> 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?
