The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here
The Graduate
Three Days of the Condor
The Electric Horseman
Heaven Can Wait
Reds
Absence of Malice
On Golden Pond
ON MOVIE SCORES
It really isn't important how pretty the music is. The film isn't about music; the score isn't about music. What matters is how helpful the score is to the film.
ON MYSTERY
I think the function of a score is subliminal and psychological. I believe there's a mystery about the emotional response a listener gets from a piece of music. I can't define how it works, but it's there in some way. How you respond to a Mahler symphony will certainly differ from your reaction to a Donna Summer record, but in both cases something happens to you. You're maybe not even aware of it.
What we try to accomplish in film scoring is to channel those responses in an organized way, so that an audience can be moved in one direction or another without actually knowing why. I believe that's the most functional use of film music.
ON THE TUG OF WAR
By the time the composer gets hired, the battle lines are drawn. Usually, the composer comes on very late, after the film has been rough-cut. There may already have been three years of work on the project with a producer, a director, a writer, and others being involved. And if there are differences of opinion, which there frequently are, usually I find the producer on one side and the director on the other. And not just about music--about the project in general; maybe one wants a scene left in and the other doesn't. When I show up, there's a preconception of getting me on one side or the other. In other words, I'm often in a tug of war. The director might say about the producer, "Don't listen to him, listen to me, he doesn't understand the film, I'm the only one who understands it." And the producer might take me aside and say the same thing. I don't mean to imply that this happens every time out, but it's happened to me often enough by now to make me think maybe it's not an uncommon disease.
ON THE PROBLEM
I'm convinced there are at least a half dozen ways to successfully score almost every film; I mean radically different ways with radically different styles of music. So the crucial problem becomes: Which way is the very best? That's the problem I roll around on the floor with.
ON FIRST IMPRESSIONS
The best situation for me is to see the cut of the film the first time without other people around. I really think that one of the biggest contributions a composer can bring to a project is simply this: The composer is one of the few people involved at that point who has never seen the film before. And on his first viewing he truly sees the reality of it. He doesn't see the script as it was before the rewrite, he's not seeing the earlier cuts before all the scenes were changed, he's seeing exactly what's on the screen now. There is a certain objectivity that lasts for that first running. And for me, that first impression is terribly important--because when I see the film that first time, I'm the audience.
MUSIC FOR DA VINCI
I don't think Da Vinci should have a big score at all. I mean, the orchestra should not be large--I think I'd try to use as few instruments as I could get away with. I'm not speaking of the amount of music here, I'm talking about the kind of sound.
Less can really be more in film scoring. That's why so many art films are so impressive musically: They are sometimes scored with just a few instruments (frequently because of a lack of budget), and that sparseness is artistically quite pleasing. Personally, I find that kind of thing terribly appealing.
And I think basically that Da Vinci requires a two-motif score--the kid's and Bimbaum's.
ON MUSIC FOR BIMBAUM
When we first meet him in the shop, and through the dialog, I don't think we need music for him. The haircut is what makes him an artist, so I'd like to introduce his theme once he's got the scissors in his hands and we can see the man at work.
We want to set him apart, he's unusual, and maybe we could do that with some kind of dissonance. But not too much; we don't want to make him scary. It's all a matter of degree.
I think the scissors are a specific, wonderful sound. Hopefully, they could be used as they exist, at the start, but then gradually we might change the reality of the sound by "bending" it electronically, or perhaps filtering it in some way.
I wouldn't want to get cute with the scissors--for instance, by making a waltz out of the scissor tempo. But I think they might be superimposed over some instruments to become part of the music--some high, shimmering kind of texture. I hear high sounds for this scene; maybe the first instrument would be a harpsichord, riding high over some mid-range muted strings. I don't know for sure, but I think I'd like a kind of hard-edged sound for Bimbaum. I'm not sure if his music should be melodic, but perhaps angular, with unusual intervals; not unpleasant, but harmonically and melodically different.
ON MUSIC FOR WILLIE
For Willie, I think one might just pick an instrument, and that would become his sound. It's an old device; I think it came from ballet and opera, where a character is identified by a specific instrument.
I don't know why, but at this point I hear the kid as a clarinet.
ON THE ENDING
I don't know if the ending can work musically the way you have it working in the script. You've got the music making a kind of an unusual plot point; it's supposed to take us into the future and let us know that Willie becomes an artist like Bimbaum.
Music is frequently asked to do things for film for which there are no ironclad guarantees of success, and this may be one of those times. You're also asking a lot from an audience, because they're not conditioned to think of music as carrying the plot in this way. They may be listening to the melody, and perhaps the orchestrations, etc., but are they really going to be able to absorb the idea of the kid becoming an artist, solely through the score?
I think things are further complicated by having him first fumble with the harmonica, then get better, then adding the guitar, and after that the piano.
