This is part of a series. Part 2a can be found here: https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=107737

—------------------------------------

Two If By Sea (1996) - Not heard
NGS & Paddy Maloney of The Chieftains; orchestrated by B Fowler/Moriarty

NGS becomes the first graduate from Media Ventures and starts doing his own thing.

NGS: “Editor Bruce Green called me - “Paddy’s never done a film score, and he might need help.’ I used one of his ideas and wrote the rest of the score.”


White Squall (1996) - ***½
Jeff Rona; orchestrated by Scott Smalley; conducted by Fiachra Trench; produced by Hans (maybe some add’l music as well); vocals apparently by HGW

I’d like to think I’m a pretty big fan of Ridley Scott, yet even I had no clue what this film was about. This is my eighth discovery as part of this rundown, and my first Jeff Rona album - and possibly the earliest case of one of Zimmer’s associates writing a replacement score (something Zimmer had already done a few years prior with Point of No Return).

JR: “Ridley hated [Maurice Jarre’s score] because it was too close to the temp track. I never heard it. Hans said: ‘I don’t have the time but I know just the right guy.’ I started about one day later, 100% terrified. I came up with this very lavish melody and sophisticated harmony and Hans just [stared] at me and said, ‘Jeff, I recommended you because your style works for this movie. What’s this?’ And he was right. I wrote that whole score in just over two weeks. I played a number of instruments, including many conch shells.”

It often sounds like the halfway point between the more primal parts of Waterworld and an aquatic Basil Poledouris score (like if you fused the metallic percussion of Farewell to the King with the primarily electronic approach to Wind, and added some noble trumpet solos for good measure). This is likely no coincidence as Smalley was a regular Poledouris orchestrator, not to mention Rona’s earlier career as an uncredited ghostwriter for Basil.

Choir, seemingly a blend of synthetic voices and HGW, adds some weight to the hazy atmospheric passages. Other parts suggest modern Irish folk music - and there’s a soothing jazz bent to the bookend theme. On the whole, it’s an above-average “mood music” album, and a rather coherent one despite its many disparate parts.

JR: “I dodged a few bullets; Ridley really liked the first few sketches I wrote. There’s no getting a degree in being a film composer; it’s something more ephemeral.”

Jarre, only a year or so removed from having his work tossed from The River Wild, would claim he wasn’t paid and file a lawsuit. Still embittered years later, he would at least take comfort that both films had flopped stateside.


Muppet Treasure Island (1996) - ***½
Zimmer; add’l music & conducting by HGW;
orchestrated by B Fowler/Moriarty/McIntosh & Fowler’s brothers Walt & Steve; score produced by Jay Rifkin;
songs by Barry Mann with lyrics by Cynthia Weil; songs produced by Simon Greenaway; 'Boom Shakalaka' by Zimmer & NGS;
singing by John Berry, Helen Darling, Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers, and the cast

The first list of credits that’s so expansive you can’t help but chuckle. My ninth discovery as part of this rundown.

HGW, often doing a hilarious accent when he’s quoting Hans: “[Hans] sniffed me out to do some arranging/orchestrating/writing when he was in London scoring Nic Roeg's Two Deaths. After his return to the US, I maintained a close relationship with Nic Roeg and over the course of the next 8 months scored 2 films for him. One day the phone rang. ‘How quickly can you be on a plane? I’ve got the director of Muppet Treasure Island on the other line. I’m reluctant to take it on, but if you come out to help me I’ll take it on.’ Nick [had] graduated and Hans was going, ‘oh bloody hell, what about that skinny tramp in London?’ I’d never been to America; I basically came in [illegally]. As luck would have it the film would be recorded back in London, maybe the first film to be recorded in Abbey Road.”

HZ: “To make the Muppet thing work you have to surround these characters with reality - for those characters to really come across as crazy, the more traditional I am with my scoring the more they shine. You can just drop all pretensions and have a good time.”

The score largely plays like a prototype Dreamworks Animation score, complete with some swashbuckling variations on the action mannerisms from The Lion King and some of the “heaviness” of this era’s MV action music. It’s a transitional work for sure, but the whole package is still quite spirited and often charming.

Cynthia Weil: “You can’t look at it as something funny. You have to do it completely seriously. The fact that it’s a Muppet is what makes it funny.”

The songs from the film manage to strike the appropriate balance between being amusing without being annoying - though none of them are earworms in the way the best ones from the Mann/Weil collaborations with James Horner are. Maybe Love Led Us Here comes close, though the album arrangement for country music singer John Berry is nonsensical. The reggae Love Power really doesn’t fit.

HGW, again with the accent: “I had no gear, and you needed gear to keep up with Hans. I had to have a ridiculous amount of these Roland [S-760] samplers. I said, ‘Hans, how do I get them?’ and he said ‘you take out a bloody bank loan!’ ‘But Hans, no bank will give me, they’re $4,200 each and you said I’ll have 27 of them!’ ‘I’ll co-sign, [but] you’d better not screw up.’ So they lent me the money. He said, ‘one day that’ll buy you a house.’ Maybe it did, I don’t know.

I got the gear necessary [to no longer be] the night owl, because up until that point to do anything effective for Hans you had to do it with his gear in his room. He couldn’t be there; you couldn’t have two of us sitting on his seat at once. The guy didn’t leave his studio until half past 3am. ‘So that’s when I start? Oh, GREAT.’ Those first couple years were brutal, but fun - I was totally up for it.”

I know I saw this film when it came out in theaters, but the only thing I remember is steam coming out of a puppet’s ears during Cabin Fever.

Muppet performer Andrew Spooner: “I went to the office to pick up my crew jacket and [director Brian Henson] was just leaving to have lunch. He asked if I wanted to join him and his companion. I had to say no! I was expected elsewhere. His companion? That was Hans Zimmer. I turned down lunch with Brian Henson and Hans Zimmer. That keeps me awake at night sometimes.”

Future MV/RC regular Liz Finch and Conrad Pope may also have helped with orchestration - not too far outside the realm of possibility, given how much Hook seems to inform the opening.


