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  Neal Hefti at LA's Egyptian Theater showing of Lord Love A Duck

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Topic:   Neal Hefti at LA's Egyptian Theater showing of Lord Love A Duck

 Lou Goldberg
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A friend of mine who lives in LA just returned from a screening of Lord Love A Duck given as a tribute to Neal Hefti. Hefti was there and did a Q & A with the audience after the screening.

Hefti began by talking about Lord Love A Duck. He thought George Axelrod who wrote and directed the film was a great talent. Axelrod, being a writer, didn't like music drowning out his dialogue, so most of the music in the film is source music. Axelrod wanted Hefti to catch the feeling of the times so that meant a guitar-heavy rock sound. Hefti said the big influence on the score and its sound was A Hard Day's Night. Hefti said the hardest part of writing the score was working on the title tune since the phrase 'Lord Love A Duck' didn't mean anything and was hard to use. Hefti was friends with Elmer Bernstein and Elmer suggested Hefti use Ernie Sheldon who wrote the lyrics to Bernstein's Baby The Rain Must Fall.

Hefti said that he felt he and Quincy Jones were more 'current' and caught the period of the 60s down better than Elmer because they had grown up playing jazz and listening to pop where as Elmer had been more influenced by Hollywood composers.

Hefti went on to discuss his other films. He said that his favorite score was to Harlow because he got to show the most range in that one even if it isn't known like his other scores.

He said The Odd Couple theme was easy to write and that for the film version the theme was meant to be slow and sad because Jack Lemmon is this poor depressed guy. The TV show version was sped up and made bouncier.

He said that the theme he had the most trouble with was Batman (which surprised the audience because it's a very simple riff). Hefti saw about an hour of footage and realized the show was pretty silly so he wanted to capture the nonsensical feeling. He figured there should be voices singing "Batman" in it a few times. That down, he wrote and discarded a ton of versions before selecting one to play to William Dozier and Lionel Newman. He didn't have much confidence in it but the two of them loved it.

He didn't discuss what he'd been doing since the 60s, probably just picking up royalty checks, and that was that.

[Message edited by Lou Goldberg on 07-06-2002]

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posted 07-06-2002 12:23 AM PT (US)    ip  

 BMikeJ
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I've always had a fondness for his score to Duel At Diablo. I stayed away from the movie for years because I couldn't imagine the guy who wrote the theme for Batman could possibly score a Western. I was wrong, though, and his theme grew on me.

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posted 07-06-2002 02:53 AM PT (US)    ip  

 Graham Watt
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I like DUEL AT DIABLO too. That one allowed him to flex his muscles a bit, though his light, swinging jazz scores are a joy. Stuff like LAST OF THE RED HOT LOVERS (Alan Arkin in Neil Simon comedy, I think).

FSM had an interview with him a year or two ago. I can't be bothered to fish it out right now, but I seem to recall that he wasn't too communicative about the scores he did. Maybe he'd just forgotten. Anyway, looks like he was more chatty in the interview Lou mentions.

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posted 07-06-2002 04:46 AM PT (US)    ip  

 
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