Pino Donaggio was born in Burano, an island of the Venice archipelago, on November 24, 1941. The son and grandson of musicians, he got a diploma in violin and studied composition with Ugo Amendola, currently headmaster of the Conservatore “Bendetto Marcello” in Venice. Donaggio began to write songs and took part in some festivals in Sanremo, in a short while becoming one of the most popular Italian singers and song-writers. His melancholy and melodious compositions are known all over the world. ‘Io che non vivo’ sold 55 million records and was recorded by various artists in several languages (the best-known version is probably Elvis Presley’s, who used the tile ‘You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me’). In 1973 Donaggio began scoring films. Even now, the composer remains close-mouthed about this sudden alteration of course. He had been approached by producer Ugo Mariotti to score “Don’t Look Now”, an ESP thriller by Nicholas Roeg, set in a bleak and wintery Venice. The critics of the respected English magazine Films and Filming felt it was that year’s best film sound track. This initial success made him more popular in Italy than abroad (a trend that would later be reversed). Next he scored “Corruzione a palazzo di Giustizia”, a dark judicial tragedy, and “Un susurro nel buio”, a thriller, both for Marcello Aliprandi, a close personal friend of his. His next assignment was “Hunst”, another ESP thriller starring Cameron Mitchell and Aldo Ray. Then, in 1977, he met director Brian De Palma. “I was working on ‘Susurro nel buio’, when the phone rang. It was De Palma, who wanted me to write the music for ‘Carrie’. A New York Times journalist, a friend of Brian, had bought a copy of the ‘Don’t Look Now’ soundtrack album in London, and liked the music a great deal. Bernard Herrmann had just passed away, and so De Palma was looking for another composer who’d be able to score ‘Carrie’. Brian liked my music: he projected ‘Don’t Look Now’ several times in the privacy of his home, and tended to close his eyes to enable him to concentrate better on the score. He wanted either Johnny Williams or myself for ‘Carrie’, and I won the assignment.” In Italy, he scored “Nero Veneziano” (1978) for Ugo Liberatore, another thriller set in the lagoon town. It’s an assignment he remembers with distinct displeasure: “This film, and the next one I did for Monte Hellmann, ‘Amore piombo e furore’, are typical examples fo the meddling producers can go in for. When they finished shooting ‘Nero Veneziano’, producer Luigi Borghese (who was in Brazil when filming took place) disliked the end product and cut out whole scenes, cannibalizing my music in the process. So, for example, a percussion effect originally heard when looking at an empty corridor had now been used to personify the main character. Olga Karlatos! Other cues had been removed, or transposed to other sequences that had nothing to do with their original intentions, especially for instance the hallucination sequences, which had been very carefully scored. “The same thing happened with ‘Amore, piombo e furore’: they wanted a song, Mexican style, for a love scene between Fabio Testi and Jenny Agutter, although the same melody had already been used for a sequence that took place near the Mexican border: it was a foolish thing to do, but the ‘powers-that-be’ decided that it was ‘commercial’, and so it would be a good time to force the theme on the audience a second time!” After these two misadventures Pino Donaggio scored “Pirahna” (1979) for Joe Dante, a young director from Roger Corman’s ‘stable’. Although this picture had been dubbed ‘a poor man’s “Jaws”’, it took in 9,000,000,000 Lire in Europe, and a further 5,000,000,000 Lire in the USA. For David Schmoeller, a former assistant of Bunue and Jodorowsky, he worked on “Tourist Trap”, enriching it with one of his most audacious and inventive scores. Aliprandi’s sexy comedy “Senza buccia” came next, in which he used some of his old successful songs as well as some tunes by other Italian songwriters. Still in 1979, he scored De Palm’s comedy “Home Movies”. A year earlier, De Palma had finished “The Fury”, but when the picture was released in theaters it flaunted a score by John Williams. “Well,” Donaggio states, “the executives at 20th Century Fox, impressed by the phenomenal success of films (and soundtracks) like ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ wanted a demand composer like John Williams, and Brian had to give in. Williams’s music was beautiful, and Brian was quite taken with the score, but afterwards he confided to me that I had done a better job for ‘Carrie’ than John Williams had done for ‘The Fury’… It’s one of the most flattering remarks I’ve heard in my career as a composer for films! I try to serve the movie, to propel it along with my music and I never try to put the score first, and the film second. I detest expressions like ‘Well done’ or ‘Beautiful’: I prefer words like “Valid’ and ‘Successful’.” “Home Movies” is a brilliant film… “Yes. Brian always says I can switch easily from a thriller to a comedy and back again, and that in any case I shouldn’t be fossilized in a single genre. Maybe he is right. We worked very hard on “Home Movies”. There are some cues ‘a la manière de Rossini’, which I composed in that scintillating style. In order to pull that off, I again had to study Rossini’s work for films – I was fairly familiar with them anyway, since I played violin with the Solisti Venetei and the Solisti de Milano.” After “Home Movies”, Donaggio did another horror movie for Herb Freed, “Beyond Evil”, followed by “Augh! Augh!”, a student comedy directed by fledgling director Fausto Toniato. Donaggio often works for newly qualified directors. “I like working with them. ‘Augh! Augh!’ was a minor picture but an intelligent one, and ‘La vita interiore’ for Gianna Barcelloni was in the same vein. I can express myself better, I have more freedom because they are still