With an incredible lust for experimentation, Elliot Goldenthal has refreshed the symphonic tradition of film music in Hollywood radically. His breaknecking French horn trills, blaring trumpets, howling woodwinds and avant-gardish stringwriting have made him amazingly popular, both among producers and directors, as well as soundtrack collectors. I interviewed Elliot Goldenthal a few weeks after the release of “Batman Forever”, the third film about Gotham City's dark guardian angel. Danny Elfman wrote a heroic theme for the two earlier films, both directed by Tim Burton, a tune which, for many, has been closely linked to the Batman character. Then, Elliot Goldenthal came along. He wanted to do his own theme for Batman.
“I had to fight for it, because the marketing part of the movie – you know, people who sell Batman glasses and Batman pajamas for children – wanted a theme that they considered to be the theme of Batman,” Elliot explains.
“I said, ‘If you're gonna use Elfman – hire Elfman, get him to do the whole movie. He's done some great works with Tim Burton, let him do it. But if you're gonna hire me, then you have to give me the respect to let me come up with a new theme. You have a new Batman, a new Batmobile, you have a Robin, a new story... I have no bad feelings about Elfman, I think his theme was really great. But I wanted to do my own theme.”
If you compare Danny Elfman's music from the two previous Batman-films, with Elliot Goldenthal's score for the third one, it's pretty obvious that the latter is more inventive and quite typical for its composer. Perhaps the most interesting cue on the score album is ‘Nygma Variations: An Ode to Science’ – not only an ode to science, but to the classical horror movies of the ’50s as well. Everybody – among lots of others Bernard Herrmann, Hans J. Salter, and Ronald Stein – used the eerie-sounding, early electronic instrument called the theremin in those movies. Recently, Howard Shore featured this characteristic instrument in “Ed Wood”, and now Elliot Goldenthal utilized it in “Batman Forever”.
Where did you get the idea to use a theremin?
This was the way the word ‘science’ sounded in the 1950s. The word ‘science’ in American culture in the 1950s and 1960s was something you looked forward to, and something that was the beautiful world of the future. Now, when we hear the word ‘science’, we think of something negative. The character, Nygma, would create things from this antiquated 1930s-50s type scientific instruments. I wanted to use antiquated electronic instruments that sort of felt in that world of the early 1950s, the film noir movies, the sort of Ed Wood movies that used those sounds.
Can you tell me about your approach to your score for “Batman Forever”?
I used leitmotifs, mainly. Also, I wanted very delineated music; it's a comic book again and it's a big mass cultural movie, maybe the biggest mass cultural movie of this year. So, for me, the hero theme had to sound heroic, post-Wagnerian, and very march-like. But it had another side, which was the double-life and the tragedy, and that was also something that I wanted to make very personal, so that wasn't big; the orchestration was very small when it went to flashbacks. And that was what he had in common with Robin, this sense of tragedy, losing both of his parents tragically. Nygma was the only character where I used electronic instruments, and I wanted him to sound very jazzy, very jazz-like.
There is quite a lot of jazz influences in the score, even in the action sequences.
Yes, there was specifically the type of jazz that one associates with movies that take place in the city, especially New York. And for Gotham City, I wanted it to be a sort of jazzy 1950s-type big band thing, but I used a lot of twelve tone harmonies and different rhythms, especially 7/4 time. For the Two-Face I wanted the music to be very darkly, circus-like, very theatrical – he's a very theatrical character.
When you say that there isn't much electronics in the score, I have to ask you about a piece like ‘Perpetuum Mobile’, and other action cues. It seems to me that there are quite a lot of electronics at times, a little bit in the style of “Demolition Man”.
‘Perpetuum Mobile’? Oh, that stuff is a vintage 1970s Moog. It depends on what recording you have... there is more electronics in the U2-single, we recorded that earlier with the New York Philharmonic, and we used more electronics there. But if you think about it, there was 2.5 hours of music in “Batman Forever” and there is very, very little electronics. Very, very little.
“Batman Forever” is very much action and adventure, lots of fun.
Well, there is too much action!
Do you find it more difficult to score movies like this than, for instance, a drama like “Golden Gate”?
No, it's easier and more boring. When you have action, you can only go one way, and then it's fighting the sound effects. Someone said to me, if there would be no sound effects, then it would be interesting! But it's not interesting just to know that the music will be buried under the sound effects.