Maybe a good way to start would be this: When the guitar enters, the harmonica stops. And when the piano takes over, the guitar stops. Maybe that way we could make the story point. In other words, when the guitar enters, the "harmonica" part of his life is finished. He's moving on. And he's done with the guitar when the piano begins--he's growing, getting older. At the very end, we could perhaps bring the three instruments together, but certainly not till then.
I'm not saying this solution would work; maybe, maybe not. The problem's still there: Audiences aren't stupid, but we're asking them to do things they're not accustomed to.
For me, the ending would be the challenge of the score. Before trying to write it, there would be a lot of rolling on the floor.
The Grusin interview reminded me again of one of the basic truths of filmmaking: We are all at each other's mercy.
Look, I know the producer's going to get killed by the studio and the director's going to be eaten alive by the star; I realize that just when the cinematographer has spent hours beautifully lighting a romantic garden scene, it's going to rain; I am aware that the production designer will be told, the morning he was supposed to shoot in the Sistine chapel, that he won't be allowed to use the Sistine chapel.
Well, tough about them, I've got troubles of my own.
I'm the screenwriter and my constant trouble is that my screenplay is toothpaste but my specific problem with Da Vinci was this: I couldn't figure out the ending.
The ending of the story centered too much on the family. I wanted the influence of Bimbaum to be what we were left with.
How, though?
Finally I get the notion for the scene where Willie is playing the harmonica and Bimbaum tells him everyone was terrible once. And in that scene Willie says how if he masters the harmonica he'll get a guitar and if he masters the guitar, then he'll get a piano.
So I blithely write the ending w
ith that thought in mind. It's so easy--I just type a few words. The music goes from crummy harmonica to good harmonica to guitar to piano. Final fade out.
Then Grusin tells me what you've just read about the ending--that I'm asking music to accomplish something that it may not be able to do. And of course, he's dead on the money. What I wrote was a literary conceit, and sometimes they don't shoot so hot.
The point is, if the ending can be made to work, it won't be because of me, it will be because the composer, in this case, finds a solution. For me to be at my best, I need everybody. We all, always, need everybody.
One last thing--I don't know about you, but as far as I'm concerned, now and forever, Willie's going to be a clarinet....
Director: George Roy Hill
George Roy Hill studied music at Yale and acting in Ireland. He began directing for live television--A Night to Remember, Judgment at Nuremberg. For a time he worked on Broadway, and the first play he directed, Look Homeward, Angel, won the Pulitzer prize in 1957. Among his dozen films are:
The World of Henry Orient
Hawaii
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Sting
The Great Waldo Pepper
Slapshot
The World According to Garp
ON DIRECTING
The principle job of a director is to first get his script and get it right and get it playable and get it almost foolproof. Then his job is to cast it as perfectly as he can.
If he does those two things, he can phone in the direction, because it doesn't make any difference, his work is eighty percent done. The fact is that no director with a poor script that is badly cast can make it work through his direction. On the other hand, if he gets the script right and the actors right, then he can invent, then the rest of it is fun--I don't mean it's all fun, it's partly a pain in the ass, but I mean, then you have a solid basis on which you can create.
ON SHOOTING
The most anxiety-producing time is the actual filming, because by that time you have the picture in your head. And to make the scenes all correspond to what's in your head is very difficult.
Because there's nothing more artistically devastating than the atmosphere of a movie production. There are so many people around, so many people bothering you, asking you questions, actors wanting to know what tie they're going to wear--you're in constant danger of being fragmented, and the vision you have of the scene gets eaten away by a thousand different problems. It's a physical drain--I exercise and get into shape, but shooting is always a very, very tough time for me.
ON STUDIOS AND STARS
If I went in tomorrow and said I wanted to do, say, David and Goliath, the studio might send out a research organization to find out if the public wanted a biblical film.
And if they got back certain replies they might say, "All right, do it, but we want to have a star play David or Saul" or what have you.
That's perfectly all right with me if the name values fit the movie. But if I go in and say, "Look, I've found this wonderful kid for David and an old actor who's been working in regional theatre and I want him for Saul," they might say, "All right, we'll do it, but we won't give you more than X million dollars."
Then you have to make up your mind. If you want to, you can do it for X million dollars, or you can compromise and take a star and get a bigger budget. But this is a constant, it's a continual give-and-take proposition when you're preparing a film.
Once I get the go-ahead, I never hear from them again; I don't know if that's unusual or not, but I don't get bothered by them. Except in the case of Hawaii, where things were disastrous.
ON DA VINCI: THE ARTIST AS SHIT
What you've done here is take a story that works pretty well on paper, but you really make some fundamental errors in your screenplay--and since you are very glib and very clever and very able, you have covered up those errors and masked them so that most people would not see them. But I would, I think, be inclined to unmask you.
Da Vinci is an allegory and I don't much like allegories--I agree with Mrs. Malaprop that allegories should stay on the banks of the Nile.
