I want to hear your assessment of the current Hollywood scene. Because of “Star Wars” and all these films, have things changed for movie composers? Do producers stand up and take notice of you now? You have been through the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s right on the front lines; so what’s it like now? The categorical answer to the question would be ‘Yes’. A couple of interesting things have happened. I think that the composer, because of the success of the Williams scores, is in a somewhat better position now than he has been in for some time. The attitudes appear to be a little bit looser, less doctrinaire on the part of producers. There was one time a feeling, you know, that they wanted either a rock score or a commercial score. You hear much less of that now, in spite of the fact that certain types of scores have taken off. There have been, let’s say, two great influences: one is “Star Wars” and the other side is “Saturday Night Fever”. Each has inaugurated a trend. “Fever’s” influence was to get producers interesting in buying old pop records and using them as a score to a film: pictures like “Car Wash”, to a certain degree even “Animal House” which I was involved with. Making a score out of what are essentially pop records. But it still seems to me that the situation is somewhat looser now. I know in my own case, for instance, this year (1979) I’ve done three completely different kinds of things. In a picture called “Zulu Dawn” I did a completely classical symphonic score with the Royal Philharmonic of London; in the case of “Meatballs” I did a score whose attitude is mod, you know, kind of a song score including rock and disco stuff which I wrote; and now I’m doing “Saturn III” which is a science fiction movie in which I’m using very largely avant-garde improvisational techniques. For what kind of orchestra? Well, for different kinds of orchestras… One consists of four piccolos, four bass flutes, one soprano singer, four bass singers, four harps, organ, eight celli, and four bass… One of the other orchestras consists of nothing but various percussion instruments. I give this as an example to illustrate the fact that the situation is somewhat looser now. It seems also, at least at this point in time, that producers are willing to spend quite a bit of money on music. Up until these scores you’re telling me about now, it seemed to me that you were moving more in terms of melodies, in terms of songs, than ever before. I refer to “Animal House” and “Gold” and “Trial of Billy Jack”. Those rely on very effective little ‘starter’ songs, before they get into orchestral functional music at all, which in turn is based on these songs. Well, I’ve always been really partial to linear writing. I think line is really sort of the spine of music, personally. Ordinarily, even though I just described a score I’m doing which is not linear, which is improvisational and is fairly vertical in the sense that it will sound like a lot of musical sound effects, I’m not generally very partial to that kind of writing. For instance I’m not very partial to a composer like Penderecki. I think the sounds are wonderful. I think it’s wonderful to utilize those sounds in the cause of music. But I think there is a tendency to use music in the cause of making sounds! The evolution of songs in my scores has been simply a reflection of, so to speak, “where it’s at”. In certain cases I’m importuned to create something that can be used outside of the film – a commercial song, I mean. Well, in the case of “Meatballs”, the whole design of the score was my idea, I thought it was appropriate. “Gold” really only has one song in it that was placed in a very prominent way. No, there were at least three. The song I’m speaking of was an attempt to find an exploitation handle for the film. Let’s drop that and let me find out what it was like doing scores for television. You’ve done a number lately. Let me tell you, it’s really improved in recent times. What’s happened in recent years with the advent of mini-series and the filming of important literacy works for television is that the budgets have been punched up to a degree where much more money is available for music. The music is getting a great deal more attention and it’s getting much more like doing a film score that it ever has been. Like “Captains and the Kings”. Yes, that sort of thing. I had a very free hand and I didn’t have this constant thing of people watching the budget and that sort of stuff. So that you could really stretch out as you did in the days of “Summer and Smoke”. Yes, right. Exactly so. The only problem that television has, and nobody has found a way to defeat it, is that the schedules are inhuman. There is very little time to get the work done. And yet that’s why some people go in and do them. They know it’s going to be a short schedule and they can move in and out quickly. I don’t think that’s a fair statement, John. I think people have got used to the schedules and I don’t know personally of anybody who does those projects for that reason. What about scoring a single series like “Ellery Queen” or “Owen Marshall”, have those changed? That hasn’t changed a great deal. I’ve done very little of that and what I have done has been