by Paul Tonks
score -- n. / Pron. “skôr”
1. The notation of a musical work.
2. The written form of a composition for orchestral or vocal parts.
3. The music written for a film, play, or other viewed entertainment.
4. The resounding cheer that accompanies the “high-fives” of Producers when they get what they want sounding close enough to the Temp Track, without fear of being sued.
Did the past year go as fast for anyone else as it has for me? I’m finding it incredible to think this is my twenty-sixth column for the site. That’s an awful lot of prattling on about an aspect of film making that still goes largely unnoticed. Nevertheless, I‘m proud of the Archive that’s built up here (check at base of page if you’ve never noticed the Link). I hope that amid the general tongue-in-cheek tone there have been a few nuggets of wisdom and truth.
Entering YEAR TWO with this Column, I’m in a playful mood again. Firstly, there’s a new dictionary definition at the top of the page. I guess I’m done with berating the labels (for now). If there’s been one aspect of the film scoring industry I’ve learned more about in the last year, it’s the role a composer has to play in satisfying Producers. So now they are deserving of my on-line ire!
The second act of playfulness is the column itself. It’s inspired by what I considered a stroke of surreal coincidence that happened to me in Los Angeles a week or so ago. Bumping into a composer at a record store thousands of miles from my home (and his, too, actually) seemed a remarkable collision of unpredictable timing and circumstance. Especially since we’d e-mailed only a few days beforehand. But such is
life. And thinking along those lines I decided on my return I’d craft together one of these Top Ten lists that seem to go down so well here, based upon the most surreal, peculiar and coincidental instances of my life relating to film music.
Happy Birthday to us all.
THE TEN ODDEST FILM MUSIC MOMENTS IN MY LIFE
1) Since self-plagiarism is a topic of choice in the film music world, I thought I might get away with a bit of it here. Back in Column # One I concluded a review of BATMAN with an anecdote that still raises a smirk in remembering:
On a hot ’89 Summer’s day as I sat listening to the score in a park, a little old lady passed by walking two poodles. One was black, the other white and each wore a mirror image BATMAN t-shirt with the logo up top. “Looking forward to the film?” I asked politely. “Dick and Bruce are,” she said. “They love that TV song!”
All these years later, I’d love to know what they thought of BATMAN & ROBIN…
2) In that SAME park (I kid you not!), some eight years later as I sat reading the latest issue of Film Score Monthly, I suddenly caught the opening tweeness of James Horner’s TITANIC. For about a minute I looked all about me, trying to work out where the Hell this rude interruption was coming from. A wind was blowing erratically, so the sound seemed to be coming at me from different directions simultaneously.
Just before the ends of my fingers began itching with being completely creeped-out, the answer revealed itself. From around a line of tall hedgerow, an elderly gentlemen appeared on a tiny and syrup-dribblingly slow bicycle. He doffed his flat cap at me as he passed and I saw the dawn of civiisation radio poking out from the wicker basket on his handlebars. My breath, circulation and magazine page turning had all frozen while these couple of strange minutes passed. Then as he disappeared down a small hill, I was relieved of the strangeness, and to know that my heart will go on…
3) OK – let me get my other TITANIC tale out the way. My wife and I considered buying an upright piano for a while. Being on a budget, the search took us to secondhand furniture stores far and wide. Then we lucked upon one at a charity store about 5 minutes walk from our house. We kept returning to cast our eyes and thoughts over the instrument. Plans were formed. Fantasies ran free.
On a day I was perfectly ready to make the purchase I entered the store to find a group of teenage girls walking toward the piano. They circled around one girl. She rolled up a sleeve, and broke into the Theme from TITANIC.
Ten minutes later I was back home recovering with a cup of tea. We still don’t have a piano.
4) About nine years ago I was working as a paper and envelope jockey at a financial firm. Anyone who pushed about my interests got the enthusiastic reply about film music. In return I got the perplexed and cautious conversational retreat usually reserved for when you discover someone’s an axe murderer. Then one glorious day as I sat enduring paper cuts on top of my paper cuts, a suited chap some two years, one management grade and apparently therefore a million times my intellectual superior came bursting into the room. “You’re the movie songs guy aren’t you?” he panted breathlessly at me. I nodded. “I must have JAWS!”
I thought about this a moment. I considered a comical reply along the lines of: “Well of course you must. You never stop talking.” Instead I explained that although I didn’t happen to be carrying that one particular Theme out of millions, that I could bring it in the next day. And so it was that I helped some crappy little middle-management team-building presentation (delayed by a day) on how a client may listen to what’s said but hear something else.
5) Blanking on someone’s name is always annoying and sometimes downright embarrassing. Stood talking to someone while queuing at an airport check in, he asked me who the guy was who did “that OMEN music you hear in all the gothic horror movies.” And I blanked.
I fumbled for words, examples and anecdotal reference that would trigger the name as fast as possible. I had after all just told this guy that I wrote about the subject for a living. But try as I might to put a name to the pictures in my head of the guy with the white ponytail who had X number of movies already on the screen that year, including the Oscar-nominated L.A. CONFIDENTIAL from not that long ago, it just wouldn’t come. I felt -– in U.K. parlance –- like an utter tosspot. Conversation with the guy thinned considerably after that.