learning their craft. For me it is fundamental to understand the director I’m working with, a mutual understanding is very important for a successful film score. Sometimes it’s easier to obtain such an understanding with young people, young directors.” The third film Donaggio worked on for Brian De Palma was “Dressed to Kill”, an extremely complex score, and one in which the Venetian orchestra sounds particularly expressive. “Well, II think that in ‘Dressed to Kill’, ‘Blow Out’, and ‘Tourist Trap’, I was able to do some unique things. Particularly the museum sequence in the first picture, where the music closely follows the visuals, although the melody itself can survive on its own. If you listen to this cue, with the ‘perpetual movement’ executed by the sweeping violins and you remember Angie Dickinson wandering through the museum, picking up the stranger who will eventually make love to her in the taxi cab and later in his apartment, you won’t notice the pauses. When the film begins and you see Angie Dickinson taking a shower, that wonderful theme appears for the first time; but it disappears halfway through the picture, and the reason is simple: Angie is killed in the elevator, and I could no longer associate this particular theme with Angie’s character. “I believe that the use of a leitmotif should differ from one film to another, from one particular case to another. If there is a song you have to use several times in a movie, then it’s best, from a commercial point of view, to impregnate the entire picture with it; but if you compose a theme to be associated with a particular situation or a specific character (which frequently happens in my line of work), then you need much more sensitivity and common sense when distributing your thematic material.” After “Dressed to Kill”, Donaggio scored “La vita interiore”, based on Alberto Moravia’s novel; “The Fan”, produced by Robert Stigwood of “Saturday Night Fever” fame – a film starring Lauren Bacall, which many people felt referred to John Lennon’s murder; and “The Howling”, once more for Joe Dante. “The success of that movie was mainly due to the many special effects and to the ironic humor it had been injected with. Dante used everything in his picture: old film clips about lycanthropy, even scenes from Walt Disney films. He shot a serious horror movie, while making it obvious between the lines that he didn’t believe a word of it himself; as a result, ‘The Howling’ is a ‘scare’ movie with makes the audience burst out laughing at times. I like working with Joe Dante. He’s a meticulous person.” Then came “Il gatto Nero” by Lucio Fulci, based on one of Edgar Allen Poe’s stories, followed by his fourth collaboration with De Palma, first shown at the 1981 Venice Film Festival where it suffered a lot of negative criticism: “Blow Out”, a melodramatic thriller with John Travolta. Donaggio gave the film an intense score, brooding and threatening, which the orchestra went at full tilt. That same year he polished off “A venezia, carnevale, un amore”, a ballet film with Rudolf Nureyev, which hovered between dreams and reality. In 1982 he scored “Morte in Vaticano”, a thriller teetering between fantasy and religion, and “Oltre la porta”, Liliana Canani’s controversial film set in Morocco, starring Marcello Mastroianni; more recently he worked on “Tex” for Walt Disney Productions, “La via Degli Specchi” for Giovanna Gagliardo (a former assistant of Milos Jancso), “Hercules” and the sequel, “My Darling Shiska” and “La petra di Marco Polo”, his first television score. Any way you look at it, Pino Donaggio is a very busy man. I ask him, very indiscreetly, whether he earns more today by scoring films that he used to do when writing songs. “Without doubt you can earn more by writing songs. If you are a film composer, it takes longer to become known. However, scoring for films can make you famous. Before I began working for the film industry, people in America didn’t know who I was. They probably knew ‘You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me’, but certainly not Pino Donaggio!” How do you score a film? “First of all I sit down at the piano and write down the various themes I’ll develop later. While I’m doing this, I’m already thinking of the various musical instruments I’ll use. Next, I orchestrate my score. It’s all a part of the logical process of composing. Then finally I take the score to Natale Massare, who will conduct it. His contribution is mainly of a technical nature, and of offering practical advice. Once he told me, in regard to a certain musical passage, ‘We’ll need two days in the recording room in order to do this properly.’ Which is impossible, as the time allotted for rehearsals and recording is very limited. As a rule you can get through each piece twice during rehearsals, and then you have to record. The musicians are used to a certain level of difficulty, beyond which you cannot go. Once I have had to rewrite a passage for violin-cello and contrabass, because they simply couldn’t play the cue, they were often out of tune…” Do you think that film soundtracks play an important part in the acceptance and the general knowledge of movie music? “They play a very important role, although in Italy it’s a concept that has not yet been accepted. In the United States, however, there’s a prosperous market for soundtrack albums, especially discs with symphonic film music. I also feel that a soundtrack LP may help to remember the film. In my own case, for example, I’ve been lucky since the leitmotif I wrote for ‘Dressed to Kill’ has been recorded in two or three other versions (even in Japan), one of them by one of The Supremes. A thing like that can promote both the picture and the album.” How did you become involved with Varese Sarabande, who have been putting out many of your scores on record? “I must confess that I did not even know them! One fine day they released ‘Piranha’ without my prior knowledge (in America, whether there’ll be