Broken Arrow (1996) - ****
Zimmer; add’l music & conducting by Don Harper; add’l music HGW;
orchestrated by Fowler bros/Moriarty/McIntosh plus conducting by Bruce and some really dope trumpet solos by Walt;
baritone guitar by Duane Eddy; add’l guitar by Ryeland Allison;
produced (in absentia) by Jay Rifkin; original album assembly by Jeff Rona

No, not the one where Jimmy Stewart plays a cowboy who falls in love with an Apache woman. This is the one where Christian Slater kicks former NFL linebacker Howie Long out of a railcar before John Travolta gets impaled by a nuke. Loads of future Zimmer works would feature electric guitar, but this is perhaps the last score overseen by Zimmer to have an overt rock & roll feel. It also, somewhat amusingly, has one of the rare expanded albums to receive no quotes at all from its composer in the booklet, possibly because Zimmer despised the movie.

HZ: “I think Broken Arrow was a disaster. I was poking fun at it! I did [it] because every action movie started to sound like what I had been doing. [I thought] I could reinvent the form. I did it once before. It didn’t work. There was not enough substance in the movie for me to [write something as good as The Lion King]. John Woo’s subtext got thrown out of the movie.”

Even with this score getting over-extended at its full length and with a good portion of it being shredded 90s cheese (including some of the rambling piano that would be all over The Rock), I still think it’s absurd amounts of fun - Zimmer throwing harmonica and guitar and banjo and synth choir and whatever else he can think of to slightly pivot the MV sound in the direction of a spaghetti western.

The two Travolta themes (the revolving synth bells and the bass guitar riff) are very catchy - but the heroic theme for Hale that kicks off the end credits is a show-stopper and one of my favorite Zimmer themes from this era. Those ideas, a bunch of action motifs, and the aforementioned instruments help keep enough thematic and sonic diversity for the work to avoid being tiresome at over 90 minutes, something I can’t necessarily say for The Rock.

HZ: “[There’s some Ennio Morricone in there] because I thought we were doing a Western! I always thought Ennio wanted to work with Duane Eddy. So I just got the real Duane Eddy.”

I somewhat joked in my first post in this series that Zimmer might’ve turned into Randy Edelman without forcing himself to try new things - totally forgetting that Zimmer & team would be forced to quote one of Edelman’s themes here.

Interestingly, in at least one track you can hear the origin of what would be the Kraken heartbeat in Dead Man’s Chest.

HZ: “I remember at one showing, in the third act when Travolta comes back and the little guitar tune comes in, the audience actually laughed--in a good way. They knew I wasn't being patronizing. My intent was [to] make the film fun, when there's no real story to tell. Well, I guess there was a story about betrayal between two men who've been friends forever. But that's not really what the movie was about. It was about blowing up a lot of things.”

Jay Rifkin may have gotten a producer credit for doing nothing.

I wonder if Marty O’Donnell was a huge fan of this score since quite a bit of the electronics heard here would show up in his Halo scores - especially in ODST.


Twister (1996) - ****½
Mancina; orchestrations also by B Fowler/Moriarty/McIntosh; orchestrations, add’l arranging & conducting by Don Harper;
add’l arranging by John Van Tongeren; guitar solos by Trevor Rabin; song by Edward & Alex Van Halen

Shockingly way better than I remembered it. Unlike prior Mancina scores with a large orchestra, it actually feels like they’re using all of it, both in ensemble moments and in more intimate stretches - there’s a deft balance between big and small so that the score never feels terribly repetitive. The main theme is great, and Mancina (usually a terrific tunesmith) gets a lot of mileage out of it - it’s Copland, then it’s sorta Copland, then it’s not Copland…hopefully you get the idea.

MM: “Twister was really fun, [but also] about the hardest movie I’ve ever done. I was very free to create, but that doesn’t mean I wrote whatever I wanted to. Some cues I rewrote 12 or 13 times. There were some sequences where I had to do two versions - one very vocal and the other very orchestral - because we didn’t know, once the tornadoes were in there, how the music was going to sound. At the end the movie got severely cut, and my music wasn't presented the way I had intended for it to be.”

The choir is a completely unnecessary and often-gorgeous addition - striking a nice balance between fear and wonder, and lending an almost awe-inspiring fantasy touch to multiple tracks.

MM: “I wanted to make sure we didn’t score music in areas where the sound effects would take over. Jan felt the same way.”

The second “snap, I was wrong, that was great” score of this series.


The Rock (1996) - ***½
Zimmer, NGS & HGW;
add’l music by Don Harper, Steven Stern & Russ Landau;
orchestrated by B Fowler/Moriarty/McIntosh/W Fowler & Dennis Dreith;
add’l engineering by Marc Streitenfeld

NGS: “It was a Jerry movie. Jerry wanted Hans. It was a hard one to crack.”

The masculine choir becomes a staple of Zimmer’s output. Whereas with Crimson Tide there was an intellectual purpose for having it around, now it’s just in the score cuz that’s what Jerry likes. In a way this score is that score plus the Mancina-esque guitar-driven coolness of Bay/Bruckheimer joint Bad Boys.

HZ: “Jerry didn’t like the tunes. I must have worked four weeks around the clock. The main theme is mine, as are a few other bits. I was the ghostwriter. It was always supposed to be Nick's. I didn’t want credit [but] Nick phoned his agent and said he couldn’t have his name in the opening credits over a piece of music I had written.”

The score definitely has its negatives. A lot of the action material, particularly anything that isn’t a thematic statement, seems to devolve into obnoxious loops, random piano rambling & synths, and bongos. Sure, there’s still harmony, bass accents, and “cool” drum hits, but countermelodies and counterpoint, something Zimmer occasionally used in his early days, are largely absent - everything is very direct, dangumbit. Whatever HGW had a hand in suggests little of his material to come, save maybe for his future works with Tony Scott.

HZ: “With the way they were cutting, there was no way one person could do it. There was one person who came in who had worked with Spielberg on television or something, who said he could write eight minutes of music a day. After eight days, he hadn’t [even] written three minutes.”

But gosh, those Zimmer themes are so effective, and the Mason theme by NGS is lovely even if it sticks out like a sore thumb from the rest of the material. If I can turn my brain off during the movie, I can probably do it during the music too.

HGW: “There was a mountain of music to be written and hardly any time (what's new) plus the eternal task master Jerry 'let's torture Harry now' Bruckheimer.”

Zimmer hated the original album - and I think everyone else does too. Maybe someday there’ll be a legitimate release of the full score - including that sole full Dies Irae quote early on in the film.

HZ: “In the one big chunk I did write, I actually went against my judgment and moralized something, when all the guys get killed and cut down, I wanted to make it tragic and say it was fucked up. But after that where do you go? I did the best I could, but do I feel passionate about it? No. I can live with this bunch of notes. I wasn’t saying gimme gimme The Rock.”

