JamieC

Hi gang
Do any of you know the book The Film Music Reader ? It's a book that includes an interview with Jerry Goldsmith (perhaps the interview has been published elsewhere, too) and he discusses the role of an orchestrator.
Here's a link to Google Books; p. 230 of the text made available is where to read JG's comments.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=FhUZ4nphj58C&pg=PA229&lpg=PA229&dq=mervyn+cooke+orchestrators&source=bl&ots=Vxx1jxw2D6&sig=y5ukZG7yScTD98XbUsbhYxLbjnI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=I3pnUtm9H-WW0QWSroGYAQ&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=mervyn%20cooke%20orchestrators&f=false
It still seems a little unreal that a new JW score will be out witihin the next few months doesn't it ? There we all were waiting patiently for his new work for Star Wars.
JC

I remember seeing Star Wars when it opened in the UK in early 1978: I had seen a black and white photo of the film (showing the moment when Luke and Ben, as they ride into Mos Eisley, are stopped by Stormtroopers) in our local newspaper and I think that had been my first encounter with the movie. I was hooked, of course, from that first screening. I was only five years old.
The movie I really remember being excited for , though, was Superman: The Movie the following year. That same year must have been when I got my first recording of some of JW's music when my mum and dad got me an album of themes for sf movies and tv, conducted by Geoff Love. I don't think I got a John Williams soundtrack proper until The Empire Strikes Back on vinyl or Jedi on audiocassette in '83. I even remember 'Darth Vader' making an appearance in the toy department of our local department store in around 1980. That was very exciting.

I may be lagging way behind here, but here's an on-camera interview with Steven Spielberg and John Williams that I'd not seen before. Scroll through to about 1 hour and 13 minutes to see them chatting together. However, the whole programme is really worth watching.

JC

I may be lagging way behind here, but here's an on-camera interview with Steven Spielberg and John Williams that I'd not seen before. Scroll through to about 1 hour and 13 minutes to see them chatting together. However, the whole programme is really worth watching.

JC

Permit me to indulge a happy memory here: the current 'surprising' (and very pleasing) news about JW writing the music for The Book Thief movie adaptation takes me back (with a wry smile) to pre-internet days when you'd walk into a record shop ('A what ?' I hear some you perhaps ask) and you'd suddenly discover a John Williams soundtrack you had no idea about because there wasn't the volume or speed of information dissemination in the fabric of daily life as there is now.
I remember discovering the soundtracks for Presumed Innocent and Stanley & Iris in the late summer of 1990 when I came across them in HMV on Oxford Street in London. This was hugely exciting as they were both new albums and had just seemed to 'arrive' in a rather magical way in shops. I had no idea that JW had composed them and there would certainly never typically be any advance news about such projects. To some degree that kind of surprise was true of movies, too. The first time you'd see a movie poster used to be when you saw it just a few days before a given film's release when it was printed in a newspaper or put up in its frame outside the local cinema. I guess it's fair to say that the wave of pre-release hype and promotion which the internet can now furnish has perhaps taken away, or at least lessened, certain kinds of discovery. (I appreciate that one can choose to not go online and read / listen / view pre-release material, of course).
JC

Hi gang
This is an excellent subject to consider as it takes us, once more, back to some issues which lie at the heart of the matter.
I mean this in the best way: arguably, nothing is original (in terms of cultural production/art) in the sense that we are all ongoing products of our ongoing cultural reference points and moment in time. Factor into that, too, a sense of historical context in terms of traditions, movements and cycles in creativity and we've got a melting pot of ways to get our creative bearings.
We , as individuals, though are, to some significant degree, original entities and so the very fact that anything we compose ( our every spoken word, as well as the music, postcards, emails, text messages, stories, poems, letters, shopping lists etc. that we write ) is therefore original.
I wonder if the territory that we're actually wandering into here is the issue of 'creative legitimacy' rather than of 'originality'; if, by the use of the term legitimacy we mean a creative act that is somehow unhampered by 'commercial' requirements.
Pushing at the door of this line of thought even further might it be even more correct to acknowledge that what we're really thinking about and discussing is the issue of what could be considered anomalous work in relation to the work of a creative that is most familiar to most people. Certainly, JW's excellent score for Images is a steadfast case in point.
Who knew that the JWFan's forum could be such a great place for such philosophical ramblings ?
JC
* When we say 'original' are we striving to really try and define what is most affecting and expressive in a creative work ? Ah...the inadequacy of words and the supreme adequacy of music

I've always enjoyed JW's playful Star Wars themes for Jawas, Ewoks and Gungans. In fact, as time goes by , I feel that the combination of high drama and silliness in the Star Wars films is a creative strength of the serial (when will we stop using the cold and heartless term 'franchise'?). When I was younger I used to think it all had to be superserious in order to be 'meaningful'. I'm not so sure anymore. The Star Wars films have confidence in the counterpoints of dramatic tone and so keep an enduring storytelling tradition alive and well.
JC

I think the score for Lincoln is equal in achievement to Raiders, to name just but one generally agreed upon JW 'classic'. I also think that the film is one of Spielberg's most accomplished pictures. Oh, how I hope he might direct the recently announced new adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath.

Three generations, indeed Even more incredible.
I am remembering, as I sit here typing this, being eleven years old and buying the original audiocassette (!) release of the Return of the Jedi soundtrack in the summer of 1983 and listening to it thereafter...endlessly... all summer long.
A sweet memory.
JC

I think it is indeed fair to say that the Lincoln soundtrack is particularly coherent as a listening experience entirely 'removed' from the film. For me its lyricism suggests that same kind of coherence found in the presentation of musical material for The Accidental Tourist or for Raiders of the Lost Ark, to name just two disparate but equally rewarding listens.

Sometimes, the films (or books or music or whatever medium) that prove most frustrating, or not quite as we had imagined or hoped to have been, at first encounter can end up the more enduring stories, becoming better understood as time goes by. Indeed, their imperfections become a part of their fascination. Is there such a thing as a perfect artwork I wonder ?

This is a nice discussion thread.
Well, my entire life has truly been tracked by John Williams' music. I was born in 1972 and so you can imagine what it was like to be five years old and hear the Star Wars music for the first time when I first saw the movie during its original release. Therefore, to be sitting here now with the Lincoln music playing makes for quite a sense of a journey taken.
JC

I haven't seen the film yet.
It is going to be interesting to see how viewers with no knowledge (or interest in , really) of the source material respond to the adaptation as that , I imagine, will determine the popular success of the film. That general audience is, in certain ways, the key audience for the movie : those people looking simply for a movie that offers them 'escape' and entertainment for a few hours.
The release of this movie is going to be an interesting case study, I think, in what it is to be a fan and the importance of online communities in cultural conversation.
I'd still like to see a review that really discusses the movie as a piece of filmmaking in and of itself rather than only in terms of its qualities as an adaptation. Ultimately, the two considerations are connected, of course, so it's more an issue of emphasis in the response.
Maybe we can look forward to such a piece from the film scholar Kristin Thompson. I hope so as she always writes so clearly and precisely. You can read her work here: http://www.davidbord...t-is-he-padded/
Take care , gang
JC