A Small Thing
Going back to the composer who was crammed down my throat with a baseball bat by the producers:
I went to his studio yesterday to hear his first try at a few of the cues.
Auggghhhhhhhhhh!
We have ten year old children playing in a pond in the woods. There's somebody else in the woods, watching them, unseen. We don't know how much of a menace the watcher is, or if the watcher is a menace at all. I talked to the composer about a single sustained string line, maybe a couple of tentative piano notes, a sense of mystery, of anticipation.
I got a cue that wouldn't have been out of place in the climactic battle in Alien vs. Predator. Booming drums, screaming strings, wailing synths. I sat in the big comfortable chair in his studio listening to this and desperately trying to come up with what to say. I realized that if I had hired him, if he knew that I thought he was great, if there was trust between us, I could have said "Oh, man, that is waaaaay off the mark," and we would have gone from there. But he and I aren't there yet. So I had to say "That is so beautiful, but I'm not sure it's exactly right for this moment in the film." The good news is, he's smart enough to have been able to translate that to THAT CUE SUCKS THE BIG ONE, CHARLIE. The even better news is, he's extremely eager to please and get it right so he got right to work on a hugely scaled-down version. I listened to other cues. The ones that weren't entirely wrong were...what's the word?... Pallid. Fine. Good enough. In the past I've taken cassettes home from music sessions and played them in my car and for my friends and bragged about what an amazing composer I had. I don't think I'll be doing that this time...
Here's the capper. There are four movies in this series, of which mine is the first. After I went quietly ballistic at having my composer chosen for me (which is in contravention of the rules set by the Directors Guild of America, though those rules are in most cases unenforcable), they went to the next director, gave him this guy's music and said "What do you think of him?"--without telling him the guy had already been hired--hoping, I suppose, that the director would love the music and they wouldn't have to admit that they had screwed up. When the director came back with "I don't think this guy is great at all", all they could say was "Um, he's already on the payroll..."
Why would a producer who has made about two hundred million dollars in this business feel the need to lie to the director of a cable movie? Why be sheepish when you've got all the cards in your hand anyway?
I went to his studio yesterday to hear his first try at a few of the cues.
Auggghhhhhhhhhh!
We have ten year old children playing in a pond in the woods. There's somebody else in the woods, watching them, unseen. We don't know how much of a menace the watcher is, or if the watcher is a menace at all. I talked to the composer about a single sustained string line, maybe a couple of tentative piano notes, a sense of mystery, of anticipation.
I got a cue that wouldn't have been out of place in the climactic battle in Alien vs. Predator. Booming drums, screaming strings, wailing synths. I sat in the big comfortable chair in his studio listening to this and desperately trying to come up with what to say. I realized that if I had hired him, if he knew that I thought he was great, if there was trust between us, I could have said "Oh, man, that is waaaaay off the mark," and we would have gone from there. But he and I aren't there yet. So I had to say "That is so beautiful, but I'm not sure it's exactly right for this moment in the film." The good news is, he's smart enough to have been able to translate that to THAT CUE SUCKS THE BIG ONE, CHARLIE. The even better news is, he's extremely eager to please and get it right so he got right to work on a hugely scaled-down version. I listened to other cues. The ones that weren't entirely wrong were...what's the word?... Pallid. Fine. Good enough. In the past I've taken cassettes home from music sessions and played them in my car and for my friends and bragged about what an amazing composer I had. I don't think I'll be doing that this time...
Here's the capper. There are four movies in this series, of which mine is the first. After I went quietly ballistic at having my composer chosen for me (which is in contravention of the rules set by the Directors Guild of America, though those rules are in most cases unenforcable), they went to the next director, gave him this guy's music and said "What do you think of him?"--without telling him the guy had already been hired--hoping, I suppose, that the director would love the music and they wouldn't have to admit that they had screwed up. When the director came back with "I don't think this guy is great at all", all they could say was "Um, he's already on the payroll..."
Why would a producer who has made about two hundred million dollars in this business feel the need to lie to the director of a cable movie? Why be sheepish when you've got all the cards in your hand anyway?
posted by Tom at 9:30 AM
1 Comments:
“THAT CUE SUCKS THE BIG ONE, CHARLIE?” Love that expression. It’s good to know that sometimes subtlety does prevail.
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