It’s a fun score that’s very much of its time - but for me it doesn’t rise above a guilty pleasure.

Marc Streitenfeld gets his first credit beyond just being Zimmer’s assistant. I’m fairly certain the Spielberg alum Zimmer referred to is Russ Landau, who had done a number of episodes for the second and third seasons of the Spielberg-produced seaQuest DSV and would later mostly score competition shows like Survivor and Fear Factor - he ended up only getting partial credit for one track.

HZ, later speaking about the late producer Don Simpson: “I’d rather spend 10 minutes with Don than most other people I know. They would be action-packed with thoughts, ideas, conTROVersy, lunacy, fun, tragedy - you name it, THERE WAS DON.”


The Fan (1996) - Not heard
Zimmer; add’l music and conducting by HGW; add’l music by Jeff Rona;
orchestrated by B Fowler; song “Letting Go” also by Terence Trent D'Arby

A supposedly wretched film (even according to Zimmer) with a supposedly wretched score (not according to Zimmer), this one is only worth listing for a variety of events
- The last collaboration between Zimmer & Scott
- The first time HGW would work on a Tony Scott film
- I believe it’s the first time Zimmer collaborated with cellist Martin Tillman
- It’s where Steve Jablosnky appears

SJ: “I got out of college, came back to LA, did a few little odd jobs. I thought I might end up a recording engineer. I had a little bit of gear at home. I had been a big fan of Hans Zimmer for many years, I knew his studio was somewhere in LA. I found the number and said, ‘Do you need an intern, or a helper, or anything like that?’ and they said, ‘Yep, come on down.’ I got in at a good time because it was so much smaller than it is now. I started helping Harry, and he eventually hired me. [Earlier] somebody had told Geoff Zanelli, ‘when you come back from Berkeley, you can work for Harry’. I had no idea, [and] I always thought Geoff hated me, but he [ended up with] John Powell, so it all worked out.

I remember Harry was working on The Fan. I was sitting there going, ‘Let me show you guys what I can do.’ I obviously was just doing it for fun. I remember the receptionist coming in, and she thought that was good. Harry realized I was doing this, and started giving me cues to do on his own films.”

—------------------------------------

Next time: Gavin, Geoff, John, Klaus, and dream a little Dreamworks

(Message edited on Saturday, April 2, 2022, at 5:16 a.m.)

Good stuff as always. I never knew Jeff Rona used to work for Poledouris, but thinking about some of Poledouris' electronic textures it kinda makes sense. I do know that Rona also worked with Cliff Martinez, and I find his music resembles Martinez' more than it does your typical MV/RCP fare. I believe that's also how he got the gig scoring the Traffic miniseries a few years after Martinez scored the film version.

I seem to like The Rock quite a bit better than you. Yeah some of the action music does ramble on a bit but I find it a more varied and energetic work than Broken Arrow or even Crimson Tide. There's an old NGS demo floating around that contains his rejected theme demos, which is an interesting curio but mostly serves to highlight how damn good Zimmer's themes really are.

The Fan isn't a very enjoyable score, but it's also one that got very poor album representation with its single, poorly chosen suite. The complete score has at least 20-30 minutes of worthwhile material. It's a very growly, broody, bass-heavy, occasionally melodramatic score that arguably has more in common with the Zimmer of today than it does with something like The Rock. I hope LLL or someone does let it see the light of day eventually, it's worth hearing for that reason if nothing else (it feels like quite a transitional score for Zimmer/RCP, you hear lots of samples/sounds debuting here that are better known for later scores including an early version of the "Kraken/Skorponok/TDKR" bass line).

Fantastic write up. A couple thoughts:

- as a stupidly big fan of Rabin, I can’t believe I didn’t know or at least remember that he worked on Twister. I’d had it in my mind Van Halen did all the guitar solos. Whoops.

- Didn’t James Newton Howard and Gavin Greenway work on The Rock too? I thought the latter wrote the majority of that ballslappinglyawesome chase cue.

- The Rock is a fucking masterpiece and Yknow what, the album is just fine by me haha. Having said that, I have long re-arranged the cues to make more sense…but apart from that, I find it a damn near perfect way to spend an hour. So much fun.

Love this series, keep up the great work! Make it a book and self-publish it on Amazon and I’d buy it in a heart beat.

> - Didn’t James Newton Howard and Gavin Greenway work on The Rock too? I
> thought the latter wrote the majority of that ballslappinglyawesome chase
> cue.

JNH wasn't really involved with The Rock, I think he and Zimmer shared sample libraries a few times in the 90s (I know there's some MV samples in Waterworld, anyway) so he just gets a vague thanks credit but he didn't actually write anything.

As for Greenaway, you're getting it mixed up with The Peacemaker where he did do a ton of additional music including a couple big chase cues. He wasn't involved with The Rock, though; that one's chase cue was HGW I think. Well, among other people, but he took the "final pass" at it from what I understand.

> - The Rock is a fucking masterpiece and Yknow what, the album is just fine
> by me haha. Having said that, I have long re-arranged the cues to make
> more sense…but apart from that, I find it a damn near perfect way to spend
> an hour. So much fun.

I don't think there's really a whole lot wrong with the album for The Rock except that the long cues are unwieldy if you're trying to quickly find (or separate onto a playlist) certain moments in the score without breaking the tracks apart in an editor. In terms of what it includes and what it omits, it's pretty well selected.

> - Didn’t James Newton Howard and Gavin Greenway work on The Rock too? I thought the latter wrote the majority of that ballslappinglyawesome chase cue.

Greenaway arrived in Hollywood sometime in 1996, but he may still have been in London when this film was in production.

They aren't officially or unofficially credited anywhere - even on H-Z dot com, which has fixed its redesign problems and is now useful again. https://hans-zimmer.com/discography/104/project/2046

But given how many people were on this it's not outside the realm of possibility that other uncredited people 'assisted'.

I think the Chase cue is largely HGW (who's mentioned working on it in interviews) & Don Harper.

> Greenaway arrived in Hollywood sometime in 1996, but he may still have
> been in London when this film was in production.

> They aren't officially or unofficially credited anywhere - even on H-Z dot
> com, which has fixed its redesign problems and is now useful again.
> https://hans-zimmer.com/discography/104/project/2046

> But given how many people were on this it's not outside the realm of
> possibility that other uncredited people 'assisted'.

> I think the Chase cue is largely HGW (who's mentioned working on it in
> interviews) & Don Harper.

Huh, well, there ya go - with your post and Edmund's, I stand corrected.

