Composer Jerry Goldsmith has established several loyal and long-term collaborative relationships, which have come to form something of a team. This team includes orchestrators Arthur Morton and Alexander Courage, engineer Bruce Botnick, and keyboardist Mike Lang. Another key member of Goldsmith’s team is music editor Kenneth Hall, who has served on most of the composer’s projects over the last fifteen years. The following interview took place in Kenneth Hall’s studio in the San Fernando Valley. Mr. Hall is a pleasant, unpretentious man who enjoys a round of golf and owns a beautiful golden retriever (who remained impeccably well-behaved throughout the interview). Mr. Hall shares his insights and experiences with Darren Cavanagh on an esoteric, highly-specialized though often-overlooked profession.
- Paul Andrew MacLean

Pumping Gas

I’ll begin by asking, how long have you been at this?

I got into the business in 1956. I was going to school at UCLA, and CBS Television had an opening for a film helper; these were the days of kinescopes (kinescopes being films made off of video monitors, which was how television broadcasts were preserved before the advent of video-tape recording), so I quit school to take the job. The reason I did was that I found that the favourite son of UCLA’s graduating class that year was pumping gas on Sunset Boulevard, and I decided maybe I should take the job. My family had also been in the business for a long time; my father ran the sound effects and music editorial at Universal years and years ago, so I was always around the business.

What were you studying at UCLA?

At that time it was called theatre arts. Music was just a sideline for me. I was playing piano in combos in high school and a little bit in college, and a little bit professionally, but I was never on the level of someone like Mike Lang. In fact, when I got into the business, which was at Fox, I just put my hands in my pockets, because these guys were such incredible players; the best in the world.

How did the actual film angle come about?

I would up at Desilu (“I Love Lucy” was going then). In fact, they had an apartment above where my cutting room was, and I went into the sound effects department. Then later Fox was looking for an apprentice with a musical background, so I took the interview and got the job. Alfred Newman was still there at that point and it was really the best training ground for music editors anywhere in the world, as far as I’m concerned. You learned it all. It not only had to be dramatically correct; it had to be musically correct. It was an education you couldn’t buy. Eventually I became an assistant, then I was laid-off and became an assistant picture editor for about a year. Then Fox was getting into television for the first time, and there weren’t that many who could track [picture with music], so I was hired over there and was a second editor on a series (though I can’t remember which one it was now!). That led to me becoming a music editor, and my first series which I did on my own as a series called “Bus Stop”, which was an anthology series.

What were the first major feature films you worked on?

Early on I worked with Hugo Monetnegro and on an early Jerry Goldsmith score. It got so that I was doing a feature film and the television series at the same time. Then I left Fox and worked on the last year of “Mission: Impossible”.

Jerry Goldsmith

How did your relationship with Jerry Goldsmith come about?

I met him when I was at Fox, and one of the first pictures I did with him was “Justine”. That led to other films on and off with him. We were in a department status then; you could drive on the lot and had a place to park every day, but I didn’t really work with Jerry on a more of a full-time basis until I went freelance in 1976. I was working at Fox at the time and I was doing the remake of “King Kong”, which John Barry had called me to do. I was also doing “Silver Streak” at the same time, and the “Swiss Family Robinson” TV series. I decided that, Golly, if it’s this busy for me, let’s get out. So I quit in‘’76 and went freelance.

So were you cutting temp scores at that time?

Constantly! In fact, it was, Call Kenny and have him do the next trailer for the next picture. That happened a great deal, taking parts of someone else’s score and laying it into the trailer.

Communicative Devices

Generally, what is your feeling on temp tracks? A lot of directors become very attached to them.

That’s a great danger. I personally hate having to do it, although originally I was able to make more money doing it; there weren’t that many fellows at the time who really could cut the stuff together with cohesion and make it sound like a score. I still think it can be a wonderful communicative device for the director who possibly doesn’t have a great deal of musical knowledge. He can say to the composer ‘I like this’, and the composer can say, ‘Well, that’s fine, but let me go in this direction.’ It gives them a starting point, perhaps. ‘Communicative device’ I think is the best way of putting it. But you sometimes run into problems. A guy will cut a temp score and it goes out in preview screenings, and if the previews are very, very good, they think that maybe something close to the temp music is the way to go, and I hate to see a composer being handcuffed by that. He may have some wonderful ideas which haven’t existed yet.

Would you actually temp a film like, say, “Total Recall” with Jerry Goldsmith’s music?

Any time that it’s a picture that Jerry is going to do, and I have to do a temp job, absolutely. That’s the first place I look. That doesn’t mean I have to, but Jerry is very open about that. Because he’s going to be the composer, I’d rather go in that direction and use his music. Certainly his versatility is second to none.

I've heard Joe Dante likes to temp with a lot of Bernard Herrmann.

Yeah, Joe temps from everywhere! Joe's a great friend and has marvelous ideas. Now, he's a good example of using his ideas or something he comes across as a way of communicating to Jerry. He'll say, I think this idea's going to work. It doesn't mean Jerry's going to write that, but it gives him a point of departure.

What are your feelings on the technical advances in your field? For instance, the Auricle software which Goldsmith uses.

It's incredible. For scoring purposes there's nothing like it. In Jerry's case, he writes a lot of odd-metered bars, like 5/8 or 7/8, and the patterns will flip-flop back and forth. With the Auricle, in a 7/8 bar, let's say the pattern is quarter, quarter of 3/8. Well, I can enter 2 + 2 + 1 + 1 + 1/8. Enter that, then accent off, then he's going to get the correct rhythm through his headphones. Maybe he's in a 7/8 - 4/4 pattern, so I can enter in 7/8 form, if its staying in that pattern, then skip that from bars whatever to whatever so the 4/4 time can take over. It’s a great system!

