"... When I had completed the editing of 2001: A Space Odyssey, I had laid in temporary music tracks for almost all of the music which was eventually used in the film. Then, in the normal way, I engaged the services of a distinguished film composer to write the score. Although he and I went over the picture very carefully, andhe listened to these temporary tracks (Strauss, Ligeti, Khatchaturian) and agreed that they worked fine and would serve as a guide to the musical objectives of each sequence he, nevertheless, wrote and recorded a score which could not have been more alien to the music we had listened to, and much more serious than that, a score which, in my opinion, was completely inadequate for the film. With the premiere looming up, I had no time left even to think about another score being written, and had I not been able to use the music I had already selected for the temporary tracks I don't know what I would have done. The composer's agent phoned Robert O'Brien, the then head of MGM, to warn him that if I didn't use his client's score the film would not make its premiere date. But in that instance, as in all others, O'Brien trusted my judgment. He is a wonderful man, and one of the very few film bosses able to inspire genuine loyalty and affection from his film-makers."

(I assume he was talking about North)

"Most recently, Tony was asked by director Peter Hyams ("Outland", "Capricorn One") to score "2010", the sequel to Arthur C. Clarke's "2001: A Space Odyssey". At the time of the interview below, Tony had not started work on the picture. However, he did tell us that he was looking forward to doing a heavily synthesized score utilizing digital sampling supplied by the E-mu Emulator to generate many new unheard and unrecognizable sounds. Shortly before we started work on this issue, however, "Variety" reported that Banks had been fired from the picture. Tony explains, "Peter Hyams really didn't like what I gave him from the word 'go.' I thought it strange since he was the one who contacted me, based on having heard what I had done on "The Shout". The first tape I sent him included something that I thought was great, but he came back and said he thought it was really bad. So I thought, 'This is crazy. Here I consider these to be the most appropriate things and he doesn't like them.' I don't know why he got a hold of me. Anyway, I thought, 'We'll fight on.' So I did a couple of other tapes, and we managed to end up with something he seemed fairly enthusiastic about.

When it came to thinking about final ideas, he said he didn't like it. I think he wanted something a lot more conventional than he orginally thought he did. The closer I got to writing a Hollywood kind of score, the happier he looked. That was disappointing to me. It was a blow to the confidence.

Banks had worked on the music for a long time, generating a lot of material. However, he still owns it, and may decide to do something with it at some future date. "I'm trying to get into some more ambitious instrumental pieces. Film is an obvious place to do that," he says. "I'm frightened at the idea of putting out an album of instrumentals without it being tied to a film. I'd have trouble finding someone to release it."

"He was approached to prepare the score for 2010, the follow up to 2001: A Space Odyssey, a high profile film, perfectly suited to his talents and an excellent vehicle to promote his name among the film moguls. Initially things went well but then internal politics and Hollywood's notorious capriciousness crept in and music that had initially excited the movie men suddenly wasn't what they wanted. Tony's eventual departure from the film was a source of intense frustration as he had invested so much time and excellent music into it and had turned down other film offers in its favour. (excerpt from 'Genesis: A Biography' by Dave Bowler and Bryan Dray) Note - some of Tony's unused material for 2010 was later revamped for Lorca And The Outlaws ("Starship")."

Moving on to the Soundtracks album, there was a lot of talk at this time that you had been involved with the 2010 soundtrack and that didn't eventually happen.

I was given the sack, there's no two ways about it. The guy chose me because he really loved the theme from The Shout, he could sing it! (laughter). I couldn't believe that as it was difficult to sing anyhow, it hasn't got much of a melody. I thought that I was on to a winner here as that was like stuff I could write in my sleep. I met him and things went well and then I went home and made a demo of about five or six pieces. He rang me up and said that he didn't like any of them! He was very definite about it as well. I thought this was the big moment as well, I'd seen it as the next step up in the film writing world. Anyhow, I tried again by sending another tape out which he didn't like, so I finally decided to go out there and see him. I wrote a piece almost in front of him and I found the chord changes that he liked. He said that the piece I did there and then was great and then he asked for something that could be a song. Then I went home and began demoing some actual pieces for the film on the themes that we'd agreed on but he said that it wasn't working and that was that. The whole thing wasted about six months and it really was a set-back forme. There were quite a few film offers coming in.