> The Fan (1996) - Not heard

Don't bother. It deserves that prayer from snakes in the toilet dude.

Truly stupendous, I am genuinely gripped by this history. I genuinely think this is book-quality! Love, love, love this series and the way you give context to these scores.

I have never seen The Fan and have heard of the score's reputation, so I was surprised when I heard it and was generally entertained. No strong feelings, i just had fun!

I was late coming to Twister, hearing the original album around 2016 and the expanded around 2018, and wow did I realize how spectacular it is on re-listen! The way Mancina & co. blended the Americana style with MV rock 'n roll is just exquisite. Top 5 MV scores for me.

Broken Arrow was one of my first Zimmer scores, perhaps only behind Pirates. It delighted me immediately, and remains a summer mainstay!

The Rock was one of my early experiences with the Media Ventures sound, all the way back in 2015. I loved it then, love it now. I don't really have any reason why that wouldn't sound like one of Clemmensen's jabs at Zimmer fanboys, nor am I old enough to be 'nostalgic' for the sound, but I just love it!

Can't wait for you to explore Powell's early work, him being my favorite composer!

(Message edited on Saturday, April 2, 2022, at 1:44 p.m.)

> The Fan (1996) - Not heard
> Zimmer; add’l music and conducting by HGW; add’l music by Jeff Rona;
> orchestrated by B Fowler; song “Letting Go” also by Terence Trent
> D'Arby

I actually love that score (and the movie too, as ridiculous as it may be), and it's a shame that so many people don't give a crap about it.

You probably have to be into synths and electronic stuff to properly appreciate it, sure, but I think there's some really beautiful passages in it, and it has a sort of nostalgic sound for me. It's not a stellar score by any means, but it is an important one for the MV sound. I believe that people would appreciate it better if there was a decent album release available, as the comercial album suite does not benefit the score in any way.

Still, give a listen when you have the chance, you might enjoy it.

> This is part of a series. Part 2a can be found here:
> https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=107737

> —------------------------------------

> Two If By Sea (1996) - Not heard
> NGS & Paddy Maloney of The Chieftains; orchestrated by B
> Fowler/Moriarty

> NGS becomes the first graduate from Media Ventures and starts doing his
> own thing.

> NGS: “Editor Bruce Green called me - “Paddy’s never done a film score,
> and he might need help.’ I used one of his ideas and wrote the rest of the
> score.”
>
>
> White Squall (1996) - ***½
> Jeff Rona; orchestrated by Scott Smalley; conducted by Fiachra Trench;
> produced by Hans (maybe some add’l music as well); vocals apparently by
> HGW

> I’d like to think I’m a pretty big fan of Ridley Scott, yet even I had no
> clue what this film was about. This is my eighth discovery as part of this
> rundown, and my first Jeff Rona album - and possibly the earliest case of
> one of Zimmer’s associates writing a replacement score (something Zimmer
> had already done a few years prior with Point of No Return).

> JR: “Ridley hated [Maurice Jarre’s score] because it was too close to
> the temp track. I never heard it. Hans said: ‘I don’t have the time but I
> know just the right guy.’ I started about one day later, 100% terrified. I
> came up with this very lavish melody and sophisticated harmony and Hans
> just [stared] at me and said, ‘Jeff, I recommended you because your style
> works for this movie. What’s this?’ And he was right. I wrote that whole
> score in just over two weeks. I played a number of instruments, including
> many conch shells.”

> It often sounds like the halfway point between the more primal parts of
> Waterworld and an aquatic Basil Poledouris score (like if you fused
> the metallic percussion of Farewell to the King with the primarily
> electronic approach to Wind, and added some noble trumpet solos for
> good measure). This is likely no coincidence as Smalley was a regular
> Poledouris orchestrator, not to mention Rona’s earlier career as an
> uncredited ghostwriter for Basil.

> Choir, seemingly a blend of synthetic voices and HGW, adds some weight to
> the hazy atmospheric passages. Other parts suggest modern Irish folk music
> - and there’s a soothing jazz bent to the bookend theme. On the whole,
> it’s an above-average “mood music” album, and a rather coherent one
> despite its many disparate parts.

> JR: “I dodged a few bullets; Ridley really liked the first few sketches
> I wrote. There’s no getting a degree in being a film composer; it’s
> something more ephemeral.”

> Jarre, only a year or so removed from having his work tossed from The
> River Wild, would claim he wasn’t paid and file a lawsuit. Still
> embittered years later, he would at least take comfort that both films had
> flopped stateside.
>
>
> Muppet Treasure Island (1996) - ***½
> Zimmer; add’l music & conducting by HGW;
> orchestrated by B Fowler/Moriarty/McIntosh & Fowler’s brothers Walt
> & Steve; score produced by Jay Rifkin;
> songs by Barry Mann with lyrics by Cynthia Weil; songs produced by Simon
> Greenaway; 'Boom Shakalaka' by Zimmer & NGS;
> singing by John Berry, Helen Darling, Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers,
> and the cast

> The first list of credits that’s so expansive you can’t help but chuckle.
> My ninth discovery as part of this rundown.

> HGW, often doing a hilarious accent when he’s quoting Hans: “[Hans]
> sniffed me out to do some arranging/orchestrating/writing when he was in
> London scoring Nic Roeg's Two Deaths. After his return to the US, I
> maintained a close relationship with Nic Roeg and over the course of the
> next 8 months scored 2 films for him. One day the phone rang. ‘How quickly
> can you be on a plane? I’ve got the director of Muppet Treasure Island on
> the other line. I’m reluctant to take it on, but if you come out to help
> me I’ll take it on.’ Nick [had] graduated and Hans was going, ‘oh bloody
> hell, what about that skinny tramp in London?’ I’d never been to America;
> I basically came in [illegally]. As luck would have it the film would be
> recorded back in London, maybe the first film to be recorded in Abbey
> Road.”

> HZ: “To make the Muppet thing work you have to surround these
> characters with reality - for those characters to really come across as
> crazy, the more traditional I am with my scoring the more they shine. You
> can just drop all pretensions and have a good time.”

> The score largely plays like a prototype Dreamworks Animation score,
> complete with some swashbuckling variations on the action mannerisms from
> The Lion King and some of the “heaviness” of this era’s MV action
> music. It’s a transitional work for sure, but the whole package is still
> quite spirited and often charming.

> Cynthia Weil: “You can’t look at it as something funny. You have to do
> it completely seriously. The fact that it’s a Muppet is what makes it
> funny.”

