How was it decided that Miklós Rózsa should score “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid”? Well, I tried to give the film a feel of the ’40s and I felt the best way to do this would be ti give the picture a sound, a look and feel of the ’40s (we filmed in black and white). We felt we needed the kind of music they wrote in those days. We realized if we got a modern composer like Dave Grusin or Jack Elliott, they could give us the “sound” by recreating it, but we figured why not go to the original source? So we went to Miklós and he said, “I don’t do comedies”, but we told him we wanted to make the score authentic. So you told Rózsa, play it straight, not for laughs? Yes, and he did it perfectly. He loved when he saw it all put together. Did you ever use a temporary track when you were first editing the film? Yes, we used Rózsa’s music from “Eye of the Needle” (the love theme especially), and it worked very well, but not as well as what he finally wrote for our film. How closely involved were you with the writing of the score? Well, Rózsa went off and wrote, and after a time he played some of it on the piano for us. You can’t tell a lot simply by a piano, you need a full orchestra, but it sounded right. However, you can’t tell until it’s all orchestrated. For example, the theremin has a very individual sound you can’t get on a piano. I thought perhaps the theremin sound was simulated, such as on a synthesizer. Oh no, it was a real theremin. There are only a couple of them left, and only a few people can play them. Did you attend the scoring sessions? Yes. We had 3 or 4 sessions with about a 65-piece orchestra, then it went down to a smaller size orchestra. I was quite involved with the scoring. In a couple of places in the film, I felt the music was a little too heavy. So Lee Holdridge (who conducted for Rózsa, who was ill and couldn’t conduct himself) “lightened” the cues by reworking them for a quintet. It worked quite well, mainly ad-libbing using the original score, but using just a few instruments. They did this in a couple of scenes in the picture: in the beginning, the montage, and once when Steve Martin is dressed up as a girl. The studio musicians are quite adept and so they were able to move things around. Once the score was recorded, how much did you change it in the final mix? Very little. Rózsa gave us a lot of music. For example, he gave us four and a half minutes for an ‘End Title’ since we weren’t sure how much we’d need (it ended up a bit less than that). He also gave us a lot of crescendos and cues that could be shortened by a good music editor. You always have a little “tampering” with the score. Wherever possible we made the music very prevalent in the final mix. You really can hear the score in the film, and the themes are very recognizable. Let’s talk about your general feelings on how important you think music is in films… I would say a film’s score brings everything to life. It’s amazing how scenes that were dead can come “alive” somehow by adding music. I recall seeing “rough cuts” of pictures where people are walking down the street, when the score is added you lead the audience emotionally. In a “long shot” you don’t know what the emotion is, but the music tells you. I’d say it’s one of the most important elements in any picture. Or, the lack of music can be effective, giving a “barren” feeling.