary culture. It was the biggest selling album of all time with 25 million sales internationally. It had been a case of mass marketing, includ ing co-ordin ated trailers before the film’s release, and mad e the Bee Gees an ev en bigger ph en omen on than th ey alread y were. It also catapu lted J ohn Travo lta into s tardom. When it was s een that a Star could draw th e p ublic into cinemas an d record s tores for disco, fo llo wed b y 5 0s ro ck with Grease (1 978), and then Co untry with Ur ban Cowboy (198 0), televisio n reared its head again . If the Mu sical could be p opular once more on big screen, th en it was p ossible on the smaller screen too. Th e ans wer was th e M TV ch an nel, laun ch ed in the summer of 19 81. It was a meltin g p ot for artistic creativity. Firs tly for mu sic, but als o for directing and editin g on video. M ovie s tudios therefore sou ght to take so meth ing back , and b eg an to p oach video and commercials directors . The world of dance h ad been represented by the d isco mo vies ab ove. Th en in 1980 th ere was a do-it-for-fun followin g for The B lues Broth er s contras ted by a do -it-for-art fo llo wing fo r F ame (which w en t to T V between 19 82 and 1987 ). Co mmercials directo r Adrian Lyne then raised the bar with Flashd ance (1 983). Ev ery one ag reed it was one lo ng rock vid eo , an d featu red o ne o f the first credits fo r a music su perviso r, wh o oversaw Gio rgio M oroder’s score and so ngs. Dance s tayed in every one’s mind with Kevin Baco n’s tu rn th e same year in Footloo se, and a few y ears later with the sleep er hit Dirty Da ncing (1 987). T heir albums were mas siv e chart h its , and in itiated a public taste fo r son g co mpilations th at has lasted far longer than th e period of pop ularity in the late 60s . One major factor influen cing record bu ying an d marketing trend s was th e emergence of compact dis c techn olog y. The first player debu ted in 19 80, and then the Philips and Son y Corporatio ns began to mak e th em co mmercially available in 1 985. Viny l su ccess es on th e cusp of the CD mark et and born out of the M TV era were generally sold on th e basis of one or two song s going to N umb er 1 in the charts. Fo r the years in question, these su ccess es were: Th e B ig Chill (19 83) with M arvin Gaye’s ‘I Heard It Throug h The Grapevin e’, Gh ostb uster s (198 4) with Ray Park er Jr.’s title s ong , Against A ll Odd s (1984 ) w ith Phil Collins ’s ‘Take A Look At M e N ow’, The Woma n In Red (19 84) with Stevie Wo nder’s ‘I J ust Called To Say I L ove You ’, P urple R ain (19 84) with Prince’s Os car-win ning title song , an d White Nig hts (19 85) with Lio nel Richie’s ‘Say You , Say Me’.

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Diggin g into the po ck ets carryin g teen ag ers ’ dispos ab le income was the order of the day. There was the charitable ro ute, wh ich h ad the wh ole wo rld rocking to the feel-goo d factor o f Liv e Aid . Th en th ere w as th e Hollywo od way o f not only creating its own meg a-bu dget megastars , but also poaching po p Superstars like Prince, w ho w as followed into the cinema by M ad onna with Desperately Seeking Sus an . Teen flicks were never more po pular than when co ncep tualised and marketed b y so meone wh o could tap into pop cultu re with ease. Fo remost among thos e makin g the attempt was writer/produ cer/d irector Jo hn Hu ghes. His films o f the mid 80s are a p erfect s napsho t of fas hio n, language, and mus ical tastes . Titles were ins pired by son gs and vice v ers a. Their compilation son g albu ms co mp letely igno red scores by Ira Newbo rn . Th is was exactly what the indu stry had b een mo ving to ward s, hence the sizeable box office of Sixteen Ca ndles in 19 84, Th e Breakfas t Club and Weird Science (w hich gave Danny Elfman’s band Oin go Boin go th eir only Number 1 hit) in 198 5, and F er ris Bueller 's Day Off and P retty In Pink (both 198 6). The multi-tas k role of Hu ghes across th is series of films is illu strative of a sh ift in power behind the scenes th at came out of th e disco mov ie produ cer’s s ucces s. Stu dio s w ere look ing for b lockbu sters, not artistic vis ion s. So stan d up Steven Sp ielberg for show ing the w ay w ith the s tart of a s econ dary p ro ducer role th at put his name before th e directo r’s in a film title. 19 85 was th e key y ear where it was a case of ‘Steven Sp ielberg Pres en ts’ Ba ck To The Future, The Goo nies, and Yo ung Sherlock Holmes. Part of that role was to ens ure sub sid iary income in soun dtrack s ales, and so th e scores by Alan Silvestri, Dave Grusin, and Bruce Brou ghto n respectiv ely to ok a backseat to s ongs from Huey Lewis A nd The News and Cindy L au per for th e first two, b ut n o so undtrack at all for the third. As corporations began bu ying each o ther out (e.g. So ny bou ght Colu mbia), th e sh ift fro m director to prod ucer on designer b lockbu ster mov ies so on became apparent. Wearing similar (but o nly slightly smaller) sh oes was Joel Silver, who sin ce the mid-80s has b een res pons ible for two Predato rs, th ree Die Hards, fo ur Letha l Wea pons, Comma ndo (1985 ), Ro ad Hou se (1989 ), D emo lition Man (199 3), and The Matr ix (1999 ). T he other pair of names to facilitate the elev ation of the produ cer, the develop ment of th e co ncep t movie, an d help generate the Planet Ho lly wood -s tyled Star icon was J erry Bruckh eimer and D on Simpso n.

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They gave us th e aforementioned Fla shda nce and Beverly Hills Co p, th en s tuck a p air of cool sh ad es o n Tom Cruise for Top Gun in 1 986 (Bes t Song O scar for Georgio M oroder’s ‘Take M y Breath Aw ay ’) and later for Days Of Th under (1 990). Bruckh eimer went on to produce a s eries of movies that all featu re s co res stemming fro m the direction electro nic music was taking in the 80s (B ad Boys in 199 5, The R ock in 1996 , Co n Air in 199 7, Ar magedd on an d E nemy Of The State both in 1 998 and Gone In S ixty S econ ds in 200 0). Outsid e the horror g en re, there w as the occasio nal su ccess fu l us e of sy nthes isers and sequen cers in u nexpected p laces , such as Vang elis’s Os car-winn ing Char iots O f Fire (1 981), Japanese comp oser Ryuich i Sakamoto ’s melod ic Merry Christm as Mr. Lawren ce (19 83), and M aurice Jarre’s most po pular w ork away fro m an orchestra for Witn es s (1 985). The real sp otlight was o n an ything action -oriented. On e of the flash-in -the-pan names of the time was Harold Faltermeyer with Bever ly Hills Cop (198 4, and II in 198 7), F letch (198 5, an d Fletch Lives in 19 89), Top Gun (19 86), The R unning Man (1 987), and Tango An d Cas h (19 89). T here was also the German co llective Tang erine Dream applyin g th eir dis tinctiv e b ran d of amb ient electronics to Risky Bus iness and Th e Keep in 1983 , Fires tar ter (198 4), Fr ight Nigh t (19 85), the American vers ion of Legend in 1 985 (it featured a lu sh Jerry Gold smith score every where els e), and Nea r Dark (198 7). Righ t at the end of th e decade came Bla ck Rain (19 89), a s co re to have more impact on the increas ing number of high con cept actio n movies in the 90 s than is generally recog nis ed . ‘It was pretty out there fo r its time, ’ admits German compo ser H an s Zimmer. ‘Bu t it really sh ap ed the action genre from th ere on. It s udden ly became th e temp s core for everybo dy else's action movies . Th at became really to ugh on me because the next time I was given an action movie I literally had to try to re-invent the lan guage. Everybo dy had been followin g it, so what w as new th en sud denly became a cliché.’ Th e blend of orch es tral an d made-to-order s ynthesis er perfo rmances wo rk s at a very surface level in the film, and has become one of few way s a film compos er can h ope to be h eard in a mod ern soun d mix. This was where the M ed ia Ventu res action s tyle b eg an , which w e’ll return to in the next chapter. Zimmer had lobbied hard fo r the chance to wo rk with Rid ley Scott, and the hard-hitting fusion sou nd that resulted imp res sed Scott en ough for them to form the mos t recu rring mus ical relationsh ip in the director’s career. Subsequ en tly th ey’ve collaborated on Th elma And Louise (19 91), Glad iato r

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(200 0), Ha nnib al (2 001), Black Ha wk Do wn (2001 ) and Ma tchstick Men (200 3).

