[Fmpro] Something to be aware of that is airing across PBS

[Chris Alpiar]

"Even on its own terms, it is a frivolous diversion." Ouchers! haha

-----Original Message-----
From: fmpro-bounces+chris=alpiar.com at nxport.com
[mailto:fmpro-bounces+chris=alpiar.com at nxport.com] On Behalf Of Jeff H
Kaufman
Sent: Monday, August 06, 2007 1:21 PM
To: Fmpro
Subject: [Fmpro] Something to be aware of that is airing across PBS

In what appears to be an attempt to put his own stamp on film music, Francis
Ford Coppola has done a program at PBS on the subject matter. The review
says it all. It appears to be one director/ producer journey through the art
of film music  In the process ignoring the contributions of the many and
only highlighting the few he has come in contact with over the years.  Here
is the review which appears in The New York Times .

 

TV Review | 'Lights! Action! Music!'

In Praise of Film Scores (Didn't You Hear Them?) 

By STEPHEN HOLDEN
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/h/stephen_holden
/index.html?inline=nyt-per> 

Published: August 6, 2007

Classical music for people who are afraid of classical music: that's one way
of looking at traditional film scores, which bring symphonically
orchestrated music to more people than most serious composers are ever
likely to attract to concert halls. As movie audiences are emotionally swept
up in the synergy of photography, acting, settings and costumes, it is music
more than any other element that effects what the director
<http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=85868&inline=ny
t-per> Francis Ford Coppola calls the "fusion" of these ingredients into "a
critical mass." It usually works best if it is only half-heard.

Those are among Mr. Coppola's insights in "Lights! Action! Music!," a
fluffy, disorganized, woefully incomplete compendium of interviews and film
clips about movie music that begins this month on public television
stations. (It is shown tonight on WLIW in New York.) 

In a show that flits among more composers and directors than it has the time
to accommodate, Mr. Coppola offers the most trenchant commentary. Many of
the rest of the comments by various composers are reduced to hyperbolic
sound bites included to give viewers a chance to connect a director or
composer's face with a few shallow observations.

Mr. Coppola recalls the Academy Award acceptance speech of the composer
<http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=114221&inline=n
yt-per> Dimitri Tiomkin, who wrote the thundering heroic scores for westerns
like "Red River" and "High Noon." In his speech upon winning best film score
for "High Noon," Mr. Coppola recalls, Mr. Tiomkin mischievously ran down a
list of classical composers from whom he had stolen. 

The show offers a tantalizing glimpse of Mr. Coppola's forthcoming "Youth
Without Youth," with music by Osvaldo Golijov, an Argentina-born composer
who grew up in Eastern Europe, won a MacArthur fellowship in 2003 and
teaches in the United States. A snippet of the movie, in which the director
instructed Mr. Golijov to evoke a mood of personal regret, is shown and
analyzed by the composer. As fleeting as the moment may be, you feel it. 

The composer David Shire recalls how Mr. Coppola asked him to write piano
music that evoked "the subtext" of
<http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=29486&inline=ny
t-per> Gene Hackman's character in "The Conversation." The tricky, obsessive
piano motif reveals a nagging psychological complexity that only music could
distill so precisely. 

The survey jumps awkwardly from subject to subject. One section, called
"Obscurity," seems to have been created simply to bring in the name of
<http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=100975&inline=n
yt-per> Henry Mancini, who is otherwise unacknowledged; his tango from a
flop 1969 film, "Gaily, Gaily," though catchy enough, is far from Mancini's
best. In another section the director
<http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=166472&inline=n
yt-per> Ang Lee offers a fascinating tidbit about instrumental sounds and
particular actors: Toby Maguire, he says, is best underscored by a clarinet.


One promising section, "Collaboration," focuses on the long-running
relationships between
<http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=89547&inline=ny
t-per> Federico Fellini and
<http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=109049&inline=n
yt-per> Nino Rota, and between
<http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=99175&inline=ny
t-per> Spike Lee and Terence Blanchard. But it is too far short. The
relationships of
<http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=94487&inline=ny
t-per> Alfred Hitchcock and
<http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=94132&inline=ny
t-per> Bernard Herrmann, or of
<http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=116874&inline=n
yt-per> John Williams and
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/steven_spielbe
rg/index.html?inline=nyt-per> Steven Spielberg, go unmentioned. A fragment
of
<http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=103552&inline=n
yt-per> Ennio Morricone's music from
<http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=99378&inline=ny
t-per> Sergio Leone's spaghetti western "For a Few Dollars More" is
seemingly shoehorned in just to mention that composer's name. But who's in
and who's out ultimately seems completely arbitrary.

Beyond its relationship to classical music, the history of film music is
given no historical context. The rise of the contemporary pop soundtrack in
movies like "The Graduate" should at least have been noted. And no one
describes the grinding drudgery endured by film composers sitting in front
of a Movieola and completing the painstaking, moment-by-moment
synchronization of sound and image. 

The best way to appreciate "Lights! Action! Music!" is as a sampler for a
larger and deeper exploration. Even on its own terms, it is a frivolous
diversion. 

LIGHTS! ACTION! MUSIC!

Tonight on WLIW, New York, at 9:30 (check local listings).

Directed by Dan Lieberstein; Gregg Hamerschlag and Larry Mestel, executive
producers; Kati Meister, producer; Ivan Mogull, co-producer; John Roland,
narrator; Steve Cohen, writer; Robin Joseph, music supervisor; Lisa Shreve,
editor. A Dan Lieberstein film produced in association with Primary Wave
Music.

 

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