I have heard that Jonathan Frakes might ask Jerry Goldsmith to score his upcoming feature film THUNDERBIRDS. Any truth to this?

Thanks

Ever notice how John Williams and Elmer Bernstein have gotten lots of good movies to score? I would bet that if, 15 years ago, Goldsmith had decided to not accept lousy films, today he might have scored 20 fewer pictures, but he'd still be working constantly and he'd still be filthy rich. It's called career decisions, and either Goldsmith and/or his agent can't recognize a good script, although it's hard in the case of some of his more wretched films to believe these scripts actually showed some promise. There's a BIG difference between RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and THE MUMMY in terms of the quality of the film, and you can even tell that from reading the screenplays.

But a film composer can turn down a project, especially when his phone has no doubt been ringing off the hook for the past forty years with people wanting him to work for them. He obviously made the decision to work on every big (as in expensive) film offered to him. With his track record, he could have done what Bernard Herrman did -- only worked on films he felt were worthy of his time and talent. Herrmann only scored about 50 films, but an incredible number of them are acknowledged classics or just excellent films.

And Elmer Bernstein knew he was getting typecast (on a few different occasions), so he made a conscious decision to work on different types of films. And because of that, his scores have graced dozens of good films in the past 30 years in addition to his share of junk that probably paid the bills. But I don't think Elmer or Jerry have needed to worry about paying any bills for a LONG time.

Outside of the film music fan following, Goldsmith's legacy will unfortunately be half a career scoring excellent films and taking chances, and half a career cranking out score after score for pictures that probably never should have been made in the first place. I think it's a very sad situation.

[Message edited by firefox on 08-06-2003]

And furthermore, the very idea of a THUNDERBIRDS film is, to my mind, so utterly and irredeemably imbecilic that Jerry (and indeed, Hans) should get the hell as far away from it as possible. It's a freakin' PUPPET SHOW!

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Originally posted by Richard Street:
[B]And furthermore, the very idea of a THUNDERBIRDS film is, to my mind, so utterly and irredeemably imbecilic that Jerry (and indeed, Hans) should get the hell as far away from it as possible. It's a freakin' PUPPET SHOW!

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When it comes to most mainstream movies aren't they all these days? When I think of the glory days of Goldsmith's writing for movies that were actually about something and were well made I consider the period from the 60s to the late 80s. That was, as mentioned, about 20 years ago. I was watching A Patch of Blue on DVD two nights ago and was dying with nostalgia as well as lamenting the fact that Goldsmith most likely will NEVER score this kind of movie again. Why? Because they just don't make movies like this for orchestral composers anymore. Something like Far From Heaven (which incidentally, was part of a twin bill I and my wife watched the same night as A Patch of Blue. Two really beautiful movies to watch back to back, I must say.) is a rare exception and one I'm certain Jerry would have done anything to score.

The sad fact is good directors making good movies which tell a good story are few and far in between and when such movies do get made they don't require the talents of a good composer. Movies cost way too much to make, production is expensive, actors command bank-breaking salaries, promotion must be very aggressive because the competion is fierce. The stakes are so much higher for studios today because of these costs. That has meant that movies must have the widest possible appeal to be profitable... not unlike network TV. There is a certain dumbing down which has taken root since the 80s. Granted, Hollywood has always made such vaquous movies but it didn't invest its resources in them so highly as it does today. That's been the difference. Someone like John Williams has Spielberg, who is one of the few directors making big-budget films with the golden-age sensibility for story telling and music.

Perhaps they don't make movies like they used to (in Hollywood, in general). But, I have maintained for MANY years now that it isn't the music or the composer that has declined, it is the moviemaking process...it is what we, the audience, have chosen to accept as being something we are willing to pay for. WE, you and I, which is to say the general movie going public, keep Bruckheimer in business. We keep the Michael Bay's in business...sadly, the Schaffners, Pollocks, Lumets, Wilders of yore are pretty much gone.

Don't blame the composer. Blame yourself for allowing the state of films to degrade themselves into what we have today.

God forbid we should be CHALLENGED intellectually by a movie. Now, the only challenge is to see how fast we can hop over the chairs to the exit door.