An hour later pre-boarding, some passengers were called to the desk, including a Michael Goldsmith. Naturally, the guy I’d been talking to was nowhere to be seen for me to jump on and scream the name at. So how on Earth could I momentarily forget such a huge name? I blame it on all the GUNS ‘N’ ROSES I was subjected to in the cab on the way to the airport.
6) Last year I had the pleasure of interviewing Mychael Danna as part of the Toronto Film Festival. Backstage behind curtains and a few minutes before we were due on, the previous stage interviewee stood munching from a fruit platter atop a grand piano. I introduced myself to Ivan Reitman and said we were on next, etc. Mychael introduced himself as a composer, to which Reitman basically said: “so what have you done?”
Without batting an eyelid he smoothly replied with a highlights CV. While he did so, I was screaming in my head: “when you’re done, say – ‘AND YOU?’” Unfortunately my telepathic powers were below par that day, and instead he remained the perfect gentleman.
Hmmm –- let’s see. Reitman’s directing career has seen him give up a regular collaboration with Elmer Bernstein to flitting between Randy Edelman, James Newton Howard and John Powell. Oh yeah –- he really knows his film music then.
7) Sat on a train. Walkman blasting. “Excuse me,” says the attractive lady sat next to me. “I’ve never heard a piece of Prokofiev go up and down like that.”
And so I explained how film score cues are often short and sweet, with lots of dramatic contour to follow the action on screen. We went on to talk about the subject at length and I said I’d gladly bring along anything she might care to listen to (this being a regular commuter journey, and I’d seen her board the train before). Unsurprisingly, she wasn’t at all interested in listening to WILLOW again though!
8) A certain music and video Megastore, London. Theme from BATMAN plays. “And there’s the classic BATMAN tune from Prince,” says the in-store DJ. I grimace and let it slide. Next –- THE GREAT ESCAPE Theme. “And there’s the new England Football song.” I sigh again. Next –- “Gollum’s Song” from THE TWO TOWERS. “And there’s that Hobbit song from one of the cast of The Twin Towers.” Now I’m ready to seek this guy out and flatten him. “And here’s John Barry’s “James Bond Theme.”” Someone fire this guy immediately before lawsuits stack up.
But I decide to leave and have a drink somewhere to calm down. As I walk out: “And here’s something from one of the Oscar-winning STAR WARS scores by John Williams – who’s won more Oscars than anyone alive.”
And of course it’s “Across the Stars” from ATTACK OF THE CLONES.
9) Whether this counts or nor, I wanted to include something that’s retained with crystal clairity in my mind. A few years ago Jerry Goldsmith (yes -– I remember the name now) was in concert in Scotland. I got to sit in on the rehearsals and heard the usual scale runs and thematic extracts play back and forth for a few minutes. Then out of nowhere and with no prompting, the bulk of the musicians on stage broke into simultaneous renditions of Goldsmith’s STAR TREK Themes for VOYAGER and THE MOTION PICTURE (aka THE NEXT GENERATION). For a full 30 seconds at least, this held together as if it had been written. I’d provided the programme booklet for the event, so I knew it wasn’t some surprise cross-over suite about to be thrown at the fans. But what an idea Jerry, now that the movie series and your involvement looks to have been flushed down the toilet.
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10) Finally, I have so many memories of a piece of film music I had playing unexpectedly, yet perfectly matching the moment it accompanied, but here’s my favourite:
Driving through some hilly English countryside, I saw maybe eight or nine paragliders swooping around one another in the air. It was sunset and everything was caught in that unique orange half-light. I slowed down to take in the view a little more leisurely (and safely), and suddenly I was overtaken by a stream of about a dozen professional cyclists.
Playing on my car stereo was Danny Elfman’s PEE WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE (nee Nino Rota’s 8&˝). It was a perfectly surreal moment. One of so many in my life that remain one of the most wonderful aspects of loving this industry. You just never know when or how it’ll move you in unpredictable ways.
COMPETITION RESULT:
Last Column I offered a copy of the Promo disc for the score to TOMB RAIDER: THE ANGEL OF DARKNESS. My question asked who would be the ideal composer for a TOMB RAIDER movie (no disrespect intended to Graeme Revell or Alan Silvestri [or Michael Kamen or Craig Armstrong for that matter]). I got back replies ranging from John Williams (of course) to Danny Elfman (of course), and John Barry (of course) to Wojciech Kilar (huh?). My chosen winner is Gary Huff though, who thoughtfully submitted:
“I would pick Edward Shearmur to score, given that I would want something that was a mixture of tongue-in-cheek and seriousness and he did that perfectly for the spy genre with JOHNNY ENGLISH and I think hearing him tackle an Indiana Jones-type score in the vein of the TOMB RAIDER franchise would result in a score that would be quite fun. Plus I like picking composers who need far more exposure than what they are currently getting.”
That’s a sentiment I heartily concur with. Expect to see composers getting exposed here far more frequently. (Did I really just say that?)
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