: (Jerry Goldsmith/Anthony
Marinelli) You sometimes see independent films that capture so much
interested from many actors that the project takes on a life of its own
before a studio has even committed to it. Such was the birth of
, a violently comedic crime story that drew
interest from a slew of character actors in part because the screenplay
takes place in Los Angeles and makes fun of down-and-out industry types
and, of course, hitmen. There is no overarching logic to the story, a
dozen random characters all going about their wretched lives and
converging at the end in ways that yield plenty of gunfire and death.
There's a pair of hitmen and two female accomplices, and after one
hitman tries to kill the other, the two women end up in a death fight as
well. Two cops eventually find their way into the equation, just like a
television director who stumbles into a hostage situation at a random
house involving the surviving hitman. The characters are all pathetic or
downright nasty to some degree, and you almost wish they'd all be shot
at the end. By the time the 1996 film was done, the ensemble cast
enthusiasm gave way to producer panic as realization of the project's
terrible quality set in. Years later,
is
mostly remembered for its clumsy catfight between the two evil women of
the tale, audiences indulging in seeing actresses Teri Hatcher and a
very young Charlize Theron tear, claw, punch, and shoot at each other
while also causing plenty of property damage. The personality of the
movie made its soundtrack a bit more difficult to strategize, the
approach obviously in mind for song placements.
Finding the right tone for its original score was a crapshoot, in part
because the story couldn't decide how silly or seriously to take its own
humor. Veteran composer Jerry Goldsmith wanted to tackle an indie-styled
film in his otherwise mainstream schedule of 1996 and approached
with an orchestral blend of comedy and straight
drama and suspense, the latter two a bit tongue in cheek but not seeking
outright parody modes.
After Goldsmith had recorded his score, the producers of
2 Days in the Valley started looking for reasons why the movie
wasn't clicking. The composer grew frustrated with the filmmakers'
responses to his approach to the plotline, which he felt was right.
Inevitably, however, Goldsmith's music was tossed in its entirely, and a
remarkable amount of the film's budget went with it. To achieve a far
grungier approach to unsuccessfully boost the project, the filmmakers
hired song producer, arranger, and synthesizer performer Anthony
Marinelli for a hard-edged rock and blues alternative. Marinelli had
come from the Giorgio Moroder and Quincy Jones line of soundtrack
production, and he tackled numerous scores solo in the 1990's and
2000's. While his work eventually strayed into the orchestral realm with
better results, his approach to
2 Days in the Valley is hip, raw,
and unrefined by design. His roughly half hour of music in the picture
consists of frequently aggressive electric guitar strumming. When
cranking up the intensity, the tone of Marinelli's performances
sometimes go wildly over the top. The opening execution scene involving
the villains resorts to wailing vocal layering that is so ridiculous and
brief that you can't help but scratch your head. In his "Catfight" cue
for the famed battle between the women, his guitar work doesn't capture
the back and forth with any precision, bumbling along for the ride
without enhancing the moment. A surprising amount of the movie was left
unscored by the time Marinelli was finished, the replacement composer
not scoring the full breadth that Goldsmith had addressed. The
difference in the intelligence level between the two scores could not be
more different, Goldsmith applying clever devices to certain subsets of
the characters and developing them from start to end. The
instrumentation consists of his standard orchestral shades with
electronic keyboarding and will sound mostly familiar to his 1990's
sound, perhaps aside from the mafia comedy part. Because Goldsmith opted
against one overarching theme to cover the general depravity of the
story, both his melodies and instrumentation are fragmented into three
distinct and equal parts of the score, a few unique motifs hanging
around the periphery.
