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The Fan
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1996 Commercial
Bootleg #1
Bootleg #2
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Additional Music by:
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Jeff Rona
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Orchestrated by:
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Bruce Fowler
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Labels and Dates:
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Bootlegs (no label)
(1997)
TVT Soundtrax
(August 20th, 1996)
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Audio Clips:
Bootleg #2 (Variation #2):
6. Primo Remembered (0:30), 150K fan6.ra
8. Madness (0:30), 150K fan8.ra
10. A True Fan (0:28), 140K fan10.ra
12. Fan Suite (0:30), 150K fan12.ra
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Availability:
The commercial album is a regular U.S. release and can be found for very low prices on the used-CD market. The bootlegs have been circulating in the secondary market since 1997. The first had the number 'HZCD 010LR' and the second had the number of 'HZCD 013LR'.
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Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... the bootleg only if you are a Hans Zimmer completist and are
not satisfied with the lengthy suite on the commercial album.
Avoid it... if you expected an intelligent, well-developed suspense
score that combines America's pastime with terrifying, obsessive emotions.
Filmtracks Editorial Review:
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The Fan: (Hans Zimmer/Jeff Rona) This combination of
film and score is easily a disaster for most viewers and listeners, and if
you just happen to be a baseball fan, then you'd be better off ignoring it
all together. Based on the novel by Peter Abrahams, Phoef Sutton's
screenplay must have seemed like a good idea to the Crimson Tide duo
of director Tony Scott and composer Hans Zimmer. The story revolves around a
man beaten by society (Robert DeNiro) who is a devoted fan of the San
Francisco Giants baseball team. As he loses his job and all perspective on
life, he becomes more and more obsessed with the Giants' newest acquisition,
played by Wesley Snipes (clearly modeled after the real-life Giants' 1993
acquisition of superstar Barry Bonds), and will do anything it takes to have
him lead the Giants to the World Series. For film score collectors and
baseball fans alike, The Fan will make you pull your hair out.
Despite a notable performance by DeNiro, Scott and Zimmer both fail in their
jobs so miserably that the resulting film is nearly laughable. Then again,
what do you expect from a British director and a German composer attempting
to set a film in the context of America's pastime? Before whipping Zimmer
for making the situation worse, let's take a swing at the film itself. Scott
emphasized that The Fan is not a baseball movie, and yet, the
baseball scenes are so incorrect that you can't help but throw a tomato at
the screen. How can you concentrate on the movie's plot when the players'
uniforms change in every shot, the Giants' opponents change in every inning,
players argue over a Giants number (#11) that is retired, umpires are
murdered and replaced by the killer in the middle of the game, players don't
get loose in the on-deck circle, the scoreboard jumbotron shows live images
during a pitch, games are played in a torrential downpour, and Candlestick
Park is hosting a baseball game while configured for a 49ers football game?
Heck, the mishandling of Candlestick Park alone (interior shots of Coors
Field and Dodger Stadium are substituted at will) makes the film ludicrous.
And Cal Ripkin, Jr., was a technical adviser for this disgrace? He should be
whipped, too.
It is understandable that Hans Zimmer's music isn't the
stereotypical baseball score. The story is one of emotional disintegration
and murder, not one of inspirational teamwork. But Zimmer completely ignores
(or is ignorant of) the context of baseball as a game. His charged,
guitar-driven music pounds at deafening levels, and combined with songs from
Nine Inch Nails and other heavy metal selections, drowns out dialogue and
replaces the spirit of the baseball setting with one of militaristic force.
Even when Zimmer utilizes his real/synth string combos for dramatic effect,
the score is brutally overplayed. No real theme is evident, nor is there an
established motif that develops into terrifying chaos as the film progresses
and the obsessed fan murders players and umpires. No progression from good
to evil is experienced over the course of the score's play, which is
surprising given the very obvious and relentless path towards personal
destruction on screen. The score is largely synthesized, which is a poor
choice given that the baseball setting is one of tradition, begging for the
same emotional drain to be produced by a real orchestra. There is dark side
to the game that could be explored if you begin with the style of The
Natural or For the Love of the Game (although composed after
The Fan) and convincingly mutate it from its Americana roots and
place it at the mercy of electronics. Instead, Zimmer produces an adequate,
though badly misplaced suspense score that has nothing do with any sport,
much less baseball. The lack of creativity by Zimmer is compounded by the
same kind of underscore that was heard in The House of the Spirits,
which, when layered with double the faux string melodrama, becomes tedious
and ridiculous. The scenes of actual play on the baseball field are comical
in their use of music; Zimmer --and whomever the dolt is who decided upon
the song use in the picture-- haven't a clue as to what kind of music you
really hear at baseball games. More than in any of his other scores, Zimmer
seemed asleep at the wheel.