an album is usually stipulated in the film contract in advance), and I think they liked my music. Then they wanted to release ‘Tourist Trap’, and they showed an interest in putting out LPs of ‘Home Movies’ and ‘The Howling’ while I was still busy writing the respective scores!” Regarding “Tourist Trap”, it’s a disquieting score… “Indeed, I had some inspired ideas: the more a film impresses me, the better my music will be. For instance during the title sequence there was this black screen, and you hear the atonal main title. Many friends in America have told me that it’s a beautiful main title, because you can’t decipher it, you don’t know what it means and what will happen next. Then you don’t hear that particular theme again until well into the second half of the movie, the arrival at the museum.” What about your use of those female voices for the mannequins? “When the mannequins moved their mouth, it came to me in a flash – I wanted to use women’s voices, very close to the microphone, to give the illusion they were coming alive. You get such ideas in films where you have more freedom to experiment, and this usually happens when you work with younger, lesser-known directors. When I work with Brian De Palma, who is musically knowledgeable, I know the basis to start from, which is selecting themes. Whereas with other directors I have to start from zero.” What do you think of directors who use existing music, pop or classical, in their pictures? I’m thinking here, to stick with ‘scare’ films, of “The Shining” where Kubrick used pieces by Bartok and Penderecki, synchronizing them to his picture… “You must bear in mind that the film editor deserves merit also. Working with Brian I have come to realize how vital the role of the editor is in obtained absolute synchronization of sound and picture. Using existing music to score a movie, the way Kubrick does, is O.K. if it helps the film. I’d say that while the images on the screen inspire me musically, Kubrick tracks his pictures with music that enhances the images. We mustn’t think that Bartok and Penderecki were chosen casually to ‘score’ ‘The Shining’. Kubrick was very familiar with their music, and he conceived the scenes functioning with the music he wanted to use, the way he has done for most of his previous films. But I didn’t like what Francis Coppola did in ‘Apocalypse Now’: he used the ‘Rise of the Valkyries’ in the helicopter sequence, fitting the music to the images on screen. He makes fun of things, in this instance fun of the music, and I thoroughly dislike that.” Which are the film composers you like best? “I must stress that I don’t have much time to go to the cinema, as I’m a busy person. I’ve always liked the cinema, but these days I notice the music more and this prevents me from being totally absorbed in a film. However, I very much like the scores composed by Bernard Herrmann, Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams, and our Ennio Morricone.” How is it possible to learn the craft of composing for films? Are film/music schools useful? “Nobody has ever taught me about music, and yet, I have succeeded. Actually it’s more a matter of sensitivity, of taste. I have a great visual memory and I use it to fix the images on the screen and to work on them. Naturally, the impression got from those images differ from one person to the next. That is not something you can learn. Instead, you learn how to dish out effects, contrasts, especially in thrillers such as ‘Tourist Trap’. This can be learned with practice. When I had finished ‘Don’t Loop Now’, I realized that I had scored some sequences in Herrmann’s style. Later I understood why: both Herrmann and I studied violin, and a violinist composes in a certain way, while a pianist approaches things in a completely different manner. It’s the way a melody is conceived, the way a theme is orchestrated. If you listen to my scores in a chronological sequence, you’ll notice a certain evolution in the orchestration: from ‘Don’t Look Now’, orchestrated by Giampiero Boneschi, to the more recent ones like ‘Blow Out’, where the music has a symphonic dimension. This was made possible by studying scores by other composers and seeing how they handled orchestrations. I think I learned more in this way than would have been possible by my going to any music school.” In the United States they tend to call you the ‘Italian Herrmann’. Don’t you think that’s a somewhat restrictive term? Doesn’t that mean you are confined to a single genre, ‘scare’ films? Herrmann was a giant among film composers, so I can only take that as a compliment. I believe they call me the Italian Herrmann because we are both adept at scoring a specific genre, in this case thrillers. Unlike what other composers are currently doing in the United States, I always try to introduce a melodic line in my themes, even for the most terrifying sequences. I endeavor to play music, never ‘noise’. I think that is why I’m popular in America. I do want to break out of this ‘scare movies’ harness – like Brian De Palma tried to do, unsuccessfully, with ‘Home Movies’ – and try to be successful in other genres.” You’re already a prestigious musician: in 1980 the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Films gave “Dressed to Kill” their Best Score Award. And in 1982, the same Academy awarded you a prize for the entire body of your career. Consequently, do you feel like a cinematic musician, in a sense co-author of films? “I feel that the contribution a composer makes is very important. At the same time, I have no doubt that the director is the real ‘author’ of a film.” What are your plans for the immediate future? “I’ve just scored ‘Il ritorno di Don Camillo’, produced, directed by, and starring Terence Hill (a born-and-bred Venetian like myself). My other projects are still uncertain: perhaps a film with Warren Beatty, for De Palm’s producer: maybe another with Richard Dreyfuss, a jazz player’s biography. It’s too early to tell.”