exhausting. It’s kind of fun for the first month or two and then you get worn out very quickly. One I enjoyed tremendously was “Owen Marshall” many years ago. I enjoyed it because I was working with a very literate producer, John Epstein, and we had great fun doing that show. The music was not over-used nor abused in the series. “Ellery Queen” I enjoyed, although it got to be something of a disappointment because they got to a confusion of styles, finally. We started in a frame that was somewhat more arch than it ended up. “Arch”? Yes. They wanted to push it more toward being serious and of course it was much less fun that way. How does television compare with films in the producer’s general control over your musical decisions? Well, obviously I prefer, in TV or in films, to have someone who leaves me alone completely. In television the discussions are usually conceptual and then they leave you to go to work. What I actually prefer, and this happens mostly in films, is to find a producer who has informed and definite opinions about things – and, mind you, the operative word is ‘informed’. If a producer has opinions, you can either agree or find a way to disagree and come to some conclusion. I’m thinking of “To Kill a Mockingbird” here, where you had to decide the concept of the music before you could begin to write a note. I mean, the whole posture of that score was the composer’s contribution, was it not? Now you’ve hit there on a very ideal situation. There’s a case in which both the director, Robert Mulligan, and the then-producer Alan Pakula, were both people of tremendous sensitivity to music itself, and very literate in their ability to express what it was they wanted to express… And also very open to any ideas I might bring to it. For instance, we talked a great deal. But in the final analysis I was left to go away and work something out. And it was many weeks before I did decide what the concept was. But with those kinds of people, when I decided what the concept was, I could have a conversation and we could communicate about it. Now, that’s pretty rare. Did you have any dead-ends on that film? I mean, did you try to describe the setting in your early score efforts, or talk about racism, or to describe the summertime, or the courtroom aspects? No, I don’t think so. I finally wound up with really only one concept which I followed fairly well through the whole picture. What I was looking at and what I finally decided to do musically was my own interpretation of the magic of a child’s world. It was, sure, one of many choices – I mean, you indicated in your question that there were other possible ways to go. Did they lay in a temporary track for you on that film? I don’t remember, John. I don’t think they did. I will refuse to listen to a movie in that state, anyway. I won’t listen to a film that has a temp score in it. Do other composers say that? I don’t know. But for me, it inhibits ideas to hear a pre-fabricated score in a film that I am supposed to provide original music for. Can you explain how you got to be the spokesman for Southern-flavored movies back in the fifties and early sixties? Pictures like “Summer and Smoke”, “God’s Little Acre”, “The Wild Side”, “Mockingbird”, even “Hud” to an extent. All these southern-based scores in which you developed an immediately identifiable sound of the steamy, sultry, summertime – the southern summer. Why you? Well, of course, like all those things, it’s accidental. There were a slew of those films at one time. I think that’s part of a particular phase of my career which has to do with Americana in general. I’ve always had an interest in American folk music; it’s odd to think now that in the forties I was a student of American folk music, that was a very exotic study for anyone to be doing. Nobody knew anything about it. Of course, after the war, people like Burl Ives and The Weavers and Pete Seeger finally popularized American folk music and then, oddly enough, it came into the general pop culture. And even I might take some credit for having had that particular kind of influence on film music, because a lot of my earlier scores are heavily tinged with that Americana. That is to be differentiated from the sort of middle-European music that Max Steiner or Victor Young used in American western films. I’m talking about authentic Americana music. Do you remember scoring “God’s Little Acre”? It seems there as if you recreated the sound of the south without relying on the instrumental clichés that we associate with the area and the period. I would attribute that, once again, to that solid grounding I had in American folk music. I put my scores in sort of ‘families’. “The Great Santini” belongs in the family we are talking about here: what you call my southern style, and what I call my Americana family. And there’s a little tune in that which is going to sound very folkish, although actually there isn’t a single ‘folk’ instrument in the orchestra. That’s exactly what I mean. It also comes out in those clarinet shuffling pieces from “Little Acre”. Did you study folk music intentionally? Yes, absolutely. I was still in school. I had a friend who played banjo and it was the first time I had ever seen a five-string banjo. And he played extraordinary things