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Why is it so hard for John Williams to collaborate with new directors?


Edmilson

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Since the beginning of the century, Williams scored 23 movies and did the main theme (or themes) for another one. Of these 23 movies:

 

16 (or about 70%) were directed by one of his old collaborators that remained loyal to him on the XXI century, George Lucas, Chris Columbus and Steven Spielberg. Actually, Spielberg was responsible for 12 of his scores (or 51%) since the turn of the century.

 

Of the 7 (30%) remaining movies directed by people who had not previously collaborated with Williams before:

 

  • 4 of them was because these movies were from franchises that Williams already scored past installments: the three Sequel Trilogy movies, and Prisoner of Azkaban.
  • 1 (Memoirs of a Geisha) was because Spielberg was originally going to direct it, but when he decided not to do it, Williams managed to remain as the composer.
  • 1 was because he actually lobbied to score, since he loved the book (The Book Thief)
  • And just 1 was because the director actually wanted specifically Williams to score it: Roland Emmerich and The Patriot.

 

On the 1990s, there were 20 movies scored by Williams. Of these 20 movies, 12 were directed by people who had previously collaborated with Williams, and 8 (40%) were from people working with him for the first time: Presumed Innocent (Alan J. Pakula), Home Alone (Chris Columbus), Far and Away (Ron Howard), Sabrina (Sydney Pollack), Sleepers (Barry Levinson), Rosewood (John Singleton), Seven Years in Tibet (Jean-Jacques Annaud), Angela's Ashes (Alan Parker). It's interesting to note that, differently from the 2000s, on the 1990s none of his first collaborations were from sequels to franchise movies he already scored - only Home Alone became a franchise.

 

On the 80s, on the other hand, he did only 16 movies, 9 (56%) of which were directed by first timers on working with him, 2 out of these 9 being TESB and ROTJ (which he did anyway because of his association with ANH and George Lucas). The others were: Heartbeeps (Allan Arkush), Yes, Giorgio (Franklin J. Schaffner - gosh, Goldsmith must've been pissed), Monsignor (Frank Perry), SpaceCamp (Harry Winer), The Witches of Eastwick (George Miller), The Accidental Tourist (Lawrence Kasdan) and Born on the Fourth of July (Oliver Stone).

 

And finally, on the 70s, Williams scored 30 movies, 14 of which (47%) were directed by newcomers with him.

 

Of course, it's a simplification to narrow it down to the directors. Of the 3 disaster movies he did on the 70s, 2 were produced by Irwin Allen, who alredy knew Williams from his work on his TV shows, and also Jaws 2, much like Prisoner of Azkaban or the Sequel Trilogy, he did because of him scoring a previous movie on the franchise.

 

But the point is: on the first decades of his career, Williams used to work with more directors that previously haven't worked with him before. These days, this hardly happens, and when it does, it's because of a franchise he previously scored.

 

And the worst part is: despite him being considered among the greatest film composers of all time, Williams is simply terrible at keeping his collaborators, outside of Spielberg and Lucas. Let's take a look at some of them:

 

Director

Movies he did with Williams

Worked with other composers after that?

Mark Rydell

  • The Reivers

  • The Cowboys

  • Cinderella Liberty

  • The River

  • For the Boys and Even Money, score by Dave Grusin

  • Intersection, score by James Newton Howard

Arthur Penn

The Missouri Breaks

  • Four Friends, score by Elizabeth Swados;

  • Target, score by Michael Small

  • Dead of Winter, score by Richard Einhorn

  • Penn & Teller Get Killed, score by Paul Chihara

John Frankenheimer

Black Sunday

  • Prophecy, score by Leonard Rosenman;

  • The Challenge, score by Jerry Goldsmith;

  • The Holcroft Covenant, score by Stanislas Syrewicz;

  • 52 Pick Up, Dead Bang and The Island of Doctor Moreau, score by Gary Chang;

  • The Fourth War and Year of the Gun, score by Bill Conti;

  • Ronin, score by Elia Cmiral;

  • Reindeer Games, score by Alan Silvestri

Brian DePalma

The Fury

  • Home Movies, Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, Body Double, Raising Cain, Passion and Domino, score by Pino Donaggio

  • Scarface, score by Giorgio Moroder;

  • The Untouchables, Casualties of War and Mission to Mars score by Ennio Morricone;

  • The Bonfire of the Vanities, score by Dave Grusin;