But it's interesting to hear the music on record, anyway.
Yes, of course. But the psychological things are much more of a challenge.
Re-Scoring “Interview with the Vampire”
The most successful year for Elliot Goldenthal so far has to be 1994, at least in terms of film scoring. His music for “Interview with the Vampire” earned Golden Globe- and Academy Award-nominations, and the critics hailed the score lyrically. Variety, for instance, compared the music with the works of Bernard Herrmann, Danny Elfman, and Eric Satie.
It is indeed something of a paradox that “Interview with the Vampire” was to become Goldenthal's biggest success as a film composer, because the music was written extremely fast. From the beginning the film was scored by British composer George Fenton, but the music he composed obviously wasn't enough dramatic and did not provide the prompting energy the film needed.
The truth is that Gary LeMel, who is the head of music at Warner Brothers, said after hearing “Demolition Man”, the range in the different types of music I composed for that, that he suggested to Neil Jordan that he should listen to “Alien 3” and different things, with the idea that I have the ability to compose for very different types of drama. And Neil liked what he heard. Then they told me that I had only 3.5 weeks to compose 80 minutes of music. We agreed that I would compose the score in New York and Neil would stay in Ireland, and after two weeks we would meet again. Then I'd have an hour and a half of music already done as a sketch, and he came and listened to it and had many suggestions. It was a very easy situation, because the film was already locked and they didn't make any changes in the movie. It wasn't like going on a rollercoaster, like most movies are because they change things all the time.
So in a way, “Interview with the Vampire” was much easier than “Alien 3”, although you were given much less time to do it?
Yes, definitely. Whatever I composed, with a few exceptions, was the music to be in the movie. In “Alien 3” things changed and changed and changed. So even though I had six months to work on “Alien 3” nothing was ever solid or consistent. If I did something right in “Interview with the Vampire”, it was done and there would be no more discussions about it.
Did you hear George Fenton's score?
Once, when I saw the movie screened before me. I thought it was quite beautiful, a very beautiful score. The problem is that the movie was too slow, and when you add slow music to a slow movie I think it just become too much. But I don't think that was George Fenton's fault, as much as it was a decision in a collaboration of the road that George Fenton and Neil walked down. They walked down the wrong road.
How does it feel to take over a job from another composer like this?
George Fenton was already doing another movie, so it wasn't like I was taking his job away. He was already paid for it... I don't think about it, because I can't let other things than the music get in the way of composing. George Fenton has a very healthy career; I think that if he was a first-time composer, I would feel very bad, but George Fenton's gonna work on hundreds of movies if he lives long enough. He has a very good career.
When you listen to your score for “Interview with the Vampire”, you don't hear lots of electronics in the music.
No, there is very, very little. I think 99 percent is orchestral... There is no electronics, I think.
It has to be the only score where you don't use electronics at all, then. There is “Cobb” too.
There is some electronics in “Cobb”, in the flashback-sequences, but “Cobb” is also 90-percent orchestral.
Let’s talk a little bit about the pieces called ‘Claudia's Allegro Agitato’ and ‘Armand Rescues Louis’. Can you explain your main intentions with that kind of unusual action music?
Well, the agitato is when a little girl, Claudia, is very angry and loses her temper. She goes to cut off her hair, but her hair grows back. She's very angry. I wanted the type of hot energy which you can get with a string quartet. I composed the music as a string quartet with orchestra, so the string quartet played in front of the orchestra, as if the orchestra was accompanying the string quartet as in a concerto. And the use of snap pizzicato felt very much like the child trying to cut off her hair, and it had a very edgy, very sharp feel to it. It is very essential to me that I used a string quartet with orchestra, so you have solo violins scratching away. In ‘Armand Rescues Louis’ it is the same sound, but that all had to do with the fact that Louis is very much concerned about Claudia. So this music refers to that. Armand rescues Louis, but Louis was trying to rescue Claudia. I wanted the same sense of urgency, and also I felt that it worked in that scene because the string quartet, the snap pizzicatos, worked very well with ticking away the bricks and this cement that he was locked in.
The beginning of “Interview with the Vampire” is done in the same way as “Alien 3”.
