This is part of a series.
- Here’s the prior post on various 2024 scores - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=139223
- If you want the full set of links, click on my profile.
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David Fleming had a heck of a year.
He walked into a meeting for Netflix’s Damsel thinking the revisionist princess vs. dragon fairy tale would require a more contemporary score and was surprised to find the director wanted a more traditional, robustly thematic, “timeless” score. “It was a smart decision from him because you're able to subvert everything [without being] winky-winky.” David’s at-times immensely orchestral and choral music, which occasionally utilized the same kind of carnyx war horn listeners would hear later in the year in Gladiator II, was one of the early film score surprises of the year, in part because his most of earlier gigs as a lead composer, co-composer, or producer (Hillbilly Elegy, Unforgivable, The Son) hadn’t given him the opportunity to show this kind of talent, though admittedly some of his additional music contributions for recent Hans scores had (the remake of The Lion King, WW84). Heck, only some brief moments of vocal whispering gave any clue that he was part of the team translating Hans’s Dune ideas into the finished film score. “It was an unusual and lovely surprise to be working with a director who wasn’t scared of melodies.” The climactic track End of Your Story, weaving both of David’s melodies for the protagonist princess together with the dragon theme, ended up as one of the film music highlights of the year, style and substance fused together for blazing entertainment.
Coming perhaps a little more in his “electronic or textural or modern” wheelhouse was the music for Amazon’s spy couple action-comedy series Mr. & Mrs. Smith, as the producers desired to avoid both the expected sounds of the genre and the Latin flair that John Powell gave the 2005 film of the same name. “Even when I wanted a big section, they were like, ‘This sound is for John and Jane, this is not James Bond. What’s the art school version of this?’” Extreme time constraints (eight weeks for eight episodes) had him eschewing his preference for writing suites first and just experimenting a couple of scenes at a time, almost like going back to his early days of making ringtones for an advertising music company. “No second guessing or waffling, a ‘what the hell, just go for it’ dynamic that made it feel like play. Our John and Jane are not slick or really ever in control. The clothes they wear sort of informed the kinds of sounds I wanted to use. [And] there was this element of curiosity and off-kilter chemistry - as their relationship develops, their tune starts to be superimposed over the awkward weirdness of the kalimba and the synths.” Most traditionalist score fans were repulsed, but David’s intriguingly quirky music - an offbeat spin on Bourne Identity minimalism and world music / electronic fusions for the 2020s set inspired by the 1960s Italian pop music Ennio Morricone arranged before he became widely known as a film composer - was an undeniable asset in the acclaimed show (a score nomination being one of 16 Emmy nods the show’s first season received), adding just the right amount of fun and weirdness to the proceedings.
The most lauded of his three scores that year was for Ron Howard’s Disney+ documentary Jim Henson Idea Man, which won five Emmy awards including one for David’s whimsical music. “Jim’s playfulness was so obvious from the work he made and there was so much to key into with that playfulness, but he also had this quiet spirit and it was an interesting juxtaposition.” As with the prior year’s Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret., it showed David could do a very capable continuation of Hans’ now-quite-rare comedy sound, this time complete with some quirky “almost carnival-like” jazz. “I knew I didn’t want to do a [purely] jazz score because I didn’t want to be constrained by that emotionally, but I did like the idea of using jazz instruments because Jim’s work and his experimental films have a very percussive and almost jazz-like quality to them.” Thematically simple but instrumentally creative, the score served as further testament to David’s impressive versatility. With a score for Barry Levinson’s Mob drama Alto Knights and the Sydney Sweeney-starring neo-Western Americana set for release in 2025 and another for Donald Glover’s Bando Stone & the New World probably dropping that year as well, his ascendance seems likely to continue.
Damsel - **** - David Fleming; add’l music by Jake Boring & David Naroth;
add’l score production by Aldo Arechar & Forest Christenson, orchestrated by
Òscar Senén; add’l orchestration by Nacho Cantalejo, Vicente Ortiz Gimeno &
Rob Westwood; conducted by Gavin Greenaway; zither by Anže Rozman;
percussion by Satnam Ramgotra; electric guitar by Yvette Young; technical score
engineer Matt Wood; score supervisor Monica Sonand; produced by Hans Zimmer
Jim Henson Idea Man - **** - David Fleming; add’l music by Jake Boring &
David Naroth; orchestrated by David Deutsch; drums recorded by Hal Rosenfeld;
woodwinds recorded by Jake Boring; technical score engineer Matt Wood;
score supervisor Monica Sonand; produced by Hans Zimmer
Mr. & Mrs. Smith Season 1 - *** - David Fleming; add’l music by Aldo
Arechar & Forest Christenson; add’l programming by Jake Boring; score
supervisor Monica Sonand; technical score engineer Matt Wood
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Next time:
- “Get the feeling of a needle-drop but tell a story way better than a needle drop can.”
- “This stage in my career I’m really trying to do action in a different way.”
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