Their Energy Surrounds Us And Binds Us
This b rings us to something rep eatedly touched upon in th is book so far, and th at’s o f great importan ce in the indus try tod ay. Lo ng-lasting d irector/ compos er relations hips are quite simply on e of the last p laces for artis tic express ion and develop ment. With the takeover of a produ cer’s role, it requires a director ’s frien dship with a comp oser to ensu re mus ical con cepts end up on the s creen as originally en vis ioned. So it’s well wo rth noting the significan t friends hip s forged in th e 8 0s. David Cronenb erg’s films are who lly self-con tained; yet seem to belo ng to gether in a v ery private un iverse. Keepin g th em stylistically indiv idu al yet in tellectu ally un ified is th e directo r’s musical other half, Ho ward Shore. ‘When w e started, we did n’t have a lot of pre-co nceptions,’ Sho re ex plain s. ‘He was th e first director I h ad worked with, an d I was the firs t composer he had worked with. David d oesn’t try to steer you or co rru pt you in an y way. He just wants y ou to be able to write to the max. That’s ho w we’ve alway s work ed . It’s actually a rare kind of situation to b e in . His stuff h as alway s been my most forward thinking.’ Th eir projects have been some of th e mos t controversial and stimulating cinematic exp erien ces of the last 20 years, beginning w ith The Broo d (19 80). Sho re w orked with a dozen s trin gs to in voke uncertain ty and unease fo r a tale of h omicidal mutant babies. M utants then pop ulated Scann ers (1981 ), th is time dabbling in p re-sy nthesiser electronics . Two y ears on, the compos er was ready to go wild with electronic ex perimen tatio n, disto rting voices an d building u niqu e effects for Videod rome, a strange reaction to the MTV generatio n. Their bigg es t co mmercial success together was a remak e o f Th e F ly (1986 ) starring Jeff Go ldblum. Grand operatic tragedy musically s urround s the doo med scientist’s disin tegratio n. Along side the following Dead R inger s in 19 88, with its p oign an t expression of being d ep res sed, thes e tw o are the most melod ic their music’s ever been. M ichael N yman is often credited with being the first compo ser to apply minimalism to mainstream film scoring . Th is is a technique largely concern ed w ith repetitio n, whereb y the speed of cy cling material shifts, wh ile th e pitch generally d oesn’t. Wh ereas Philip Glass seemed to be merely writ-

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in g his con cert works for others to film aroun d (as with the h ypno tic Koyaan isqa tsi in 198 3), minimalism’s greates t p ro minence, and Ny man’s ris ing star was in th e films of fellow Brit Peter Green aw ay. Th e Dr augh tsman 's Co ntra ct (1 982) featured a dry, clin ical portrait o f characters lost in po rtrait painting. Almos t exacting ap proach es followed for bo th A Zed A nd Two Noug hts (1 985) and Th e B elly Of A n Architect (1987 ), befo re a su rprise mutu al appreciation of M ozart offered something gracefully different for Drowning By Nu mbers (198 8). Their culmination of the 80s was w ith The Cook The Thief His Wife An d Her Lover (198 9), which both vis ually and musically s plit aud iences between absolute love o r hate o f its sens ory assau lt. Also from th e U K came Kenneth Branag h and Patrick Doyle with Henry V (19 89). Th is brav e debut offered itself up for comp arison with that of Sirs Laurence Oliv ier and William Walton, and came away with a d ignified amo unt of res pect. For Sco ttish compos er Do yle, it was a cinematic baptism of fire with th e larg e-s cale s ymp honic score. ‘It’s a very relaxed relationsh ip,’ he main tains . ‘G en erally speakin g, once he’s talk ed ab out what h e’s after in terms of style, we’re set. Ken likes a tune an d that’s really the barometer for the rest o f a film for h im. He’s h ap py for the rest to develop on ce w e’ve s et a main co re. There’s b een a stro ng s horth an d from th e word go . We’ve g ot on very well as pers onalities go. The main prio rity is having fun. Otherwis e what’s the p oint?’ T heir fun con tin ued by b reaking into H olly wood an d plu ngin g the depths o f No ir for Dead Aga in (19 91), then g etting a tan on the set of Much A do A bout Nothing (1 993) with Doyle’s h earty onscreen singin g bu ild ing the cast u p for a jo yous choral fin ale. The mos t sing ular p airing to have come from France in the las t 30 years is director L uc Bess on and co mp oser Eric Serra. The Last Battle (198 3) was th eir firs t big s creen effort, and bo re all the hallmarks o f wo rk ing together on student films, with saxo phon e and s ynth rock back ing a samurai warrior cleanin g up after a n uclear apo calypse. T hen came the home turf hit of S ubway (198 5), lau nching th e career of Chris toph er Lambert as an eccen tric hero hiding in the Paris Metro from a criminal und erwo rld. Serra’s u pbeat po p s core tapp ed directly into the co ntemporary y outh s en sib ility reb elling again st Ho lly wood con fo rmity. A gentle ch an ge of pace for The Big B lue (198 8) was exactly what the d irector wanted for h is very perso nal d eep-s ea divin g story, but on this on e Hollywoo d go t its w ay by replacing Serra’s

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su bterran ean samp les with a mo re trad itional score by Bill Con ti fo r the US mark et. M ak ing bigg er cross -cu ltu ral waves was the main stream d eb ut o f co ntroversial Du tch director Paul Verho ev en . Like any one else breathing, he’d been enormously impressed with th e s co re for Co nan The Barb arian (198 2), with its pagan op eratic extremes an d bo tto mles s su pply of memo rable melod y. Compos er Basil Po ledou ris was bo rn in America o f Greek descent, and that West Eu ro pean s en sib ility shines throu gh many rhy thmic licks in his w ork as w ell as a bottomless supp ly of beautifu l romantic material (e.g. the tend erness exp res sed in The Blue Lag oon from 1 980). Verhoeven wanted roman ce to acco mp an y his decadent mediaeval w allow in rape and rab ies with Fles h A nd B loo d (19 85). H e got th at and more, and the friends hip took them on to th e big b udget hit Robo co p (198 7), where the in dus trialised to ne of the music s uits th e co ld characters an d cold er s ardo nic wit of the plot perfectly. Later they reunited for wry military exercises and satire in Stars hip Troop er s (199 7). Of all modern directo rs, David Lynch is resp ected as th e mo st aurally attuned. He n ot only acts as sou nd desig ner and mixer, bu t frequently contributes to the score as well. ‘What mak es it d ifferent with D av id is that he lo ves music s o much,’ claims compos er An gelo Badalamen ti. ‘He fin ds that th e pace an d mood of it so metimes dictates th e pace o f the s cen e he's going to shoo t. I write a lo t of music before he even sho ots. T his is very interesting because in film 99% o f the time a composer is broug ht in at th e las t momen t on ce there's a director's cu t. That gives en ough to start composing themes, and befo re you know it there's a lo ck ed picture. Then the compos er marries th ing s to gether. Part of David's genius is that h e sees th ro ugh mu sic. Wh ich is kin d of cool, and yo u can't say th at about many people.’ T heir memorable first collab oration was for Blue Velvet (198 6). It integrated the 50s title so ng in to the fabric o f the n arrative, demons tratin g Lynch’s p erso nalis ed technique of us ing music as an emotional n arrato r to brid ge scen es an d character relationsh ips togeth er. Their o wn son g ‘Mys teries Of Lov e’ features th ree times in d ifferent forms h igh lig hting the matu ration of Kyle MacLachlan’s bo y-to-man journey. Both ‘In Dreams ’ by Roy Orbis on and ‘Love Letters’ by Victo r Young (yes, the Young from Ch ap ter 2 ) and performed b y Kitty Lester take on nightmarish significance app lied to Den nis Hop per’s role. Tyin g the director’s 50s s ensib ilities together is Badalamenti’s sympho nic score, which began their almost telepath ically intuitive w orking meth od

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with o ne another. The Twin Peaks TV Series , su per sexy/vio lent Wild A t Hear t (19 90), an d u napolo getically s urreal Twin Peaks: Fire Wa lk With Me (199 2) all fo llo wed , crowning them as a rare cinematic musical fo rce for cinema of th e 9 0s. The real su pers tar of working relations hips that originated in the mid-80 s was that of Tim Burto n and Dann y Elfman. Pee Wee’s Big Adventu re (19 85) was a d izzy ing splas h of colour and s tyle with a mu sical accomp an imen t th at’s part G eo rges Delerue, part Nin o Rota, part Bern ard Herrmann, but as we’d soo n dis co ver, all Elfman. ‘I used to see him in clu bs when I was n’t even in th e film in dustry, ’ remembers the directo r. ‘Th ey (Elfman ’s band Oingo Boin go) were very theatrical and fun , and they had a s ubtex t under th em being so rt o f narrative. Not like film music exactly, but there was so meth ing in them that seemed very filmic. So wh en I had the o pportunity to make a mov ie there was no qu es tio n that it wou ld be great to as k him. He’d b een s ucces sful in a b an d, bu t wh en we went to the film we were both starting o ut at th e s ame time. It felt very contemporary to hav e so mebo dy who was like me in the sens e that we knew wh at we were doin g bu t we didn’t know what we were do ing. It was new and w e were stu pid and arrogant to thin k that w e could do it. It was funny to see h im in clu bs an d then dealing with a b ig orch es tra for th e firs t time. ’ Pee Wee’s in fluence on co medy scoring was instan taneous, and is still felt today. Distancing thems elves completely they returned with the sup ernaturally screwball Beetlejuice (198 8), where Elfman mixed Harry Belafon te into his offbeat take on the afterlife. Th en every thing chang ed with Batman (1 989). The mark eting machine set in mo tio n for the Caped Cru sader's ad venture was at an unp recedented level. It inclu ded Warner Bro thers s ecuring Prince, on e of Warner M usic’s biggest selling artis ts, to w rite sev eral song s. His albu m was labelled ‘Original Sou ndtrack’; it preced ed the release of the film, and sent one of many song s n ot actually in the movie (‘Batd an ce’) to Number 1. Film studio /reco rd label hands hakes in spired by the success of th is has led to the current state o f affairs, where the wo rd sou ndtrack mean s any of a number of things to th e pub lic. What hasn’t helped is the scenario Elfman faced, whereb y his score albu m was s uppress ed un til a month after th e film opened so as n ot to in terfere with Prince’s sales. He faced it ag ain th e followin g year on Dick Tra cy, and has do ne several times since, as have all too many of his fellow compo sers . The g reat s hame of this is that his