This story, as you yourself say, is about how an artist cannot survive in the modern world--you claim it's about a guy losing a job but that's not really accurate. And if it is accurate, it's pretty damn dull.
This guy loses a job because of his integrity, his artistic integrity. Fair enough. But you also make him a shit, which is a cliche--that in order to have integrity you must behave like a shit. Shaw did it first, I think, with Dubedat in "Doctor's Dilemma," and since then it has become a popular dramatic concept. I don't buy it. The people I've known with the greatest artistic integrity are usually the most professional and the most considerate, while I've unfortunately run into a few second-rate artists who behaved like shits in the belief that this somehow automatically endows them with talent and integrity.
ON DA VINCI: THE ARTIST AS A BARBER
The first thing to say, the artist as a barber is a very tough visual thing to do. You have, in some of your more purple prose, described the effects of these haircuts.
Well, you've left the poor fucking director saying, "Jesus Christ, this kid gets a haircut and everybody falls down," Now I've seen lots of kids and lots of haircuts, but I've never seen a haircut that made me want go "Ooh--ooh--ahh," especially in a small midwestern town.
It just doesn't happen--unless you let him have a fright wig in the first scene or a hairpiece of snakes, like Medusa, and then you clean him up. In which case, it's going to be fairly obvious.
And then when Willie gets the haircut and Porky sees it and says, "What a beautiful haircut"--you say in your notes that kids don't talk that way. Well, you're right there, they sure as hell don't. I mean, you could have Willie back-lit and you could have the Hallelujah Chorus coming in and have a close-up of him through gauze and you'll create an effect, but in fact, you're striving to do something that's false. No kid's haircut is going to bring the world to an end.
In the story, you accept this because you don't have to deal with the visuals, but in the screenplay, you run smack into them, and there's your director saying, "What the hell can I do?" I would sure try and pull every trick I knew--have the kid back-lit, have his hair a kind of glowing nimbus--but I'm going to have to light him through the whole movie that way, and it's going to take for fucking ever.
So you've got a very basic problem in the fundamental visual concept of the piece--and you're on very thin ice when you start accepting a haircut as a great work of art.
ON DA VINCI: THE HARMONICA SCENE
In your notes you say it would be phony, bad, dangerous, to write a scene that establishes a relationship with the boy and Bimbaum--and then you go ahead and write one. The very thing you say is bad, you write, The thrust of that scene where he's playing the harmonica is to give something to the old man. He softens his attitude toward the boy for one moment. It's the crotchety but dear old man--that's the artist saying what every young artist wants to hear. You know what I've written in the margin beside that scene? "Ugh." Enjoying this, Bill?
ON DA VINCI: WILLIE'S BEHAVIOR
He knows he's going to destroy his father--he's a cretin if he doesn't know he's going to destroy his father, because Porky's already done it. So this kid is so vain about how gorgeous he looks in his new haircut that he can't bear to have his father touch his head--is he suddenly Narcissus, in love with his haircut? Is that your basic sympathetic character? I'd boot the little kid's ass from here to doomsday.
I'm not suggesting this, but if he had a girl friend who, instead of Porky saying, "My God, you're beautiful," said, "Come on, I'm taking you to bed," and then later said, "I'm not taking you to bed anymore because you don't look so good," that would give him motivation to go get the haircut. Granted, a girl who behaves that way may not seem a girl with outstanding qualities, but we don't all pick the best, particularly when we're young. Then the boy is in the
grips of an overpowering emotion--sex, which we all know drives people to all kinds of desperate things. Of course, this would change the balance of the story--it would now be about a boy who destroys his father because he wants to get humped. And Mr. Bimbaum goes floating away.
ON DA VINCI: HYPE
This script as written has things in it that set a director's teeth on edge. Look at your opening page--"Pull back to reveal a schoolyard on an agonizingly beautiful spring day." Well, the studio executive reads that and he says, "Oh, an agonizingly beautiful spring day, that's great." The director says, "When have I ever agonized over a spring day?" Then he says to his cameraman, "Get me an agonizingly beautiful spring day."
It's all hype--you write it, the executive reads it, and after I've shot it, everybody looks at it and says, "Wait a minute, that isn't agonizingly beautiful, why isn't it?" It's the director's fault.
More hype--when we see Porky after his haircut, you say, "Porky, need it be said, has vastly improved his appearance." Well, what the hell can I do to improve his goddam appearance, I've only got hair. I've got to make everything suddenly wonderful, with hair!
One of your more egregious examples of hype is in the second haircut--where the river isn't like before, it's the Nile or the Amazon--"but whatever it is, it makes you gasp." Jesus God.
I wonder what Shakespeare would have read like if he wrote this way? "And it's the most agonizingly beautiful dawn you've ever seen and the ghost appears and it's the most staggering-fucking-looking ghost anybody ever saw."
Adventures in the Screen Trade Page 38