In October of 1983, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hosted a four-part seminar on film music. Each session lasted 3 hours and focused on a particular aspect of film scoring. These sessions were chaired by Joe Harnell (Emmy-nominated for his music on the “V” television movie) and Dr. Tom Becker, a psychologist. The opening session was called ‘The Process of Making Music for Films!’ Panelists included Harry Lojewski, Executive Director of Music at MGM Studios, Dan Carlin, music editor, and composer Bill Conti. Harnell spoke much too long and what he had to say was not new, except, perhaps, to the film music neophyte. He used “V” as an example of how he goes about the process of film scoring. The clip he presented from that TV film contained an adequate but not exceptional use of music. Dan Carlin used a black and white work print of “Airplane”, first without the music but including the scratch marks used by Elmer Bernstein to begin, change, and end his musical cues. Then, the print was shown again, this time with Bernstein’s witty score. It was a very effective example of how well a film plays with music. Unfortunately, not enough time was allotted to composer Bill Conti. Conti was humorous, pleasant, a bit flippant but easily the most lively of the speakers that evening. He furnished the audience with a thumbnail biography and the story of how he broke into the film music business. He was working in a piano bar in Rome when he met an English cutter who was working on a film in Madrid. “I’m a film composer,” Conti lied, and he was offered the job of scoring the low-budget film the cutter was working on. He continued to work on various European B pictures (he didn’t furnish any titles) and ghost wrote film scores for several famous Italian composers (again, no names). He quit ghosting when he saw the salary they were receiving for the music he wrote, and went to Milan where he directed the Italian company of Hair. Through a contact, he was hired to do the street music for “Blume in Love”. Director Paul Mazursky, thinking Conti was a native Italian, spoke to him through an interpreter for weeks. After that experience, he came to California seeking film work, without much success. After about a year, Mazursky came to the rescue again and offered Conti “Harry and Tonto”, and subsequently “Next Stop Greenwich Village”. A meeting with director John Avildsen brought an offer to score “W. W. and the Dixie Dancekings”; however, Lionel Newman, head of the 20th Century Fox Music Department, wanted Dave Grusin for that job. When John Avildsen did “Rocky”, he offered it to Conti after two other composers turned it down. Conti was paid $25,000 for the job, but he had to pay all the recording costs. He did the scoring session in one 3-hour session and pocketed $15,000. As a composer, Conti ferrets out who has the power on the film he’s working on, because that’s who you have to please – whether it’s the director, producer, or star. “It’s a business,” he said. He presented clips from his best film work, “Gloria”. The clip was comprised of the main title, opening sequence of New York skyline, and Julie Carmen on the bus. Regarding the unusual main title of a male solo anguishedly singing the word ‘Mama’ to a Spanish guitar, Conti explained that the studio wanted a theme song for the picture; director John Cassavetes mischievously agreed to the idea and urged Conti to write one. Conti knew, of course, Cassavetes wouldn’t dream of using a title song. Playing along, Conti asked Cassavetes for lyric ideas. “Give me something to work on… a word, at least!” “Mama!” Cassavetes snapped back. This in-joke caused Conti and Cassavetes to snicker at the screening while others took the somber main title seriously, as they should. A clip from “I, the Jury” followed. A piece of source music (Chopin on piano) during the beginning of the scene slowly eased into a Conti-scored seduction theme during a Barbara Carrera/Armand Assante love scene. It was quite clever, although the sequence itself was vulgar. The now famous ‘Gonna Fly Now’ segment of “Rocky” was also shown and Conti closed with these parting words: “We’re like morticians. We can’t bring the body back to life, but we can make it look better. None of this is serious. Remember that and you can’t get hurt.” The following session was highlighted by an all-too-brief session with Elmer Bernstein, who followed psychologist Tom Backer’s interminable talk (the evening was called ‘The Psychology of Film Music’) and Joe Harnell. Harnell showed two clips from the “Incredible Hulk” television series and told an amusing anecdote of how the producer didn’t appreciate Harnell’s discreet violin theme for actress Mariette Hartley’s death scene. Harnell had the violins slowly ebbing away until they faded out completely. The producer was worried that the audience would not realize that she was dead, so he insisted that Harnell bang a solo note on the piano to dramatically clue the audience that she was, indeed, dead! An angry Joe Harnell did as he was told and banged the solo note loudly on the piano, using his elbow. It worked very well in the clip he presented, although the knowing audience couldn’t help but laugh heartily. Elmer Bernstein furnished the audience with a verbal biography. He stated that in his first ten years in the film capital, he dealt with the heads of the music departments (John Green – MGM, Alfred Newman – 20th Fox, Morris Stoloff – Columbia, Ray Heindorf – Warners), not the producers and directors the composer deals with today. Bernstein mentioned, “They did what was best for the film. They didn’t dream that the score would have a life outside of the picture, or even if it was appropriate. They considered themselves part of an artistic endeavor. Other composers would come and sit in when Bernard Herrmann recorded his latest movie. It was a serious business until the commercial aspect came along.” He also decried the current practice of ‘holding back’ in film scoring, citing that many directors are afraid of direct emotional statements in the film score. “I believe in going with it, expressing emotion. Let’s have emotional response, what are they afraid of?” This was in response to a clip from “The Man with the Golden Arm”. A scene with Frank Sinatra getting a heroin fix where the music was definitely in the forefront, that might be scored more subtly today. After showing a scene from “Birdman of Alcatraz” (the emergence of a baby chick from its shell), Bernstein said that he wanted to use instruments not usually associated with prisons, so he scored the sequence with bells, harps, triangles. The clips and scoring of it proved very popular with the seminary participants. He acknowledged that he wrote within phrases, so that the music falls naturally within the timing, since he uses no devices. Although he’d like to do his own orchestrations, he can’t because of time reasons; however, in the case of “Birdman of Alcatraz” or “To Kill a Mockingbird”, the orchestrator is little more than a copyist because the music is so simple. One movie he very much wanted to do was “The Big Country”. He asked Charlton Heston, one of the stars (Bernstein had scored “The Ten Commandments”) to act on his behalf and see about the possibility of working on “Country”, but he was typed as a jazz composer (“Golden Arm”, “Sweet Smell of Success”) and Jerome Moross got the assignment. He was eager to do an Americana type film score and told his agent to get him “The Magnificent Seven” when it was ready to be scored. When quizzed if he uses or will use synthesizers in his work, Bernstein said he’d have to take 2 years off in order to know how to use them properly. “Melodic lines are the most communicative,” he said. “Film music is a poor field for complex writing. It’s not a question of pandering or writing down, it’s just that it works well.” Illness prevented me from attending the third session entitled ‘The New Technology’, which featured a synthesist, a representative from Yahama International, and John Cacavas of “Airport 1975” fame. The final session was entitled ‘The Future of Film Music’ and featured James Horner and Arthur Rubinstein, two of the most promising new composers in this field. Arthur Rubinstein spoke first and appeared ill at east, with a tendency to ramble on rather than make concise points. Rubinstein proffered that “As a film composer, you are in a Wagnerian position. You take stories of mythology and add to these stories, an element of simple emotional response (music). Films are in danger of getting into the technology of film making, i.e. sound effects, et al.” In scoring an episode of the television series “Scarecrow and Mrs. King”, he scored scenes with the music first and the sound effects placed later, which is not the usual procedure.