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Is Chinatown Jerry Goldsmith's most influential score?


mxncr12

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No Goldsmith score was really influential on a massive scale. At most he influenced particular composers (like Chris Young) or particular sub genre sounds, like the 'erotic thriller sound' in the years immediately following BASIC INSTINCT. CHINATOWN is a fine score (mostly through its sparse spotting), but influential it is not. Neither is the film, for that matter, although it's a fine film noir specimen and a classic in many ways.

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Just now, Jay said:

What's a Chris Young score I could check out that is influenced by Basic Instinct?

 

None that I'm aware of? They were two separate issues -- influence on composers, and influence on sub genres.

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2 minutes ago, Thor said:

No Goldsmith score was really influential on a massive scale. 

 

Rubbish. Goldsmith action style from 'Capricorn One' onwards was the blueprint for almost everything in the genre, from Poledouris to JNH.

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Just now, publicist said:

 

Rubbish. Goldsmith action style from 'Capricorn One' onwards was the blueprint for almost everything in the genre, from Poledouris to JNH.

 

Hardly. It's a cool score, but buried deep in the annals of film music history.

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Thor, all Goldsmith action scores (after CO) are felt in the next generation's action music. Fuckin 'Waterworld' is one Goldsmith riff after another.

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7 minutes ago, Thor said:

 

None that I'm aware of? They were two separate issues -- influence on composers, and influence on sub genres.

Oh, I misunderstood your sentence.

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14 minutes ago, publicist said:

Thor, all Goldsmith action scores (after CO) are felt in the next generation's action music. Fuckin 'Waterworld' is one Goldsmith riff after another.

 

That's what I said earlier. There are bits and pieces of Goldsmith 'gimmicks' that have influenced various composers throughout the years. But he's never really had that one influential score in his career.

 

Max Steiner's KING KONG was influential.

John Williams' STAR WARS was influential.

Giorgio Moroder's MIDNIGHT EXPRESS was influential.

Alex North's A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE was influential.

John Powell's JASON BOURNE was influential.


Goldsmith never had one of those. Not CHINATOWN. Not CAPRICORN ONE. Not even classics like PLANET OF THE APES, ALIEN, THE OMEN, STAR TREK or PATTON, brilliant as they all were.

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2 minutes ago, publicist said:

Neither 'King Kong' nor 'Star Wars' found many remarkable imitators, even if the canon claims otherwise. I agree about the others.

 

KING KONG was the first sound film that fully defined the classical sound (and especially the seamless blend from diegetic and non-diegetic). It's rightfully a cornerstone of film music history, and about as influential as it gets.

 

And do I really need to explain -- in this forum, of all places -- why or how STAR WARS was influential?

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Yeah because both claims have been made numerous times and i don't see how this is true if you really listen to what followed after and then critically analyze it. Very few references to 'King Kong' are to be found (Max Steiner's vast output notwithstanding) in works of Steiner's colleagues and surely not Korngold's, the first name composer in Hollywood, Newman who came some time later also had a remarkably different style, as had Herrmann and so on. 

 

Williams initiated a renaissance of the 'classical romantic repertoire' - which had been only 'dead' for a few years back then, remember scores like 'El Cid' etc. were from early to mid-60's - but the films utilizing this idiom were...which, Thor? Remind me of them? Because as i recall, only second-rate fare like 'Battlestar Galactica' (half Goldsmith, half Williams in style) and 'Krull' and so on. If you look at the bigger picture, the weren't many pictures that actually 'referenced' SW idiomatically. 

 

 

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No but there are also often broad assumptions that are repeated ad nauseam even if they don't hold much water - film criticism and the resulting canon are also fine examples of this.

 

It just seems kind of flimsy to cite the massive influence of, say, SW just because huge orchestras became en vogue again. The idiom(s) of SW were not that widely copied, referenced or addressed - most composers back then did their own thing, save for a few scores like, say, 'Masters of the Universe' or 'Krull'.

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Yeah, it's kind of pointless. As far as i'm concerned, 'Chinatown' is great film music to be studied but not exactly a great listen, apart from a few up-tempo versions of the theme. It's one of the few intellectual scores that enjoy a greater popularity, though.

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1 hour ago, Disco Stu said:

A piece of music's influence is not measured only in how often it is imitated.

 

Exactly. Influence can appear in the form of style or sound, approach, technology or industry. All of the titles I mentioned earlier were cornerstones in either one or more of these types of influences, and rightfully appear multiple times in literature on film music history. You are of course free to hold a different opinion, publicist, but history says otherwise.

