Goldenthal:“There have been people that have been working with me from the very beginning, and every aspect of what they do has released me from the drudgery of the non-creative activities. I can go into a room and listen to twenty-five electronic sounds and choose one or two. I can work very closely with an orchestrator and be extremely specific about every single voicing and the choice of instruments. I can keep going as a composer without having to stop and write it out. If there’s a schedule situation where time is of the essence and it’s 6:00 in the morning and I need to compose something, but yet there has to be something orchestrated for the next day, I have to trust someone who knows my work, can work with me, and reflect my orchestration faithfully.”
“The first score Robert Elhai actually orchestrated for me was ‘Alien 3’. After two or three years he became a first-class orchestrator in his own right. With all of my orchestral ideas and a great deal of his labor, we decided to split the credit. He gets all the money, we split the credit, and I’m extremely happy about the result. I don’t physically have the amount of strength to do it myself completely, unless I have eight months. I don’t have the stamina.”
How did you become an orchestrator?
I was studying to be a composer and received my doctorate in composition. I actually learned about orchestrating through the study of composition. I knew about orchestrators and was interested in the idea of orchestrating, but I never pursued it as a career. When I hooked up with Elliot, I naturally fell into becoming his orchestrator.
Besides Elliot, who else have you orchestrated for?
Besides Elliot, the other composer I’ve worked for the most is Michael Kamen. “The Three Musketeers” is the first film I did with Michael. I’ve also worked on five films with James Newton Howard and a couple of movies with John Frizzell.
How did you meet Elliot and get involved with him?
We were introduced by Eric Salzman; he was the artistic director of what is now the Prince Music Theater, but what used to be the American Music Theater Festival in Philadelphia. That’s where “The Transposed Heads” was performed. Eric knew that Elliot needed some help in putting a score together. At the time I was a graduate student at Yale and Eric was a visiting professor. He knew of my interest in music theater, so he hooked us up. I actually couldn’t work on this production because of other commitments that summer, but when their next show came up, “Juan Darien”, I had the opportunity. I went down to Julie’s old loft, we met, and we hit it off. I ended up transcribing the score to “Juan Darien”, getting it all on paper.
So what led you into orchestrating Elliot’s film scores?
After that, Elliot, in pretty quick succession, did a couple of concert music scores including ‘Pastime Variations’ for chamber orchestra and ‘Shadow Play Scherzo’ with the Brooklyn Philharmonic. I transcribed those two pieces and I was his sounding board at the time. I’d do little bits of orchestrations; he pretty much dictated those scores to me. There wasn’t really any orchestration involved in it, although I did little things like worked out voicings and things like that. By then I’d pretty much established a relationship with Elliot as the person who helps him get notes on paper, basically. The next thing we did, and his first big feature, was “Pet Sematary”. His budget for this only allowed him to record in New York using a string orchestra, synthesizer, and piano. There wasn’t much orchestration because this was all strings, but I worked out voicing and helped him put it together.
How many films have you orchestrated with Elliot?
I’ve worked with Elliot on all his films, with the exception of those that didn’t use an orchestra. The only feature film that didn’t have an orchestra was “Drugstore Cowboy”. I was involved only very peripherally in “Drugstore Cowboy”. There was only one cue that was going to have instruments, but they didn’t end up using it. He also did “Grand Isle”, an HBO movie called “Criminal Justice”, and “Roswell”; these things just didn’t have budgets for instrumentalists. “Roswell” and “Grand Isle” were all synths, while “Criminal Justice” did have solo cellists that I arranged. On every other film of Elliot’s I’ve worked with him.
What abilities help make up a great orchestrator?
The most important thing is to connect with the composer because the orchestrator is an extension of the composer; there’s no doubt about it. The most important thing is to be in the composer’s head enough so that what you put on paper is what the composer would have put on paper if he had the ability or time to do so. It’s really plugging into the composer’s head and creating a score based on what the composer gives you that is a natural extension of what the composer has realized, making their vision come true. It’s a little bit akin to an architect who conceptualizes a building and then hands it over to a drafts person who figures out the details. It’s creative in a way, but it’s not creative in terms of conception, in terms of trying to figure out what the music needs to do or how the music is going to do it. There’s not really any creative involvement in that part of it; it’s just realizing the composer’s vision.
What steps do you take with Elliot when orchestrating with him?
The first thing he’ll do is write a cue and then sequence it. Most of the time he’ll give me a very compositionally complete sequence, not necessarily sonically complete. He may put in horn lines, a harp part, percussion, or an oboe part, but sometimes it’s just strings. It depends on how much time he has to write it.
I remember the first cues that he wrote for “Sphere”, he did very detailed demos for Barry Levinson. They were very complete-sounding. That was great for me because it gave me a very clear idea of what he was trying to do. As we get further into the process and the crunch begins as he has to knock the music out overnight, the sketches get sketchier and sketchier, but they’re always musically complete. I never have to add notes and come up with counterlines. It’s always very clear to me what Elliot is going for, and that’s a result of the time that we’ve spent together.
Who puts the orchestration onto paper?