Clicks and Frames

Do you think this system has allowed Goldsmith to actually improve on his style?

Not really. It's a wonderful tool for him, but because of the way he thinks it all out, this is now a way for him to enter it in, and load synthesizers, and physically be able to play some stuff back for himself, or, as most of the guys are doing now, play it for the director and producer. From my standpoint it is the difference between taking twenty- or thirty-thousand feet of clicks, and let's say you're in a 12-frame click in that 7/8 pattern of taking three 6-frame clicks, intercutting them with two 12-frame clicks. And even though you can maybe build a loop, film is film, and the hit points are going to vary whatever click you’re in. Now with Auricle, you can just go over the bars and get from hit point to hit point. Before, I had to mathematically figure it out, which for certain cues meant spending two days intercutting these clicks, versus maybe three or four hours on the computer, and I get it perfect, absolutely perfect.

Could you outline the actual process of an assignment from beginning to end?

Basically Jerry will load up a hard disc, and I'll give him a floppy and he'll copy it out. So I'll have the disc, and I'll have a copy of his sketch in front of me. He's going to refine it as close as possible, but may not be re-timing every section of bars, while I would try and go for a tenth of a second, because I'm trying to get it exactly perfect. He still conducts free-time [without clicks] in the slower tempos or if there are no synthesizers which need to lock-up. I'll give him a streamer to start, then a hole-punch on the down beat of bar 2, and a punch on the downbeat of bar 3, and then every other bar until the next streamer.

How does someone like Jerry Goldsmith, who seems to grasp the latest technology, compare to someone like John Williams or Alex North who seems more traditional?

I've been fortunate in that I've worked with all three. Of the three O would say Alex was the most traditional; an incredible man, not just as a composer but as a person too. John uses synthesizers; in fact, he's been getting into it more and more. I think the best example I can give you of Jerry is that he'll get the latest programme on something for whatever latest computer synthesizer he has, and start creating new sounds out of it almost immediately. He starts using stuff that has never been heard before, and that will go for a particular picture. But then he won't use it again on another score, he won't compromise, even though that synth colour might fit in.

Do you work exclusively with Goldsmith now?

Pretty much. I did a thing with Cliff Eidelman a couple of years ago, “Triumph of the Spirit”, which we recorded in Rome. He's a very bright young man.

Temp-Tracking

Did knowing film scores help you create temp tracks?

Well, being able to read music helped, but if you're given a picture to temp-track, and you're not given any insight into what direction to take, I feel that's an acquired knowledge. We're only as good as what our life has been. In my case, because of all the different kinds of films I've worked on, it gives some kind of handle on what direction to take in a given circumstance, and it doesn't mean that I'm going to necessarily stay traditional. There have been many times that I've made temp scores in which I was asked 'What did you do that for?', but it worked. I worked from my point of view and the director was happy.

I'll give you an example, a crazy example, “Mom and Dad Save the World”. The guys at Segue Music did the original, based on pretty much what the director wanted. But I wanted to try and lighten it up, to try and get something a little different, for this was a way-out comedy. I used John Williams’s “Witches of Eastwick” and went into that vein. The Segue people did a great job, don't get me wrong, but in a couple of areas, the approach hadn't been written yet. Of course, it wasn't really written until Jerry finally did it. But that was a pretty off the wall approach for a film like that, but it happened to work.

It must be personally gratifying when the approach you take in a temp-track is embraced by the composer, not to say that he would musically base his score on the material you use, but that he would follow your dramatic interpretation.

Well...you could have ten of us sitting in a room, and have ten points of view, and have all ten work. Maybe one would work better then another. But all ten could possibly work depending on the direction you are going in. I personally get a greater satisfaction out of cutting the final score, and satisfying the dramatic point that the composer intended, and maintaining the quality of the score the way he intended it without making a hack job out of it.

An example of that, in fact one of the worst things that ever happened to me, was on “Rambo III”. We recorded it in Budapest. While we were gone, Sylvester Stallone re-cut the entire picture. When we got back, roughly two minutes of an hour and twenty minutes of score still worked the way it was intended. So it was very satisfying to take Jerry's score and pretty much keep the same intention going that he intended.

You did “Poltergeist” for Goldsmith and “E.T.” for John Williams back-to-back in 1982, didn't you?

That was a great year for movies. “Poltergeist” was my introduction to Spielberg, thanks to Jerry, and it was about a month before finishing it when John Williams called. Kenny Wannberg, who normally works with John Williams was tied up doing something. John asked me if I’d like to do “E.T.” I had heard about the film, but that's all. But it sounded wonderful to me because I was really freelancing then. I was going from John Barry to Jerry to Bill Conti; I was just all over the place. I said, “If Steven doesn't mind, I'd love to, but you had better check with Steven.” So he called me back a half hour later and said, 'Well, Steven loves you more than he does me, so if you want to do it it's fine!".

I have mostly good memories of working with people. I've also worked with the late Henry Mancini, and Lalo Schifrin, who isn't doing as many pictures now; I think he's mainly conducting. John Barry does marvelous stuff. I met John on a four-hour mini-series called “Eleanor & Franklin”, the first thing I ever did with him.

Sometimes you'll work on pictures that nobody ever saw, and then they'll come out on videocassette. A great example of that was “Somewhere in Time”. The studio didn't believe in it. It came out for a week and died. Then it came out on cable six months later, and everybody wanted to see it and rent the video, and all of a sudden an album needed to be made, and it went gold! This is to a picture that died!