Yes, it's the same technique, but they both have different reasons. The Latin in “Alien 3” is ‘Agnus Dei’, ‘Lamb of God’, because the characters seem to be very much like lambs being led to slaughter, and there was no hope; they were all weak lambs, and they had no control or no power over their lives. In “Interview with the Vampire” I changed the Latin words in ‘Libera Me’ from “save me from everlasting death” to “save me from everlasting life”. And also, the other Latin in it is ‘Lux Aeterna’, which is “eternal light”. So, although there is the sound of Latin in certain things that I do, there is a meaning and a difference, it's not for the same reason.
From Stage to Screen
When Elliot Goldenthal began his career, he tried to find any possibilities to work with music. This meant that a lot of variation characterized his first steps into the music business – there was literally everything from rock ’n’ roll to orchestral works and chamber music. Goldenthal, who studied at the Manhattan School of Music under mentors like Aaron Copland and John Corigliano, explored many different areas of music, but soon it became evident that the theatre world interested him the most.
How did you get into scoring films?
It was a natural progression from working in the theatre. I started in anything I could work on, from the piano, to rock bands, to concert stage, to chamber music... New York was very, very active in terms of the theater, and a lot of international types of theater works was done especially in Soho and in Manhattan. There was so much opportunity for a composer to work. Lots of fields to work in, and lots of arenas, lots of stages. Something I was very, very attracted to was the world of dance and the world of drama. The whole thing was here. I think I've worked on maybe 30-40 different theatrical productions, and it was something for me that was – and still is – very comfortable, to compose music around actors and dancers, in the dramatic world. I've always loved cinema, and it became something that was very natural for me to make the step from theatre to film.
Did you take that step yourself, or was there some director who heard your music in a play and became interested?
It was directors, specifically very, very early in the 1980s a director called Ulli Lommel, most famous for acting in Fassbinder's movies. And he did a movie called “Blank Generation”, he heard my music and was very excited about it. It was a movie with Andy Warhol. A punk rock musician and myself, we did it together. Then I realized that I enjoyed working and composing for film, and the next opportunity came up later in the late 1980s with Gus Van Sant and “Drugstore Cowboy”.
Which was before “Pet Sematary”?
No, it was the same time, simultaneously. There was a work that I was composing on the theatre called Juan Darien: A Carnival Mass, based on a South American author's work called Horacio Quiroga. And both directors of “Pet Sematary”, Mary Lambert, and Gus Van Sant, saw that production and also used some of the music of that theatrical piece during the editing as a temp score. Also, it sounded very non-traditional, very non-Hollywood sounding to them.
Do you enjoy scoring films if you compare it with writing operas or scoring theatre plays?
I think that if you have a balance it is very healthy; if you eat chicken every night it's very boring, you know? For me, it's very important to have a balance of what you do. What a film can do for a composer is very healthy, because the arts are being under attack from the government – the American government is supporting art less and less and less. It's very difficult for a young composer to find himself in front of an orchestra. When you work with music for a movie – there you are and there is a hundred musicians there. And if you make a mistake you can change it, if you make 20 mistakes you can change it, artistically. So you have the ability to refine a language of orchestration, something you can't read in books – you have to be there.
Which are the main difficulties for you in the art of film scoring, compared with writing operas and theatre plays?
The main difficulty is that you have to be sensitive, that you're a collaborator. The director or the producer might not have the best taste, and might not have any skill in terms of letting me do what you do, so it becomes very, very difficult. It's not the music which becomes difficult, it's the collaboration.
A Convincing Experimental Style
You've been experimenting quite a lot.
Yes, especially when I worked on “Alien 3”. I was experimenting, experimenting, experimenting. And for a composer student it is very difficult to have that ability that the 19th-century composers as Mahler or Richard Strauss had, they had the ability to be in front of an orchestra day and night. So it was very much a home for them. Today, film is the only place where a composer can work with an orchestra like this.
You have a very special style. Have you got any trouble trying to convince directors and producers that your style is what they need? “Cobb”, for instance, is a quite ordinary drama but your music is very powerful and, at times, very energetic.
I think that, in the case of “Cobb”, the director [Ron Shelton] was very sympathetic to anything that I wanted to do. I think you have to compose by example; you can't talk about music and say “I want it this way or that way”. They have to hear it. And I think that when they see it next to their image of their movies, they get convinced. The problem is that before it gets produced, and before an orchestra plays it, that's where you have to have a leap of faith, and say, “Please, please let me do this”, or, “I'll do what you want, but please let me do what I want and then choose later.”