on it. He used to play a tune about East Virginia, ‘Come All You Fair and Tender Maidens’, which was a really ancient American folk tune, and I was fascinated by the culture so I started to really get into it. Are those lush, chromatic waltzes that are in all those southern scores part of that background too? No, I see those quite differently, they were used for a totally different reason, really. You will find that I use those chromatic waltzes for a sort of ‘perfumed decadence’. They’re not really indigenous to the American scene at all. If anything they feel sort of French to me. But that’s part of the deep American South too: the French quarter of New Orleans, the “Walk on the Wild Side” brothels, the Tennessee Williams quarter where Alma lives… I always think of “Summer and Smoke” as lying halfway between those waltzes and the southern sound, as blending those 2 things into the definitive sound of Tennessee Williams. His plays we think of as Americana, and yet what they really were are little European chamber pieces. You’re absolutely right. I think of “Summer and Smoke”, too, as a rather unique score in my career. I never wrote another one quite like it. There’s a lot more details in that score than I ordinarily do. I usually use much bolder strokes, whereas that score is more tentative. And you find that even when that big, sort of passionate tune is going, that inside of the tune the figures are turning and turning with a restless quality. I don’t think I’ve ever written so many notes in my life. But it was all keyed to the character of Alma. Strangely enough, although Southerners have continually told me that the score sounds southern to them, I must say that there’s something under the conscious level that makes it that way. I certainly didn’t try. I think they’re looking at it the way I see those chromatic waltzes: the steamy, sultry, southern summer nights that those evoke for me. The score really hangs together, too, in the same way that Herrmann’s “Ghost and Mrs. Muir” hangs together. Well, it is not dissimilar, in some ways. Something of the linear characters. It’s interesting that you should mention that, because “Ghost and Mrs. Muir” is probably my favorite Herrmann score. I have a tremendous emotional reaction to that score, probably because I have some affinity to it through my own work. Let me just say in conclusion about “Summer and Smoke”, that I keyed everything to the character of Alma – sad, wistful, nervous, a quiet inner turmoil waiting to explode. Character traits flavored by setting. Which is exactly what Herrmann did with “Muir”. Exactly, and that was my point in thinking, now, about comparing the two. But anyway, one of the things I have enjoyed most about my career is the fact that I have eluded any kind of permanent typecasting. Other composers have not been nearly so fortunate as I. John Williams has gotten to the point where he would love to do just a simple love story. Which he’s done well before. Well, of course, I mean he’s a superb composer, he can do anything. Jerry Goldsmith is cast in a particular mold a lot of the time, although he gets to do more different kinds of things. But I’ve been very fortunate because, although the sound I make is readily recognizable, although in some ways I may be more stylistically consistent than all the other composers, still I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to do all different kinds of things. I have been typecast for short periods of time: there was one period when people thought I was a jazz composer after “Man with the Golden Arm”, then another period when people thought I was only a western composer after “The Magnificent Seven”. You yourself brought up the southern films, which stated coming my way one after another. Now, the funny thing is that after “Animal House” and the success of “Meatballs” and “Airplane”, all of a sudden I’m being offered all these comedy films now. And yet there are always precedents in my own career. I mean I’ve done comedies many times. I believe the third picture I ever did was a comedy. Nobody would remember that of course. It was never called “Never Wave at a W.A.C.”, with Rosalind Russell. Sounds like a real gem. And the fourth picture I ever did was a western of a kind, “The Battles of Chief Pontiac”. But then I did a true western very early in my career, before I became the ‘western composer’, and that was in the fifties, “The Tin Star”. I had been fortunate enough to do all these kinds of things before, but then after a special success in one of those areas I got typecast. But again, only for a short period at a time. Western, jazz, comedies… “Cat Women of the Moon” was not a comedy film, I gather? [Laughs] “Cat Women” was a science fiction movie. In fact, it’s interesting; you go back and look at that movie and another one I did from those days called “Robot Monster”, and both of those pictures were science fictions made for next-to-nothing and they’re just being made much fancier today, yet they’re the same subjects! “Cat Women of the Moon” was just simply about the fact that the moon was inhabited by these cat ladies, as we know very well to be true. And it was about a mission to the moon. I won’t even ask what kind of music you wrote there. Well, those