> The songs from the film manage to strike the appropriate balance between
> being amusing without being annoying - though none of them are earworms in
> the way the best ones from the Mann/Weil collaborations with James Horner
> are. Maybe Love Led Us Here comes close, though the album
> arrangement for country music singer John Berry is nonsensical. The reggae
> Love Power really doesn’t fit.

> HGW, again with the accent: “I had no gear, and you needed gear to keep
> up with Hans. I had to have a ridiculous amount of these Roland [S-760]
> samplers. I said, ‘Hans, how do I get them?’ and he said ‘you take out a
> bloody bank loan!’ ‘But Hans, no bank will give me, they’re $4,200 each
> and you said I’ll have 27 of them!’ ‘I’ll co-sign, [but] you’d better not
> screw up.’ So they lent me the money. He said, ‘one day that’ll buy you a
> house.’ Maybe it did, I don’t know.

> I got the gear necessary [to no longer be] the night owl, because up until
> that point to do anything effective for Hans you had to do it with his
> gear in his room. He couldn’t be there; you couldn’t have two of us
> sitting on his seat at once. The guy didn’t leave his studio until half
> past 3am. ‘So that’s when I start? Oh, GREAT.’ Those first couple years
> were brutal, but fun - I was totally up for it.”

> I know I saw this film when it came out in theaters, but the only thing I
> remember is steam coming out of a puppet’s ears during Cabin Fever.

> Muppet performer Andrew Spooner: “I went to the office to pick up my
> crew jacket and [director Brian Henson] was just leaving to have lunch. He
> asked if I wanted to join him and his companion. I had to say no! I was
> expected elsewhere. His companion? That was Hans Zimmer. I turned down
> lunch with Brian Henson and Hans Zimmer. That keeps me awake at night
> sometimes.”

> Future MV/RC regular Liz Finch and Conrad Pope may also have helped with
> orchestration - not too far outside the realm of possibility, given how
> much Hook seems to inform the opening.
>
>
> Broken Arrow (1996) - ****
> Zimmer; add’l music & conducting by Don Harper; add’l music HGW;
> orchestrated by Fowler bros/Moriarty/McIntosh plus conducting by Bruce and
> some really dope trumpet solos by Walt;
> baritone guitar by Duane Eddy; add’l guitar by Ryeland Allison;
> produced (in absentia) by Jay Rifkin; original album assembly by Jeff
> Rona

> No, not the one where Jimmy Stewart plays a cowboy who falls in love with
> an Apache woman. This is the one where Christian Slater kicks former NFL
> linebacker Howie Long out of a railcar before John Travolta gets impaled
> by a nuke. Loads of future Zimmer works would feature electric guitar, but
> this is perhaps the last score overseen by Zimmer to have an overt rock
> & roll feel. It also, somewhat amusingly, has one of the rare expanded
> albums to receive no quotes at all from its composer in the booklet,
> possibly because Zimmer despised the movie.

> HZ: “I think Broken Arrow was a disaster. I was poking fun at it! I did
> [it] because every action movie started to sound like what I had been
> doing. [I thought] I could reinvent the form. I did it once before. It
> didn’t work. There was not enough substance in the movie for me to [write
> something as good as The Lion King]. John Woo’s subtext got thrown out of
> the movie.”

> Even with this score getting over-extended at its full length and with a
> good portion of it being shredded 90s cheese (including some of the
> rambling piano that would be all over The Rock), I still think it’s
> absurd amounts of fun - Zimmer throwing harmonica and guitar and banjo and
> synth choir and whatever else he can think of to slightly pivot the MV
> sound in the direction of a spaghetti western.

> The two Travolta themes (the revolving synth bells and the bass guitar
> riff) are very catchy - but the heroic theme for Hale that kicks off the
> end credits is a show-stopper and one of my favorite Zimmer themes from
> this era. Those ideas, a bunch of action motifs, and the aforementioned
> instruments help keep enough thematic and sonic diversity for the work to
> avoid being tiresome at over 90 minutes, something I can’t necessarily say
> for The Rock.

> HZ: “[There’s some Ennio Morricone in there] because I thought we were
> doing a Western! I always thought Ennio wanted to work with Duane Eddy. So
> I just got the real Duane Eddy.”

> I somewhat joked in my first post in this series that Zimmer might’ve
> turned into Randy Edelman without forcing himself to try new things -
> totally forgetting that Zimmer & team would be forced to quote one of
> Edelman’s themes here.

> Interestingly, in at least one track you can hear the origin of what would
> be the Kraken heartbeat in Dead Man’s Chest.

> HZ: “I remember at one showing, in the third act when Travolta comes
> back and the little guitar tune comes in, the audience actually
> laughed--in a good way. They knew I wasn't being patronizing. My intent
> was [to] make the film fun, when there's no real story to tell. Well, I
> guess there was a story about betrayal between two men who've been friends
> forever. But that's not really what the movie was about. It was about
> blowing up a lot of things.”

> Jay Rifkin may have gotten a producer credit for doing nothing.

> I wonder if Marty O’Donnell was a huge fan of this score since quite a bit
> of the electronics heard here would show up in his Halo scores -
> especially in ODST.
>
>
> Twister (1996) - ****½
> Mancina; orchestrations also by B Fowler/Moriarty/McIntosh;
> orchestrations, add’l arranging & conducting by Don Harper;
> add’l arranging by John Van Tongeren; guitar solos by Trevor Rabin; song
> by Edward & Alex Van Halen

> Shockingly way better than I remembered it. Unlike prior Mancina scores
> with a large orchestra, it actually feels like they’re using all of it,
> both in ensemble moments and in more intimate stretches - there’s a deft
> balance between big and small so that the score never feels terribly
> repetitive. The main theme is great, and Mancina (usually a terrific
> tunesmith) gets a lot of mileage out of it - it’s Copland, then it’s sorta
> Copland, then it’s not Copland…hopefully you get the idea.

> MM: “Twister was really fun, [but also] about the hardest movie I’ve
> ever done. I was very free to create, but that doesn’t mean I wrote
> whatever I wanted to. Some cues I rewrote 12 or 13 times. There were some
> sequences where I had to do two versions - one very vocal and the other
> very orchestral - because we didn’t know, once the tornadoes were in
> there, how the music was going to sound. At the end the movie got severely
> cut, and my music wasn't presented the way I had intended for it to
> be.”

> The choir is a completely unnecessary and often-gorgeous addition -
> striking a nice balance between fear and wonder, and lending an almost
> awe-inspiring fantasy touch to multiple tracks.

