Dole

You're right. I'm wrong. I found the CMIYC article and it says: "Usually Williams sits down and plays the movie's main motifs on the piano for Spielberg before orchestration, but the two were on different coasts this past summer, and these recording sessions are the first time Spielberg has heard the music. 'I have implicit trust.'" I thought I remembered it being explained that he was in London but I guess he could just have been in Boston. At any rate, I'm sorry. Forget what I posted earlier. I shall punish myself accordingly.

I remember listening to that CD for the first time last year. I was wearing headphones and working on the computer and I actually threw my headphones off when it happened in that cue because I was totally unprepared for it. The people around me must have thought I was crazy.

I'm not saying it sounds realistic. But according to Spielberg, he didn't get to sit down with JW and listen to his themes for Catch Me If You Can because Williams went to London to work on Potter unexpectedly. Maybe he found he had more time on his hands. CMIYC isn't wall-to-wall score. Maybe Ross or Columbus or someone asked him to come and help out with a few things. Maybe he was having an affair with someone on the Potter crew. I don't know why he jetted off to London, but Spielberg said he was there at the end of the summer working on the film. I assume it would have had to have been something substantial for him to change the way he had done business with Spielberg for over two decades. Maybe the guy who wrote the article was on crack. I don't know.

I thought that the story was that Ross had done all but about 40 minutes, but Williams reviewed the work and didn't like it do he went to London and redid most of it himself. I know that Spielberg said Catch Me If You Can was the only score he didn't get to preview with Williams during the composing process because Williams was in London working on Potter at the same time.

I couldn't find the driver quote, but here's some stuff from interviews with orchestrator Conrad Pope: From the Tracksounds interview (http://www.tracksounds.com/specialfeatures/Interviews/interviewcp.htm): CC: I just had a quick look at the notes for the original Sony Classical release for Episode 1, but didn't find your name there, unfortunately. CP: John's point is that, he is the author of that music, fully and completely. When you take one of his albums, he is saying, "Look I am the architect of all the colors and you (the orchestrator) have just executed them." And this makes perfect sense. From a Hollywood Reporter article (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/music/features/e3i56847dd0fb6af3a5ef5d0a68d2b05862): The orchestrator works with the materials received to create an intricately detailed, fully realized orchestral score. If the sketch is almost complete, the job of orchestrating is more technical. "When I work with John Williams," Pope says, "I'm a secretary -- a very grateful secretary." From a FSM interview (http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/articles/2003/19_Mar---Conrad_Pope.asp): CP: I was doing something for Alan Silvestri and I was at the session. I had cued in a cymbal part and [the percussionist] said, "I played that, Conrad." I said, "It was cued. Did Al ask for it?" He said, "No, but when we got there I just knew it was right!" That's the feeling you want when you orchestrate. That's where orchestrating and composing meet. If you orchestrate for John Williams it's really so secretarial. You're basically an editor making sure everything's just right because he's made all the decisions. I think part of the clue of orchestrating is knowing when not to do anything -- knowing that it's all been done. DA: Can I ask a completely "devil's advocate question"? Williams is famed for having such complete sketches when he turns things over to the orchestrators. Why does he still need a talented orchestrator as opposed to someone that's just a copyist? CP: Well, at times he can just go directly to the copyist. But the reason to have someone like me, or any number of wonderful people here, is so he can write in shorthand and go quite quickly. In other words, it's all there, but it's like a secretary's shorthand. You have to know how to read it. DA: Can you give a specific example of something he might do for shorthand? CP: Yes. John will write out one line and he'll write "tutti woodwinds." And you know from that tutti that you've got to have a piccolo up an octave and put the bassoon down. You know exactly how to construct it. So all he has to do is make one notation and because of one's experience with the orchestra and with his music you go, "Oh this is John's tutti woodwinds Jurassic Park-style." Hope that helps to settle this once and for all.

I don't know about that. They made some really terrible choices back in the 70s and 80s too. Despite this year's winner, the Academy has made some decent choices in the past decade. Titanic, Shakespeare in Love, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, and the two LOTR films were all (debatable) worthy winners. I don't think that the last decade has been any worse than when scores like 'Round Midnight, Fame, A Little Romance, and Midnight Express were stealing Oscars from more worthy nominees 20 or 30 years ago.