Which part of the scoring process is the most rewarding for you, is it to be writing the music or is it to hear it being played and recorded?
I think it's when it's being recorded, and once you know that it's working. You know, living musicians interpret the works different than how you would have done it, there is extra life, it lives on its own, and in that respect it has a whole different feeling. It's like a living being when it's being performed.
Do you pre-record your scores on synthesizers before it's recorded with an orchestra?
I love to do that, because it helps the director and producer to understand it. Of course, when thing are very, very tight in terms of time, and there is no time left to do anything, I don't necessarily have to work with synthesizers. The other thing that's important with synthesizers is the way the computer and the synthesizer work together, the MIDI. The film is completely locked with my music, so it becomes closer to the act of theater because I can watch a person's eyes, I can feel that. And when I rewind the tape of the film, it's completely locked to my music playing with it.
Do you record the electronics before going into session, so that everything is on MIDI and the orchestra has to follow that?
Yes.
Do you use clicks a lot?
Yes, I use clicks a lot, but not in the emotional or romantic scenes; I feel that clicks would kill it. But it's very effective in action sequences and in very fast type of music, but not in the expressive music.
When you're composing film scores, do you like to use the leitmotif-technique?
I very rarely use it, but I used in “Batman Forever”. I didn't use it in “Alien 3”. Every movie has its own reason. You know, form follows function. For example, in “Drugstore Cowboy” composing was composing music for different drug-related states. In “Alien 3” it was composing music for the atmosphere and the environment. It was more important to me than leitmotifs. In “Interview with the Vampire” I felt that it was more important to stress the age of the vampire, so the music started with viola da gamba and music from the Latin liturgical – words, which I altered. So you're hearing a boys’ choir and viola da gamba, which is an instrument that was used in early, early renaissance music. And then it moved to the harpsichord for Lestat – for me the harpsichord was perfect for the Molière-type character of Lestat, the character from Tartuffe or something. The history of music goes then to the little girl with the piano, and to Louis with a full, modern symphony orchestra, and then finally with Guns N' Roses and Rolling Stones. Sometimes you find something organic in the movie, that creates a path for you, sometimes it's leitmotifs, sometimes it's not.
Critical First Reaction
You don't conduct any of your scores yourself. Why?
Because of three things. The first is that it's very important for me to be in the booth with the director, when the music is being performed, because the director's hearing this music for the first time. The composer's already heard the music. And it's very important for me to get that first reaction, to be with the director when the music, let's say, is being given birth. Also I need to know what it's sounding like immediately; I need to know whether the microphone technique, whether the sound that is coming through the speakers in the studio, whether everything technologically is right, because film is not an acoustic medium. In the end, it has to be electronic, digital. The third reason is that film is a very fast thing, sometimes you have to compose two hours of music in one month, so for me I would never have the time or the energy to conduct, to learn my own scores, to stand in front of an orchestra.
Jonathan Sheffer is faster and better?
He's faster and better, but also he's not composing so he gets to sleep at night.
How important is it for you to orchestrate your own music?
I co-orchestrate everything I do. Robert Elhai is my major supervising orchestrator. And it is very important for me to know what every instrument and wherever a note is being played, by every instrument. That is, to me orchestration is composition. It's very important.
What do you think about the ‘Hollywood mode’? There are often dozens of orchestrators helping the composers.
It's all about time. I mean, if a composer isn't aware of orchestration, it could be a disaster. But if a composer understands, as John Williams understands orchestration, then one can expect every note to work out. But for me, I like to work with none or as few as possible, because it needs to sound like me, and I need to direct the orchestrators and tell them exactly what every instrument should be doing. Otherwise it wouldn't sound like me.
Have you arranged any concert suites based on your film scores?
No, but I'd like to. But every time I've finished relaxing and resting after composing a movie, there is always something else coming up, whether it's an opera, something theatrical or an oratorio. I never have the time. I wish somebody would do it for me. [After this interview had been made Goldenthal actually did arrange a concert suite of his “Batman Forever” score, which is featured on Varèse Sarabande's “Hollywood 95” album, with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Joel McNeely.]
Do you listen to other film scores? Have you got any favorites?
Well, my favorites are the classical film composers like Bernard Herrmann. I like Nino Rota. They had a voice of their own and it was so strong.
