Elliot Goldenthal called it “Hollywood at its most intense.”
He was talking the morning after the Academy Awards, where he'd spent the evening as a nominee for Best Original Score to “Interview with the Vampire”.
Goldenthal said walking through the media gantlet at the red-carpeted entrance of Shrine Auditorium was what “ancient Rome must have been like.”
Said a slightly bleary Goldenthal over a bowl of matzo ball soup: “I felt I was part of the gladiators being led into the arena. These people in bleachers were cheering, and every time you turned around a million cameras clicked.”
Goldenthal, 40, is the composer of Pacific Symphony Orchestra's ‘Fire Water Paper: A Vietnam Oratorio’, which premieres April 26-27.
He didn't seem too disappointed that the Oscar went to Hans Zimmer for “The Lion King.”
“I was very nervous,” he said. “They had this 17-second clock, and I knew I would forget to thank someone that I should, thereby making an enemy for life.”
Goldenthal did come away with one valuable insight. “At one point I turned around and realized, ‘Hey, I'm the same height as Paul Newman.’”