  • Carlito’s Way, score by Patrick Doyle

  • Mission: Impossible; score by Danny Elfman

  • Snake Eyes and Femme Fatale, score by Ryuichi Sakamoto

  • The Black Dahlia, score by Mark Isham

  •  

George Miller

The Witcher of Eastwick

  • Lorenzo’s Oil, no original score;

  • Babe: Pig in the City, score by Nigel Westlake;

  • Happy Feet and Happy Feet Two, score by John Powell

  • Mad Max: Fury Road, score by Junkie XL

Lawrence Kasdan

The Accidental Tourist

  • I Love You to Death, score by James Horner;

  • Grand Canyon, Wyatt Earp, French Kiss, Mumford, Dreamcatcher, score by James Newton Howard

Oliver Stone

  • Born on the Fourth of July

  • JFK

  • Nixon

  • U Turn, score by Ennio Morricone;

  • Any Given Sunday, score by Richard Horowitz, Paul Kelly

  • Alexander, score by Vangelis

  • World Trade Center, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps and Snowden, score by Craig Armstrong;

  • Savages, score by Adam Peters;

  • W., score by Paul Cantelon

Alan J. Pakula

Presumed Innocent

  • Consenting Adults, score by Michael Small;

  • The Pelican Brief and The Devil’s Own, score by James Horner

Chris Columbus

  • Home Alone

  • Home Alone 2

  • Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

  • Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

  • Christmas with the Kranks, score by John Debney;

  • Rent, musical with music and lyrics by Jonathan Larson;

  • I Love You, Beth Cooper and Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, score by Christophe Beck;

  • Pixels, score by Henry Jackman

Jean-Jacques Annaud

Seven Years in Tibet

  • Enemy at the Gates, Black Gold, Wolf Totem, score by James Horner;

  • Two Brothers, score by Stephen Warbeck;

  • His Majesty Minor, score by Javier Navarrete

Roland Emmerich

The Patriot

  • The Day After Tomorrow, score by Harald Kloser;

  • 10,000 BC, 2012, Anonymous, White House Down, Independence Day: Resurgence, Midway, score by Harald Kloser and Thomas Wander

  • Stonewall, score by Rob Simonsen

Alfonso Cuarón

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

  • Children of Men, score by John Tavener

  • Gravity, score by Steven Price

  • Roma, no original score

Rob Marshall

Memoirs of a Geisha

  • Nine, score by Andrea Guerra, songs by Maury Yeston;

  • Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, score by Hans Zimmer

  • Into the Woods, music based on musical by Stephen Sondheim;

  • Mary Poppins Returns, score by Marc Shaiman, lyrics by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman

Brian Percival

The Book Thief

(worked only for British TV since then)

Rian Johnson

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

  • Knives Out, score by Nathan Johnson

 

So, in conclusion, there's three problems that make Williams scores less movies than he should:

 

  1. As the decades past, Williams worked with less and less directors who haven't worked with him before;
  2. This century, most of his movies directed by first timers were franchise movies;
  3. Most directors, aside from Spielberg and Lucas, haven't remained "loyal" to him. Most only did one movie with Williams before working with other composers, while even the directors who collaborated with him one some of the biggest, most well known movies of their careers (Rydell, Stone, Columbus) eventually abandoned him.

 

Surely, we are simplifying here, as some directors after working with Williams, went for TV or low budget/experimental stuff (Penn, Percival, Cuarón), set for their own collaborators (Emmerich, Johnson, Kasdan, De Palma), or prefer to work on each movie with a new director (Miller is the best example, he's the guy who made Maurice Jarre to score Mad Max 3).

 

But still...why is it so hard for new directors to call Williams to work with them on their movies? And why, after working with Williams, they don't bring him back? I personally think it's a shame we haven't got new scores by Williams for films by Emmerich, Kasdan, Miller, Pakula, Stone, Ron Howard (Solo doesn't count, he only wrote a theme for that movie, and apparently only because Giacchino's Rogue One pissed him off)...

 

Heck, since Home Alone, the only newcomers that actually scored another movie with Williams were Columbus (which eventually abandoned him anyway) and Abrams (and only because his movies were Star Wars) - again, not counting Howard.

 

Look at other composers, for example. Zimmer is always working with great, well known, powerful directors (Ron Howard, Ridley Scott, Gore Verbinski), even managing to be the new favorite composer from directors who already got theirs (Nolan, Villeneuve, Snyder). Horner also did manage to keep his own collaborators, and until the very end of his career he was pursuing scores from directors he knew (Annaud, Mel Gibson on Hacksaw Ridge) or not (Antoine Fuqua, Patricia Riggen).