SheriffJoe
NP - Masquerade (Barry)

P.S. I'd love to hear a Goldsmith score to Thunderbirds...a show I grew up with. We shall see...

My criteria for deciding what a good film is has to do with many things, including the quality of the script, the structure of the film, the acting, cinematography, music, direction, theme and presentation, etc. That's kind of an obvious answer.

However, one can generally get a rather accurate "read" on a film ten years later through different means. While one might have problems with individual movie critics, if, at the end of a ten-year period after the film's release, almost every single critic you investigate hates a specific film, chances are pretty good that the film is not a good one.

And likewise, if almost every critic lauds a picture ten years down the line, chances are that it's got something worthwhile to offer, whether it's merely fun, escapist entertainment or a more serious motion picture.

I just hope to hell that LOONEY TUNES isn't simply Goldsmith doing Stalling.

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Originally posted by firefox:
My criteria for deciding what a good film is has to do with many things, including the quality of the script, the structure of the film, the acting, cinematography, music, direction, theme and presentation, etc. That's kind of an obvious answer.

However, one can generally get a rather accurate "read" on a film ten years later through different means. While one might have problems with individual movie critics, if, at the end of a ten-year period after the film's release, almost every single critic you investigate hates a specific film, chances are pretty good that the film is not a good one.

And likewise, if almost every critic lauds a picture ten years down the line, chances are that it's got something worthwhile to offer, whether it's merely fun, escapist entertainment or a more serious motion picture.

I don't think you'll find many critics of note are demanding that we reassess FIRST BLOOD, THE RUSSIA HOUSE, or GREMLINS because we all misunderstood them at the time of their initial release. They were what they were, and that's pretty forgettable films that could have been MUCH better had a little more intelligence and thought been put into them. And in the case of FIRST BLOOD, if somebody had decided not to make the film in the first place! I'm constantly amazed at how all the great film composers can write great music for such tripe, and all the great ones did this constantly.

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Well, this looks to me like a prime case of letting other people do your thinking for you. I really don't care how many people tell me that THE ENGLISH PATIENT, EDWARD SCISSORHANDS or Burton's BATMAN are fantastic movies, because they're not and if I live another fifty or sixty years I'll hope to never see one frame of them again. (the unspeakable SCISSORHANDS in particular). All these critics are doing is proclaiming their personal opinions (at best, and party line at worst) and those are no more valid than yours, mine or anyone else's.

Your opening paragraph reminds me of that sequence in DEAD POETS SOCIETY (another massively overrated film) where Robin Williams has the class read out a chapter in a text book about applying some kind of objective analysis to poetry. You can't, and you can't apply them to film either.

Moreover, such elements as the quality of the script are of no significance at all, since we haven't read the script. We've seen the finished version after it's been filtered through several other people's sensibilities and opinions and re-written over and over by yet more people with their own agendas. Somewhere back in the mists of time, someone thought GIGLI was a script worth filming. It certainly doesn't look that way now.

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Originally posted by rkeaveney:
I just hope to hell that LOONEY TUNES isn't simply Goldsmith doing Stalling.

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Thank you for your post. I couldn't agree more with you.

Firefox,

This is not intended as an attack; your posts read intelligent but presents yourself as a contemptuous czar of taste. You have the right to your opinion, but don't expect that everybody will immedaitely follow it. For additional reiteration, please read Richard's last post's final paragraph.

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Originally posted by Richard Street:
<BLOCKQUOTE>Doesn't sound like a bad combination to me. And would that be inappropriate for the film?

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Not inappropriate, but been-there-done-that. Not much argument against retirement.

Ryan

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Originally posted by rkeaveney:
Not much argument against retirement.

Ryan

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Uh... what??? Anyway, after you've been listening to film music for a while everything is a bit "been there, done that"isn't it? And this despite the general (mistaken, IMHO) feeling that a lot of what is done in contemporary scoring is anything truly original or daring. At a point you have to get past stylistics and understand what the music is really about at it's core.

