Elmer Bernstein was in Munich to record the score for “Spies Like Us”, and when the recording sessions were finished I pounced on him for a short interview: Why didn’t you go on with your Film Music Collection? Well, the thing with the Film Music Collection was that it was getting to be a very expensive hobby. We couldn’t sell enough records to cover the costs. I tried to interest big record companies in it, but they couldn’t be bothered. Now we are reviving the FMC with Varèse Sarabande and I’ve already done three albums for them: the original music from “True Grit” and “The Commanders”, the score from “The Black Cauldron”, and the third LP will be the music from a picture I did here in West-Germany, “Marie Ward”. I think there’s a better market for such albums than ten or twelve years ago… There are more collectors now, there’s “Spellbound” magazine in West-Germany, there’s “Soundtrack!” in Belgium with nearly 1,900 readers… There should be. My theory always was that there are many, many people who are interested in film music soundtracks, if they can only find them at their local record store. In any case, we’re going to reissue some albums from my FMC. Why was the music from “True Grit” rearranged for the Capitol album? Because Paramount felt that it would be more commercial. That’s hard to believe! Now, I talked with John Landis a few minutes ago, and suggested the possibility of an LP with your music from his films. There’s so much music in films like “Animal House” and “Trading Places” – people keep asking me, ‘Is there a soundtrack album?’ Hmmm… eventually. I’ll have to see. Varèse Sarabande might be interested in such an album. I don’t know, it’s hard to say. You tend to score comedy situations in a straight way. I think you did it for the firs ttime in “Hallelujah Trail”. Yes, I know what you mean. These comedies I’ve worked on, they take comic situations, but I score them seriously. But, very often, in a tongue-in-cheek way – a kind of sophisticated joke. The joke’s already in the film; why make a joke in the music as well? You can use the music in a serious way or in a jokey way, and it will work both times… Well, it’s not exactly the same. We’re talking about “Spies Like Us”, a film which is basically about a very serious subject: it’s about atomic bombs and missiles and the Soviet Union and the United States – these are all very serious subjects but they are treated here in a very light-hearted way. You can also do the same story as a very serious picture, a thriller. I do the same thing with music. That’s not quite the same as the music I would write if I were composing for a serious film. You are one of the few film composers whose style is immediately recognizable. Whom has it been influenced by? Well, there have been a variety of influences: Stravinsky, Copland, Mahler, Bartok… You are one of the few film composers who happens to have a very strong style, like Bernard Herrmann, or Alex North, for instance. A few days ago I was talking to someone about your music, and he said, “Elmer Bernstein, he’s always doing ‘The Magnificent Seven’! That’s perfectly true. Of course nowadays they’ll always say I’m a comedy composer, but these are all people who probably haven’t heard my scores for “Birdman of Alcatraz”, “Summer and Smoke”, “Desire Under the Elms”, or in more recent times, “The Chosen”. Your music can do a lot for certain actors. I never saw that better expressed than in “The Sons of Katie Elder”. There is a sequence where John Wayne is walking from one place to another, just walking, and you made it sound menacing. Did actors like John Wayne realize this? Did he tell you that he wanted you to score all his films? No, we never discussed it; but in the case of John Wayne, obviously he liked the music that I wrote, because after Dimitri Tiomkin left the United States, John Wayne used to like to have me do the music for his films. He never told me what to do, though. I think actually that, as actors go, John Wayne was the only one who wanted me to score his films. When you didn’t score one of his films, composers like Dominic Frontiere or Hugo Montenegro copied your style, for example in “Chisum”. That I don’t know, but generally speaking John Wayne liked me to score his films. Director John Sturges wrote the liner notes for the “Hallelujah Trail” album. Was he a musical man? No, John Sturges was a man who had a tremendous enthusiasm for music. He loved music and was very inspiring to work with and work for because of that. I heard you once said that a good composer must be able to use any style – you scored “The Ten Commandments” and then “The Man With the Golden Arm”, which are totally different in style. You’re at home in both jazz and symphonic music. I scored them in the same year, too. Now, about your remark… I wouldn’t say that every composer has to be able to do things in any style. I just think that the reason I am able to do that is because I’m interested in very many kinds of music. I’ve always loved jazz music, and I was trained as a concert pianist. Most of my life I studied classical music. I like very many different kinds of music, and I enjoy them. Has this hampered you in your career? Yes and no. In Hollywood, people are much more comfortable with a person who does only one kind of a thing and they tend to try to push you into doing one kind of a thing. When I scored “The Man With the Golden Arm”, nobody wanted me to do anything but work on jazz pictures. Now that I do comedies, nobody wants me to do a serious film any more! So it’s a big problem, it’s not an advantage. I know what you mean. Miklós Rózsa, for example, scored oriental fantasies and thrillers for a period of ten to twelve years… Exactly. Do you have any colleagues you admire? I admire lots of colleagues. Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams, Alex North, Miklós Rózsa… In this film score you’ve just recorded, I can recognize a lot of your older scores. Had that been suggested by John Landis? Well, in any score of mine that we do, I discuss them to a very great extent. In this case, it was an idea we arrived at. A kind of insider’s joke? It’s not an insider’s joke exactly, it is a way of treating the score that we think will not only support the picture, but will also at the same time be amusing. What is your favorite score? I have been interested in your music for 22 years, but I have never had the chance to listen to any of your concert music… Both styles are very different. As far as my film scores are concerned, my favorites would be pictures like “Birdman of Alcatraz”, “To Kill A Mockingbird”, that kind of score. Do they approach your concert style? No, not exactly. None of your concert works have been recorded so far? Not so far. Funny you should be asking these questions now. I’ve just been asked to write a concerto for guitar and orchestra, and also a concerto for flutes and orchestra. They would both be recorded. I have the album with the flute concerto by John Williams, and I heard that it didn’t sell very well. The people at Varèse Sarabande did not understand why the collectors who bought “Star Wars” did not purchase this record. Albums like that never sell too well. Why do some composers re-record their music for a subsequent record release? There are certain things you do when you are recording a film score – you have to keep track f timings, you can’t concentrate on the music itself because you have to worry about the timings and about what’s happening in the film. Did you score “Bolero”? No, my son Peter did. Obviously Peter at times sounds like me, he worked as my orchestrator for eight years, it’s only natural. Is it true that it is so difficult to find work as a composer or as a conductor in the United States if you come from abroad? There are a lot of problems. First of all, in order to work legally in the United States, you need all kinds of papers, and they are not easy to get. If you came to Hollywood, you’d have to have enough money, so that you can live on that for a while. You meet people, that’s how it works, someone you know needs an orchestrator, one thing leads to another, but it takes time. Thank you for taking the time to do this interview. [Bursts out laughing] It was not the time; it was the energy!