What composers influence you the most?
Stravinsky, Mahler and jazz music influence me the most, I think.
‘Alien 3’ and ‘Pet Sematary’: The Avant-Garde
Let’s move on to some of your scores a little more in detail. I'd like to begin with “Alien 3”. How did you get that assignment?
The director [David Fincher] was very interested in a score that would not sound traditionally Hollywood, so they came to me. He would have already heard “Drugstore Cowboy”, and I went to David Fincher and I told him that I had the perfect sound as the voice for the alien, this instrument called the steel cello, which is heard throughout – it's an acoustic instrument. I also created some demonstration tapes for him, to show the direction I was going to, and we agreed that I would have the time to experiment and there would be money to experiment for maybe five-six months before the movie was scored. We'd do a series of experiments, so nearly a half year was spent electronically in working on different sounds. And then, when the orchestra got there, there was time for me to orchestrate everything, and it was just a lot of time on that thing, and I think that was one of the advantages of working in that system.
But there was a lot of re-editing?
That just drove me crazy, because once the film was done, the studio gave the director a very hard time. I was no longer working with one person, I was working with 30; I was working with the studio and all the assistants. It became impossible. It was a much more interesting movie before the studio got involved.
When I studied your score for “Alien 3”, I found some interesting connections between the orchestrations and the story. For instance, you have those French horn glissandi, almost sounding like an alarm foreboding the horror and catastrophe seen in the film. And in the scene where Ripley examines the dead body of Newt, you use a simple piano as a way to underline the human relation between Ripley and the girl. Is this the way you try to think when you compose your scores, to manipulate?
Well, maybe not the first one, in terms of an alarm. I use the French horns in many, many different ways – sometimes I use them isolating pitches, it creates a sense of uneasiness in the stomach. And it also creates an environment for the rest of the orchestra. In terms of the glissandi, it's very dramatic, sometimes to emphasize certain pictorial images, it's used for different reasons at different times. But you're correct about the piano. We're in outer space, in another world, and the most bourgeois, most family-type of instrument you can imagine is the piano. It's in many, many people's homes, in families where mothers and grandmothers and children gather around the piano, so I wanted the sound of the piano in space to make a point that it reminds you of home and children and family.
You brought new influences into the horror scoring, especially in “Pet Sematary”. Was that any of your own ambitions from the beginning, or did you simply write your own music?
I simply wrote my own music, but of course one have to be affected by the work of Bernard Herrmann. But I didn't listen to any other's work, you know, I don't see horror films, I don't go to them so I don't know what they sound like. In “Pet Sematary” it was mainly a string orchestra, not many players, maybe 18. As opposed to “Alien 3” and a hundred musicians!
‘Demolition Man’: Tongue-in-Cheek
I feel that a lot of your music in “Demolition Man” is quite ironic in a way, that you're playing around with all those well-known Hollywood clichés. Especially in the final scene, ‘Silver Screen Kiss’.
Yes, that is totally correct. It's a total cliché.
The producers, did they understand your irony?
No, they thought it was for real. They didn't know any difference. But to me it was a big joke. As a matter of fact, the producer was Joel Silver, and I called the piece ‘Silver Screen Kiss’, but he didn't even get that joke!
What did you think about “Demolition Man”?
I felt the script was really good; unfortunately the movie didn't work, but it's honest in the script. It had a potential to be sort of like “Fahrenheit 451” with a lot of humor, but it didn't seem to work in the movie. I was very disappointed, but a lot of the score I like very much.
You seem to have had a lot of fun doing that score?
Yes, I just enjoyed myself. I tried to create something that has some enjoyment, some fun, I guess, some sophistication to it.
‘Golden Gate’: The Intimate
Let's move on to “Golden Gate”, which is a very beautiful and sensitive score. I thought of it as a combination of folk music, jazz and new age. Do you like to combine different genres like that?
Well, I never thought of myself involving new age, I never listen to it much. But I think that when you have those sustained sostenuto sounds, and some synthesized sounds, it has a feeling of the new age. But I think that the combination was natural, because the character was very ‘jazz-like’, and the Chinese woman and her relation to her father, took on a folk-like aspect – I thought it was important for the music to be that way. I often forget how important this score was for me, because I wanted it to be very sensitive to the characters.
It's the most intimate score you've composed so far.
