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Mike Matessino on the prospects of releasing some currently unreleased Williams scores


Jay

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Those will happen after his passing, I'm sure.  No idea what stance his wife and children would take on these kinds of releases, or what instructions Williams himself might leave behind.  It's not like the estates of pop stars where there's countless millions to be made from mercenary, cynical repackagings.  These are passion projects for diehard enthusiasts only, really.

 

I'm patient!

 

Not that I'm waiting for his death.  God no.  I hope he composes new music until he's 125!

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As long as we get the complete Harry Potter and the Star Wars prequels in my lifetime, I'm happy.

 

As for the rest like the complete Dracula, Sugarland Express, etc.... I've found that I don't absolutely need to have them. It'd be great if we got them, sure, but I can equally live without them.

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From the same thread

 

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Just so we know to be *particularly* more patient, can you confirm any other titles he has turned down, for now, beyond Sugarland, Storia, and Rare Breed (the latter two also confirmed by Roger over at the Intrada board)? Or is other stuff besides those three pretty much fair game for hope?

Yavar

 

Yes, those three were rejected, for now. I don't want to comment on any others.

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I’m confused... I thought a complete Dracula release wasn’t possible? Unless if we’re talking about a remastered OST or the supposed mono tracks.

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'Dracula' was 'prevented' from a re-recording by Tadlow by Williams or his camp. On the other hand, the masters seem to be AWOL. Varése obviously wanted to release still-available mono tracks at some point, which also didn't happen for some reason. So i guess it's a myriad of reasons, not the least that people in the know think it might turn up. So it probably will.

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Sometimes composers don't like the performance or found the whole assignment lacking, or in case of 'Sugarland', the music by design was simple and percussive lending itself not to a separate release apart form the few melodic bits (totaling maybe 8 or 10 minutes). Remember, Goldsmith stopped a complete release of Star Trek - The Motion Picture, basically only allowing a few cues to bring it up to 60+ minutes. Unthinkable today.

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1 hour ago, filmmusic said:

The thing I would be mostly interested in to know, but we'll never know since it's too personal, is WHY he rejected releases of those scores?

Because he thinks less of them?

 

It could be that in some cases he thinks they're not musically interesting enough to be presented on disc, but I think more often than not it's a matter of sound quality. It seems JW still has a very keen ear about what sounds good and what doesn't.

 

1 hour ago, publicist said:

Remember, Goldsmith stopped a complete release of Star Trek - The Motion Picture, basically only allowing a few cues to bring it up to 60+ minutes. Unthinkable today.

 

Curiously enough, for the 1996 Sony Legacy expanded release, Jerry approved only the inclusion of cues that were written by him and not the ones that were written, according to cue sheet, by Sandy Courage and Fred Steiner.

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He has said no to Story and Sugarland but be patient. He is far more comfortable with these projects than he used to be so he may eventually come around. I was recently reminded that after he conducted E.T. in 2002 he said that it wasn't the kind of event that should be done all the time, but now it's a major thing and at least a dozen of his scores are being done that way regularly along with many others. Everything evolves. But it can be like watching the minute hand on a clock - you don't see it move, but if you stare at it for several minutes you know that it is.

 

Interesting that he doesn't comment on Dracula. This could be an indirect confirmation that it's in the works...

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15 hours ago, Disco Stu said:

Not that I'm waiting for his death.  God no.  I hope he composes new music until he's 125!

I hope Williams never dies so Thor never gets to hear the unreleased scores!

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He basicaly said we just have to sit and wait for Williams to wake up in a good mood some day, after a long night of wild sex with his wife.

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6 minutes ago, Thor said:

 

Yes and no. I can understand this sentiment in relation to something like SUGARLAND, but not STORIA. It's a lush, romantic score and a perfect flipside to the other romantic score he did that year, JANE EYRE. And we know how much he likes that. STORIA's disadvantage, however, is that it's a far more obscure film, and not a very good one. So that may colour his judgement or memory of it. My guess, anyway. Someone needs to refresh his memory by actually playing him the audio rip of the fantastic Cortina sequence! :)

 

Yes another good point the movie is quite an odd one from his filmography and its disappointment could be another issue. But having heard the music from the online sources I must say its quite a passionate work but very much in the dated sound of its period. Oh well, lets wait and see.

