Oscar-nominated composer (for last year’s “Interview with the Vampire”) Elliot Goldenthal is just back from Ireland, where he had a first look at what’ll be keeping him busy the next three months: Neil Jordan’s recently wrapped “Michael Collins”, with Liam Neeson, Julia Roberts and Stephen Rea. It’s about the first IRA terrorist, circa 1916-27. Goldenthal’s assessment of what he saw: “It made my jaw drop!” Further, he says, “It’s as epic as ‘Napoleon’. Neil’s done a truly amazing job.”
Now it’s time to add the music, and Goldenthal will be immersed through January and February writing the “Michael” score while, at the same time, he’ll also be finishing another project near and dear to his heart: a Broadway-bound new production of Carlo Gozzi’s famed opera The Green Bird (“wall-to-wall music in this one,” he says) being aimed for a February opening. This one is directed by Julie Taymor (who has two imminent irons of her own in the fire: this project, and Disney’s upcoming stage version of “The Lion King”, which she’ll also direct.) As far as Goldenthal is concerned, jointly working on a big-screener like “Michael” as well as a Broadway-bound project like Bird means the best of two worlds, and with an added plus. The kicker is the fact that The Green Bird will be reopening the long-dormant Victory Theatre on 42nd Street next year. That’s part of the current, humongous redevelopment project in the Times Square and 42nd Street areas, which includes Disney’s reopening of the once-glorious New Amsterdam Theatre on 42nd, as well as the Disney Store at 42nd and 7th Avenue, a major hotel at 42nd and 8th, etc. “It makes it particularly exciting to anticipate,” the composer admits.
Goldenthal’s activities don’t stop there: He did the score for the Pacino-De Niro “Heat”, which opens Dec. 15; he’ll also be reteaming with Joel Schumacher (for whom he scored “Batman Forever”) on “A Time to Kill” with Sandra Bullock; further, a major symphonic work Goldenthal created for the Pacific Symphony commemorating the 20th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, titled ‘Fire Water Paper’, has been recorded by Sony Classical with soloist Yo Yo Ma and will be released as an album in March, to coincide with concert performances of the work at N.Y.’s Carnegie Hall, D.C.’s Kennedy Center, and at Boston Symphony Hall. It’s a great time for Elliot G., but, he says, for movie music in general, the times are not so hot.
“Movie composers have two things working against them right now,” he declares. “There’s that boneheaded concept of soundtrack albums that insists songs be shoved into a score, often arbitrarily, with no connection to the product, just to help sell an album. There’s also the fact digital sound is getting so refined, and some directors are getting so intoxicated by sound effects and their use, a music score often gets obliterated. I tell people to just go and have a look at the shower scene in ‘Psycho’. There’s almost no sound effects, certainly no sound of knife jabs, or water or the ripping of the shower curtains. All you hear is Bernard Herrmann’s brilliant music. And Steven Spielberg also knows the power of music over sound effects. In ‘Jaws’, it’s that two-note passage by John Williams, repeated again and again, that helps raise the hair on the back of one’s neck.”