There was an intriguing document on display recently at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science: a 1968 studio memo listing film composers by their fees. At the head of the tally were legendary names such as Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, and Maurice Jarre, whose going rates were in the $35,000-$75,000 range. Younger or lesser known talents were available for as little as a few thousand each.
“Even the top money then – that’s a long way from what a score costs now,” says producer Mace Neufeld. Today’s feature-film music budgets are often in the millions, and high-profile composers like John Williams, James Newton Howard, and James Horner are paid in the neighborhood of $500,000 per picture.
Audiences, meanwhile, seem more conscious than ever before of the composer’s contribution to a film, as the increasing sales of pop soundtracks and film scores show. Today’s producers insist they’re well aware of the vital role composers play in the films they score. Composers, however, increasingly grumble about the shrinking amounts of time they are given to produce a score and, at a time when actors get $20 million paychecks and screenplays fetch $3 million, the fees they are paid.
“I’m not complaining,” says composer Elliot Goldenthal (“Interview with the Vampire”, “Batman Forever”), “but it doesn’t seem right in comparison to some of the actors and screenwriters. When a score drives the movie, it seems unfair that a movie star comes in for four or five days and makes all this money.”
John Debney (“Cutthroat Island”, “Hocus Pocus”) compares the relative value to a film of the composer and the editor. “It’s not sour grapes, but the editor and the composer are very close,” Debney says. “I put them on a par, great editors and great composers. But the editor is paid much, much more. I do feel that, based on experience, we’re underpaid. The AA-list guys are getting $500,000, but that has just happened. Sometimes you’re dealing with a package that’s a fraction of that. The mid-range is $200,000-$300,000. But a top-notch editor can make $1 or $2 million.”
“The position of composers on productions is rising,” says producer Cary Brokaw. “Sometimes post schedules inhibit it but I think there’s now more deference to accommodating a particular composer with schedules and budget.”
Producer Richard Gladstein (“The Journey of August King”) notes that “the composer’s function is as important as the production designer or the D.P. – it’s that integral.” And veteran producer Howard Koch goes further, declaring, “Music is fully 50% of the movie. And I’ll believe that till the day I die.”
The result, producers agree, is an increasingly important working relationship between producer and composer. It’s a process, says Neufeld, that involves “collaborating and compromising.” That’s particularly true in the producer’s ultimate domain: the budget. “Inevitably and unfortunately, composers address their budget concerns to the producer,” says Brokaw.
There is no strictly defined set of rules to determine music budgets of either studio-financed or independent films, with the exception of an early decision as to how much of the soundtrack will involve orchestration, versus popular music, and the attendant breakdown of the money along synch fee/orchestration lines.
“Usually what happens,” says Harry Garfield, senior vp, music, at Universal Pictures, “is that you work out a music budget and hire a composer within that range. You discuss the orchestra size and how many songs we’re going to license, then adjust the orchestra accordingly. The budgets vary. You can have a big budget movie and they still skimp on the music.”
The overall budget for a studio film “is arrived at by the studio telling you how much money you can spend,” producer Stanley Wilson notes dryly. “So then the director and producer determine how important the soundtrack is in terms of what kind of budget cuts they’re willing to make in other areas of the production. Then you just get a composer you can afford. If you can’t afford Randy Newman or Elmer Bernstein, there’s a next rung of guys who you can afford who are just as talented. Then you get down to how many hours of sessions and how many musicians you can afford. Economics really dictate the whole thing.”
On “Down Periscope”, the upcoming Fox features starring Kelsey Grammer, Wilson, co-producer Robert Lawrence, and director David Ward agreed to make a sacrifice in the special effects budget, because, says Wilson, “we didn’t want to sacrifice anything in the way of Randy Edelman’s score.”
Producers say they’re keenly aware that a composer’s biggest problem today is the ongoing battle to beat the clock. “They have to write the score in as little as three weeks. It’s not enough time,” says Neufeld.
“It’s murderously short,” confirms Randy Newman (“Toy Story”, “Maverick”). “The sound guys are pressed and the music guys are pressed.”