"...They had a Western film with Glenn Ford and Inger Stevens. They had changed directors in the middle of it, as well as writers. The picture was really in trouble. Following those four or five independent projects for Columbia, they said, "Why don't we give Van a chance? Maybe he can save the picture." They gave me a very good price and I had plenty of time to do it. I was given an office at the studio. I did the score in about six or seven weeks. I had a big orchestra and they were all there at the scoring session (Mike Frankovich and the head of the music department, Joni Taps). They raved about the music and said, "My God. You've saved the picture!" I was on cloud nine. So now they had what they called a "preview" of the picture. This is where they show it to the public and try to get some feedback. With my wife and two daughters, we all went to a theatre out here in the San Fernando Valley for the showing. Well, it was a disaster. People were laughing in the serious parts and were hissing the villain. I wanted to crawl under the table. I thought that I had written a pretty good score and everyone at the scoring stage had approved. And now the Columbia brass sees the result in the theatre! Two days later, Mike Frankovitch calls and tells me that he doesn't think that the music is right for the picture! I asked him if they wanted to change anything and he said, "No, I think that we're going to throw it all out and re-score it with 10 guitars and make it a real Western." So they hired Mundell Lowe who is a great guitar player. He brought in 10 guitars, but that didn't help the picture either. It never played in a theatre, but was on television about three weeks later. That made me feel a little better, but I felt as if I'd never do another picture!  But I remember what film composer David Raksin once said: "You're not a full-fledged screen composer until you've had a score thrown out of a picture. ..."

"I nearly got murdered because of this. I did a film called Agatha, I was Musical Director on it. David Puttnam was the producer and he said, "It should be like a big Max Steiner score. It's 1923. Period film. Huge orchestra. You can do it. The actual script is a little bit iffy, a little bit weak, so we shall have to rely on the score a lot, so give it all you've got Howard." So I wrote a big score for it but David backed out of the film and we got another producer in who hadn't the same idea. We had a preview at BAFTA in Piccadilly [in central London] and everybody was saying, "What a wonderful score." Everyone had questionnaires and everybody put "fantastic music". What do you think of the script? Lousy. What do you think of the acting? It's OK. This producer grabbed me by the throat, and he said, "What are you trying to do? We're not asking people to buy your bloody music. We want them to buy the film. We're going to junk the whole lot". And he did. Junked the entire score. About one hour of fully scored, symphonic music, gone, like that. That's happened on a number of things. So it's a high risk job.."

"I had a score done for a film I did for HBO called And "Starring Pancho Villa as Himself", and when I left Los Angeles they dropped my score and replaced it with another! Pancho Villa, the Mexican revolutionary, had the idea during the Mexican revolution (around 1915) that he wanted a movie made of his exploits, so he contacted DW Griffith. Griffith had more sense than to go down to Mexico and get caught up in a revolution but he sentdown a young American producer called Frank Thayer, and Thayer actually made a filmabout Pancho Villa -- a silent movie starring Pancho Villa as himself. This movie doesn't exist anymore but Paolo [Cherchi Usai, NFSA Director] is looking everywhere for it -- worldwide. It starred Raoul Walsh (who later became a famous director), and it's quite well documented. A lot of the people who went down there wrote books about their experiences. I said to my composer Stephen Endelman I wanted a score that summed up the relationship between Frank Thayer and Villa. Because Frank Thayer was only 22 when he went to Mexico he saw Pancho Villa as a romantic revolutionary. He worshipped his idealism and his patriotism. I wanted the music to reflect this. Later, as he learns more about Pancho Villa, he starts to question a lot about him. The themes can then be varied to express Thayer's disillusionment."