> MM: “I wanted to make sure we didn’t score music in areas where the
> sound effects would take over. Jan felt the same way.”

> The second “snap, I was wrong, that was great” score of this series.
>
>
> The Rock (1996) - ***½
> Zimmer, NGS & HGW;
> add’l music by Don Harper, Steven Stern & Russ Landau;
> orchestrated by B Fowler/Moriarty/McIntosh/W Fowler & Dennis Dreith;
> add’l engineering by Marc Streitenfeld

> NGS: “It was a Jerry movie. Jerry wanted Hans. It was a hard one to
> crack.”

> The masculine choir becomes a staple of Zimmer’s output. Whereas with
> Crimson Tide there was an intellectual purpose for having it
> around, now it’s just in the score cuz that’s what Jerry likes. In a way
> this score is that score plus the Mancina-esque guitar-driven coolness of
> Bay/Bruckheimer joint Bad Boys.

> HZ: “Jerry didn’t like the tunes. I must have worked four weeks around
> the clock. The main theme is mine, as are a few other bits. I was the
> ghostwriter. It was always supposed to be Nick's. I didn’t want credit
> [but] Nick phoned his agent and said he couldn’t have his name in the
> opening credits over a piece of music I had written.”

> The score definitely has its negatives. A lot of the action material,
> particularly anything that isn’t a thematic statement, seems to devolve
> into obnoxious loops, random piano rambling & synths, and bongos.
> Sure, there’s still harmony, bass accents, and “cool” drum hits, but
> countermelodies and counterpoint, something Zimmer occasionally used in
> his early days, are largely absent - everything is very direct,
> dangumbit. Whatever HGW had a hand in suggests little of his material to
> come, save maybe for his future works with Tony Scott.

> HZ: “With the way they were cutting, there was no way one person could
> do it. There was one person who came in who had worked with Spielberg on
> television or something, who said he could write eight minutes of music a
> day. After eight days, he hadn’t [even] written three minutes.”

> But gosh, those Zimmer themes are so effective, and the Mason theme by NGS
> is lovely even if it sticks out like a sore thumb from the rest of the
> material. If I can turn my brain off during the movie, I can probably do
> it during the music too.

> HGW: “There was a mountain of music to be written and hardly any time
> (what's new) plus the eternal task master Jerry 'let's torture Harry now'
> Bruckheimer.”

> Zimmer hated the original album - and I think everyone else does too.
> Maybe someday there’ll be a legitimate release of the full score -
> including that sole full Dies Irae quote early on in the film.

> HZ: “In the one big chunk I did write, I actually went against my
> judgment and moralized something, when all the guys get killed and cut
> down, I wanted to make it tragic and say it was fucked up. But after that
> where do you go? I did the best I could, but do I feel passionate about
> it? No. I can live with this bunch of notes. I wasn’t saying gimme gimme
> The Rock.”

> It’s a fun score that’s very much of its time - but for me it doesn’t rise
> above a guilty pleasure.

> Marc Streitenfeld gets his first credit beyond just being Zimmer’s
> assistant. I’m fairly certain the Spielberg alum Zimmer referred to is
> Russ Landau, who had done a number of episodes for the second and third
> seasons of the Spielberg-produced seaQuest DSV and would later
> mostly score competition shows like Survivor and Fear Factor
> - he ended up only getting partial credit for one track.

> HZ, later speaking about the late producer Don Simpson: “I’d rather
> spend 10 minutes with Don than most other people I know. They would be
> action-packed with thoughts, ideas, conTROVersy, lunacy, fun, tragedy -
> you name it, THERE WAS DON.”
>
>
> The Fan (1996) - Not heard
> Zimmer; add’l music and conducting by HGW; add’l music by Jeff Rona;
> orchestrated by B Fowler; song “Letting Go” also by Terence Trent
> D'Arby

> A supposedly wretched film (even according to Zimmer) with a supposedly
> wretched score (not according to Zimmer), this one is only worth
> listing for a variety of events
> - The last collaboration between Zimmer & Scott
> - The first time HGW would work on a Tony Scott film
> - I believe it’s the first time Zimmer collaborated with cellist Martin
> Tillman
> - It’s where Steve Jablosnky appears

> SJ: “I got out of college, came back to LA, did a few little odd jobs.
> I thought I might end up a recording engineer. I had a little bit of gear
> at home. I had been a big fan of Hans Zimmer for many years, I knew his
> studio was somewhere in LA. I found the number and said, ‘Do you need an
> intern, or a helper, or anything like that?’ and they said, ‘Yep, come on
> down.’ I got in at a good time because it was so much smaller than it is
> now. I started helping Harry, and he eventually hired me. [Earlier]
> somebody had told Geoff Zanelli, ‘when you come back from Berkeley, you
> can work for Harry’. I had no idea, [and] I always thought Geoff hated me,
> but he [ended up with] John Powell, so it all worked out.

> I remember Harry was working on The Fan. I was sitting there going, ‘Let
> me show you guys what I can do.’ I obviously was just doing it for fun. I
> remember the receptionist coming in, and she thought that was good. Harry
> realized I was doing this, and started giving me cues to do on his own
> films.”
>
>

> —------------------------------------

> Next time: Gavin, Geoff, John, Klaus, and dream a little Dreamworks

Another great article, highly informative. Could you maybe do one about Michael Kamen in the future, as he is one of my favorite composers and I can hardly find out anything about him apart from that he was married, had two daughters, also was a pop-music producer and turned out a sax concerto. I know he and Zimmer had some cross-pollination between their respective studios, most notably in that I've seen Blake Neely and Klaus Badelt work for both of them, but I would love to see a full rundown on Kamen like you've done so beautifully with Zimmer and John Scott and if you already have before I got here, sorry.

Keep up the great work and I'm waiting with bated breath for the next installment.

> White Squall (1996) - ***½

> I’d like to think I’m a pretty big fan of Ridley Scott, yet even I had no
> clue what this film was about.

.... I've never heard of this one. *goes to check on it*

Yep, never seen this or even heard anyone mention it. Apparently it's about a group of collage kids sailing around the globe and having to deal with a massive sea storm? Might have to keep an eye out for the movie if I ever find it second-hand.

> Broken Arrow (1996) - ****

> No, not the one where Jimmy Stewart plays a cowboy who falls in love with
> an Apache woman.