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go thic mas terpiece s old in lesser numbers and contributed to being p as sed ov er for Os car con sideration. Burton and Elfman learn ed their lesso n in corporate commercialism, and play ed a hand o uts ide of the ind ustry game with their nex t project. It is with Ed ward Scis sorha nds (1 990) that we n ow tu rn to the 90 s…

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6. Millennium Falcons
… where attention spans are assumed to b e so fleeting th at trend s las t mere months. Sciss orha nds is ab out as person al as any director has allowed th emselves to get, being the tale of a misu ndersto od artist wh o fears destroyin g what they to uch. Elfman’s resp onse has s ent in fluential ripp les th rough the music ind ustry ev er s ince. Its use of a w ordless chorus seems to have charmed the pants o ff anyon e making a fairytale on big screen or small, anyth ing sug gesting p urity of love, and numero us commercials rangin g from cars to cos metics. It’s su bsequ en tly beco me a staple of h is o wn work too. T he immediate follow -u p with Bu rton was an attemp t to b eat H olly wood at its own g ame with B atma n Returns (1992 ). Not only d id they avoid deman ds for marketable p op tu nes (Elfman co -wrote one so ng with Siou xsie An d The Bansh ees ), b ut in bo th to ne an d mus ic they ig nored the yo uth mark et completely. L ater th ey brok e genre barriers with th e stopmotion animated Mu sical The Nig htma re Befo re Christmas (199 3), to which the compos er’s so ng-writing s kills were of the most imp ortant type of narrativ e function. The k ooky style o f th e son gs an d s co re have featured in man y trailers an d children ’s films sin ce. 5 0s-styled s ci-fi heyday ho kum follo wed with Mars Attacks! (199 6), and then 50s-styled Hammer horror ho kum with Sleepy H ollo w (1 999). Outsid e of bein g kn own fo r the Cronenb erg co llabo ration s, Shore became the leading light for on e of the few d ubious trends th at did fo rm in th e 90s . Qu ite why there have been s o many serial k illers movies is a troubling mystery. Ho wev er, w ith Silence Of The La mbs (1 991) a genre was bo rn . Mu ltiple Os car no minatio ns (althoug h inexp licably not the s co re) sh owed this was h eld in higher regard th an th e 70s and 8 0s s tyle of schlock ho rro r. Shore’s music h as been clo ned to a death of cliché in s ubsequ en t movies conjuring foreb oding and terror. In its origin al setting it’s genuin ely respo nsib le for wh at was touted on its releas e to be the mos t frig htening movie o f all time. Take the poun din g heartbeat o f mus ic away when ‘L ecter Es capes’ and the rap id cutting of people runn ing ab out mean s nothin g. Amazingly, Sho re matched th e d ramatic in tensity 4 years later with the merciles sly negativ e S e7 en. After its en ormou sly influ en tial o penin g title sequ en ce, the score is relentles sly oppress ive. Cold and insinuating, it po ses a cons tant threat from the killer’s man ipu latin g hand , and the d ark, wet city th at created him. Fo r the des ert fin ale, s tabbing ch ords mak e th e arrival of

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an in nocuou s delivery van seem lik e the mo st frigh tenin g event in th e wh ole movie. Only one break occurred in Bu rton’s relation ship with Elfman, and th at w as for Ed Wo od (1 994). For this , the 50s-bas ed B-mo vie hoku m was pass ed to compos er Howard Sh ore. Bongo s, theremin, and a touching extract o f ‘Swan L ak e’ remind u s of Bela Lug osi’s era of stard om, when his 19 31 D racula was a little early for a s co re of its o wn. Sho re kept up just as diverse a track record as Burton and Elfman in the 90s by his ong oing partnersh ip with David Cronenb erg. Their Na ked Lu nch (19 91) w as a s urreally accu rate adaptation of William Burrough s’s n ovel. A great deal o f its selfcontained un iverse comes from the unique musical ap plication o f Ornette Coleman blowin g bebop jazz acros s Mo roccan percus sio n rhythms. M. B utter fly (19 93) indulged their sh ared p as sio n for o pera. Then Cra sh (19 96) was s cored for six electric guitars, three h arp s, th ree winds , and two percussionists . It’s an ideal reactio n to the auto erotic and fetishistic s tory of car cras h survivors. eXistenZ (1999 ) s imilarly played with instrumen tal makeup , thou gh th is time on a full o rches tra’s scale. It also p layed with the dy namics and acous tics of th e reco rd ing roo m to musically reflect the fact yo u’re n ev er actu ally s eeing wh at’s really happen ing in the film until the very end . Befo re Shore returned to the genre in ex plos ive style b y utilisin g the d ramatically non-Wes tern sou nd of th e M aster Mu sicians Of Jajou ka fo r The Cell (2 000), and b efo re D r. L ecter returned cou rtes y o f Hans Zimmer in Han nib al (2001 ), the d ecade w as filled with glo ssy glorifications of the serial killer’s craft. On ly a s mall lis t is needed to illustrate this : Ba sic Instinct, Kn igh t Moves, Dr. Gig gles (all 1992 ), Yo ung P ois oner’s Handb ook, Copycat (b oth 1 995), Kis s The Gir ls (19 97), In Dreams, Fallen (both 19 98), and Th e Bone Collector (1999 ). Director J ohn Waters is abou t the only p erso n wh ose s ense o f humour co uld be fo rgiven fo r stretch ing to Serial Mom (199 4), but humou r did find its w ay into th e horror genre with I Know Wha t You Did La st S ummer (1 997) and Urb an Legend (1 998). Respo nsible for th is shift was on e o f the 90 s’ biggest success s tories, Screa m (199 6). Post-mod ern iron y is a term applied to a lot o f film an d TV in Scream’s wake. T he first part of the idea is that characters are well vers ed in pop cultu re world s and po ke fun at them. The seco nd part (th e iron y) is they d on’t kn ow they’re in a film or TV sh ow s traigh t o ut of on e of thos e world s. M arco Beltrami was th e co mp oser hired fo r a score to fuse o ld and new styles and acco mp an y a grou p o f kids retread ing Ha llo ween territo ry. It

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came about in several uniq ue w ay s. ‘There was this radio s how that interview ed me on the Intern et, and (director) Wes Crav en 's as sis tant ask ed if th ey kn ew an y compos ers they could reco mmend. I then had a meeting and th ey g av e me the opening Drew Barrymore s cen e to score o n spec.’ It was als o a fairly un ique situation in that Beltrami had never seen a horror film before! ‘Wes taug ht me a lot about h ow to max imize th e scare po tential in ho rro r mov ies. O ne common rule is if n obod y's th ere yo u sting it, and if the killer's th ere y ou g o silent.’ Hence the musical red herring when Sy dney op en s an empty clos et’s doo r. Th is techniq ue sits in among st his co ntemporary electron ic mus ic and so ng placement. It carries through the rest of the trilog y, an d also in his scores for Mim ic (1997 ), The Faculty (1998 ), and Halloween H20 (19 98) for which he p rovid ed ad ditional mus ic. Fusing estab lis hed sty les with dance rhyth ms h as been prev alent in horror and related g en re movies ever sin ce. The oth er mainstream discoveries of the 90s came out of genre pictures to o. Elliot Goldenth al h ad wo rk ed o n a few earlier movies , b ut it was with Alien³ (1992 ) that au dience and indu stry ears p ricked up with discomfort and intrigue. Before the film even s tarts, the co mp oser messes with y ou th rough a to rturous ly tailored re-recordin g of A lfred N ew man’s 20th Centu ry Fo x Fan fare. ‘That was almost lik e k nockin g over Lenin ’s s tatue,’ Goldenth al recalls amus ed ly. ‘Dig ital record ing came alon g, and we had 40 minu tes of mus icians’ time at the end of th e recording s es sio n. So rather th an tell th em to go plu s pay them, Fo x said th ey wanted a digital recording of the logo . Th en I s aid: ‘It’s Alien. You th ink I can mess with it? Can I be su bversiv e with it? So you ’re lulled into a s tate o f non -comprehension. We didn’t have an y score, s o I just g ot up on the s tand and to ld th e musician s what to d o on what no te.’ Within a sh ort sp ace of time, many more eyes were po inted his w ay, once his g rinding, shriek ing, yet often bittersweet style began getting Oscar n ominations with Interview With Th e Va mpire (199 4). It’s a s tyle that’s influ en ced plenty o f scores in the same way as the fusion method . In fact, h e was a pio neer of fusing styles p re-Scream himself, es pecially with th e h igh profile B atma n Fo rever (19 95). It was a case of b eing plucked fro m obs cu rity for Lon don composer David Arno ld wh o was gifted the sci-fi blo ck bus ter Starg ate (199 4). Full of th e ro mance rejuvenated by J ohn Williams fo r Star Wars and s ly n ods to other p opular so undtracks (listen fo r 63 3 Squa dron in the final battle), the score s howed what happens when a sou ndtrack enthus iast is giv en a big

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break. It led to th e eno rmou s spo of an d noise score of Independence Day (199 6), which was as b ig as mov ies could be in th e mid -90s. His n ext major project allowed him to reach b ack into his childh ood and the reas on he was in the in dustry at all. ‘W hen I saw You On ly Live Twice (196 7) as a lad, Jo hn Barry’s mus ic ju st too k my h ead off comp letely. T hat was it. Bond to me is try ing to keep it cool. It’s metal-tip win klepick ers . Lo afers with s teel to ecaps . So when I did Tomor row Never Dies (1997 ), it had to be do ne with all that in min d. I did talk to John upfron t abou t it, as s omeon e I resp ect and admire. I did n’t want to piss h im off really. H e s aid he thoug ht I was the one perso n w ho co uld d o it. That from the G uvno r! Then we wen t out and go t drun k.’ The film an d score resurrected the flagging sp y series after a limp in trodu ction fo r Pierce Bros nan in G oldeneye (1995 ), w hich had a decidedly no n-Bo ndian mu sical accompaniment fro m E ric Serra. Arno ld mo re than mad e amends w ith his h omag e to Barry cross ed with drum and bass , and to ok things furth er fo r th e rockin g, samp le-laced The Wo rld Is No t Enou gh (199 9).