 

Lots of movies coming out in 2020, but not a single one of them has JW as composer for now. And despite him being one of the greatest living legends on the American music, directors still have some resistance on working with him, for the first time or again. 

 

Why is that?

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Simple: he is old and doesn't want to put the time into it.  Look at the number of concert works he has composed in the last 25 years and the number in the 25 years before that.  Clearly those and conducting across the US has been his greater interest.  

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Also many of these 90's selections were not director decisions, per se. Williams likes literary properties and with his diminishing interest in current cinema that's all he has touched for decades now, except his old cronies' stuff.

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More selective of engaging projects, older, wiser, more likely to work with people he knows and trusts. I don't see this an issue! I mean, sure there are films I wish Williams had scored...

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The only project remaining:

 

A Year in the Life of Daisy "Rey" Ridley

 

An hour long reality series on Disney+ featuring 365 episodes, each lovingly scored by Maestro John Williams.

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2 hours ago, Arpy said:

More selective of engaging projects, older, wiser, more likely to work with people he knows and trusts. 

 

I think that's the gist of it. No more complicated than that. I don't believe there's some underlying fear of working with new directors that he's acquired in this century.

 

5 hours ago, Edmilson said:
  • And just 1 was because the director actually wanted specifically Williams to score it: Roland Emmerich and The Patriot.

 

Where have you heard/read this? I believe the official story is that Emmerich wanted to work with Arnold, as usual, and Arnold actually wrote a demo/score. Then, when they heard Williams was interested (since he wanted to write music for that particular period in American history), the "powers-that-be" dropped everything, including Arnold, and hired Williams instead.

 

As for why certain collaborations end, there are different reasons for this. For example, for Robert Altman, he's said that they simply 'drifted apart' after THE LONG GOODBYE.

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33 minutes ago, Thor said:

Where have you heard/read this? I believe the official story is that Emmerich wanted to work with Arnold, as usual, and Arnold actually wrote a score. Then, when they heard Williams was interested (since he wanted to write music for that particular period in American history), the "powers-that-be" dropped everything, including Arnold, and hired Williams instead.

 

I've never heard it was this dramatic. What's your source?

 

I've heard that Arnold wrote some demos or parts of the score, and that Emmerich just didn't like it that much. JW was then brought in as a replacement late in the game.

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1 minute ago, Jurassic Shark said:

 

I've hever heard it was this dramatic. What's your source?

 

Bits and pieces over the last 20 years. What do you mean with 'dramatic'? That Arnold was rejected?

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I've never heard that Emmerich didn't care for his demos. The replacement was due to the producers wanting Williams instead, when they heard he was interested.  But this story exists in bits and pieces and interview tidbits; you'll have to assemble them to create a whole story.

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8 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

I doubt that JW shouldered out Arnold, as you seem to imply.

 

I never said that either. But the story goes that Williams expressed interest in the project (much like THE BOOK THIEF) because he wanted to write in that idiom. I seem to remember Williams talking about this in an interview himself. Producers may initially have pushed for him or not, but I also don't believe it was Williams' intention to 'shoulder out' Arnold, well aware that Arnold was already attached to the project. It's the producers' fault, not Emmerich's or Williams'.

 

But I guess we need an official breakdown at some point. Doesn't this have an expanded release with detailed liner notes?

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11 minutes ago, Thor said:

I never said that either.

 

But you did say

 

  • Arnold wrote a score
  • JW then expressed his interest
  • Then "the powers that be" dropped Arnold and his score in favour of JW.

 

What you're describing there is pretty much JW shouldering out Arnold. :)

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I heard more in the way that Emmerich/Devlin got over-confident and pleased with themselves about how good their film was (Oscars and all that) and when JW turned out to be available, decided that they had a chance to (in their eyes) really elevate the score.

 

I'm inclined to believe that story, as there has to be a good reason why they never worked with Arnold again.

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Exactly when Williams expressed interest, is unknown. Could be the moment he heard about the project, or later. Heck, it could even be when the producers approached him, saying "ah, that's interesting; I've always wanted to write music for this era in US history". At no point was there a scenario where Williams said "Out of the way, Arnold! I'm doing this!". There is no blame for Williams here. I also don't think there's any blame for Emmerich; it would be very counter to his personality, but I'm not ruling it out either. This all smells like "suit decisions".

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Actually, Arnold has no sour grapes with Emmerich (in a 2001 interview with Soundtrack! magazine, he said he'd gladly work with him again), so the decision no doubt comes from higher up in the system. 