If Scott and Zimmer had been on the ball, they could have
consulted with Blake Edwards' Experiment in Terror, a 1962 thriller
in which the murderer is killed on the pitching mound of Candlestick Park
during a Giants game. In that film, the combined silence during scenes of
mad chasing through the crowd and an orchestral burst of energy at the end
perfectly captured the spirit of the horror genre and placed it in the
baseball setting. But what can you expect from a trashy modern thriller in
which real-life player John Kruk --a huge man-- dies from a stab wound to
the shoulder during a game? Stupidity in this film is rampant. And Zimmer
did nothing to attempt to solve the situation, whether by his own lack of
homework on the subject or by the directives of the film's producers. The
score plays poorly in the film, and 20 minutes of it, along with several of
the songs that were also out of place in the picture, were provided on a
commercial album at the time of the film's 1996 release. Parts of Zimmer's
suite fit remarkably well with the heavy metal songs. As to be expected,
more selections from the score became available on the bootleg market,
courtesy of the plethora of die-hard Zimmer collectors. Originally, a
ten-track, 45-minute score album was released that contained music that
wasn't formatted for the commercial album. Some of this featured a few
snippets of dialogue from the film, including the "Fan Poem" performed by
DeNiro. Later, another bootleg surfaced that combined the ten cues from the
first bootleg with the two Zimmer-composed tracks from the commercial album
(one being the score suite and the other being a song that Zimmer composed
for the project). Two different variations, with different track orders,
exist of this bootleg. Even if you completely forget the rotten film, and
the fact that Zimmer failed in every regard to put his score in context, the
music isn't a very interesting listen on album. It doesn't have the dramatic
weight of his later scores in the same genre, nor does it exhibit the same
consistently rhythmic action music heard in the previous year's Crimson
Tide. It's a frustrating case all around. Perhaps all could have been
forgiven if the filmmakers had included, along with the 3,000 extras and
10,000 cut-outs, Candlestick's best known night-game inhabitants: naked guys
running around the ring of the upper deck in 40-degree weather carrying ice
cream cones. But how would Zimmer have scored that? *
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Viewer Ratings and Comments:
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Track Listings (Commercial Album:):
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Total Time: 68:50
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• 1. Did You Mean What You Said - Sovory (3:49)
• 2. Letting Go* - Terence Trent D'Arby (5:34)
• 3. Unstoppable - Mic Geronimo (3:47)
• 4. Hymn of the Big Wheel - Massive Attack (6:35)
• 5. (Let Me Up) I've Had Enough - Kenny Wayne Shepherd (2:44)
• 6. Little Bob - Black Grape (5:36)
• 7. The Border Song (Holy Moses) - Raymond Myles (3:37)
• 8. What's Goin' Down - Honky (4:19)
• 9. Deliver Me - Foreskin 500 (3:58)
• 10. Forever Ballin' - Johnny 'J' And Big Syke (4:25)
• 11. I'm da Man - Jeune (5:24)
• 12. Sacrifice - Hans Zimmer score (19:09)
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* song written by Hans Zimmer
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Track Listings (Bootleg #1, HZCD 010LR):
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Total Time: 31:28
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• 1. Fan Poem (2:50) - score/dialogue
• 2. Sacrifice (0:57) - score/dialogue
• 3. Is Perfectly Property (3:49)
• 4. Primo Remembered (1:48)
• 5. Cobb Murder/Is My Daddy in Trouble?/Finale (6:12)
• 6. End Credits (2:32)
• 7. The Fan (2:52)
• 8. Sacrifice Theme (1:42)
• 9. Sean (1:37)
• 10. Fan Suite (6:49)
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Track Listings (Bootleg #2 (Variation #1), HZCD 013LR):
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Total Time: 46:87
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• 1. Fan Poem (2:53) - score/dialogue
• 2. Sacrifice (6:33) - score/dialogue
• 3. Dead Come (2:38)
• 4. The Fan (2:52)
• 5. Madness (4:04)
• 6. Sean (1:37)
• 7. Cobb Murder/A True Fan (14:43)
• 8. End Credits (2:32)
• 9. Suite (6:49)
• 10. Letting Go (5:36) - Terence Trent D'Arby song
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Track Listings (Bootleg #2 (Variation #2), HZCD 013LR):
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Total Time: 70:40
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• 1. Fan Poem (2:53) - score/dialogue
• 2. Sacrifice (6:33) - score/dialogue
• 3. Dead Come (2:38)
• 4. The Fan (1:35)
• 5. Cobb Murder (6:16)
• 6. Primo Remembered (4:34) - score/dialogue
• 7. Daddy in Trouble (4:16)
• 8. Madness (4:04)
• 9. Sean (4:27)
• 10. A True Fan (8:27)
• 11. Letting Go (5:36) - Terence Trent D'Arby song
• 12. Fan Suite (19:16)
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None of the albums includes extra information about the score or film.
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