two pictures were written for rather similar orchestras and they were in their own way sort of oddly avant-garde scores. There was a leaning on electronics in both of those and they were written in the early fifties. They were written for instruments like the Novachord and electronic organs and things of that kind. Well, comedy scores are a different thing, and I wondered what thoughts you had on the subject. What Henry Mancini always says is that he likes comedy scores to be, not jokey, but humorous and warm to play against the laughs, or play along with them. I get the same message from your scores. I’ll tell you what’s very gratifying about doing comedy. People enjoy comedy and they feel good there. And it’s a nice feeling to be part of that kind of thing. I know in “Meatballs”, for instance, I’ve seen the film with many audiences now and I think the music played a great part in the sort of affectionate relationship people have with the film. It’s basically a gentle movie, a sweet story, in spite of all the slapstick gags and so forth, and it’s gratifying to be part of something like that and see the people having a good time, with your music coaxing them along. For instance, there’s that scene in “Animal House” which I got such a kick out of having been a part of – when Belushi makes the big speech, when he rouses them from being all down. Anybody who knows anything about film scoring recognizes the role that music played in the success of that scene. It’s kind of fun to be part of that. How about a different kind of comedy, like “The World of Henry Orient”, where music is really underlying a whole character framework of the comedy, and not involved in the jokes at all? Yes, well, I approached “Henry Orient” not as a comedy at all. I approached it as a gentle, sweet story, a children-people story. Except in that film, there were a couple of things that were just music gags. I speeded things up and took the music mechanically up an octave, and so forth. Just to try and admit Sellers’s wackiness in the scoring a little bit. Talk about your one Oscar-winning score, “Thoroughly Modern Millie”. Did you have any control over what you would be doing there? Absolutely. Total control. They didn’t bother me at all on that one. I enjoyed scoring “Millie”, it was kind of fun. I liked the whole concept in fact, the way they used the song and everything. Is there a way not to score a comedy? Well, that’s a very big question. Yes, I think if you interfere with the basic humor of a situation you could hurt it; and there are many different ways of interfering. One way is to simply write the wrong kind of music but that would just be inept. But another way to interfere is, as “Henry Orient” has indicated to you, to make musical jokes while the joke is already happening on screen. Yes, like playing consecutive seconds or something like that. Exactly. You spoke of “families” that you put your scores into in your own mind. Where does something like “The Gypsy Moths” or “Birdman of Alcatraz” fit in? Are they Americana to you? Well, there you’ve got me. “Gypsy Moths” is something I don’t really remember very well. I recall many scores very well, but not that. I wasn’t overly fond of the film. I do remember being very fond of the main title I wrote for that picture. There was a strange sort of mix of half styles, American, migrant, European… Well, if all that communicated itself to you, it might reflect an uncertainty on my part as to what to do at all. I had a great deal of difficulty finding a hook in that score. I remember two sequences. The main title and one long sequence that was, I believe, a tentative love scene. Their walk at night. Burt Lancaster and Deborah Karr walking alone at night, with just a pizzicato bass, a long, linear tune that I liked a lot. But as I say, if something was unclear musically it would probably be because I was unclear what to do. There are other sort of ‘mixed’ scores you’ve done, whose styles to me never seemed quite to jell or be sure of themselves. “See No Evil” with Mia Farrow running around on an English estate, at the mercy of an unseen killer, is one of those. Can you describe what you wanted to do here? I did a score which had inherent in it tremendous violence and activity coming right out of a kind of pressure cooker – with one big romantic sequence in it. What’s the mix of styles that bothered you? The single electric guitar note all through the first half hour, which denotes the killer whom we only see the boots of, then suddenly that big love theme scored in simple thirds for the center of the film, then the terror music at the end which didn’t seem to relate to the other very distinctive sounds. Well, I was the third composer on that film, but what I didn’t know at the time when I first took the film was that the second composer on “See No Evil” was André Previn. And apparently he had written a score which was found unacceptable. I could never get anybody to play his score for me, because apparently they destroyed all the material, which sounded to me sort of brutish. But had I known that Mia Farrow’s husband at the time, Previn, had written a score, I doubt I would have accepted the assignment. That’s long after he had stopped scoring films, wasn’t it? Yes, he