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1 hour ago, Thor said:

Actually, Arnold has no sour grapes with Emmerich (in a 2001 interview with Soundtrack! magazine, he said he'd gladly work with him again), so the decision no doubt comes from higher up in the system. 

 

Unless Emmerich feels differently about working with Arnold again than Arnold feels about working with Emmerich again...? Just because Arnold is gung ho about collaborating again doesn't mean Emmerich is.

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I partially blame Spielberg's tendency to do 2 films per year (particularly in the 2000's) that seemed to prevent Williams from working with different people. And the accumulation of work with the prequels -and to some extent with the Potters. 

 

We know he had some interesting offers that decade, like Disney's Treasure Planet... I seem to recall there were more.

 

Money could be a factor as well. He has said in many interviews that he's willing to lower his paycheck, but even at a lower cost he's still really expensive. I remember reading an interview with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost a couple of years ago where they said they wanted Williams to score Paul but that he was too expensive. 

 

However, I wonder if he hadn't had all those Spielberg movies, the prequels and the Potters... Had he scored as much as he did? By 2005 he probably became exhausted and didn't want to do stuff that he wasn't that keen on, like Amenanbar's Agora, which would have been hella interesting. (though I think maybe he passed on it considering it was probably too similar too Munich musically, at least according to the final product)

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I have no doubt Williams has been offered a lot of movies over the years he has declined to score for various reasons.  In the recent Stargate re-release liner notes David Arnold makes a salient point about the importance of relationships and people you know in the film making business and how this affects your career. The long personal friendship with Steven Spielberg has had a lot to do with the choices Williams has done over the decades, meaning that he has scored all those Spielberg movies out of friendship and because of the close working relationship between him and the director that both feel works like a good marriage at this point.

 

I guess at this point of his career Williams likes to make movies with his friends more than actively seeking new creative relationships in movies unless he finds something that really piques his interest. Musically it is an entirely different case exemplified by the recent collaboration with Anne-Sophie Mutter for example.

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2 hours ago, Thor said:

Actually, Arnold has no sour grapes with Emmerich (in a 2001 interview with Soundtrack! magazine, he said he'd gladly work with him again), so the decision no doubt comes from higher up in the system. 

 

I'm not casting doubt, but most composers would say that if an interviewer asked them about collaborating again.

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Most, perhaps, but Arnold seems refreshingly honest in such circumstances.

 

But the point is moot anyway, as Emmerich chose to go on with Kloser and Wander instead.

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11 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

Wanker, you mean. :D

What an unfortunate surname to work under in the English speaking world. Not as delicious as Chris P. Bacon though. ;) 

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So basically, maybe Williams received a lot of offers over the years, but he got so powerful that HE chose which movies he would score?

 

In the 90s, when he was a little younger (lol) and Lucas was busy preparing The Phantom Menace, he was scoring the projects that interested him, like, say, Sabrina, Sleepers, Far and Away, Angela's Ashes, Home Alone, in addition to Spielberg movies, right? Then in the 2000s, as he got older, he decided he would work pretty much only for his friends, franchises and projects that might be interesting (Patriot, Geisha, Book Thief)?

 

That's a pretty interesting approach, as opposed as, say, Giacchino or Desplat, who do a lot of movies most of the years, between blockbusters and smaller flicks. Maybe because he is an older man, he's in the business since the late 50s (!).

 

1 hour ago, Jurassic Shark said:

Wanker, you mean. :D

 

Thomas WANKER will be the composer of the movie based on the life of Phillip K. DICK, written by Lulu WANG, directed by Rian JOHNSON and starring WOODY Harrelson ROTFLMAO

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I don't think he has trouble working with anyone.  If you want Williams, you have to be willing to pay for Williams.  The studio has to be willing to foot the bill and not concurrently demand something cheaper and more "modern" from the factory.

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4 hours ago, Muad'Dib said:

I partially blame Spielberg's tendency to do 2 films per year (particularly in the 2000's) that seemed to prevent Williams from working with different people. And the accumulation of work with the prequels -and to some extent with the Potters. 

 

We know he had some interesting offers that decade, like Disney's Treasure Planet... I seem to recall there were more.

 

Money could be a factor as well. He has said in many interviews that he's willing to lower his paycheck, but even at a lower cost he's still really expensive. I remember reading an interview with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost a couple of years ago where they said they wanted Williams to score Paul but that he was too expensive. 

