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Date:         Mon, 28 Sep 1992 09:49:13 -0500
From:         FAC_JCLARK@JMUVAX.BITNET
Subject:      Re: Movie music?

Carol, thanks for bringing up the subject of Danny Elfman's music--a pet pleasur
   e of mine, too.  Your opinion is not so IMHO, though, since I think even more
highly of him.  Most of his scores that I'm aware of since his first "real" one
--PEE-WEE's BIG ADVENTURE (not counting the one he did for brother Richard's
FORBIDDEN ZONE years before, which I mentioned as a hidden gem)--have been
accomplished and even remarkable in one way or another, in my not-so-humble
opinion.  He's shown a real ability to cover a wide range of musical style in
different genres or just plain dramatic moods, and to do it without giving the
impression of pastiche or a low-level apeing of his movie-music precursor
betters. I've forgotten which score he had in the running the year John Barry
won for DANCES WITH WOLVES; it may have been BATMAN itself. But the comparison
is instructive.  Barry is a film staple, with a career of more than a quarter
century. Yet I listen to DANCES and hear essentially the same composer with the
same general compositional tricks, strategies and sensibility, as I did in his
early career at least since the Bond films.  Then I listen to Elfman, who in
less than a decade has composed creditably in more styles than Barry can
apparently even *dream* of.  If you're ever in the mood, I'd be glad--with anyon
   e--to discuss some particular pleasures of any individual score of Elfman's.

Elfman himself has made credible reference to why he's not been oscar-nominated
yet. He believes it will take a full ten years for "acceptance."  The Hollywood
"guilds" often tend to be clannish, and perhaps the professional composers' grou
   p is even more so than others. So here is this younger upstart--who comes fro
   m
*pop* music and can't even *read* music--weighing in suddenly with full-blown
scores that even old-timers can't completely discount. At the time of BATMAN,
his breakthrough major-film score, there were scurrilous rumors that themes or
parts of it were composed by others.  This kind of thing has ceased since then,
because of a consistent track record. But for the moment, he's still shut out.
The only pop music composer who's really made it and whom I consider worth
serious attention besides Elfman is Randy Newman.  Occasional shots by people
like Peter Gabriel (LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST) or David Byrne (LAST EMPEROR)
don't really count, and the Academy in the latter case can feel smugly safe
about offering Byrne part of an oscar, because essentially his achievement is
viewed as a novelty--like an unusual dog doing an unusual trick, which catches
the fancy at the moment (and happens to be part of a film sweeping a lot of
awards at the time); there's no danger of seriously viewing what Byrne's done
as composing.  There's some justice in that: much as I appreciate accomplish-
ments of both Gabriel and Byrne, their film forays essentially play it close
to the vest, with film music conceptions that are essentially not very adven-
turous adaptations of what they do in their "real" music.  They don't show
the traditional film or other composer's sense of sustained musical development
beyond the unit of the tune.  On the other hand, that ability is clear in
Elfman, and his successful work in film seems to me inevitable from the sensi-
bility he displays in his composing for his group Oingo Boingo, of which I've
been a long-time partisan for its skillful manipulation of musical elements,
among other things. (Like Elfman himself, I must confess that if compelled to
make the choice, I'd sacrifice his film music to his band's music--even though
the latter remains in semi-obscurity, unlike its now-Hollywood composer on his
own.)  By the way, another member of the band, Steve Bartek (guitarist) works
on Elfman's film orchestrations since he, at least, reads music.  Elfman has
stated that because he doesn't, composing with keyboard is a very arduous task:
when a score begins, he can put in 12-14 hour days, and end up with about 3
minutes of music a day(!).  To my mind, though, the conditions under which
he's obliged to work and the achievements he manages, are a vindication of
a genuine feel and talent for how music works and how it works with film.

To end on something other than Elfman, a few comments on the pop-song soundtrack
   .  In general, I despise it myself, although mostly in principle, since it se
   emsto afflict most severely those films which deserve no better. A writer (na
   me
forgotten) in Films in Review once pointed out, quite soundly, that the problem
with pop songs is their definitive, consistent beat (with or without backbeat)--
   it ends up dominating and conflicting with the visual rhythms established by
film, to the point that those rhythms have to go along or are unavoidably
compromised.  As I imply, though, most films that "go along" are such throwaway
conceptions that it hardly matters.  It's just films with otherwise "normal"
scores that throw in a pop song that tend to annoy one more, even though it's
only minor damage.  The one supreme exception to using pop songs in film is
Martin Scorcese, who has no equal, let alone master.  He has an astounding
sensibility for how to integrate them with his visual style on equal footing.

Enough sermonizing for now.  Jeff Clark
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