Could You Turn It Up?
If action mov ies and sample-d riven s co ring h ad a n ursin g ho me in the 90 s, it was named M edia Ventures Entertainment Group, L LC. In its infancy it was a one-room arrangement for Hans Zimmer and pro ducer J ay Rifkin to work on Rain Man (1988 ). With the s ubsequ en t s uccess es of B lack Rain (see Chapter 3), Da ys Of Thun der (19 90), Pacific Heig hts (199 0), and specifically Backdraft (1991 ), h e expand ed the operation w ith a purpo se-b uilt facility in Santa M onica, w here he in vited other composers to hous e their studios. Zimmer ’s style o f ov erlay ing a massive o rches tra with syn thesizer effects (es pecially percussive) quickly spread to those w orking un der the same ro of. Many co llabo rative effo rts resulted in multiple names credited on a s co re. M ark Mancin a was o ne to sp read h is wings and go els ewh ere after his S peed (199 4) most definitely help ed define the action mov ie score of the 90s . He then app lied the style to the h its Bad B oys (199 5) and Twis ter (199 6). Other high-octane action extravaganzas p ro duced w ith in the M V complex includ e: White S quall (199 6) by J eff Ro na for director Ridley Scott while Zimmer was bus y on other thing s, Face/Off (1997 ) by J ohn Powell, Ar magedd on (199 8) by Trevor Rab in, and Enemy Of The Sta te (1998 ) by Rabin an d Harry Gregson -Williams.

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Aside from the mas siv e collaboratio n that resulted in multiple award glory fo r Dis ney’s The Lion King (1 994), th eir other po pular p ooling of resou rces was on The Rock (1996 ), which credits Nick Glenn ie-Smith, Zimmer, and Harry Gregs on-Williams . Zimmer himself has continu ed to carry th e action torch for Crimson Tid e (1 995), Broken Arro w (1 996), Th e P ea cemaker (19 97), Missio n: Impos sible 2 (2000 ), an d Gla diator (20 00). He explained his think ing behind the latter: ‘All the action sequences, the battles, came from s itting up to my ankles in mu d in th is tent which was like a palace with all these beau tifu l sculptures aroun d me in gold. Ridley Scott explained th at M arcu s Aureliu s fo ught this battle for something like 17 years and he wou ld actually have these bu sts and artwork all aroun d him. Th e th ing th at we lo ve abo ut th e Roman civ ilization is the eleg an ce of the arch itectu re an d the art. All of it w as at my feet, plus this b lood -s oaked earth. I had this crazy idea to find th e mos t formal and b eautiful mus ical form that I cou ld thin k of which would reflect this beauty. I s uddenly th ough t of Vienn es e waltzes, wh ich are so happy and gay with a veneer of culture attached to th em. So I made waltzes for the b attle scenes w hich are in credibly savage.’ Th e cros s-pollin ation of ideas and mus ical forms like th es e res ulted in Z immer’s appointment as Head of Mu sic when the Dreamwork s SKG studio was fou nded in th e mid-90s. Several in dustry factors have influenced, affected, an d resulted fro m the M V s cenario . M ost pertinent is the final sou nd mix . ‘It's not hard to do rig ht,’ claims Danny Elfman. ‘It's just h ard th e way th ings are d one today. Films now are so nically su ch clu ttered mess es . M usic and sou nd effects peop le are all doin g the same things for th e same moments of film. The directo rs do n't un derstand how to separate th e two after the fact, so you get a little of bo th all th e time. Yo u get these cluttered mons ters, wh ich is abou t 85 % to 90% o f Ho lly wood movies today. The big ger the budg et, it'll b e a so nic catastrophe.’ A case in po int wou ld be Ar magedd on, where nearly every review made men tion of th e sheer volume o f n ois e. There are sadly many other examples o f tamp ering o r stud io interferen ce th at have h ind ered the film compo ser’s craft at th e tail en d of the 20 th Centu ry. The sys tem is now highly relian t on the results of test screening s, where a rand om grou ping of cinemag oers is empowered to tickb ox as pects of a film into being chang ed . This o ften leads to re-sh ooting fo otage, wh ich of cou rs e means mus ical edits o r comp lete re-scoring of scenes. Worse still, it can lead to w hat’s kn own as a ‘toss ed s co re’ if too many voters con sider

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th e mus ic uns uppo rtive. Replacement scores, nearly always by a differen t compos er, are s omething collecto rs increasing ly d es pair at. Th ere have been scattered instances of th is in years g one by. Sir William Walton’s rep lacemen t by Ro n Good win o n Battle Of Britain was mentioned in Ch ap ter 4. Goo dwin also replaced H en ry Mancini o n Hitch cock’s Frenzy (197 2). Yet it go t to th e poin t d uring the 9 0s that withd rawing b ig name compos ers ’ work was co mmonp lace. For ex ample in 1 998, Ennio M orricone was replaced by M ichael Kamen for W hat Dreams May Come, and Jo hn Barry by Jo hn Ottman on G oodb ye Lover. One tech nolo gical ad vancement that’s p ro ved damaging on many film scores is d igital editin g. Altho ugh a b lessing for filmmakers to wo rk fas t and meet releas e d ead lines , it h as played h av oc with scores having to stay in cons tant flux u p to th e last min ute as scen es change in leng th and sequence. One of the b iggest v ictims of this was Jo hn Williams’s Th e Pha ntom Menace in 19 99. As h inted at in Chapter 5 , in combin ation with the composer’s preference for res eq uencing material o n album, it caus ed mo numental fan ou trage. Two separate CDs were the ans wer, a y ear ap art. E ven that didn’t pacify aficionad os however, and neither ackno wledged the extent to wh ich th e mus ic had b een cu t and pasted in th e film. Find ing more th an on e albu m rep resenting a mov ie is s omethin g b uyers have had to mud dle throug h for some time now. A fter Batman in 198 9, Dann y E lfman regularly s uffered the ind ignity of havin g h is music temporarily forgotten w hile son g compilatio ns filled sh elves. There were th ree albu ms for Dick Tra cy, then two for Mission: Impos sib le, Men In Black, and even for the in ex plicable Psycho re-make! Others already mentioned in clude: the Screa m trilogy, Batm an F orever , Arma geddon , Sp eed , and Twis ter. Th ose last two also carried the ‘Insp ired b y’ heading that’s p roven so mis leadin g to collectors and casual b uyers alik e. T he p rogression of th ing s h as h ap pened over a very s hort space o f time. In 1994 , b uyers were perfectly h ap py w ith Pulp Fiction mixing up dialo gue and s ongs heard only fleetingly in th e film. Also with the two-CD s et for F orrest Gum p of song s heard even more fleetin gly. Labels beg an to avoid indicating wh ich track s were to b e fo und in a film, leading to th e ‘From and Ins pired by ’ albums for Ba tman A nd Ro bin (19 97) and The Matr ix (1999 ) w here yo u’re left to gu es s. Coun tless more examples s wamped the market in th e latter half of th e 90s , mean ing film compos ers ’ work en ded u p being represented in several equally uns atis facto ry ways: a token g es ture of on e o r two tracks after a

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list of son gs, on a separate albu m held b ack so as not to impede s ales of a preced ing s ong compilation, or ju st no t at all. T he resu lt o f this is a co mplete los s of p ublic understan din g of wh at a So undtrack Albu m is. The o nly technological bright sp ot within th e same timeframe was the emergence of Laser Disc and DVD, which allows for is olated music track s and d ocumen tary explan ation s of a sco re.