The studio factor

"In the end Endelman's score for Pancho Villa was ditched and I don't think the replacement captured the spirit of the film at all. A surprising number of film scores, even those by celebrated composers, are replaced by the studio executives. I suppose they're right some of the time, but mostly I suspect they're making a mistake."

Dear all,

I would like it to be known for what it's worth that the 'score' for Blackhat maybe credited to me, but contains almost none of my compositions. I attended the premiere of the movie at the end of last week and discovered, to my horror, music that shocked and surprised me...quasi emotional (synth) string pieces that I'd never heard in my life before. I knew of at least one other composer, a good one at that(!), that had put in months of work on this movie just as I had, but this appeared to me to be in addition to both our contributions. To be honest, I'm not sure, as I'm having a hard time understanding what I heard and why it was there and I can say nothing for certain except that I was not the author of most of what is now in the movie. I feel like I want to point this out for anyone who like me cares about these things, as my name is right there listed as the lead composer and one would expect that credit to mean something, but it doesn't. And I do care about that.

I therefore reluctantly join the long list of composers who have had their scores either sliced and diced mercilessly or ignored completely by Michael Mann. This is his film and these are his decisions and I do respect that, but see no reason to have people mistake this score for one that I composed, or in any way approved of musically. The 90 minutes of score that I did write and deliver is, as I've said, mostly unused.

I would still encourage you to check out his movie, as you may enjoy it.

Harry

• Craig Armstrong was supposedly working with Holmes on the score.
  
• Soundtrack.net interview with Alex Wurman:
  
  Soundtrack.net:  "How did you get involved with Confessions of a Dangerous Mind?"
  
  Wurman:  "I have a friend named Stephen Mirrione, who cut Doug Liman's first movie, which I scored. He went on to cut Doug's next movie, Swingers, and they didn't offer it to me because they didn't have enough money and thought I wouldn't want to do it! I was kicking myself for a long time because when I saw the screening, before Miramax bought it, I thought it was a very cool movie - I would have loved to do it! Stephen is a fantastic editor. Steven Soderbergh saw Swingers, hired Stephen to cut Traffic, and he got the Academy Award - but he's still a friend!
  
  So Stephen then cut Thirteen Conversations About One Thing, which thanks to him, I scored. It was such a joy - Jill and Karen Sprecher are going to make another movie soon, and I can't wait! Then Stephen was cutting Confessions and director/actor George Clooney was working with a different composer and he wanted to go in a different musical direction. Stephen suggested bringing me in to write some cues and I was hired to score the film."
  
  Soundtrack.net:  "So you replaced Clooney's original pick - was there any animosity there?"
  
  Wurman:  "No, none at all. Clooney was very pleased because he had struggled to get something that he thought was working, and then they gave me one shot at it, and I got it right the first time.  So it was smooth sailing for both if us! He is a great guy too."

We are presenting the first trailer for Flatliners (Music in this trailer is not Jacob Groth), the Niels Arden Oplev helmed project based on the 1990 sci-fi Joel Schumacher film of the same name. Jacob is composing and recording the score in his Griffith Park Studio in Los Angeles and his Copenhagen Studio. Working with him is his great team Ole Bo, Søren Møller and music-editor Robin Whittaker.

Matthias Büdinger: Although your score was involuntarily chamber-like, you did the best creatively with the forces you had, which is one of the capabilities of good composers. Let’s discuss HOMEWARD BOUND: THE INCREDIBLE JOURNEY, which ended up with a score by Bruce Broughton.