Anyway, what would one expect of a movie featuring the WB toon characters but a Stalling-like sound or approach? I have heard that the movie is temp tracked with some Raiders of the Lost Ark, James Bond and other such stuff so who knows. I can say that I DON'T want to hear a manufactured thump-thump MV thing.

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Originally posted by rkeaveney:
Not inappropriate, but been-there-done-that. Not much argument against retirement.

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Is there a full moon or something? I hate to feed the trolls... but...

Jerry is down to about 1 film per year. So, avoid the single Goldsmith film and/or score if you don't want to hear his latest output.

There. I told you.

It's easy to avoid the Goldsmith score, the Goldsmith film, but not so easy to avoid the Goldsmith fan who has the ANGIE OST cover art tattooed on their chest, screaming about how great ALONG CAME A SPIDER, THE LAST CASTLE, THE SUM OF ALL FEARS and NEMESIS were.

I don't like to beat on Jerry because I love him, but I'd rather him go out with a bang then fizzle. As much as I love Joe Dante, I don't see LOONEY TUNES turning it around for either of these great talents.

Maybe they should just make GREMLINS 3 and make me happy again. Even us trolls need slapstick handpuppet shenanigans.

Ryan

The difference between you and me is I know that I don't know everything. I know that there is much knowledge out there beyond my own, regardless of how intelligent I am. One reason I am smart is because I value other people's knowledge and try to learn from it.
For example, you might rave about a movie being the most creative thing you've ever seen, while I would listen to what other people say in addition to forming my own opinions, and in so doing might learn that the film you're raving about was stolen idea-for-idea from a film made in 1938. So your raving about how brilliant the filmmakers were would really just be a pronouncement about how ignorant you are.

>>Moreover, such elements as the quality of the script are of no significance at all.

Your comment would seem to show your ignorance. I've read hundreds of scripts, and I've also evaluated the "written word" as it appears in the film. I've done it professionally. If you can't see through the cinematography and the music and the acting and get a sense of the script beneath all the gloss, then your opinions about which films are great and which aren't would seem to be not as valid as somebody who understands story, theme, character development, etc.

>>FIRST BLOOD... I never thought it was that terrible

Your standards are obviously different from mine.

>>GREMLINS I always thought was terrific

GREMLINS has lots of fun effects the first time you watch it, but the movie is one disjointed, episodic setpiece after another, with virtually no components that 99% of all critics would agree are necessary ingredients for a well-constructed motion pictures. It's an idea less complex than that in most cartoon shorts, and then that idea was stretched out to interminable feature length.

>>For additional reiteration, please read Richard's last post's final paragraph.

I did. It appeared to be spoken by somebody with a disdain for all human beings other than himself. In fact, most of his comments seem to be coming from a place of "I don't need anybody to tell me anything about anything because I already know it all." Perhaps I've misconstrued some of his points? I'm always happy to learn I've been wrong, because that makes me less likely to be making the same mistakes in the future.

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Originally posted by firefox:
>>Well, this looks to me like a prime case of letting other people do your thinking for you.

The difference between you and me is I know that I don't know everything. I know that there is much knowledge out there beyond my own, regardless of how intelligent I am. One reason I am smart is because I value other people's knowledge and try to learn from it.
For example, you might rave about a movie being the most creative thing you've ever seen, while I would listen to what other people say in addition to forming my own opinions, and in so doing might learn that the film you're raving about was stolen idea-for-idea from a film made in 1938. So your raving about how brilliant the filmmakers were would really just be a pronouncement about how ignorant you are.

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Oh dear. Firstly, I'm making no claim to know even half of everything. The point is that it's impossible to know whether a film is a Good Film, because basically there's no such thing on an objective level. There are only Good Films on a subjective level, when the film has been watched and filtered through your mind, preferences, personality, standards, tastes, preconceptions and experiences. A critic's review is just an account of that critic's reaction to the film as seen through his/her mind, preferences, personality and so on. It is just that critic's opinion that EDWARD SCISSORHANDS is a GREAT movie, and whether that opinion is shared by four other people or forty thousand doesn't really matter when I sit down and watch it.

