My question is this: I don't know the Goldsmith score except for the one brief cue I was able to download at DECONSTRUCTING GOLDSMITH. Does anyone who DOES know the score, and the film well enough to have noticed, hear ANY of the Goldsmith stuff in the finished film? I ask because it was reported at the time (in the Goldsmith Society newsletter, whatever they were calling it then) that some of it WAS retained.

I tend to doubt this -- wouldn't Goldsmith have received partial credit in this case? But I don't know the music well enough to say. It's probably wishful thinking on the part of the Goldsmith fans (they were able to trumpet that "still, NO Goldsmith score has ever been COMPLETELY removed from its film!") -- but if it IS true -- anyone, anyone?

The Main theme for the score was first written for WALL STREET when he was going to score the film, but he left the projectl and his them went with him.

It ended up in ALIEN NATION, but sadly was not used because Goldsmith score was replaced.

It found a home at long last as the Main Theme for THE RUSSIA HOUSE, and later it turned up (Slightly altered) as end title of THE VANISHING.

Proving the old saying "Waste Not,Want Not".

Ford

" ALIEN NATION (***)-- Jerry Goldsmith's unused score is usually typed as a dull synth-fried collection of drones plus the RUSSIA HOUSE theme once intended for Oliver Stone's WALL STREET. 100 per cent electronic, it shares with RUNAWAY and CRIMINAL LAW (which was done in the same period) the coarse timbres and blocky keyboard textures of 80s programming limitations. In the score at least, the stereotypes die there.

If you are misfortunate enough to remember the pitiful film about cops and aliens you'll recall James Caan was a lonely cop buddying up with an alien partner (Mandy Patinkin in a rubber head), to investigate murder and drug trafficking in the alien community (the aliens are an escaped labor class addicted to drugs pretty much the way humans are addicted to Miller Time and football-- what an odd film). The cop hates rubberheads at first but learns to relate to aliens as individuals. Ordinary cop show. The movie was delayed from
summer 88 and re-edited down to a slow hour thirty-one.

Goldsmith took the job with honor and committment. In a summer 88 issue of STARLOG he promised the score would be "positive and uplifting" and not "downbeat and gritty". A trailer was shown before YOUNG GUNS that featured the shimmery "spectral" effect familiar from RAMBO III and INNERSPACE over the Fox logo, followed by a few secs of
faint keyboard action, then it was gone. The film came out with Curt Sobel's replacement score (a conventional keyboard blues/pop approach with
arpeggios). Reasons why remain an enigma, but are probably mundane and practical (scheduling conflicts).

I love this music. The opening cue establishes the score's sound world-view of
mystery and urban danger with the spectral effect followed by a burst of percussion and a bizarre, primordial two-note synth horn effect (that wouldn't
be out of place in ALIEN or PLANET OF THE APES) which shows up throughout the score. The inexpressive electronic sound of the score is both primitive and futuristic, with interesting washes of metallic hues (sustain tones) that build up harmonically so that the score is always in motion even if it's vertically rather than straight-ahead. Bits of melancholy tonality start laying the
ground work for what will become the lonely cop's emotional reprieve music-- ie, the RUSSIA HOUSE theme.

RUNAWAY also sounds a bit primitive now, but Goldsmith's sheer artistry and signature shine through in a way a lot of other "trendy" electronic scores of the period, often written by composers desperate to stay "current" (or who couldn't write a note to begin with, and were delighted to discover themselves "current"). I'm also especially fond of CRIMINAL LAW, which is perhaps the LEAST dated of his electronic scores because of its almost ambient-seeming nature.

It's fairly obvious why that theme didn't work for Stone on WALL STREET, but its eventual postponement to THE RUSSIA HOUSE is a blessing in disguise -- that lonely sax figure sounds way more evocative than the synth version I've heard. Interesting that Goldsmith waited until THE RUSSIA HOUSE to use the tune again -- he must have wanted the exact right picture to deploy it (LEVIATHAN or WARLOCK, much less CRIMINAL LAW, would not have been those pictures.)