David Shire: For me it was truly an incredible journey. I worked as hard and lovingly and with as much enthusiasm on that score as I did on RETURN TO OZ. It was the best opportunity I had had since OZ to do a full-blown, multi-themed symphonic score. I was thrilled to get the project. I had almost weekly meetings for a couple of months with the director. He sat on that couch many Monday mornings while I played him themes and reworked them until we both loved them. The producers also were very enthusiastic about the material. They sent me off to Munich to record the score and we had to leave after 3 days because the orchestra played so poorly. I’m not totally sure why, but I had the feeling that we got a lot of substitutes. I know for a fact that the concertmaster and the lead trumpet were subs. We then re-recorded the whole score in 2 days at the Burbank Studios with a smaller orchestra (60 pieces) because of the diminished music budget. It was about 80 minutes of music. Before he left for Cannes, Jeffrey Katzenberg (the former Disney chairman - MB) wanted to see the picture in whatever state it was in at that time.
I was at the screening at Katzenberg’s house and he seemed to be pleased. A couple of days later I got a call from my agent saying that my services were no longer required. Katzenberg also fired the stars doing the animal voices and almost fired the director. Then Bruce (Broughton) was called in which surprised me, because I think that we have similar musical sensibilities. I thought that perhaps they wanted a very different style.
People who have heard the score feel it’s as good as anything I’ve done. I think: the cloud of Munich hung over it. It was a double disappointment. When you lose a picture like that, you don’t just lose that picture. You lose all the pictures that that film might have generated. Anyway, one amusing story came out of it: My son Matthew who was 17 at the time is a great fan of mine, very defensive of his father. He went to a dance after this happened and found himself dancing with Bruce Broughton’s daughter. Matt said, “I hear your father scored INCREDIBLE JOURNEY.” “Yes, he did,” she said, “Well, mine did too!” he shot back.

JF: I want to talk about something I came across on the Internet Movie Database. It said that you had an unused score to the movie HOMEWARD BOUND. Is that true?

DS: Yeah.

JF: What didn't they like about it?

DS: They didn't like it. Katzenberg didn't like it. I worked with the director on that picture for three months like I did with Walter Murch on RETURN TO OZ. I came up with all the themes, one by one--he loved them all and as we got to work on them I met with him every Monday for week after week. I went to Germany to record the score, but the orchestra there was not good enough, so we scrapped those sessions and then I re-recorded them in LA. Then Katzenberg wanted to hear a cut of the picture with the score on it and the voices for the animals--and I remember going over to his house and we sat there while he watched it. He smiled and shook my hand and said, "Fine, fine," and by the time I got home there was a call from my agent saying he scrapped my score and wanted a new one. He also fired the three people who were the principal voices of the animals and he almost fired the director. But he brought someone else in to work with him. So it was just a totally disappointing experience because that was the last score I thought was going to get me back in the loop. It was a big, romantic, fun picture with the Disney stamp on it and that was a huge disappointment. Since then I've hardly gotten called for a picture.

JF: Have you ever considered making that music available in some way--as a promo maybe?

DS: No, I haven't thought about it much. Frankly, it was so painful I never went back and even listened to it. But we'd have to get the master tapes and mix it because we never finished it. I have a tape of it somewhere. If somebody wanted to put it out and thought it was good enough to put out, I'd have no objections.

How did you get involved in the project?

Josh, the director, came to our studio in Santa Monica for an initial meeting about two months ago. Being a true artist, he had an amazing vision about the music for jOBS. The script has a great rhythm and there are a lot indications for music already, acknowledging how music was such a big part of Steve Jobs’ life. We bounced many ideas off of each other very quickly during what turned out to be a very energetic meeting. Then I played at the piano to show him what I thought could be the main theme. He immediately responded, “it is jOBS’ theme”. He really loved it, and wanted me to write it down. These things don’t happen too often, usually I write dozens of themes before finding the right one, but to my great satisfaction he really wanted to use my initial idea as the theme for the film.

Tell us about the work you have already done for the film. What is your general musical approach on the project?