*insert Captain America "I understood that reference" meme*

> This is the one where Christian Slater kicks former NFL
> linebacker Howie Long out of a railcar before John Travolta gets impaled
> by a nuke. Loads of future Zimmer works would feature electric guitar, but
> this is perhaps the last score overseen by Zimmer to have an overt rock
> & roll feel.

It's an oddly satisfying slice of mid-90's actions cheese and one that I'm proud to own both the film and original album for. Zimmer's score is also a ton of fun and one of my favorites from his 90's output.

> It also, somewhat amusingly, has one of the rare expanded
> albums to receive no quotes at all from its composer in the booklet,
> possibly because Zimmer despised the movie.

Oh, that's hilarious. XDD

> The Rock (1996) - ***½

Hmm... I guess the rating is about right. It's a complete mess but an entertaining one at least. The film is also probably Bay's best effort, which is rather pathetic.

-------

As I said previously, really loving this deep-dive into Zimmer and Co. works. Informative and a joy to read. Looking forward to Vol. III!

> This is part of a series. Part 2a can be found here:
> https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=107737

> —------------------------------------

> Two If By Sea (1996) - Not heard
> NGS & Paddy Maloney of The Chieftains; orchestrated by B
> Fowler/Moriarty
>
>
> White Squall (1996) - ***½
> Jeff Rona; orchestrated by Scott Smalley; conducted by Fiachra Trench;
> produced by Hans (maybe some add’l music as well); vocals apparently by
> HGW

> JR: “Ridley hated [Maurice Jarre’s score] because it was too close to
> the temp track.

Well who put the temp track there Ridley??
> I never heard it. Hans said: ‘I don’t have the time but I
> know just the right guy.’ I started about one day later, 100% terrified. I
> came up with this very lavish melody and sophisticated harmony and Hans
> just [stared] at me and said, ‘Jeff, I recommended you because your style
> works for this movie. What’s this?’ And he was right. I wrote that whole
> score in just over two weeks. I played a number of instruments, including
> many conch shells.”

> Muppet Treasure Island (1996) - ***½
> Zimmer; add’l music & conducting by HGW;
> orchestrated by B Fowler/Moriarty/McIntosh & Fowler’s brothers Walt
> & Steve; score produced by Jay Rifkin;
> songs by Barry Mann with lyrics by Cynthia Weil; songs produced by Simon
> Greenaway; 'Boom Shakalaka' by Zimmer & NGS;
> singing by John Berry, Helen Darling, Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers,
> and the cast

> HGW, often doing a hilarious accent when he’s quoting Hans: “[Hans]
> sniffed me out to do some arranging/orchestrating/writing when he was in
> London scoring Nic Roeg's Two Deaths. After his return to the US, I
> maintained a close relationship with Nic Roeg and over the course of the
> next 8 months scored 2 films for him. One day the phone rang. ‘How quickly
> can you be on a plane? I’ve got the director of Muppet Treasure Island on
> the other line. I’m reluctant to take it on, but if you come out to help
> me I’ll take it on.’ Nick [had] graduated and Hans was going, ‘oh bloody
> hell, what about that skinny tramp in London?’ I’d never been to America;
> I basically came in [illegally]. As luck would have it the film would be
> recorded back in London, maybe the first film to be recorded in Abbey
> Road.”

> HZ: “To make the Muppet thing work you have to surround these
> characters with reality - for those characters to really come across as
> crazy, the more traditional I am with my scoring the more they shine. You
> can just drop all pretensions and have a good time.”

> The score largely plays like a prototype Dreamworks Animation score,
> complete with some swashbuckling variations on the action mannerisms from
> The Lion King and some of the “heaviness” of this era’s MV action
> music. It’s a transitional work for sure, but the whole package is still
> quite spirited and often charming.

> Cynthia Weil: “You can’t look at it as something funny. You have to do
> it completely seriously. The fact that it’s a Muppet is what makes it
> funny.”

> The songs from the film manage to strike the appropriate balance between
> being amusing without being annoying - though none of them are earworms in
> the way the best ones from the Mann/Weil collaborations with James Horner
> are. Maybe Love Led Us Here comes close, though the album
> arrangement for country music singer John Berry is nonsensical. The reggae
> Love Power really doesn’t fit.

> HGW, again with the accent: “I had no gear, and you needed gear to keep
> up with Hans. I had to have a ridiculous amount of these Roland [S-760]
> samplers. I said, ‘Hans, how do I get them?’ and he said ‘you take out a
> bloody bank loan!’ ‘But Hans, no bank will give me, they’re $4,200 each
> and you said I’ll have 27 of them!’ ‘I’ll co-sign, [but] you’d better not
> screw up.’ So they lent me the money. He said, ‘one day that’ll buy you a
> house.’ Maybe it did, I don’t know.

> I got the gear necessary [to no longer be] the night owl, because up until
> that point to do anything effective for Hans you had to do it with his
> gear in his room. He couldn’t be there; you couldn’t have two of us
> sitting on his seat at once. The guy didn’t leave his studio until half
> past 3am. ‘So that’s when I start? Oh, GREAT.’ Those first couple years
> were brutal, but fun - I was totally up for it.”

> I know I saw this film when it came out in theaters, but the only thing I
> remember is steam coming out of a puppet’s ears during Cabin Fever.

> Muppet performer Andrew Spooner: “I went to the office to pick up my
> crew jacket and [director Brian Henson] was just leaving to have lunch. He
> asked if I wanted to join him and his companion. I had to say no! I was
> expected elsewhere. His companion? That was Hans Zimmer. I turned down
> lunch with Brian Henson and Hans Zimmer. That keeps me awake at night
> sometimes.”

> Future MV/RC regular Liz Finch and Conrad Pope may also have helped with
> orchestration - not too far outside the realm of possibility, given how
> much Hook seems to inform the opening.

Having never heard this one, my takeaways are 1. Well, they understood how to score a genre comedy, and 2. That sounds like an absolute nightmare for HGW.

>
>
> Broken Arrow (1996) - ****
> Zimmer; add’l music & conducting by Don Harper; add’l music HGW;
> orchestrated by Fowler bros/Moriarty/McIntosh plus conducting by Bruce and
> some really dope trumpet solos by Walt;
> baritone guitar by Duane Eddy; add’l guitar by Ryeland Allison;
> produced (in absentia) by Jay Rifkin; original album assembly by Jeff
> Rona

> Twister (1996) - ****½
> Mancina; orchestrations also by B Fowler/Moriarty/McIntosh;
> orchestrations, add’l arranging & conducting by Don Harper;
> add’l arranging by John Van Tongeren; guitar solos by Trevor Rabin; song
> by Edward & Alex Van Halen

> Shockingly way better than I remembered it. Unlike prior Mancina scores
> with a large orchestra, it actually feels like they’re using all of it,
> both in ensemble moments and in more intimate stretches - there’s a deft
> balance between big and small so that the score never feels terribly
> repetitive. The main theme is great, and Mancina (usually a terrific
> tunesmith) gets a lot of mileage out of it - it’s Copland, then it’s sorta
> Copland, then it’s not Copland…hopefully you get the idea.