Who’s The Man?
The 90 s started o ut well enoug h for the big gest o f the names cov ered. For in stance, John Barry bou nced back fro m a bou t o f serio us illness to win an Os car for Dances With Wolves (1990 ). At that po int it was still pos sib le for him to conceive a score in his trad itional way. ‘Kevin sh owed me abo ut 20 minu tes of the opening, s o I got a feeling o f the texture of the movie. Then I went away and wrote 20 minu tes of th emes, kn owin g th ere had to be a ‘Jo hn Dun bar Theme’, kn owin g th ere had to be a journ ey theme w hen he takes o ff acro ss this lan dscape. I never viewed Dances as a Wes tern bu t this very heroic sto ry of a man getting on a ho rs e and riding across America. Everyth ing I wrote in that movie was throu gh his eyes. I had to dramatically get in sid e h im an d put my self on that ho rs e. I h ate writing music wh ere I’m o utside like the camera.’ Barry got to ap ply h is metho dology to Chaplin (19 92) and a couple more, but by the time of The Sp ecia lis t (1994 ) h e was being affected by market trends with his score album d elayed so as not to affect sales of the son g collection . Later in th e decad e there were numerou s in stances o f Barry being replaced o n a scorin g assignmen t, including The Hor se Whisperer (19 98), and the aforementioned G oodb ye Lover. The triumvirate of A-list co mpo sers from Chapter 5 had an interesting decade to say th e leas t, each in their o wn way d emon strating the state o f the in dus try. Joh n Williams remain ed the mos t Os car-nominated person alive largely th an ks to the continued collab oration with Stev en Spielberg . S ch indler 's List w as the aw ard winner over Ju ras sic Par k wh en both arriv ed in 19 93. Aside from multiple no minatio ns for des erving works like JFK (199 1) and Sa ving Pr ivate Ryan (1 998), it was otherwis e a pretty lean decade for the compos er after the mass ive s uccess es of the 70s an d 80s . Jerry Gold smith began th e 90s in true s tyle with what many cons ider to be h is last great action s core for Total Reca ll (1990 ). At the time he anno unced it would b e the last of its ty pe he would d o, referring to the

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dens ely complex orch es tratio ns for the large number of actio n set pieces. Th e s co re is full o f rapidly overlapping rhythms to k eep u p with Pau l Verhoeven’s breathless directorial sty le. They reunited for Bas ic Instinct (19 92) with a main title that ebb s and flows with sensu ality, and was on e o f the most emulated pieces for s everal years . He managed to k eep up the promise of avoiding action material for the early p art o f the d ecade with a few romances and comedies like Th e Ru ssia H ouse (1990 ), Love Field (19 92), Ru dy (199 3), and Ang ie (199 4). Th en so meth ing else took ov er an d that promis e seemed to be comp letely fo rg otten . There followed: The Sh adow (199 4), Firs t Kn igh t (1 995), Chain Reactio n an d E xecutive Decis ion (both 19 96), Air Force O ne (199 7), U. S. M arsh als (199 8), The Haunting, The 13 th Warr ior, and The Mummy (all 199 9), and a reunion w ith Verhoeven on ce more fo r Hollow Ma n (2 000). With many similar in b etween (e.g. the tw o Sta r Treks), it seemed Gold smith was enslav ed to the Hollywo od action mach ine. His o wn personality pervades these p owerhous e pieces, b ut at no where n ear th e inventive lev el of th e d ecades b efo re. It is merely a reflection of the films thems elves of co urse. Yet even th e one critical highlight of th e perio d, L.A. Co nfidential (1997 ), is little more than an amalgam o f his earlier China town and the action material developed in th es e others. It sto od no chance in th e Oscar race th at y ear o f cours e. The jug gern au t of Titanic could not b e stopped , and J ames Horner’s unpreced en ted album sales had to be ackn owledg ed . Critical op inion ab out period anachronisms, startlin g similarities to Enya’s son g ‘Bo ok Of Days ’, an d lo ve/hate for Celin e Dion’s voice are ultimately rather immaterial. ‘I wanted to write a score that was d eeply emotional,’ he exp lained. ‘I h ad to ch oose a palette of colo urs th at would do that for me. My Iris h guy s and Sis sel Kyrkjebø because th ey ’re so intimate. J im (Cameron – director) wanted d es perately no t to have a b ig Hollywoo d extravaganza s co re that they’ve pu t o n a th ousand o ther films. Th ey all sou nd the same n o matter wh o writes them. By th e same token, alth ough th e film takes place in 191 2 I d idn ’t want to write so me p recio us little E nglish ch amber piece that would narrate th e period. It had to be s ome timeless fusion. I was look ing for colours that weren ’t convention al ways to sell a perio d film. I wanted to feel what I migh t h av e felt had I been on board and lo st somethin g very dear to me. Th e sin king didn’t really matter. It takes care of itself in the watchin g. It didn’t really matter what mus ic I put to it, it’s already so s pectacu lar. Wh at I felt need ed my h elp more was the depth o f pass ion between them. T he p ro fo und lo ss that Rose

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feels. The way the story turns itself around at the end and go es fu ll circle. All those s ort o f wis tful mys tical feelings I wanted to co nvey in the mu sic.’ Horn er’s th ink ing ans wers many criticis ms . The influence o n the indus try whereby compo sers now either aim s traigh t for or run far away fro m uilleann p ipes, ans wers many more. To p ut Titan ic into co ntext fo r the co mpo ser’s own decade, it shou ld b e noted that the ‘Iris h gu ys’ (whistle and bh odrán drums) followed in the foots teps of his Patriot Games (1 992), Legends O f Th e Fa ll (199 4), B raveheart (19 95), and The Devil’ O wn (19 97). s Th ematically the material o wed much to his Thun derheart (1 992), Bop ha! (199 3), Coura ge Under F ire (1996 ), an d oth ers . Lik e Go lds mith, it’s felt his las t truly insp ired works came at the begin ning o f the 9 0s. Namely the charm of The R ocketeer (1991 ) with its 30s in nocence and serial ad venture conv ey ed in a joyo us flyin g theme, and S neakers (1 992) with its blu es y motif an d su btle s usp en se und erscore.

There’s Too Many Of Them
Outsid e the security of the compos er A-list and working partnersh ips , the 90 s were s prink led w ith in dividual highlights. There were mo re co mp osers work ing an d more albums b eing released than ever before. In chron olo gical order, here are s ome o f the momen ts o f note: Of th e d irector/compos er relations hips planted last chapter, several bore in fluential fru it. E ric Serra’s Leon (19 94) for Luc Besson solidified an electronic p alette o f sou nds an d a style that won him the next J ames Bond mo vie (Goldeneye). Other comp osers have often attempted to replicate that so und. L ater with The Fifth Element (1 997), they to ok that style much further, memorably fo r a d azzling display of electro nically manip ulated opera singing. Angelo Badalamenti work ed with David Lynch for a coup le more au rally su mptuou s pieces. Firstly with fellow comp oser Barry Adams on on Los t Highway (199 6) with its un iquely ap propriate s election o f n eed le-d ropped s ongs (meaning fragmen tary extracts). T hen The Straight Story (19 99) was a surpris e departure from dark s urrealism. Instead the life-affirming tale featu res a blend of Coun try an d Americana g uaran teed to res ult in n ot a d ry eye in th e ho use. At the opp osite en d of the emotional scale was Patrick Do yle’s goth ic horror for Ma ry Sh elley’s Fr ankenstein (1 994) with Kenneth Branagh. Away from th e Sh ak es pearian adaptations , Doyle let rip with a blisteringly furiou s

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orchestra, esp ecially for ‘Th e Creation ’ s cen e and its 2 minutes of all-ou t sens ory ass au lt. Gho st (199 0) remains on e of th e best ex amples o f a son g selling an albu m. A lex North ’s ‘Unch ained Melody’ as in terpreted by the Righteou s Brothers, kept the alb um in US charts for over a year. The record label Varèse Saraband e was b y th is point es tablishing itself as th e foremos t so undtrack producer, and the success o f their s core album for M au rice Jarre mean t they stay ed lead er of th e pack. Directo r Nich olas M ey er tried to repeat his trick o f a decade earlier (wh en he launched J ames Ho rn er ’s career on Star Trek II) by g iving Cliff E idelman his b ig b reak o n Sta r Trek VI: The Und iscovered Country (199 1). Meyer’s class ical roots sh one th rough in elemen ts fas hio ned after Holst and Stravinsky, but the y oung composer’s Golden Age tak e o n the fran ch ise un fo rtunately did n’t carv e h im as b ig a name as Horner’s. An element of confus ion s urround ed the names o n Th e Las t Of The Moh icans (199 2) with a s creen card p utting a dou ble s pace between Trevor Jo nes and Ran dy E delman . Only record b uyers wo uld dis co ver who was respo nsib le for the majes tically s oaring hero mu sic, and who for the ambient syn thesiser ins erts. T hat s ame year, there was n o un certainty that Polis h compos er Wojciech Kilar was solely resp ons ible for the hy pnotic g rimn es s of B ram Stoker ’s Dr acula. His middle-Eu ropean style clash ed welcomely with Hollyw ood’s. No on e els e wo uld h av e s co red the h earse chase finale with an insanely repetitive scherzo (vigorou s movement of music). In 1994 , M ichael Nyman ’s The Piano so ld over 3 million copies w orldwide, and remains his most pop ular wo rk . The Us ual Sus pects (19 95) remain s n ewco mer J ohn Ottman’s mos t popu lar to o, w ith its film no ir tone and rhyth mic perfection derived from the fact h e was also the film’s ed ito r. It too k a trio of comp osers to keep up with the editin g and romance of Ro meo + Ju liet (19 96), but th e orchestral/contempo rary electronics /so ng fusion fro m Craig Armstrong, Nelle Hooper, and Marius De Vries h as been much emulated (particu larly Arms trong ’s choral elements ). Far su btler and tend er express iveness was required for roman ce and th e lo ve that dare no t sp eak its name in Wilde (1 997). The emo tiv e score fro m Debbie Wis eman declared bo th the scribe’s geniu s and its own. Righ t at the dawn of th e new M illenniu m came three potentially trendsettin g scores in an oth erwise lacklu stre 199 9. First were Jo n Brion’s unu su-