We have recorded a couple of demos at East West Studios in LA with an intimate group of musicians. I love to start the process as soon as possible, so it’s great to work with filmmakers who are on the same page. Thankfully, both the director and the producer wanted me to start working on the music ASAP. Josh and I are very closely working on some of the main themes and different sonorities, and both really want to set this score apart and have something truly original. The story is huge, and hopefully music can find all the right emotions needed to tell the story of this complicated man’s life.

What is your own relation to Apple and the legacy Jobs left behind?

Like so many of us, I have been working on a Mac for as long as I can remember. When I started my first semester at Berklee College of Music, having a Mac was mandatory, so I learned all of the music software that is available. Even though I tend to compose longhand, my team and I work on Macs for the entire process, from writing to mixing.

Steve Jobs has changed the way we produce and distribute music, which has ultimately changed the way composers write music. Our writing is directly connected to advances in technology, but music distribution has a far greater impact. In the 18th century, the only way to listen to music was to go to a concert, a church, or a civic event and see the players performing. You always had to hear it live. Music involved a social interaction; you couldn’t just put your headphones on. Then the piano, which could be mass-produced, was invented as well as sheet music. Both of those new technologies brought music into many households, and it created a new class of musicians, composers and performers. A century later, the gramophone and radio were invented which brought the actual performers, that new class of musicians, into people’s living rooms. Then the iPod, iTunes, Garageband, and other music software changed everything all over again. Now the listeners can manipulate music, creating a new personalized experience. Everyone can be their own composer, and listening to music can be an individual adventure. Steve Jobs was a very lonely person in that way, and we are trying to portray that in the movie through music too.

As jOBS is your first straight drama project in Hollywood, do you hope to do more work in the genre and what other type of films would you like get involved in as your career progresses?

Drama is one of my favorite genres. The storyline as well as the use of music can be very interesting, as there are few specific conventions. I love to work on action films too, those are a lot of fun. I would also love to be involved with an animation project.

(FilmMusicReporter.com link)

"Has any of your film scores been rejected?"

"Yes. A few years ago the producer rejected my music for the first part of The Lord of the Rings, despite the director's wish. I agreed to write music only for the first part of the saga, but the filmmakers were not happy with that. And it's just as well, because I was terrified at the thought that more parts of this tale would be created and that I would have to spend an awful lot of time on that."

Stephan Eicke: Many people don't want to talk about the following theme but do you have any rejected scores?

Christopher Gunning: Oh my God (laughing)! I don't mind talking about that... there has only been one full score which was rejected and that was a score for a film called "The Theory of Flight".

Stephan Eicke: Wasn't Stephen Warbeck's score for this movie rejected, too?

Christopher Gunning: That's right and that's why I don't mind talking about that because there were lots of rejections (laughing). Actually, the film was crap... no, it wasn't crap... it could have been a very nice film, but... the situation there was that there was a producer and a director who weren't communicating at all with each other and the relationships really collapsed. I was working with the director and it turned out that the producer just didn't like what I was doing. I didn't know that until it was too late. They were terribly bad about it.
I was called for a meeting afterwards and then they phoned up just as I got my hat and coat on ready to go, and they said: 'I think we'll postpone the meeting.'
Then Stephen (Warbeck) rang up and said: 'Chris, I've just been to see this film and it says 'Music by Christopher Gunning' at the beginning!' 'Oh Stephen, do you really want to know the whole story?' (laughing)
He said: 'Look Chris, I am short of work at the moment, so if they offer it to me, I am afraid I am going to take it, but I just want to know the background.'
I replied: 'Watch out because this could be a poison-chalice.' Stephen is a really nice man and he phoned me up after the meeting and said: 'Well, I'll do it.' Then he rang me up a month later and said: 'You'll be happy to hear that my score was thrown out as well!' (laughing)
They got an American guy to do it, and when the movie was shown on television, I noticed that his music was not unlike mine at all. I recorded my music and Stephen, too. The same engineer recorded both scores. It's a huge waste of money and it was produced by the BBC whose license-fee is... whoa...