 

However, I wonder if he hadn't had all those Spielberg movies, the prequels and the Potters... Had he scored as much as he did? By 2005 he probably became exhausted and didn't want to do stuff that he wasn't that keen on, like Amenanbar's Agora, which would have been hella interesting. (though I think maybe he passed on it considering it was probably too similar too Munich musically, at least according to the final product)

 

100% I think we’ve gotten way more out of Williams this decade because of Spielberg and Star Wars. I don’t think he would have been doing any movies otherwise. Might have just been The Book Thief and maybe one or two outliers.

 

And as far as his price goes, I do think that’s been a factor with some of his previous working relationships falling by the wayside. Williams mentioned in an interview a couple years ago that he wishes he’d worked with Oliver Stone again. Perhaps Stone couldn’t afford him anymore but idk. World Trade Center seems like a JW project.

 

I think he’d work for Chris Columbus again if the circumstances were right. I wonder if they tried to get him for Percy Jackson. I Love You Beth Cooper and Pixels would have been particularly embarrassing.

 

Btw Christmas with the Kranks wasn’t a Columbus-directed joint, he wrote/produced it. He also produced The Help, which might have been up Williams’ alley.

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2 hours ago, Edmilson said:

That's a pretty interesting approach, as opposed as, say, Giacchino or Desplat, who do a lot of movies most of the years, between blockbusters and smaller flicks. Maybe because he is an older man, he's in the business since the late 50s (!).

 

Giacchino and Desplat are in their 50s. Williams was in his 50s in the 80s/90s, when he was basically scoring everything and anything (to some extent).

 

Williams is also probably not equipped to handle haphazard modern blockbuster scoring schedules at this point. I'm sure Star Wars probably took quite a toll on him. It's why he's keen to work with those who can accommodate to his process more, rather than the other way around. And that's mostly just Spielberg, really.

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27 minutes ago, mrbellamy said:

Perhaps Stone couldn’t afford him anymore but idk. World Trade Center seems like a JW project.

 

I seem to recall Stone wanted Williams to do that particular film, but Williams declined. Probably because the film isn't very good.

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11 minutes ago, KK said:

Giacchino and Desplat are in their 50s. Williams was in his 50s in the 80s/90s, when he was basically scoring everything and anything (to some extent).

 

 

I guess Williams' most active decades were the 70s and the 90s - on the 80s he was also busy as the Pops conductor. Maybe on the 90s the lack of Star Wars and Indy movies gave him more time to pursue riskier projects, like Angela's Ashes, Rosewood, Sleepers, etc. When the 2000s came out, he was so busy with two big fantasy franchises (Potter and Prequels) and a Spielberg on fire, that he didn't had the time to pursue other collaborations. 

 

But even on his most active years, I don't think the number of Williams' scores compares to those of Gia and Desplat. They can write on their keyboards and work faster than Williams ever could, even on his prime.

 

36 minutes ago, mrbellamy said:

I Love You Beth Cooper and Pixels would have been particularly embarrassing.

 

I imagine Columbus bringing a copy of Pixels to Williams' office, and trying to persuade him to scoring it. The crude Adam Sandler/Kevin James gags would've made for a very uncomfortable spotting session :lol:.

 

10 minutes ago, Muad'Dib said:

I seem to recall Stone wanted Williams to do that particular film, but Williams declined. Probably because the film isn't very good.

 

That's a shame, I would've loved to hear what Williams could have done for the movie. But he had made terrible movies before, perhaps he declined because he is from the state of New York, so the subject matter would be too close for him?

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43 minutes ago, pete said:

I think there's a lot of over analyzing in this thread.

 

There is, yes. But I can't fault Edmilson's dedication. I kinda love his "genre" of queries, although I think it was a little bit overblown in this case.

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No, no....I'm totally with you. I think you perhaps over-analyzed in this case (I think it's simply a matter of him growing older and wanting to work with his trusted colleagues), but please keep such topics coming. It's a refreshing change of pace from the millions of tired STAR WARS threads, joke posts and whatnot in this forum.

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8 minutes ago, Thor said:

No, no....I'm totally with you. I think you perhaps over-analyzed in this case (I think it's simply a matter of him growing older and wanting to work with his trusted colleagues), but please keep such topics coming. It's a refreshing change of pace from the millions of tired STAR WARS threads, joke posts and whatnot in this forum.

 

Says the guy who just posted this!

 

6 hours ago, Thor said:

He, he. Someone should make a picture of Williams' head on Gollum's body, with the STORY manuscript in his hands, saying "My Precious!".

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9 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

 

I've never heard it was this dramatic. What's your source?