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ally long cues linking the many d isparate threads of Magno lia . T hen in amo ngs t so urced drum an d bass (e.g . The Propellerh eads ' ‘Spyb reak’ wh ich was p romp tly re-us ed or mimicked to death) for The Matrix is a sass y blend of ato nal b rass and tech no from Don Davis . Lastly there was Fig ht Club with a k itchen sin k collection of every conceiv ab le method of scoring applied by The Dust Brothers . Into the new century, Crouching Tiger H idden Drag on by Chinese compos er Tan Dun would prove to b e the mos t memorable new sou ndtrack experience. In an even more lack lus tre y ear, it was w ith out doub t th e mos t des erving o f Oscar gold . The ex tended N ewman family (see Ch ap ter 2) warrant mention. Thomas seems to have a s plit mu sical person ality, divid ing h imself between the up lifting symph onic sty le of Th e Sha ws hank Redemption (1994 ) and the po ts an d pans electronics of American Beauty (1999 ). Ran dy excels as a so ngwriter, y et is just as at h ome warming ev ery sportingly patriotic American’s heart for The Na tur al (19 84) or recalling the child in every one for Toy Sto ry (19 95). David is a well-respected co nductor wh o alway s seems to be most at home with slap stick comedy like Bill And Ted ’ Excellent A dven ture s (198 8) o r Galaxy Quest (19 99). A noth er name to gain promin en ce throu gh th e 90s was James Newton Ho ward . His su btly su pportive wo rk with directo r M. Nigh t Shy amalan o n the my steries of The Sixth Sen se (1999 ) and Unb rea kable (20 00) lo oks set to forge anoth er g reat director/compos er relations hip. Yo u’ll h av e n oted repeat men tio n of the Ho lly wood A -list tow ard the end of this chrono logy. A part from financially motivated lis ts in p laces like The Hollyw ood Rep orter, it’s rare any one cares to name names. Su ffice to say, th is last chapter just has.

A Final Thought
What d oes all this wind ing d own and mis cellany mean ? Wh ere film scorin g is concern ed , to o man y cooks have most definitely s poiled th e b roth. As of th e 9 0s there have been enormous numbers of composers wo rk ing , yet few can claim to have in fluenced th e indu stry. Having po stu lated that directo r/composer relationsh ips have led to s ome o f the best and mos t in fluential music, it’s only right that I sho uld acknow ledge s ome others that are in exis tence tod ay.

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Atom Egoyan first co llabo rated with fello w Can ad ian M ychael Danna in 19 87 on F amily Viewing. Fro m the s tart their w ork h as been defined by un pred ictability. Every one of their mov ies features a score that d efies convention , yet perfo rms all the magical tricks this b ook has s potlig hted. Exotica (1 994) cov ers jumps b ackw ard an d forward in time with an all-inclus ive sedu ctive motif. Th e S weet Hereafter (199 8) has a Persian ney flu te ex pandin g Egoyan ’s Pied Piper allego ry in the tale. Arar at (2002 ) in co rporates ancient Armenian folk tu nes into Go lden Age pastich e for a film-within -afilm s tructu re. Carter Burwell has w orked on all o f the Coen Brothers films since Blo od Simple (19 84). Ran gin g fro m zany comedy for Raisin g Arizon a (1987 ) to Nord ic folks iness for Farg o (1996 ) to No ir genre homage for The Man W ho Wa sn’t Th ere (20 01), theirs has been ano ther partn ersh ip defined by constant u npredictable ch an ge. There are only 3 films so far to talk of betw een M. Night Shyamalan and compos er J ames Newto n How ard, but each have merited commen t in the so undtrack community. The Sixth Sense (19 99) sub tly worked its w ay under th e audience’s skin with layers of vocal effects . Un breakable (2 000) p layed with ideas of mus ical d uality an d reflectin g echo es . Signs (20 02) d eligh ted so undtrack fan s with a quintes sential demons tration of what’s ‘Herrmannesq ue’ ab out sus taining s uspens e. The first 2 sco res Elliot Goldenth al compos ed for Neil Jo rd an were both no minated for Academy Awards . Interview With The Vamp ire (199 4) and Mich ael Collins (19 96) remain the pin nacle of the comp oser’s ach ievements in many op inions (desp ite his eventual Oscar win for Frida in 20 03). Frequ en tly d ipping in to nig htmarish realms v ia d ark orchestral colours, Go ldenth al’s sing ular style continued into Th e B utcher B oy (1 997), In D rea ms (199 9) and The Go od Thief (2002 ). One more partnersh ip to men tio n as highly significan t in the new millennium is that between Pau l T homas A nderson and Jo n Brio n. Since scoring And ers on’s debu t with H ard Eight (1996 ), he’s receiv ed numerous offers to work on A-list projects. He has tu rn ed every one dow n, refu sin g to work with anyo ne else. Th at means a very s low rate of ou t pu t, bu t both Mag nolia (199 9) and Punch-Dr unk Love (200 2) have p ro ven to be w orth the wait. Both featu re extrao rd inarily prominent uses o f mus ic, often drowning ou t dialogu e co mpletely.

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Loo kin g ah ead from h ere isn ’t d oom and g loom by any means . History repeats itself now ad ay s mo re th an it ever used to . The ind ustry ’s future is su re to enjo y an unexp ected s urprise or two. With more confid en ce and money being directed tow ard th e Internet an d the gaming in dus tries, filmic orchestral mu sic h as alread y begu n so me interesting d ev elopments in the 21 st centu ry. Sho rt movies pop u p in all so rts o f p laces in the web, with v ario us co mp osers con tribu tin g excellen t min i s co res (e.g. M ychael Dan na for Chos en in 20 01 and Elia Cmiral for S on of Satan in 2002 ). In the world of game-p lay, names like Michael Giacchino (the Medal o f Hon or s eries ), In on Zu r (Icewind D ale II), Richard Jacques ( Head hunter) and Peter Connelly with M artin Iv es on (Tomb Raid er : Angel of Da rkness ) hav e all been prov idin g su mp tuou s film-styled o rch es tral scores. Wheth er y ou were a film music geek fan before reading this book or no t, rest as sured there’ll always be plenty to make listen ing to screens big or small well w orth y our while. As promised at th e start of th e book , th e names have gon e by pretty fas t, th erefore many h av e had to slip th ro ugh the cracks. From the 90s, s ome I wish there’d b een ro om fo r inclu de: Carter Burwell, Bruce Broug hto n, Jo hn Debn ey, Rand y E delman , G eo rge Fen ton, M ark Isham, Joel McNeely, Rach el Po rtman, Graeme Revell, M arc Shaiman, Step hen Warbeck, and Gabriel Yared. Also, man y whos e careers orig inated earlier: Luis Bacalov, Richard Ro dney Benn ett, Joh n Coriglian o, Carl Davis , Brad Fiedel, E rn es t Gold, John Green, Q uincy Jon es , Stanley M yers, M ario Nas cimbene, JeanClaude Petit, Nicola Piov an i, Zbigniew Preisn er, And re Prev in, Richard Robb ins, Philipp e Sarde, an d Jo hn Scott. To them and their fan s, as well as to many oth ers (particularly international composers), this book apologises for th eir absence.

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7. Hitting The Right Note
This final chapter is a con densed s tage-by-stag e loo k at the craft of scorin g a modern film. 1) The po int at wh ich a co mpo ser comes aboard is dependent on many facto rs highligh ted in Chapter 6. If they have a w orking relationsh ip with a directo r, it’s no t uncommo n to visit the set. In general, a composer will be approached toward the end o f s hooting . Co ncurren t to this, a mu sic editor comp iles a temp track o f existing mus ic to wo rk with early edits of th e film. 2) T he first thing a co mpo ser is giv en is eith er a s cript or rough -cu t of fo otage to view. Dann y Elfman exp lains his preference: ‘I n eed an assembly. A scrip t does n’t do any thin g for me at all. Any time I’ve tried to jump the gu n an d get musical ideas from a scrip t, I’ve en ded up scrapping th em all. Yo u can s hoot a s cript a hund red differen t w ay s. Wh at wo rk s for me best is to come in to the first rough assembly with an abso lutely blank slate, no pre-con ceived ideas at all. First impressions are very importan t, which is wh y I need my tape recorder to h an d. In fact, very often I tell the directo r not to be alarmed if I run ou t. I’ll get ideas and literally take my reco rd er and charg e d own to the lob by.’ 3) Next co mes a repeat viewing with the d irector (and often the produ cers) to ‘sp ot’ the film. This is a proces s of identifyin g w here music cues sh ould begin and end . Here th e mus ic ed ito r helps th e compos er determine cue leng ths and keep abreast of ch anges. 4) With a number of ‘starts ’ in min d, it all comes down to the blank score page an d being sat at the piano /keybo ard . ‘Insp iratio n is a very difficult th ing to talk about,’ states J ohn Williams . ‘Sometimes you feel the flow, and s ometimes you don 't. The results d on't always corres pond to the way we feel. The thin gs we do that w e think are the high es t from an in spirational p oint of view are not. The things w e d as h off on th e way to work in a tax i mig ht dig deeper or reach h igh er.’ Insp iratio n is o ne thing , bu t where do you s tart? ‘Perso nally, finding the mu sical hook th at will be the central core of the th eme is the mos t impo rtant p art of th e initial co mpo sition process,’ s ay s Debbie Wiseman. ‘Someh ow, when th e key theme is in place, all else follo ws quite naturally. Th is key musical id ea can happen almost immediately, or else it can take an age to materialise. It's a cas e of keep ing going un til it happens. ’ Composers like Williams and Wiseman are from the s ch ool of putting pencil to p ap er in sketch ing out ideas . With so mu ch techno log y to p lay