Mikael:  "When we are talking about action scores, I have to ask you about the chaotic events around the scoring of WATERWORLD.  What happened?  The only thing remaining from your score is a tiny little music-box theme, the rest of the score was replaced by James Newton Howard."

ISHAM:  "What went wrong was that the film politically exploded at the end.  Kevin Reynolds quit the film, which left me working for Kevin Costner, who listened to what I had written and wanted a completely different point of view.  He basically made a completely different film -- he re-cut the entire film, and in his meeting with me he expressed that he wanted a completely different approach to the score.  And I said, "oh let me demonstrate that I can give that to you", so I presented him with a demo of my approach to his approach, and he rejected that and fired me.  What I find a lot in these big films, because the production schedules are so insane, that the directors have very little time to actually concentrate on the music."

Mikael:  "What kind of approach did you have, and what went wrong?"

ISHAM:  "One of the things that I do in scoring is I try to find a unique sound for each film.  I believe that, at least to me, is the most artistic way to approach it.  I'm not a formula composer.  So here in this case, Costner I think just didn't want to put in the time.  He wanted to give someone the assignment, go away and come back in six weeks' time and it would be exactly what he wanted.  Because he had a long working relationship with James Newton Howard he knew he could do that with him, and he knew he couldn't do that with me because he'd have to work with me, he'd have to come and listen and respond and we would have to shape this score.  That's my interpretation of what happened."

Mikael:  "How much music did you write?  How did you react on a personal level?"

ISHAM:  "I had written about, maybe two thirds of the score.  On a personal level,
you've got to just roll with the punches.  This is part of the business.  That particular scenario was so understandable because the of the politics.  I was low man on the totem pole.  There were a lot of dead bodies on that picture, and I was one of many, so it wasn't exactly a mystery as to what happened there.  It only gets personally upsetting when you can't understand it, and so I just always get as much information as I can from the producers as possible so I really do understand why these things are going on.  And then it's really just part of the game that you're playing if you're in this business."

Mikael:  "What did you think of James Newton Howard's score?"

ISHAM:  "I think James did a very admirable job, I mean considering the assignment -- that it was a very exotic motion picture and yet Costner wanted to turn it into a very mainstream heroic picture, but Reynolds had shot footage that was something else -- I think he did a fine job."

MISCELLANEOUS INFO:
• Mark Isham had plans to use the music box theme that Anola kept singing to her self throuhought the score.  Apparently, he'd written the tune as source music during production, so that the girl would have something to sing when in front of the camera, and Isham wanted something of his own to work with when incorporating the theme into other parts of the score.
• Isham is in the end credits as the composer of "Music Box Theme" in the end credits.
• In the book "The Making of Waterworld," there is a section commenting on Isham's music and Kevin Reynold briefly discussing why he chose Isham.
• A Japanese pressing of the score that supposedly contains one of Isham's cues is a FAKE; mislabeled.  It's a cue from J.N.H.'s score.

In an XM digital radio interview by Chris Panico, on "Crash", when asked about "Waterworld", Isham said:
     "Well, that particular case, um, I was hired by Kevin Reynolds, who was the director, and, um, I've worked with him before and we have a very good working relationship, and I felt that we were doing quite well together; I had submitted demos for maybe a quarter of the movie and he was happy.  And I was just about to get really, really going when ... and then there was ah ... there was a breakdown between him and Kevin Costner ... and they're old friends and I won't begin to know, or care to relate actually what may have gone on there, but basically it ended up with Kevin Reynolds not finishing the movie, and Kevin Costner took over.  And so I met with Kevin and the producers and said I would like the oppritunity to stay and finish this for you, and he said 'In that case, you know I want a different approach,' and I said, 'Well, can I show you that approach; how I would do that?' and he said, 'Yeah, you have a couple days,' so I wrote some music ... um, but he decided not to take me on that..."

(Special thanks to:  MightyMcT!)