 

Goldsmith was at the cutting edge of what was happening on the film score scene (especially in the 60s and 70s), and had a truly unique voice, but he never had a defining title in his career that influenced film music history on that level. Most of his influence is heard in his general trademarks as a composer, or -- at most -- a 'sound' influence within certain niches.

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1 hour ago, Stefancos said:

Ironically Jerry would be accused of ripping of Conan for Total Recall.

I always understood that was completely intentional and by the directory's request.

Not so much "ripping off" as "doing what you're asked to" and then putting another spin on it.

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1 minute ago, Disco Stu said:

I'd say Planet of the Apes is probably closest to being considered "influential" in this way.

 

It's certainly a classic film score, but I would argue that it's more 'symptomatic' than 'influential'; symptomatic of the experimentation that took place at the time (also within Hollywood). It's part of a series of scores that incorporated serialism into their soundscapes.

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3 minutes ago, Pieter_Boelen said:

I always understood that was completely intentional and by the directory's request.

Not so much "ripping off" as "doing what you're asked to" and then putting another spin on it.

 

Ive been told by people in the know that that is absolutely not true, and that Goldsmith was not asked to follow any sort of temp track.

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19 minutes ago, Thor said:

Exactly. Influence can appear in the form of style or sound, approach, technology or industry. All of the titles I mentioned earlier were cornerstones in either one or more of these types of influences, and rightfully appear multiple times in literature on film music history. You are of course free to hold a different opinion, publicist, but history says otherwise.

 

Yeah but as always your argumentation is kind of blurry -  we suddenly have four! types of influence and it seems for whatever reason important to you that Goldsmith didn't figure in any of them which kind of defies this broad reasoning. It's a classic 'whatever, Thor' moment.

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4 minutes ago, publicist said:

 

Yeah but as always your argumentation is kind of blurry -  we suddenly have four! types of influence and it seems for whatever reason important to you that Goldsmith didn't figure in any of them which kind of defies this broad reasoning. It's a classic 'whatever, Thor' moment.

 

 

How is it 'blurry'? Of course, we have four types of influence. There are even more. The point is that Goldsmith doesn't have that single, milestone influential score, whether you define influence in terms of sound, approach, technology or industry (or other things), at least not on the scale we're talking here. 

 

That doesn't denigrate him as a composer, btw, it's just an observation of this particular aspect. God knows there have been influential composers and scores that weren't necessarily 'great'.

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It's blurry because you mix scores that initiated a very clear and long line of successors (Bourne, 80's electronica) with scores like SW or KK which are influential mostly by association to the mega success of the movie itself not because their musical idioms were widely used thereafter. I can cite you as many cues clearly being patterned after First Blood/Capricorn One/Rambo II as i can of obvious SW epigones, though obviously neither except SW was a monster hit. 

 

The pressing question is, in relation to this thread, what does the example of SW (or KK) do here? It's not a score copied a lot (except by Williams himself), it's a score that is famous by being a brilliant success. And that's not what the thread is about, it specifically asks if the score of 'Chinatown' was influential (it was not). If the question would arise if SW was 'influential' in the sense that other scores refer to it, idiomatically, not by using broad orchestral gestures, i would argue that is not really the case.

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2 hours ago, Thor said:

No Goldsmith score was really influential on a massive scale. At most he influenced particular composers (like Chris Young) or particular sub genre sounds, like the 'erotic thriller sound' in the years immediately following BASIC INSTINCT. CHINATOWN is a fine score (mostly through its sparse spotting), but influential it is not. Neither is the film, for that matter, although it's a fine film noir specimen and a classic in many ways.

It seemed that Chinatown was influential in the noir genre because I read an article in film score monthly that said that Goldsmith started the neo-noir scoring trend with Chinatown that continued with scores such as Farewell, My Lovely,  Taxi Driver and Body Heat; it does seem like other films like Prince of the City, Mulholland Falls, LA Confidential, and The Black Dahlia continued that trend.

 

Regarding the merits of the score, I think that it being extremely specific to the film's the dramatic elements through the aforementioned sparse spotting makes it one of most astutely conceived film scores ever and therefore one of the all-time great film scores.  

 

Taking the main title/motif as an example, most talk about the melancholy trumpet solo that anticipates the film's doomed romance but fail to denote that the theme's opening of brushed piano strings is evokes the parched backdrop for which that aforesaid doomed romance takes place.  We know this because upon re-watch, those same brushed stings are used to conjure aridity during the third scene of the film when the main character is spying on another character navigating an austere and completely desiccated riverbed.  It's all obviously brilliant, to the point that when the great John Williams was asked to pick music that he admired that set a tone by another composer, he picked the the Love Theme From Chinatown.

 

It's all the more astounding that this score was composed in nine days.