Secondly, however hard one tries, one cannot live in a vacuum. Information will filter through from various sources - my mother told me yesterday that PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN got a good write-up in the newspaper, but Johnny Depp didn't. I've seen various other comments made about the film in forums such as this. So your example about me raving ignorantly about a really creative movie that isnt as creative as I think doesn't really work; information of that level (that it's ripped off from a 1938 film) would seep through!

Thirdly, if I'd claimed that it was the most creative movie I'd ever seen, that would be entirely true if I was somehow unaware of this 1938 original.

Fourthly, whether the film is astoundingly creative or not doesn't matter. Creative doesn't necessarily equal good (and we're talking about the criteria for good films, not creative ones, remember). Is ALIEN a creative movie? Not even close. Extremely entertaining and effective, though.

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>>Moreover, such elements as the quality of the script are of no significance at all.

Your comment would seem to show your ignorance. I've read hundreds of scripts, and I've also evaluated the "written word" as it appears in the film. I've done it professionally. If you can't see through the cinematography and the music and the acting and get a sense of the script beneath all the gloss, then your opinions about which films are great and which aren't would seem to be not as valid as somebody who understands story, theme, character development, etc.

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You say you've looked at scripts professionally. I'd suggest then that you were looking at scripts for different reasons than the rest of us: as a business proposition rather than entertainment. Most people don't read scripts anyway; I've read a few, and I've also tried my hand at writing the damned things myself. The script may have been great once, but after the seventh draft by the fourth writer of the third re-write, after it's been hacked down, had another subplot grafted on and been re-adjusted as a vehicle for Brad Pitt instead of Antonio Banderas, after the producers have decided to change the ending and relocate the action from Acapulco to Culver City because it's cheaper.... All the audience gets is what's on the screen in front of them. I shouldn't have to look at the project in that much detail any more than I should follow the Eroica Symphony with Ludwig's original sketches to see how he got from there to here. (Incidentally, where would that leave CASABLANCA, which was being scripted as they went along, and wasn't that creative since it was derived from a Broadway play?)

Besides, those scripwriting gurus don't know everything. Doesn't one of them (McKee?) have a golden rule - No Voiceovers? It doesn't take a genius to find a few terrific movies that have voiceovers, and I'll even discount BLADE RUNNER (though I prefer the original cut).

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>>FIRST BLOOD... I never thought it was that terrible

Your standards are obviously different from mine.

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Well, d'uh! Check the DNA strands. We're different people. I think the point here is that my standards are mine, and yours seem to be distilled from a bunch of other people's opinions.

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>>GREMLINS I always thought was terrific

GREMLINS has lots of fun effects the first time you watch it, but the movie is one disjointed, episodic setpiece after another, with virtually no components that 99% of all critics would agree are necessary ingredients for a well-constructed motion pictures. It's an idea less complex than that in most cartoon shorts, and then that idea was stretched out to interminable feature length.

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Okay. Fine. I liked it, you didn't. Again, I went in there with a bag of jelly babies and you went in with an abacus and slide rule. Yes, it has a very simple idea behind it, true. Doesn't mean anything. I'll go you one better: GREMLINS 2, which is even more disjointed, random and chaotic, is an even better film.

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>>For additional reiteration, please read Richard's last post's final paragraph.

I did. It appeared to be spoken by somebody with a disdain for all human beings other than himself. In fact, most of his comments seem to be coming from a place of "I don't need anybody to tell me anything about anything because I already know it all." Perhaps I've misconstrued some of his points? I'm always happy to learn I've been wrong, because that makes me less likely to be making the same mistakes in the future.

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Disdain? Me? Far from it. My objection stems from the sense that you can rate films on some sort of sliding scale and yet not have any personal reaction to them, when personal reaction is ultimately the only way you can rate them. Perhaps my statement: "There are loads of movies out there that lots of people liked that I hated, and that lots of people hated that I liked. In all cases, they're wrong." was badly phrased; I'm obviously not about to tell someone they're wrong for liking TITANIC or EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, but whatever positive elements they saw in those films eluded me. Or the negative elements eluded them.