And the Lincoln film too. Whatever the movie is, I'm happy. Hurt is a fabulous actor.

I think it would be clearer if Williams/Ross hadn't used the stupid theme in Chamber of Secrets where it has no business being (even if it does work well in the scene and sounds good on the album).

Wasn't "Variations on Happy Birthday" originally supposed to be on the "American Journey" CD (the one with "Call of the Champions" on it)? I thought I remembered seeing a temporary track list with it on there and then it disappeared (ala I am the Senate). If so, then Williams would have recorded it when he recorded all the other material for the CD and it's just sitting somewhere begging to be released right? I don't know. Maybe I'm going senile but I thought I remembered this happening.

I can't ever imagine "Fanfare for Dukakis" being released unless some zealous JW fan has the opportunity to record it. Maybe if it was renamed...

What nominated score from 2003 would you have rather seen win?

LOTR: FOTR deserved the Oscar. A.I. would have been my second choice. Harry Potter is a good score with some great cues, but it sounds like JW on autopilot compared to the beauty of A.I.

Absolutely. I never thought too much of Hook until I got a bootleg. Now it's my second-favorite JW score. The brilliance of the themes etc. doesn't come through on the OST. There's just not enough room.

If John Williams read even a fraction of the stuff we post about him here, he'd probably get a restraining order against the lot of us.

Williams did. It's from a recording he did with the Boston Pops.

Artie Kane raped my childhood!

I agree that TMP is the best prequel score. It does sound like a Star Wars score. However, I think AOTC could have had the best prequel score had JW composed some battle music. The battle music is such an important part of a Star Wars score. Take away all the Battle of Endor music from ROTJ and you take away some of the best and most inventive music of that score. Sadly, we'll never know what JW might have been capable of composing for AOTC. Oh, and I agree with whoever mentioned the cartoon-like fanfares in ROTS. I hate the one during the transition right after the ship crashes on Coruscant. Dole: ready to be assaulted by the "I enjoy puking up Jagermeister and stomach acid more than I like the score from Attack of the Clones" crowd.

I've always like the Coruscant arrival music and "He Is the Chosen One." When the expanded score came out it took a long time for the other Coruscant music to grow on me, but now I like it. I've found myself liking the score to TPM (as a whole) much more in the past couple of years. I listen to it much more often now than I did when it first came out. It would be nice to have a complete legit release of the score.

For Your Eyes Only was. So was "Nobody Does it Better", "Live and Let Die", and (if you count it as being from a Bond film) "The Look of Love"

1. Goldfinger 2. You Only Live Twice 3. Nobody Does it Better Moonraker has grown on me recently too for some reason.

As for the films, the Academy giveth and the Academy taketh away. Rebecca won best picture in 1940 and I think there were a lot of better films that year (The Grapes of Wrath, Pinocchio, The Great Dictator, Fantasia, etc.). I think a lot of it just had to do with competition. North by Northwest came out the same year as Ben-Hur, Some Like it Hot, Anatomy of a Murder, etc. Although I do agree that Hitchcock's films weren't viewed as masterpieces until the 60's and 70's. Vertigo was practically booed out of theaters in 1958 and now it's considered one of the top 50 films ever made! As for the scores not being nominated, I agree with whoever mentioned that Herrmann was an unpleasant ass. I think that probably had something to do with it. That and the fact that the Academy's Music Branch seems completely inept at judging the quality of music. They're like the FEMA of the entertainment industry.

They're making another Rambo film? Dole: whose choice for the film would be Gustavo Santollalalalalala

What film did he win for? He won for The Lion King in 1995

There are 2 that I'm aware of off the top of my head. 2-time Oscar-winnning Best Actor Gary Cooper was given one, and 2-time Oscar-winning Best Director Elia Kazan was given one. But Cooper was beloved by all who ever knew him and Kazan was being recognized for, among other things, helping to bring method acting to Hollywood and tackling taboo subjects such as racism in a time when you just didn't do that. Kazan probably wished he never got the honorary award though as a large part of the audience refused to stand or applaud for him because he testified before Congress back in the 1950s about Communist sympathizers in Hollywood that led to many people being blacklisted.

I play the piano... but I certainly wasn't there as an instrumentalist.. let's say I have a good connection Hellgi = William Ross!!!!