was already music director of the London Symphony. It must have been quite a favor for him to have done it at all. I would think so. If someone as distinguished as André Previn did the score and didn’t succeed – had I known that I would not have wanted to take a whack at it myself. It would make me suspect the producers. Let me put a few specific film scenes before you here, whose scoring interested me, and see if you can recall them specifically and can say what your thinking was in each of them. There’s a scene at the end of “To Kill a Mockingbird”, a scene in the bedroom I believe, when the unseen villain reveals himself to be a simple-minded innocent who was actually protecting Gregory Peck’s children rather than threatening them. And the girl scout says to him, “You want to say goodnight to Jem, Mister Arthur?” This is all in a bedroom with, again, southern summer evening lighting all around, coming through the windows. And in your score are a series of descending string chords, very like a chamber sound, that have a feeling of real benediction to me, a real summation of all the feelings of the film. It’s a scene that becomes significant because of your music. Yes, it was very, very special to me. It was like a slow curtain of a very special character. It’s very difficult to say much more about it, because it was sort of a very internal, very personal reaction. I love that scene. There’s a chase sequence towards the end of “Where’s Jack?” which has a kind of music that’s not typical of you. Well, there again, that’s a film I don’t readily remember very well. It was an association with James Clavell that I very much enjoyed. It was also my introduction to the Republic of Ireland, which I know think of as my sort of second home. I have more good friends there than perhaps anyone else… What I was trying to do in that score… I was trying to avoid simply doing a ‘period’ score. I was trying to do something slightly more sophisticated and I could never make it come out right for myself. So once again, my memory of it is sort of vague. I don’t think I could readily conjure up more than a couple of songs to memory. Nice songs, too. Did they take off at the time? No. You must remember that the film was a total failure. I don’t think the movie played in the US more than one week. It was a disaster. A remake of a remake of “Tom Jones”. Well, the same bandwagon anyway. Another specific scene: this time in “The Scalphunters, with Shelley Winters in the back of a wagon and out of the distance comes the sound of a music hall piano, used also as a device in “Magnificent Seven”. Yes, that was just a reference to the sort of music hall world, the completely different world she had left behind to come out to this barren, warrior-infested American West. Funny you should notice that, most people just look at her face there and think she’s doing the whole thing by marvelous acting but it’s really the music, it’s really a musical device that conjures up that music hall world and how anachronistic it is for her to be out there. Actually that’s a score I very much enjoyed doing. There was a score treating a particular kind of Americana and I always felt that the music had a nice flavor of wit about it, in keeping with the story. Yes, the perky banjo in the titles. Yes. And there’s a case where I actually did use the instrument. Almost the first time. No, I used a banjo in “God’s Little Acre”. In the divining rod sequence. I actually used an American folk tune there. Have you done any concert writing lately? Well, no, not really. I’ve done things, like I wrote a piece for the installation of the chancellor of the university there. I do some of that sort of thing, yes, but not what I’d call concert hall music per se. And conducting? I do a lot of conducting. I used to conduct an orchestra in Los Angeles, which I no longer do. I did that for about eight years. But I do a lot of guest conducting, for instance here in Santa Barbara, and I do concerts with the Royal Philharmonic when I have time. Let’s talk about breaking the law for a moment. Breaking the law? All right, how so? Pirates? Pirate recordings, yes. Do you know how many people have that piece of yours called ‘The House’? Has that been pirated? Long ago. Was it originally a concert piece or a piece of film music? That was originally a divertimento written for a film called “The House”, by the Eames brothers, who did “Toccata for Toy Trains”. So, in other words, it was written as a whole but meant for a film. Originally released on a reel tape by Audio Arts, Inc. And now, you say, pirated. And “The Gypsy Moths”. Do you know about that? I do indeed. That is a really nasty story which, unfortunately, cost a lot of film music fans a lot of disappointment. I used to sometimes send people tapes of things, if they asked for them. In this instance, my son was being given tennis lessons by a film buff and I gave him a series of tapes, all of which subsequently showed up on these bootleg records. And the result is that I won’t give anybody tapes anymore. Pirating is big business. Yeah, I know, but a couple of people on the west coast here have already gone to jail for it. Have they? Well, good. Listen, let me tell you something about all that, John, which