The smoothest of Goldsmith's three themes for
2 Days
in the Valley is the bluesy trumpet and string identity for the
suicidal television director, Teddy Peppers. Defined immediately in the
album arrangement's opening track, "Theme From 2 Days in the Valley,"
this theme is wistful and solitary like the famous identity for
Chinatown and will remind some listeners of similar shades in
L.A. Confidential, but it's warmer in personality, straying
relatively close to reprising the tone of
The Russia House and
the rejected score for
The Public Eye. There is a depth of drama
that is missing from this theme's performances, however, perhaps an
intentional byproduct of the shallow nature of everything and everyone
in this movie. Keyboards and trumpet return with more loneliness for
this idea in "One Last Walk" and "1982 Emmy Award" while the muted
trumpet solo offers it at the start of "Teddy's Bad Reviews." The
director's theme is diminished on depressed but elegant piano in the
latter half of "The Cemetery," explores a variant on the trumpet and
other familiar tones in "Lights Out," prevails with some resolution in
"Teddy's Redemption," and barely impacts the start of "Teddy and Audrey"
before yielding to the hitman material. It reprises the opening
suite-like performance in "End Credits" to bookend the album without
taking any real effort to alter the arrangement of the theme for a
different performance inflection. Completely different in tone is the
Dosmo Pizzo theme, representing the pathetic hitman with an Italian
mafia tilt, Goldsmith's comedic accordion and generally Sicilian motif
of the score. The idea's humorous waltz format is established in
"Dosmo's Theme," becoming exuberant with Latin flavor late in the cue.
It turns to the full orchestra in the plucky "Hello Dosmo," becomes
forced into a grand suspense form in "Dosmo and Mark" with almost the
force of
The Shadow, and returns to its silly roots on clarinet
and blurting brass in "Rapini." The charm of this material yields to
more ominous bass string layering in "House Negotiating" but reduces
again to lighter comical shades in "Street Convergence" and enjoys an
almost carnivalesque sense of playfulness in "Toupee or Not
Toupee."
Enthusiasts of Goldsmith's darker 1990's mode will
gravitate towards the cues for the lead hitman and villain, Lee Woods.
His propulsive, throbbing motif for the 60-second countdowns to death
that he prefers in his executions previews the approach to the villain
in
Star Trek: Nemesis. Strings, flutes, synthetics, and, most
notably, dominant chimes perform ascending phrases for this theme,
introduced with malice in "The Arrival." The assassin's theme turns more
suspenseful with dissonant string lines over the top in "Roy's Minute,"
almost clicking like a clock in the accelerated "Helga's Minute" and
using slurred string effects akin to
Basic Instinct that become
more prominent later in the plot. Those
Basic Instinct influences
flourish in "Becky and Helga," though the idea's rhythmic effect turns
to chimes and
Hollow Man-like synthetics in "Cigarette Pack."
This material culminates in the action climax of "Street Convergence."
Goldsmith sprinkles a handful of other motifs into the score between the
three above, the most divergent of which being a vaguely oriental
identity of
High Velocity roots in "Alvin's Badge" for a
secondary character pair. A motif for the Becky character is belatedly
revealed on keyboard in "Becky Reaches for the Gold," and the composer's
typical action meters come forth in "Becky Warms Up" and "We are the
Police." Ultimately, Goldsmith's score is an odd duck in that it rotates
between its totally distinct thirds without any connective elements on
the overarching level. It's a work that begs you to pick out whatever
mode you want to combine onto a compilation of like Goldsmith music.
While most people will take a preference for the main theme for the
director, it's hard not to smirk at the Dosmo theme's amusing rhythms,
as they definitely stand out as the best personality in the work. It's
difficult to say of Goldsmith's score was actually a better fit for the
movie than the trashy thrashing of Marinelli's guitar performances. In
some ways, Goldsmith may indeed have provided too much intellectual
thought to yet another movie that simply didn't deserve such musical
care. The Marinelli score only exists outside of the film as rare
bootlegs, but the Goldsmith alternative was officially released by
Intrada Records in 2012 and offers the original, ill-fated, 46-minute
album arrangement in beautiful sound quality. It's one of Goldsmith's
more curious diversions with a dose of familiar comfort.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
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| Bias Check: |
For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.27
(in 122 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.3
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