 

I've heard that Arnold wrote some demos or parts of the score, and that Emmerich just didn't like it that much. JW was then brought in as a replacement late in the game.

 

9 hours ago, Thor said:

 

Bits and pieces over the last 20 years. What do you mean with 'dramatic'? That Arnold was rejected?

 

9 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

 

See the addition to my original post.

 

9 hours ago, Thor said:

I've never heard that Emmerich didn't care for his demos. The replacement was due to the producers wanting Williams instead, when they heard he was interested.  But this story exists in bits and pieces and interview tidbits; you'll have to assemble them to create a whole story.

 

8 hours ago, Thor said:

 

I never said that either. But the story goes that Williams expressed interest in the project (much like THE BOOK THIEF) because he wanted to write in that idiom. I seem to remember Williams talking about this in an interview himself. Producers may initially have pushed for him or not, but I also don't believe it was Williams' intention to 'shoulder out' Arnold, well aware that Arnold was already attached to the project. It's the producers' fault, not Emmerich's or Williams'.

 

But I guess we need an official breakdown at some point. Doesn't this have an expanded release with detailed liner notes?

 

8 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

 

But you did say

 

  • Arnold wrote a score
  • JW then expressed his interest
  • Then "the powers that be" dropped Arnold and his score in favour of JW.

 

What you're describing there is pretty much JW shouldering out Arnold. :)

 

8 hours ago, Richard Penna said:

I heard more in the way that Emmerich/Devlin got over-confident and pleased with themselves about how good their film was (Oscars and all that) and when JW turned out to be available, decided that they had a chance to (in their eyes) really elevate the score.

 

I'm inclined to believe that story, as there has to be a good reason why they never worked with Arnold again.

 

8 hours ago, Thor said:

Exactly when Williams expressed interest, is unknown. Could be the moment he heard about the project, or later. Heck, it could even be when the producers approached him, saying "ah, that's interesting; I've always wanted to write music for this era in US history". At no point was there a scenario where Williams said "Out of the way, Arnold! I'm doing this!". There is no blame for Williams here. I also don't think there's any blame for Emmerich; it would be very counter to his personality, but I'm not ruling it out either. This all smells like "suit decisions".

 

https://cnmsarchive.wordpress.com/2014/03/17/david-arnold-on-zoolander-and-the-musketeer/

 

Here is the story... Arnold's answer is confusing. He says both that he wrote the whole score AND that he wrote demos.

 

"Yeah, I’d written the whole score. It was very unusual, because the way that film was developing, Dean phoned me when they got the script, a long time ago, and he was screaming on the phone, saying “This is it! This is the one! This is the one we’ve been waiting for! You’re on!” They were quite a ways into shooting and I think they were getting to the point where they were getting into over-budget difficulties, and I started getting phone calls from Dean and Roland where they were saying “do you still want to do this film?” And I was going, yeah, of course I do! And then another phone call a few weeks later, “Well, we’re going to have to hear some demos first…”
I’d done three movies with them and I’ve never done that before! So I said, okay… I’d also heard, before I’d even written anything, that the studio had put out inquiries to John Williams and James Horner, independently of Dean and Roland. One of the producers had worked with John on SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, so he’s going, “look, we can get John Williams – why do you want to stay with Arnold when you can get John Williams?”
I think they were under a lot of budgetary pressure. I think the studio was very keen on getting someone with obviously such a huge marquee value as John, ho tends not to put his name to things that aren’t first rate, and as far as I’m concerned very rarely ails to deliver something quite astonishing. So I felt, I’ve got nothing to lose, so I might as well send them his demo that I did. I think it was one of the best thing’s I’d ever written. And virtually immediately I hat a phone call from Dean, saying “look, we haven’t really connected with it, so we’re going to go with John Williams.” I mean, you don’t get a demo and on the same day call up John Williams and have him agree to do the film at the drop of a hat. Obviously, some other things had been going on, and I wasn’t particularly surprised. I was a little disappointed, perhaps, in the way that it was handled, but to be passed up for him certainly isn’t an insult!"

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Also this reply was interesting:

 

Quote

A lot of your scores, the majority of which have not been released on CDs, have been bootlegged. As an Artist, what’s your feeling on that?
I’d rather they were released properly, but also I’d rather people heard them than didn’t hear them. One thing I don’t like is that, when you put together a soundtrack album you do it in a way that you think is the best listening experience, and it’s not all the time that a bootleg is done that way. Obviously there are the hard-core fans who want every millisecond of score.

 

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