goes back to the days when I was doing the Film Music Collection records, and the magazine to which you contributed so frequently and so well: I firmly believe there is an international market for soundtracks. Nobody’s going to get rich over it, but I think there’s enough to warrant major companies putting out new scores. I mean, enough beyond the John Williams blockbusters. Even the smaller scores and smaller films: I think there’s a market for that music on records. When you have pirates working underground, whether they get away with it or not – just the fact that they have a market should be a clue enough to the legitimate record companies that film music, for whatever reason, is marketable. We tried to establish an association with a major record company to underwrite Film Music Collection and couldn’t do it. See, I never wanted to make any money out of FMC. All I really want would be some record company to just pay the bills in exchange for having this music to distribute. Even if some individual out here could figure out a way to distribute these albums through the various independent soundtrack outlets around the country and could come in and do all the bookkeeping, FMC could probably make it. But I just don’t want, (1), to become a little distribution company myself, because I don’t have time for that; and (2), to lose money on it, I mean personal money. That’s all. So I believe there’s a market but there’s not, perhaps, a dependable way of reaching that market. Not is that market very dependable. I mean, a lot of soundtrack collectors have very unmusical, non-musical reasons for supporting one score and not another, so that it’s impossible to tell what they want. You’ve noticed that too. It’s a hobbyist’s field, unfortunately. At least the records aspect. Now. Let me just get your thoughts on your experience with Cecil B. DeMille. Ah, well, we could talk for an hour on that subject alone. That was an interesting case. We were talking about producers. You asked about what kind of producers I like to work with. Now here was a case of a producer who knew exactly what he wanted. Knew exactly, and could state it. But what he would do was listen to every piece of music you had written, on the piano, and accept it or reject it at that point, before the recording. That must have been terrible for you. Well, it was difficult but… it was fascinating. Not only did he know what he wanted, but he had a whole philosophy of what motion picture scoring was for. It’s a philosophy I don’t happen to agree with, but I must say it worked perfectly well for his pictures. That philosophy was the use of music as a storytelling device; by that I mean that in a very doctrinaire way each screen character has a theme and whenever that character is on-screen, that music plays. Very Wagnerian. Which we’re back to with “Star Wars”. Yeah, right. But that’s what he wanted. He spotted that my music behind the great exodus scene in “The Ten Commandments” was too slow and what he wanted was usually right – for his films. I must say I learned a great lesson from him on that. The original piece was rather slow and ponderous: Moses leading his people forth and all that. But that’s what it looked like to me on the screen. He took great exception to that. He hated it. And I said to him, “If we do something that’s rousing and fast, won’t it look wrong?” He said, “No, trust me, it will work.” He was absolutely right about it. The great lesson I learned was that music can appear to speed action up and it’s a lesson I put to very good use in “The Magnificent Seven”. But DeMille was, of course, very experienced in music. The whole thing was extraordinary. I mean, how many directors would have taken a complete unknown like me and entrusted him with what was at the time the most ambitious film ever made? Did he know about “The Man with the Golden Arm”? No, not at all, because I hadn’t done it yet. What happened was that I went on hiatus for about six months, while DeMille was cutting “Ten Commandments” and it was during that time that I scored “Golden Arm”. Then just before I came back to DeMille to finish up, I found out he had run “Golden Arm” at his home to see what it looked like, and I thought, “That’s gonna be the end of me.” He was very funny about that. He told me at the office the next day, “You know, I ran ‘Man with the Golden Arm’ last night in my home.” And I replied, “Yes, I know, I was afraid of that.” And he said, “No, I thought you did a very nice job. It was really very good and exciting. But don’t do anything like that in ‘The Ten Commandments’.” He’d have been even more nervous had he seen “Cat Women of the Moon”! Now, what were you like in those days? You had accomplished certain things as a painter, had wanted at one time to be a dancer, had credentials as a concert pianist. Where did your ideals lie? I really liked this “composing thing”. And I really had an idea that I would like to do that, but even though I had got a great deal of experience in the Army doing it, I found out that when I got out, there were not a lot of jobs to be had in it. So I just fell back on what I had been trained all along to do, which was to be a concert pianist. Do you still practice? No, unless I have an appearance somewhere.