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'Chinatown' is too much of its own beast that others could help themselves to it. It just doesn't suit that much beyond the narrative of...'Chinatown'. And the 'noir' was even used by JG himself in scores like 'The Detective' (cf. Alex North).

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19 minutes ago, Stefancos said:

Like Chinatown those scores you mention took film-noir music stylings and updated them to some extent. That hardly makes Chinatown a hugely influential score.

 

What are film-noir music stylings?  It certainly can't be the use of jazz since jazz is nearly non-existent in film noir and since very few film noir scores utilized jazz, the films of that genre clearly didn't encompass jazz in their film scores any more than films from other genres during that time period.

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1 hour ago, publicist said:

It's blurry because you mix scores that initiated a very clear and long line of successors (Bourne, 80's electronica) with scores like SW or KK which are influential mostly by association to the mega success of the movie itself not because their musical idioms were widely used thereafter. I can cite you as many cues clearly being patterned after First Blood/Capricorn One/Rambo II as i can of obvious SW epigones, though obviously neither except SW was a monster hit. 

 

The pressing question is, in relation to this thread, what does the example of SW (or KK) do here? It's not a score copied a lot (except by Williams himself), it's a score that is famous by being a brilliant success. And that's not what the thread is about, it specifically asks if the score of 'Chinatown' was influential (it was not). If the question would arise if SW was 'influential' in the sense that other scores refer to it, idiomatically, not by using broad orchestral gestures, i would argue that is not really the case.

 

But again, you imply that there is only ONE form of influence, which has to do with 'musicial idioms' or style. This is clearly not so. There are several types of influence. Scores like SW and KK are highly influential both in terms of approach and use (if not in style per se); not to mention setting a new industry standard. This makes them cornerstones in film music history. Goldsmith never had one of those, nor any other singular score with any other form of influence on the level we're talking about here.

 

Incidentally, the original post never clarified which type of influence it was after.

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2 hours ago, publicist said:

Yeah, it's kind of pointless. As far as i'm concerned, 'Chinatown' is great film music to be studied but not exactly a great listen, apart from a few up-tempo versions of the theme. It's one of the few intellectual scores that enjoy a greater popularity, though.

 

That really depends on your individual threshold for this kind of writing. But we're not talking Fielding's Escape from Alcatraz here--even in the non-theme received cues are generally tonal with a clear structure for the brain to follow. 

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3 hours ago, Jay said:

What's a Chris Young score I could check out that is influenced by Basic Instinct?

 

The influence on Chris was in the compound meters in the action music like the Spidey 3 first fight or the train in Spidey 2.  Also the spotting decisions.  Goldsmith was a very, very good spotter and that is a gift that is separate from composing.  You can write good music but spotting is knowing what the scene needs musically, where it should step away, take a pause, etc.  I believe Goldsmith learned this from Herrmann's influence.

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2 hours ago, Thor said:

 

It's certainly a classic film score, but I would argue that it's more 'symptomatic' than 'influential'; symptomatic of the experimentation that took place at the time (also within Hollywood). It's part of a series of scores that incorporated serialism into their soundscapes.

 

That's true. Fantastic Voyage was probably the first blockbuster sci-fi score to channel the European avant-garde of the time, and that was two years previous. It had been done on TV of course on shows like the Twilight Zone, but not on the silver screen.

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1 hour ago, publicist said:

And that's not what the thread is about, it specifically asks if the score of 'Chinatown' was influential (it was not). 

I do not see how it was not influential in the noir genre.  Goldsmith's The Detective seemed to be a a forerunner but Chinatown started the neo-noir scoring trend.  At the very least, the score to Chinatown has to be a reinvention of noir scoring practices or perhaps the defining noir score.

 

I mean, The Godfather not only has one key scene (restaurant murder) reminiscent from the 1948 film noir/gangster film Force of Evil but also many of its defining themes, and yet it's themes are still widely perceived as a groundbreaking and influential.

32 minutes ago, Thor said:

Incidentally, the original post never clarified which type of influence it was after.

 

I was primarily interested as to whether Jerry Goldsmith had a film score that was influential in a genre.

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6 hours ago, Thor said:

 

But again, you imply that there is only ONE form of influence, which has to do with 'musicial idioms' or style. This is clearly not so. There are several types of influence. Scores like SW and KK are highly influential both in terms of approach and use (if not in style per se); not to mention setting a new industry standard. This makes them cornerstones in film music history.

 

I don't imply that, you are the one who brought up two examples which just doesn't belong in this thread because we can assume no one including the original poster ever claimed that 'Chinatown' was a mega blockbuster that prompted millions of young boys to go gaga over it.

