The Goonies: (Dave Grusin) Director Steven
Spielberg made a reputation out of conjuring stories about children's
interaction and family challenges and developing them into highly
manipulative movies. Some of these productions were aimed at the fears
of adults while others were purely meant as entertainment suitable for
the youngsters themselves. Among the last of the latter category for
Spielberg was 1985's
The Goonies, one of Amblin Entertainment's
early projects and one what combined Spielberg's writing and production
talents with an all-star crew that included director Richard Donner and
screenwriter Chris Columbus. Despite the scope of the latter two's
involvement,
The Goonies had a distinctly Spielberg touch on
screen that led many to believe, as with
Poltergeist a few years
earlier, that he had influenced the direction of the film more than
officially credited. The story required that logic be left at the door,
telling of a group of kids (the "Goonies") in mystical (though actually
just perpetually dreary) Astoria, Oregon whose parents are all facing
foreclosure on their homes. On one last adventure together, they decide
to seek out fabled treasure said to exist underground in the area, and
their path to the discovery of the pristine pirate ship in hidden caves
is inhibited only by a series of physical obstacles (a usual Spielberg
favorite) and a family of bumbling criminals (a Columbus trademark).
Along with the scenes of innocent adolescent romance, the closing scene
of
The Goonies is so ridiculously contrived that it's difficult
to forgive the entire movie. At least Spielberg created waves by
allowing the young cast to swear freely, an aspect of the film that drew
some fire despite its realistic depiction of banter in that age group.
Considering a heavy marketing campaign that included a
Spielberg-directed MTV video with Cyndi Lauper, though,
The
Goonies was a relative disappointment. It failed to earn universally
positive praise and lagged far behind its Amblin production sibling,
Gremlins, at the box office. Still,
The Goonies managed to
achieve a tremendous cult following with viewers who were the pre-teen
age of the protagonists in the story at the time of its theatrical
release, and considerable momentum for the film generated twenty years
later has long reaffirmed Donner and Spielberg's interest in someday
revisiting the concept in a sequel (or, intriguingly, a Broadway
musical).
In the early days of Amblin, composers John Williams
and Jerry Goldsmith were the regular Spielberg collaborators, and only
in the mid-1980's did he begin to branch out to explore the talents of
others writing in the industry. One such diversion from the norm was the
hiring of Dave Grusin for
The Goonies, and the composer's natural
first instinct was to be surprised that he was offered the job at all.
Grusin, despite being active in film scoring for over a decade, was
better known for his contemporary jazz contributions and the very
successful record label that was spawned from those efforts. He had
written serious orchestral scores before, though even in Hollywood, he
was frequently associated with soundtracks like
Tootsie (and
related songs). But his connection to Spielberg went back to an obscure
student project of the director in 1971, and he was thus thrust into an
almost impossible position of conjuring a score that could compete with
the style of Williams and Goldsmith, both of whom were arguably at their
peak at the time. In retrospect, one must wonder whether or not Grusin
was biting off more than he could chew with
The Goonies.
Spielberg, as usual, was omnipresent in the scoring process, from the
conceptual stage all the way through the inevitable heavy rearrangement
of the music in the finished picture. Perhaps it should come as no
surprise that the score Grusin submitted is an awkward blend of
influences from Williams, Goldsmith, and Max Steiner, with only a hint
of his contemporary mannerisms figuring mostly into the end credits cue.
The Steiner presence is somewhat appropriate but bizarre in this
context; quotations from the 1948 score for
The Adventures of Don
Juan are brazenly incorporated into a climactic fight sequence and
are jarringly disparate from the remainder of the score. The Williams
influence comes in the form of the motif development and Grusin's
general attempts to translate the vintage swashbuckling sound into the
dynamic bombast expected during the 1980's. More interestingly, the
touch of Goldsmith in
The Goonies exists in the form of the
employment of synthesizers as an additional section of the orchestra.
You can definitely hear Grusin attempt to take Goldsmith's usual
instrumentation at the time and force it into a Williams mould. To an
extent, this tactic works, but it's obvious from Spielberg's requests
for extensive re-writes and the eventual heavy rearrangement of the cues
in the picture (both of which making it very difficult to match what you
hear on screen with what you hear on album) that Grusin didn't manage to
accomplish the impossible.
In its general grasp of the adventure in the plot,
Grusin's score functions. He tends to draw too many similarities to Carl
Stalling's Warner Bothers cartoon music, but he does manipulate that
sound into a broader environment of 80's fantasy scores. Unfortunately,
the organization of the score seems haphazard and there is a lack of
sweeping majesty of convincing depth in the thematic structures and
disappointingly sparse orchestrations. In places, it sounds like a demo
take on what Goldsmith or Williams would follow with additional layers
of activity. Grusin's four major themes for the film never gain much
traction, regardless of their unintended placements in the film. The
main identity for the Goonies as a group is pleasantly harmonic in a
vaguely noble sense, ironically best arranged in the pop-inspired "End
Titles." A theme for One-Eyed Willie the pirate and the lead boy
inspired to seek his treasure is a competent mystery theme but fails to
generate any gravity. The oddly well-preserved pirate ship is afforded
its own theme, one which attempts to address the true fantasy element,
but this idea ultimately blends badly with the Steiner material and
loses credibility by its accompaniment of the ship's ridiculous escape
from the coast in "No Firme and Pirate Ship." Finally, the comically
rhythmic symphonic theme of classical influence for the Fratelli family
of criminals is perhaps the best remembered idea from the score, but it
cheapens the remainder of Grusin's material (especially with its strange
merging of the symphonic performances and drum pads and light metallic
loops). Without any of the themes jumping forth and taking command of
the score,
The Goonies risks becoming generic outside of its
rather unique instrumental balance, and without many truly consistent,
compelling performances of the four themes, the score wanders without
the ability to tell its own narrative tale. Perhaps it was not meant to,
as the use of the Steiner and Williams'
Superman theme in parody
fashion would suggest in "The Fighting Fratellis." A likeable
overarching character is the best rebuttal to these concerns with
The
Goonies, and those who worship the film and accept its faults will
find much to appreciate in Grusin's music. The score was not treated
well on Epic's original LP and CD releases, both of which only included
Grusin's "End Titles" to accompany the songs by Lauper and others. After
years of seeing bootlegs of the score, Varèse Sarabande finally
responded with a whopping 79-minute Club release of 5,000 copies that
sold out within months of its 2010 debut. Given the cult appeal of the
film, that sales performance is not surprising, though for those not
interested in or impressed by the movie, the merely functional score is
a mixed bag of conflicting styles and thematic ambiguity despite its
adventuresome personality.
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The insert includes notes from both the director and composer, as
well as the usual information about the score and film.