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with, th ere’s also the app ro ach o f s omeo ne like Hans Zimmer. ‘Having had no mu sical education whatsoever oth er th an piano lesson s for 2 weeks, which if anythin g d amaged my way forward b ecaus e th ey never taug ht me anythin g, I u se a Macin tos h. I us e s eq uencing s oftware, then so me samplers w hich b as ically have a fak e o rch es tra in them. ’ 5) Once th e id eas are flowing, it’s usu al for a series of electron ic d emos or ‘mo ck -ups’ to be requested to accomp an y the s cenes bein g edited. Then it becomes a race ag ainst time to meet a pre-boo ked record ing s ession date. ‘J ust to g et two minutes of orchestral mus ic a day o n paper is really hard,’ rev eals D an ny Elfman . ‘Ev ery one h as their own sys tem of workin g. I pu t it up o n a big board. I b reak d own the number of cues into their minutes and second s. I to tal it know ing I can write rou ghly two min utes a day. I have a coun tdo wn o f days at the top, an d there’s a certain po int, a D-Day, where I mu st write two minu tes a d ay to mak e it to the end on time. I’m always watch ing that p oint coming, and I’ll try to d o my develop ment k nowing th at freight train is comin g. But it’s inconceiv ab le to no t be fin ish ed in time.’ 6) Time b eing of th e es sence, a composer will often work with one or more orchestrator to lessen the lo ad . Elfman’s been working with Steve Bartek since playing in the ban d Oingo Bo ingo to gether (see Chapter 5 ). Here’s Bartek ’s defin ition of the job: ‘T he ro le of the orchestrato r is multifaceted, inv olving some creativity, tech niqu e, and organization. First and foremo st I’m resp onsible for translating a compos er’s s ketch into an orchestral (ensemble) piece of music that sou nds ju st as they envisioned it. I make sure it is as easily p layable by the mus icians as poss ible so as no t to waste any time on the s coring s tage. I often make sure it fits the dramatic and sty lis tic con cerns of the scene, th at th e mu sic is large enou gh for the action or small enoug h fo r th e dialogu e, and that the in strument cho ices are ap propriate for the scene. I’m als o in volved in the man ag ement of res ources to p ro duce the music. Acting as the liais on betw een compos er and the orchestra contracto r I ens ure the need ed mu sicians are at th e rig ht s es sio n at th e rig ht time for the mo st efficient way to get the music recorded. This involves h av ing an organized recording order that will save money o n musician s and make it easier for them and th e eng ineer to move qu ickly fro m on e cu e to th e n ex t by keep ing s imilar reco rd ing set up s and music styles next to each oth er. I’m o ften called up on by the mus ic ed itor to facilitate any las t minute mo vie ch an ges by editing the music to fit any n ew version of the s cene. I’m usu ally at the sess ion s mak ing s ure it all happens as smooth ly as p oss ible, helping mak e any correction s or chang es called for by th e compos er or director

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while musician s are on the stan d. Of cours e when so meth ing goes wro ng it’s always the orchestrato r’s fault, as it s hould be.’ 7) Bartek’s intermediate adminis trativ e decis ions ens ure a recording venue is settled on, and the n umber o f s es sio ns needed are determined b y the amo unt of mus ic. T he play ers th emselv es are bo oked b y an orchestra contracto r dependent on ho w many have been orchestrated fo r and who’s availab le. In Los An geles there are a large selection of sess ion p layers, whereas the UK o ften makes u se of several lon g-stand ing orch es tras (e.g. th e LSO ). With everything in place, th e last minute stage is to create the individ ual pages for p layers to fo llo w. The fu ll score is given to a cop yis t either in hand -w ritten A 3 format o r as a computer file. They th en transcribe for each ins trumentalist bearing several points in mind. The p arts have to sh ow the number of bars to rest, otherwise a player is look ing at empty sp ace and rustling un necess ary pages. The page tu rns need to be when th e p layer h as a free hand . Fo r n eatness and sp eed, this is generally all fed in to a piece o f software. 8) The set-up of a reco rding s tudio is extremely imp ortant given the amo unts of mo ney often in volved. D ick L ewzey worked fo r many years at Lo ndon ’s CTS Stud ios . He broke d own the stages of set-up and his role as record ing en gin eer like this: ‘A compos er calls to ask you aboard first of all. A venue is co nsidered based on th e size of orchestra and the so rt of sou nd th ey wan t. Is it to b e an acous tic reco rding or something really in-you r-face? You ’re us ually book ed fo r the room a d ay in advan ce of the sess ion . T he mus ic ed ito r comes in with click track machines (which play in strumentalists’ beats for them to follow in their headph ones) and they test the video machines and talk back (a simple twoway communication from control roo m to con ductor p odium). Then th ere may be a two-man team p utting out microph ones, cables , and headph ones. Sometimes it’s just me. The time this all takes d ep en ds on the room and n umb ers of players. A recent on e hund red and fifty-piece orchestra with cho ir took nearly 6 hou rs to s et-up. It was 7 :00 PM to 2:00AM . Usually it’s around 3 to 4 hours. I never d elegate microp hone placemen t to an yone els e thou gh. I allocate mikes to certain tracks on the tape machine. So metimes they w an t to separate so loists to giv e the op tion of cu tting them out later. When we start th e sess ion, I have to achieve a h eadp hone balance for the players, and then tweak as we g o. One o f the hardest things is mon ito ring click track n oise d oesn’t s pill ou t of headpho nes during quiet passages. A noth er jo b durin g the sess ion is go ing into th e stu dio an d talkin g to players. With percus sio n yo u have to talk abo ut where to stan d to catch every thing fo r th e way y ou’ve set u p.

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During the actual takes I try to catch ev ery cue o n their o wn merits. Bey ond this I have to ensure the people who are mix ing at th e du bbing sess ion kn ow what they’re g etting on the tapes. Then afterwards there’s th e clean up. An eighty -piece orchestra can d ev as tate a roo m. There’s sp illed tea on cables and cup s everywhere!’ 9) Of all th e aspects o f p utting a mo dern score together, co nducting is the on e where opinion ’s most d ivided. The A-list triumvirate of John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith , and James Horner all cond uct their ow n work , as do John Barry and Debbie Wis eman. Others su ch as David Arnold, Danny Elfman, an d Hans Zimmer do not, feeling it is more importan t to be in the recording bo oth to be hands -o n for an y changes requested by th e director or prod ucers. For th e cas e in fav our, here’s what Howard Shore has to say: ‘I th ink that condu cting is a way to fully realise y our music. It’s the final s tage in a way. Fro m the podium you can offer s o much exp ress ion and advice to the players , wh ich y ou can’t do fro m the contro l ro om. There are man y thin gs you can quickly do fro m the po dium with y our players, from marking score parts to talk ing abou t ph rasing, dy namics , interpretation, to changing a melody line slightly with g race no tes. Film music is done quickly. It’s no t like y ou can finis h a score and h av e a month to go o ver ev ery s mall detail. From the po dium yo u can work with the orchestration and hear these b alances and ass es s th e performance of the p layers first hand. It’s all abo ut g ettin g a great performance on tape es sentially. Th e ess en ce o f it is really abou t rehears al, because the players have never seen it. You want to take th em th ro ugh the reh earsal p ro cess as quick ly as po ssible. Then wh en the energ y is correct, do th e best take. Quite often th e best film takes are early o nes. So there’s a fantastic immed iacy of being on the p odium and feeling the energ y of th e p layers when y ou’re goin g to get th at great take. Yo u can see if they’re g etting a little tired, or may be it’s getting a little near lun ch . It’s somewhat ab out co ntrol. There’s n o chain of command.’ 10 ) T here are two stages of mixin g what’s been record ed . Each cu e can have in strument vo lumes tin kered with to achieve desired effects . A full balance is achiev ed , and it’s also the time an albu m is pu t to gether. Then comes the final ‘dub ’, where comp osers fear to tread. The final sou nd mix for th e film is where the music’s function in the film is set. M any modern s co res are thoug ht lost in hig h vo lumes o f dialo gue and fo ley (rep lacement s ound effects). For film mus ic, this is where the bu ck either stops or is made.

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8. Reference
Books On Composers
There’s a s hockingly small library on the lives of film compo sers . Nearly everyth ing releas ed has g one o ut o f print (but try throu gh the magazines listed below), h ence this paltry list: A Hea rt At Fire’s Centre (The Life And Music Of Bern ard Herr mann ) by Steven C. Smith. Hardback - 41 5 pages, 1991 , U niversity Of California Pres s, ISBN 0-52 0-0712 3-9. A truly masterful work o n th e life o f the composer. Covers h is p rivate life, film career, and co ncert works with equal resp ect and detail. John Ba rry: A Life In Music by Geo ff Leonard, Pete Walk er, & Gareth Bramley. Hardback - 243 pages, 1998 , Sansom & Company, ISBN 190 0178 -8 6-9. If ever there was a labour of love, th is is it. Bulging with in fo rmation and colo ur p hoto graphs, this is the way all great film co mpo sers deserve to be rep res en ted.