 

And i don't agree exactly with the rest of your assumptions (setting a new industry standard?) KK despite common lore wasn't the first type of score to utilize the symphony orchestra in that way, even 'Metropolis' had a proper film score (in very operatic fashion) and several others i can think of, Steiner included (Bird of Paradise). Technical advance in sound recording made KK possible, the success of the movie brought the music into the spotlight but film music would have taken largely the same development even if KK was never made. It was inevitable with dozens of european composers providing the music.

 

And SW was a gigantic success but your claim to fame really rests on the fact that more juvenile sci-fi/fantasy movies were made after that and the music of SW didn't influence that many of them, or only in the superficial-ish ways, say in using a large orchestra and providing a lot of music (The Black Hole? ST TMP? Conan?...even E. T.?).

 

So if you ask me, 'influential' here means more general culture and generations of people that know the brand and the main theme (in case of SW) but if we are looking for a MUSICAL influence, the ground wears rather thin. 

6 hours ago, Sharkus Malarkus said:

That really depends on your individual threshold for this kind of writing. But we're not talking Fielding's Escape from Alcatraz here--even in the non-theme received cues are generally tonal with a clear structure for the brain to follow. 

 

Yeah but it also is dry, arid and modernistic, not exactly film music's most endearing features.

6 hours ago, mxncr12 said:

I was primarily interested as to whether Jerry Goldsmith had a film score that was influential in a genre.

 

That would probably be martial action scores and thrillers.

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3 hours ago, publicist said:

I don't imply that, you are the one who brought up two examples which just doesn't belong in this thread because we can assume no one including the original poster ever claimed that 'Chinatown' was a mega blockbuster that prompted millions of young boys to go gaga over it.

 

It has nothing to do with being a 'mega blockbuster'. It has to do with approach (a re-vitalization of the neo-romantic score for a sci fi movie in the case of SW) and use (a seamless integration with sound/diegetic/non-diegetic in the case of KK). These two scores are considered influential cornerstones in film music history for a reason.

 

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And i don't agree exactly with the rest of your assumptions (setting a new industry standard?) KK despite common lore wasn't the first type of score to utilize the symphony orchestra in that way, even 'Metropolis' had a proper film score (in very operatic fashion) and several others i can think of, Steiner included (Bird of Paradise). Technical advance in sound recording made KK possible, the success of the movie brought the music into the spotlight but film music would have taken largely the same development even if KK was never made. It was inevitable with dozens of european composers providing the music.

 

I was talking about sound movies and classical Hollywood cinema. Of course, symphonic/neo-classical/leitmotif-driven music was used before KK, but KK seemed to be the fulfillment of this particular approach -- a fully furnished, thematic landscape that had no confusion stemming from what was diegetic or non-diegetic (like the first tribe scene); a confusion that was fairly common following the advent of sound in movies. Doesn't matter if it was inevitable; it was the first to make an impact on the industry this way and is therefore rightfully hailed as the "father" of contemporary Hollywood film music.

 

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And SW was a gigantic success but your claim to fame really rests on the fact that more juvenile sci-fi/fantasy movies were made after that and the music of SW didn't influence that many of them, or only in the superficial-ish ways, say in using a large orchestra and providing a lot of music (The Black Hole? ST TMP? Conan?...even E. T.?).

 

 

It goes beyond merely employing a big, orchestral, neo-romantic approach to genre movies at a time when these were out of fashion (although that would have sufficed in itself, since the following years saw a splurge of these movies). The massive soundtrack sales also indicated great synergy effects, which became more and more important throughout the 80s (much like EASY RIDER and THE GRADUATE indicated great possibilities with using rock or needledrop songs in movies a decade before). It was a game-changer.

 

I think you're the first person I've ever met who claims that the influence of Williams' STAR WARS score is non-existant or overrated. It's certainly a difficult standpoint to defend.

 

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So if you ask me, 'influential' here means more general culture and generations of people that know the brand and the main theme (in case of SW) but if we are looking for a MUSICAL influence, the ground wears rather thin. 

 

If by 'musical influence', you mean ushering in a brand new tonal language that had never been heard before, I agree. But that's rather limiting (few scores would qualify). In this case, it has more to do with application, use and re-vitalization.

 

In any case, it seems the topic starter had 'genre influence' in mind when he did this thread (as he specified on the previous page). Then I have to re-iterate what I said earlier: I don't think CHINATOWN was particularly influential in the film noir genre, even if it's a good example of a film noir score. If Goldsmith has had any kind of 'genre influence', it would need to be the erotic thrillers in the wake of BASIC INSTINCT. Arguably also some lofty soundscapes in the wake of ALIEN. But that's VERY arguable. Goldsmith's main influence was a limited one; mostly his general use of odd meters and chord progressions (esp. in action music) that later composers have admired and been inspired by.

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