We have another guy who works with us, Winfried Kraus, who’s been transcribing scores since “Batman and Robin”. Until he came along I basically did all the transcribing myself and it got to be impossible. It’s impossible to both transcribe and orchestrate Elliot’s amount of material; in a lot of ways transcribing is harder.
First the mockup or sequence would go to Winfried; he will get it down on paper and then fax it to me here in Minneapolis. At the same time I’ll also get a copy of the sequence and some kind of a mixdown of it, so I get to hear what Elliot heard. I’ll have that sequence dubbed onto a videotape of the scene because Elliot writes music so closely to the movie that it’s important to know what’s going on in the picture. I take the transcription and transfer it to an orchestral score, doing whatever I need to do to make the orchestra sound like what it’s supposed to sound like. Finally, this goes to the copyist, and then it shows up on the scoring stage.
Is there any particular score you worked on with Elliot that stands out in your mind?
“Titus” definitely stands out. That was just an amazing score. Besides “Titus”, I think I probably did my best work on “Interview with the Vampire”. I’ve always loved that score; it just really came out well. Working on it was great; it was frenzied like crazy. We had to do it really quickly. That was actually the last score I did while I was still living in New York. I was able to be there for the whole thing and that made it a lot easier.
As far as “Titus” goes, I just really think there’s some great music in it. I think Elliot was really inspired by this project, also inspired by Julie of course, as were we all. He’s rarely done a film before that was as well-scripted as “Titus”, and he’s certainly not scored a Shakespearean film before. A lot of movies he’s done are things like “Sphere” which were very interesting conceptually but not on any kind of literary level. Elliot is a very literary person; he really responds to depth, substance, and texture in writing, in words, so I think he was very inspired by Shakespeare.
“Titus” is an incredibly eclectic score; it really has got a lot of music he’s fluent in. There are ever a couple of big band pieces here, which he’s never used in a film score before. We’ve done jazz before – things like in “Batman Forever” that were these jazz band-type foxtrots and rumbas – but never a straight-ahead big band chart. That was exciting to do.
Which score of Elliot’s was your greatest challenge to orchestrate?
“Sphere” and “Alien 3” both fit into this category. In “Sphere” there was a huge amount of electronics and a desire to try to match the electronics with the orchestra. Have the orchestra support the electronics and even emulate the electronics in some cases. It did require a lot of Elliot and I putting our heads together, figuring out how we are going to make the orchestra sound like this. Also, “Sphere” was very complicated music; it’s probably the most dissonant score that he’s written. From a musical challenge it was difficult; there was a lot of textural stuff that takes a lot of brain power to work through it. I had a lot of help on “Sphere”. For one thing, the recording sessions were spread out over three or two-and-a-half months, which made it a lot easier. Winfried transcribed just about everything in that, so I didn’t have to do any transcription.
“Alien 3” was a big challenge because I had never orchestrated a big orchestral film score and I was new to the big Hollywood studio system. Compositionally Elliot had a difficult time because they were changing things right and left in that movie. He wrote a huge amount of music for it, but, by the time it actually got to me to orchestrate, I think it was pretty set. “Alien 3” is possibly the most ambitious score of Elliot’s in terms of the sound sculpture, texture, or the orchestra and electronics working together. We just ran out of time; a lot of the music had to be written really fast, so we were bringing in other orchestrators at the end of it.
“Voices” was a challenge as well. Elliot had written about half the music by the time we’d got to London, and we recorded that score in three triple sessions. We started at ten o’clock in the morning and didn’t finish until ten o’clock at night. Twelve hours a day of recording; plus, Elliot had to write and I had to orchestrate half the score in that time. Oh, man, that was a nightmare, but there is some great music in that movie. I never even heard a final mix of anything, and I’d love to see the movie.
What do you find unique about Elliot?
He has just got an incredible musical imagination. He has conceived things that I would never have thought of; he’s had orchestrational ideas that are amazing and really remarkable in their conception. Especially some of his string effects like the special ‘scratch-ando’ effect. It’s an effect where the string players hold down the string so that when you play the instrument you don’t hear a tone; all you hear is a scratch. When you get sixty string players doing it, it’s huge. I remember that he first came up with it in “Demolition Man” and we’ve used it lots of times since then. He has such a great imagination for sound, different sounds, and how music fits with an image.
What have you learned from Elliot?
The most important thing I’ve learned is the power of the imagination and all sorts of unusual things. I certainly learned a lot about brass writing. He’s a trumpet player and he came up with a lot of great things – the way the mutes are used, and techniques like that which I would have never imagined or even thought of.
What’s it like working with Elliot for about ten years?
It’s great, actually. I always look forward to whatever project he’s doing because he always presents me with interesting, amazing music to orchestrate. He’s very choosy about his projects, so he always picks really good projects – projects that have some value to them, whether it’s for the director, script, or concept. When we work with Neil Jordan I know he’s always going to come up with something really great. Elliot was disappointed he couldn’t score Neil’s new picture. In fact, every single one of us were all hoping that Michael Nyman’s score to “The End of the Affair” would be thrown out and we could work on it at the last minute.