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Unless the history of every copy is thoroughly documented (which they of course aren't) or they're digital files (which Jane Eyre definitely wasn't), there's always the slight chance that someone has a bootleg copy or even the first grade masters lying around in their garage, junkyard or deep in the bowels of a warehouse. Coming across these is only by chance - and if a hoarder finds the proper session tapes for Jane Eyre and Dracula, he still has to recognize it and give it back to the studio/label/rights owner or else it's still as good as lost for everyone else on the planet.

Or a master turns up when the studio finally decides to actually try looking for it - like with Alien 3's digital masters.

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I forget exactly what I read regarding Jane Eyre, but the session masters do appear to be lost to time (aka destroyed or permanently irrecoverable).

 

Wasn't that score the catalyst for Williams personally archiving his original handwritten scores, after having to transcribe the concert arrangement for Jane Eyre by ear (after the studio misplaced/destroyed his handwritten score)?

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With old, lost movies I believe the official expression is "now considered lost" because of how fickle these things are. Technically, any day there's a tiny chance a random guy could come forth with a decent film strip of London After Midnight.

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4 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

You mean during the recording sessions for all of the scores he doesn't wanna release?

 

For all the scores, period. But later he got Shawn Murphy to record them with such blurry acoustics that the screams cannot be heard on the recording.

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5 hours ago, bollemanneke said:

Do you guys think Matessino could ever recover Jane Eyre? I know LLL said it was lost and all that, but does that really mean lost forever? Is there no hope at all?

 

Are you asking whether we think Magic Mike Matessino could make the master tapes to Jane Eyre suddenly materialize out of thin air? Of course we do! :D

 

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 6/20/2018 at 12:50 AM, publicist said:

Sometimes composers don't like the performance or found the whole assignment lacking, or in case of 'Sugarland', the music by design was simple and percussive lending itself not to a separate release apart form the few melodic bits (totaling maybe 8 or 10 minutes). Remember, Goldsmith stopped a complete release of Star Trek - The Motion Picture, basically only allowing a few cues to bring it up to 60+ minutes. Unthinkable today.

 

Goldsmith was right!

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Agreed. The playing on STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE is consistently top-notch. One can only assume that Jerry nixed a C+C for the reasons noted above, and not for any reasons of sub-standard playing.

 

 

 

 

 

7 hours ago, Demodex said:

There's a John Williams Dracula score?

 

7 hours ago, El Jefe said:

Yes, film was in 1979. 

The guy joined JWfan in 2005, Mark; I'm sure he knows that there's a DRACULA.

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19 minutes ago, Demodex said:

I had actually never heard of it before this thread. 

 

Check it out! There was a recording for sale (12 tracks), but the complete recording has a holy grail status here. 

 

 

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How long is the complete score anyway? Don't think I've ever seen a breakdown of how much music is unreleased, relative to the OST.

 

I guess part of the 'Holy Grail' status comes from the fact that, like Jane Eyre, urban legend says the scoring sessions are lost to time.

 

I've never actually seen Dracula but the brief clips on YouTube look like it was shot yesterday! And Williams' score underpins the drama superbly.

 

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4 hours ago, crumbs said:

How long is the complete score anyway? Don't think I've ever seen a breakdown of how much music is unreleased, relative to the OST.

 

Everything heard in the film is unreleased, as the official album is a re-recording.

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24 minutes ago, Thor said:

DRACULA deserves no mention in this thread. It has a perfectly fine soundtrack album already.

 Wasn't the OST a rerecording, or am I imagining it?

 

Btw, you gotta check out Bes' LP rip. The sound is so much clearer than on the Varese CD, with a much needed boost to the treble.

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