It’s no secret that some of the best composers in the movie business have had their scores unceremoniously dumped, to be replaced by an entirely new score composed by different hands.  It happened recently to Elmer Bernstein on “I Love Trouble” and, perhaps most famously, to both Bernard Herrmann on Hitchcock's “Torn Curtain” and Alex North on “2001” (the insult here being that his score was replaced by Stanley Kubrick's record collection).

Most controversial of recent replacements seems to be Jerry Goldsmith's score for “The River Wild”, which replaced a complete score by soundtrack veteran Maurice Jarre.  To explain the whys and wherefores of this move, I tracked down the film's director, Curtis Hanson, during his recent stop-over in London to promote the Meryl Streep action vehicle.

A competent genre director responsible for such thrillers as “The Bedroom Window”, “Bad Influence”, and “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle” (as well as the screenplays for “The Silent Partner” and “Never Cry Wolf”), Hanson was more than happy to give an explanation.  “It was a studio call, actually,” he says.  “The simple fact was that – as one always does during the editing process – I and the editors put together a temp score made up of music from all sorts of movies, so that we had music there to preview the film with.  I think we then had three previews, and the studio people saw the previews with that temp score and the previews went very well and the music worked.

"Maurice Jarre then came in to score the picture, after which we screened it again for the studio.  And their feeling was it (the score) let down the picture a little bit.  It wasn’t that they didn't like the score; they felt it didn't add as much as they hoped it would.  In a way, that’s the curse of a temp score.  You put in terrific music from all over the place, and it’s hard for the poor composer coming along to follow it.

"But we had the time to make a change and they elected to do it.  And the position I took was that this would be a big job and we should only consider it if someone like Jerry Goldsmith was available.  That was the line I took.  So they checked, and it turned out Jerry was available and anxious to do it.

"He'd been unavailable when we'd originally started – and I'd wanted to work with Jerry for the last three movies (“Bedroom Window”, “Bad Influence”, and “The Hand that Rocks the Cradle”).  So, he came in and did a score – and there you have it!

"Altogether, he had about four-and-a-half weeks.  But that said, one of his best scores, ‘Chinatown’, was also done as replacement, and I knew that.  He's a pro.  All movie composers, Maurice, Jerry, whoever - they're just professionals.  But the quality of their work depends an how they connect with the movie.  Jerry's had scores thrown out too.  It’s just part of the business."

Hanson then summed up the situation as follows: "I felt bad because Maurice did a very good score and is a wonderful guy," to which he added, "It was just one of those things!"