Think I need to revisit it. Definitely a fun score.

\> The Rock (1996) - ***½
> Zimmer, NGS & HGW;
> add’l music by Don Harper, Steven Stern & Russ Landau;
> orchestrated by B Fowler/Moriarty/McIntosh/W Fowler & Dennis Dreith;
> add’l engineering by Marc Streitenfeld

> NGS: “It was a Jerry movie. Jerry wanted Hans. It was a hard one to
> crack.”

> The masculine choir becomes a staple of Zimmer’s output. Whereas with
> Crimson Tide there was an intellectual purpose for having it
> around, now it’s just in the score cuz that’s what Jerry likes. In a way
> this score is that score plus the Mancina-esque guitar-driven coolness of
> Bay/Bruckheimer joint Bad Boys.

> HZ: “Jerry didn’t like the tunes. I must have worked four weeks around
> the clock. The main theme is mine, as are a few other bits. I was the
> ghostwriter. It was always supposed to be Nick's. I didn’t want credit
> [but] Nick phoned his agent and said he couldn’t have his name in the
> opening credits over a piece of music I had written.”

> The score definitely has its negatives. A lot of the action material,
> particularly anything that isn’t a thematic statement, seems to devolve
> into obnoxious loops, random piano rambling & synths, and bongos.
> Sure, there’s still harmony, bass accents, and “cool” drum hits, but
> countermelodies and counterpoint, something Zimmer occasionally used in
> his early days, are largely absent - everything is very direct,
> dangumbit. Whatever HGW had a hand in suggests little of his material to
> come, save maybe for his future works with Tony Scott.

> HZ: “With the way they were cutting, there was no way one person could
> do it. There was one person who came in who had worked with Spielberg on
> television or something, who said he could write eight minutes of music a
> day. After eight days, he hadn’t [even] written three minutes.”

> But gosh, those Zimmer themes are so effective, and the Mason theme by NGS
> is lovely even if it sticks out like a sore thumb from the rest of the
> material. If I can turn my brain off during the movie, I can probably do
> it during the music too.

> HGW: “There was a mountain of music to be written and hardly any time
> (what's new) plus the eternal task master Jerry 'let's torture Harry now'
> Bruckheimer.”

> Zimmer hated the original album - and I think everyone else does too.
> Maybe someday there’ll be a legitimate release of the full score -
> including that sole full Dies Irae quote early on in the film.

> HZ: “In the one big chunk I did write, I actually went against my
> judgment and moralized something, when all the guys get killed and cut
> down, I wanted to make it tragic and say it was fucked up. But after that
> where do you go? I did the best I could, but do I feel passionate about
> it? No. I can live with this bunch of notes. I wasn’t saying gimme gimme
> The Rock.”

> It’s a fun score that’s very much of its time - but for me it doesn’t rise
> above a guilty pleasure.

I think you're underrating how much of a banger "Rock House Jail" is. Where's my club remix of that theme!?

> Marc Streitenfeld gets his first credit beyond just being Zimmer’s
> assistant. I’m fairly certain the Spielberg alum Zimmer referred to is
> Russ Landau, who had done a number of episodes for the second and third
> seasons of the Spielberg-produced seaQuest DSV and would later
> mostly score competition shows like Survivor and Fear Factor
> - he ended up only getting partial credit for one track.

I see. Some part of me thought "Broughton???"

> HZ, later speaking about the late producer Don Simpson: “I’d rather
> spend 10 minutes with Don than most other people I know. They would be
> action-packed with thoughts, ideas, conTROVersy, lunacy, fun, tragedy -
> you name it, THERE WAS DON.”

I guess that's one way to describe him. What did I say in my Simpson/Bruckheimer binge about this score?

> Another seminal action score, upon this relisten I was surprised with how much this score draws from Backdraft. I'm also surprised with every relisten how danceable this score is. Like, I could see someone make a club remix and it would be awesome. Anyway, good score, good note to end this on. 4/5

Eh, I stand by it. Had it 2nd overall in my Simpson/Bruckheimer rankings between Crimson Tide and Bad Boys.

> The Fan (1996) - Not heard
> Zimmer; add’l music and conducting by HGW; add’l music by Jeff Rona;
> orchestrated by B Fowler; song “Letting Go” also by Terence Trent
> D'Arby

> A supposedly wretched film (even according to Zimmer) with a supposedly
> wretched score (not according to Zimmer), this one is only worth
> listing for a variety of events
> - The last collaboration between Zimmer & Scott
> - The first time HGW would work on a Tony Scott film
> - I believe it’s the first time Zimmer collaborated with cellist Martin
> Tillman
> - It’s where Steve Jablosnky appears

Correction, isn't it
STEEEEEEEEVE JABLONSKYYYYYYYYY!!!!
?

> SJ: “I got out of college, came back to LA, did a few little odd jobs.
> I thought I might end up a recording engineer. I had a little bit of gear
> at home. I had been a big fan of Hans Zimmer for many years, I knew his
> studio was somewhere in LA. I found the number and said, ‘Do you need an
> intern, or a helper, or anything like that?’ and they said, ‘Yep, come on
> down.’ I got in at a good time because it was so much smaller than it is
> now. I started helping Harry, and he eventually hired me. [Earlier]
> somebody had told Geoff Zanelli, ‘when you come back from Berkeley, you
> can work for Harry’. I had no idea, [and] I always thought Geoff hated me,
> but he [ended up with] John Powell, so it all worked out.

Oh damn. Sliding doors stuff right there.

> I remember Harry was working on The Fan. I was sitting there going, ‘Let
> me show you guys what I can do.’ I obviously was just doing it for fun. I
> remember the receptionist coming in, and she thought that was good. Harry
> realized I was doing this, and started giving me cues to do on his own
> films.”

> —------------------------------------

> Next time: Gavin, Geoff, John, Klaus, and dream a little Dreamworks

So it continues! And I catch up incrementally! I'm only what, 11 years behind now?