James Horner had seven or eight weeks to write the scores for “Patriot Games” and “Clear and Present Danger”. Normally, it’s five weeks, says Horner, “and they’re still editing, still previewing. So I’m spotting the music a week or two after photography stops. I have to write it fast while they’re still editing, it’s a huge scramble, it’s madness. They’ll have 40 editors and one composer. You get it done and the studios say, ‘See, we did it last time, so we can do it again.’”
Patrick Doyle (“Sense and Sensibility”, “A Little Princess”) says that he’s been generally lucky regarding schedules. “One can always do with more time. Five or six weeks is a woefully short time in most cases. Although, sometimes shooting from the hip pays off because there is no time and who’s to say the work is not just as good?”
Thomas Newman (“The Shawshank Redemption”, “Little Women”) is philosophical about the situation. “It boils down to the deals made,” he says. “You have to play the game. More time doesn’t always equal a better product. Although you do need time to incubate, you can be overly thoughtful.”
And while Hans Zimmer (“Crimson Tide”, “Nine Months”) says the only time he’s really happy is when he’s writing music, he suggests: “Sometimes one should be paid for grief and pain. Any day under 10 weeks should cost another $1 million. But then, the things that Elliot Goldenthal does in a short time are amazing. It only takes a second to have an idea.”
Ever-tightening schedules, meanwhile, mean there’s less room for error, leading to the ultimate dilemma: last-minute rewriting of the score, or replacing it – and the composer – altogether. Even top talents like Mark Isham (“A River Runs Through It”), Elmer Bernstein (“Devil in a Blue Dress”), and Michael Kamen (“Mr. Holland’s Opus”) have fallen out with filmmakers on other movies. This worst-case scenario for composers is also something producers say they’d rather avoid. “Chucking an entire score and hiring a new composer is about as big a nightmare as you can get,” says Gladstein. “You can equate it to shooting a film and firing the director – or having him walk off – and shooting it again.” Still, says Neufeld, “We often say something isn’t working, though it’s very costly.”
Sometimes producers opt to work with what a composer’s already done. When Kock and director Jerry Zucker first heard Maurice Jarre’s score for “Ghost”, he had used synthesizers. “He had gotten away from the original feeling we had been going for,” Koch recalls. “So we sat down with him and he rewrote the whole thing and got back on the road.”
And sometimes, Koch adds, more drastic steps are taken. “It happens a lot today but it always has. With ‘On a Clear Day You Can See Forever’ [released in 1970], after God knows how much we spent on the music, Barbra Streisand didn’t like the score. So for $150,000 we got someone else. I thought about firing her, but she was absolutely right. When [Burton Lane] came on he made it so much better.”
In the final analysis, concludes Neufeld, the role of the composer on a film is inevitably improving, a result of both the climate and the musicians themselves. “There’s such an abundance of brilliant musical talent in Hollywood,” he says. “Most composers are so versatile they can handle almost any type of score. Composers are not yet stars, commanding millions, but remember, they can do a lot of scores a year. A composer can get four or five hundred thousand several times a year, plus residuals.”
But composers fear the abundant talent makes filmmakers blasé. “Most of the time, when execs say, ‘I’d like so-and-so to do the score,’ it’s not like, ‘Get me Harrison Ford,’” says Horner. “The feeling that one composer can do it better than another is not there. Spielberg uses Williams and Zemeckis uses Alan Silvestri but [with most directors] choosing the composer is not a show-stopper, so the composer doesn’t have as much clout to raise his fee. They’ll move on; there’s always someone willing to do it. Music is an area where people don’t know the value of one composer’s abilities over another, there’s always a list and they’re thought of as interchangeable. Directors are fiercely loyal to cinematographers and editors, but mostly not to composers.”
In the end, however, composers have learned to live with their lot. “If composers find fault [it’s because] there’s a neglect of purposes, we occupy our own rarefied space,” says Thomas Newman. “But that’s the territory. We’re backstage people. You can complain, but you’re in the wrong profession if you can’t deal with it.”