I think so, with the exception of the one I just composed, “Voices”.
What's your relation to jazz music?
I grew up in New York in a time with great jazz players as Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Charlie Mingus – I mean, the greats were around me the whole time. I was exposed to it, I played it, I enjoyed listening to it. Many of my close friends are great jazz musicians. I think it was a part of growing up in New York.
It was a natural thing, then.
It was a natural thing, and it's something that seemed as natural for me, as a child, as to playing sports. For me, great jazz and great western classical music is the same. It's just great music.
‘Cobb’: Composition as Collision
“Cobb” must have been some experience for you to score. I believe you like baseball a lot?
Yes, I do. But there was not many baseball sequences in “Cobb”; it's more about this awful man. But the thing about “Cobb” that I liked was the sense of collision – when cultures collide, or when music collide. It's a very exciting thing, and very interesting things can come out of it. So there was a collision between, let’s say, rural American type singing, jazz music – almost the history of jazz from ragtime to things you would associate with John Coltrane - and the orchestra.
Is that you singing in the beginning of the album?
Yes, it is.
In the orchestral anarchy you're talking about in the liner notes, you can hear some influences from John Corigliano.
He was my teacher and I studied for him every Wednesday for seven years. Of course he's a big influence. I really admire his composition and his orchestration, I think that he freed up a lot of the brass instruments and the woodwinds, especially in notation. He's really important in my life, and he's been exposing me to composers like Penderecki.
Art and the Soundtrack Business
What do you think about the soundtrack business? Let me put it this way: when people are talking about “Batman Forever”, everybody's talking about the pop soundtrack. And when “Interview with the Vampire” was released, the only thing people mentioned was Guns N' Roses. Nobody mentioned Elliot Goldenthal. What can you do about it?
I can't do anything about it; it's simply marketing and money. There is nothing I can do. I can just say that, in “Interview with the Vampire”, it's ridiculous and that the public should have the ability to really hear what was on the movie. You know, deals are made in record companies of soundtracks that were "inspired by" “Batman Forever”, with songs that never got into the movie. It's ridiculous. I don't know if things are gonna change, this might just get worse. I would like it if you had the pop songs and my music, so the public can enjoy both. You know, one out of every thousand listeners are probably enjoying listening to my music.
I suppose you're quite satisfied to, in this case, have your own music released on a separate soundtrack.
Yes, I don't make any money of that, it's just very good to have a record of the music that I've composed.
A standard question is why film music is not regarded as a serious form of art, in general.
Well, to say that any media is not a serious form of art is a big mistake. In most forms of art, a good 80 percent of the art that is created is worthless. If you look at the 19th century, again, 80 percent of that music is worthless. The only thing that's left is the great music of Beethoven, Brahms and Wagner, but if you really had to listen to all the music of the 19th century, you'd fall asleep. And this is the truth of any century; it is the truth of any art and of any media. I could write a novel as a serious form, but at least 80 percent of novels, in the history of books, is worthless.
Tough talk.
It's the truth. And in movies, at least 80 percent of the music composed for movies is worthless. But in any media, there is always that 10-15 percent of brilliant, brilliant work that's art. There is art in that.
And you try to belong to those 15 percent?
No, no, no, no. I'm sure, again 80 percent of my music will be worthless, but the good 10 percent that comes out of it is great. You can't forget that Shostakovich composed over 30-40 scores, and that Prokofiev, Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland composed many scores – that many of the classical composers also worked in the world of film. Anybody that has the opinion that film music isn't a serious form of art, is just basing it on the feeling of that when they are going to a movie, 80 percent of what they are listening to are worthless – which is true. But you can't blame a medium for bad music.
We conclude the interview talking about future assignments and other up-coming musical works from the celebrated composer. Apart from the film scores, Elliot is working on an opera, which is supposed to premiere in 1997. It's called Grendel, and it features much Nordic influences. It's based on the first text written in English, by a people who lived in Denmark, Sweden, Ireland and England. The language they talked is half-way between English and Swedish. Apart from this work, there are a few new films coming up with music by Elliot Goldenthal.
“‘Voices’ is a smaller movie about a schizophrenic composer in the 1920s and ’30s. It was difficult to score, but it's one of my best scores. I like it much better than ‘Batman Forever’,” Elliot concludes.
Special thanks to Ronni Chasen.