General Books On Film Music
Again there’s not much available, and what there is can often g et academic. I’ve left out tho se aimed to ward the mus icians themselves. These offer a n ice cro ss-section o f areas of the ind ustry : Mus ic Fo r The Mo vies by Tony Thomas. Paperback - 3 30 pages, 1 997, Silman -J ames Press , ISBN 1-87 9505 -37-1. Originally printed in 1971 , it focuses o n the Gold en and Silver Ages. This was the first (and still the best) book to tack le th e s ubject. The Score by M ichael Schelle. Paperb ack - 427 pages, 199 9, Silman-J ames Pres s, ISBN 1-879 505-40 -1 . Fifteen compos er interv iews by a fellow composer. L ots of in teres tin g an ecdo tes, but inevitably gets tech nical at times. Screencraft: Film Mu sic b y M ark Ru ssell & James You ng. Paperback - 1 92 pages, 2 000, RotoVision, ISBN 2-880 46-441 -2 . Similar to The Score, bu t its thirteen interv iews are far sh orter and less ins igh tful. Don ’t be foo led by the large format; there’s no t much in it. So und An d Visio n by J on Burlingame. Paperback - 2 44 pages, 2 000, Billbo ard Boo ks, ISBN 0823 0842 72. A fact-filled his tory o f film mu sic reco rd ing s and an informative s potligh t on the mos t importan t alb ums .

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Specialist Magazines
Printing advancements h av e allo wed fanzines to move away fro m the ph otocop ier. While th ere is plenty o f fan nis h d eb ate and opinion abou t, the on es with th e mos t to say are listed b elow. Film Score Mo nthly – http://www.films co remonthly.com – Poss es sed of a singular s ard onic wit, it may not be as regular as its title sug gests , but it’s glossily attractive and informative. Th e Lo s Ang eles editorial team are also res pons ible for a terrific ong oin g series of class ic sou ndtrack albu ms . Mus ic Fro m The M ovies – http://w ww.mus icfro mthemov ies.com – With an enormous albu m rev iews section , and feature articles of biblical proportions , this U.K . based magazine has g one from streng th to stren gth.

Internet Resources
The so undtrack commu nity is no where more alive than on the In ternet. Newsg roups and private lists ch ro nicle excitement and dis may at new titles with either alarming or amu sin g degrees o f fervo ur. So me of the s ites lis ted here con tain their own chat forums, but lo g into rec. mus ic.movies so me time and enjoy the n oise!

News and Review
Album rev iew sites are plentiful on the Web. Th e better ones also feature articles and interviews : Cinemusic – http://ww w.cin emus ic.net Film M usic On Th e Web – h ttp ://www.mu sicweb.u k.net/film/index.htm Film Tracks – http://www.filmtracks.co m M ovie Poo p Shoot – h ttp ://www.mo viepoo psho ot.com/s core/ind ex .html Score Review s – h ttp ://www.scorereviews.com Soun dtrackNet – http://www.sou ndtrack.n et Track soun ds – http://www.trackso unds .com

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Appreciation
Fan sites app ear and dis ap pear regu larly. Here’s a mixture of official and un au thorised sites that s eem to be aro und to stay: Jo hn Barry – http://w ww.john barry.org.u k Elmer Bern stein – http://w ww.elmerbernstein.com Don Davis – http://d ondav is.filmmus ic.com/home.html Dann y Elfman – h ttp ://elfman.filmmus ic.com Jerry Go lds mith – http://www.jerrygoldsmithonline.com Bern ard Herrmann – http://www.uib .no/herrmann James Horner – www. hornershrin e. co m Erich Wolfg an g Korn gold – http://k orngo ld.freey ellow.com Eric Serra – http://www.ericserra.co m How ard Sh ore – http://ho me.s wipn et.se/~w-672 69 M ax Steiner – http://hometown. ao l.com/steinerlib /in dex.htm Jo hn Williams – http://www.jwfan.com Fran z Waxman – http://w ww.franzwaxman .com/main .html Debb ie Wiseman – http://ww w.d eb biewis eman.co.u k Hans Zimmer – http://www.hanszimmer.in fo

Retail
Amazo n (.com or .co.uk ) is always a go od b et for soun dtracks. Bu t h ere are a co uple o f s pecialis ts: Intrada (San Fran cisco) – h ttp ://www.intrada.com Footlig ht Records (New York) – h ttp ://www. fo otligh t.com M ovie Bou levard (UK) – h ttp ://www.mo viebou levard.co.uk

Movie Collections
The Alien Tr ilo gy, Go lds mith/Horner/Goldenth al, Varèse Sarabande VSD57 53 The B atma n Trilogy, Elfman/Gold en thal/Hefti, Varèse Sarab an de VSD57 66 Bo nd Ba ck In A ction and 2 (2 000), Various, Silva Screen FILM CD 317 /340 Fellini/Ro ta: La Do lce Vita, Silva Screen FILM CD 720 The Godfath er Trilog y, Rota/Copp ola/M ascagni, Silva Screen FILM CD 3 44 The Ha mmer F ilm Mus ic Collection Volume O ne, Vario us, GDI Reco rd s GDICD002

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Composer Collections
John Barr y: Th e Collectio n, Silva Screen FIL MXCD 3 49 Mus ic For A D arkened Theatre Volumes One and Two (19 96), Elfman, M CA MCAD-100 65/M CAD2-1155 0 The Omen: The Ess en tia l Jerr y Go ldsm ith Film Mus ic Collectio n, Silva Screen FILM XCD 199 The E ssential Mau rice Jar re Film Music Collection, Silv a Screen FILMXCD 3 24 Er ich Wolfgan g Kor ngold: The Warn er Bro thers Years, Premiere Sound track s 72 43 8 38118 2 3 Man of Galilee: Th e E ssential Alfred Newman Film Mus ic Collection, Silva Screen FILM XCD 352 Ben-Hu r: The Essential Miklós Róz sa Film M usic Co llection, Silv a Screen FILMXCD 3 34

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The Essential Library: Currently Available
F ilm D irectors : Wo od y Allen ( 2n d) J an e C am pion * J ackie C ha n D av id C ro nen b erg A lfred Hitch cock ( 2nd ) S tan ley K ub rick (2n d ) D av id Lyn ch (2n d ) S am Peck inp ah * Ors on W elles ( 2n d) S teven S p ielb erg Ha l Ha rtley F ilm G enres : B la xp loitatio n Films Ho rro r Films S las her Mov ies Va mp ire Films * Germ an E xp res s io nis t Film s F ilm S ubjects : L au rel & Hard y S teve McQu een * Filmin g On A Microbu d get Film St ud ies T im Bu rton J oh n C arp en ter S teven S od erberg h Terry Gillia m* Krzy szto f K ies low sk i* S ergio Leo ne B ria n D e Pa lma* R id ley S cott (2 nd ) B illy W ild er M ik e Hod ges A n g L ee Jo el & E tha n C oen ( 2n d) C lint Ea stw o od Mich ael M an n R om an Po la ns k i Oliver Sto ne Georg e L uca s Ja mes C am eron R oger C orma n S pik e L ee

B ollyw ood S p agh etti West ern s Film N oir Heroic Bloo ds h ed*

Fren ch N ew Wav e V iet na m War Mov ies Ha mm er Films C arry On Film s

M arx Broth ers M arily n Mo nroe B ruce Lee

Film Mu sic Th e Osca rs® (2n d ) W rit in g A S creenp lay

M us ic: T he Mad ch ester S cen e Bea stie Boy s Ho w To S ucceed I n Th e Mu sic Bu sin ess Literature: C yb erp un k A ga tha C h ristie Terry Pratch ett W illiam Sh ak esp eare Geo rges S im en on Id eas : C on s piracy T heories Fem inis m H istor y: A lchem y & A lch em is ts J ack Th e Rip p er A m erican C iv il War Glo balis ation C las sic Ra dio C om edy M iscellaneou s: S tock M arket E ss ent ia ls

Jet hro Tull Th e Beat les

Ph ilip K Dick S h erlo ck Holm es Hitch h iker’s Gu id e (2 nd ) C reative Writin g R ob ert Cru m b

Th e Beat Gen eration N oir Fict io n A lan M oore Tin tin

N ietzs ch e Freu d & Ps ych oan alys is

U FOs Bis exu ality

T he C rus ad es T he R ise Of New Lab ou r A m erican In d ian Wa rs W h o Sh ot JFK? N u clea r Pa ran oia

Th e Black D eat h A n cien t Greece W it chcraf t V id eog amin g

Ho w To S ucceed A s A Sp orts Ag ent

D octo r W ho

Available at bookstores or send a cheque (paya ble to ‘Oldc astle Books’) to: Pocket Essentials (Dept FM2), P O Box 394, Har pe nden, Her ts, AL5 1XJ, UK. £3.99 eac h (£2.99 if marked with an *). For each book add 50p (UK)/£1 (elsewhere) postage & packing.

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