It's more a case of "I don't need Roger Ebert to tell me whether a film's any good, because I'll see it for myself and come to my own conclusion, and then maybe see if Ebert agrees with me". (I don't mean Ebert specifically, since I'm in the UK, but you get the point....)

If forty thousand critics over a period of fifty years say a film is a masterpiece, that should matter when you sit down and watch it. If so many people who are supposed to know what they are talking about say it's that good, why shouldn't you take that into account when you see it? Then, after you've seen it, you can decide whether you think they are right or wrong. I happen to think EDWARD SCISSORHANDS is a GREAT movie, and I also happen to think the much-venerated HIGH NOON is trash (even if it's well-made trash). It just means, as you said, Richard, that either there are positive elements that elude me or (as I obviously prefer) negative elements that elude them.

Am I agreeing with you, Richard? Because I must confess, despite the fact that you seem to have reiterated it four or five times, I'm having a hard time figuring out what your point is. You seem to be saying that the person who's thoughts, feelings, and ideas you should heed more than anyone else's are your own, which I think is absolute truth. But you also seem to be implying (whether you intend it or not) that you should ignore all others' opinions as well, and then you say you can't live in a vaccuum. Maybe I'm just stupid, but I find your post confusing, however obviously thoughtful and intelligent.

But really, the quality of the script has no significance whatsoever? I guess I've wasted all that money and time I spent this summer in that screenwriting course at college. Yes, very often the final product doesn't match the original script that sold, but the script is still the foundation of the final product. If you can critique the film's acting, cinematography, music, and editing, why is the script any less important? I've read enough scripts (unprofessionally) to know that generally a bad script yielding a good movie and a good script yielding a bad movie are exceptions (though the latter is probably more frequent than the former) and most good films start with good scripts. Sure, someone along the way thought GIGLI would make a good movie, but does that mean the script was good from the start? (No, it doesn't mean it was bad from the start either.) Hollywood is a place where John Logan and Akiva Goldsman are hot writers who both have Oscars to wave around now.

What difference does it make that CASABLANCA was scripted as it went along? All that means is that the script they wrote as they went along is great...they could have just as easily written a bad script as they went along, and it would have led to a bad movie.

Kirk

If we're indeed in the minority on this, then that certainly speaks poorly for this being a forum where informed people can exchange thoughts and opinions of some merit. Because you are right -- not all opinions are equally valid. That's why we go to school and assume that, for the most part, we have something of value to learn from our teachers. It's why we read books, liner notes, see movies, go to museums, etc.

I was going to give up on moviemusic.com altogether and still might, but your breath of rationality in a sea of conceited ignorance has caused me to consider hanging around at least a little longer.

While I don't agree with all of Roger Ebert's opinions, he is indeed more of a film scholar than I will ever be, and even when I disagree with him, I always get something additional out of a film by looking at it from his perspective. Anyone who doesn't think he can learn something from professional critics is living in a megalomaniacal world where they feel superior to everyone else.

I think the fact that anybody can post on a seemingly "professional" forum such as a web site is partly responsible for this delusional thought process where all of a sudden people think that they don't need anybody's intelligence other than their own.

We can all "compose" music with sampling and press CDs and make pretty CD labels and jewel box art with our desktop publishing software and create seemingly professional products. But it doesn't mean the music has any worth or we have any artistic talent whatsoever. It means we can use a mouse and press buttons. Chimpanzees can do that, too.

We can even post our entire screenplays on the internet for all to see, but that doesn't mean that our script has any merit other than to prove that we can type for 120 pages and do a spell-check.

Many people seem to forget (or don't want to remember) that there's a big difference between those with actual talent and those without. And between those who have proved they can make a living off their music or writing or art and those who can't.

Just because you can post your thoughts where everyone can read them does not mean your thoughts have the same worth as those who have actually created ideas that have contributed positively to art, culture, and philosophy on a global level.

While film music forums are not going to change humanity in any big (or even teeny-weeny) fashion, even here there are intelligent posts, ignorant posts, and downright stupid posts. While everyone has the right to state his or her opinion, know that your 1000-word treatise just might have less value than somebody's two-word response.