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Jerry Goldsmith's LEGEND (1985) - 2021 2-CD Music Box Records


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On 21/11/2021 at 6:18 AM, publicist said:

It never fails to astound me that they spend a year making a very expensive fantasy picture with all that imagery and then don't even preserve the material. There has to be a 125 and even a 140 minute cut (boring as they may be except for design fans) and all they have left are the badly cut versions that got released.

 

And some of these cuts and music edits are worthy of italian movies of the 70's and that's no recommendation.

Don't forget this was a universal film and a large collection of theirs burned down in that backlot fire.

Also don't forget the production issues with Legend. The 007 stage the forest was built on burned down during lunch. They hadn't finished or  were nearly finished--forget which--with the Jack being forced to Dance by Gump scene and when they were on lunch the whole sound stage burned to the ground. 

The shots at the end of Lilly and Jack (depending on the cut) running away towards the sun was on a swing set because they had lost the main forest so there were certain things they just couldn't film.

Further, if i'm not mistaken, when you watch the "directors cut" what you're seeing is a scan of the interpositive of the cut shown to test audiences. There's a title card that shows before it plays explaining it. So it had ALREADY been tinkered with. The original cut is missing or gone or not to be released--my guess is lost in the fire. 

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5 hours ago, GoodMusician said:

Don't forget this was a universal film and a large collection of theirs burned down in that backlot fire.

 

That fire was at Universal Music Group, a company unrelated to Universal Pictures. Album masters were stored there, not original scoring elements for movies. 

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On 27/11/2021 at 10:45 PM, Jay said:

 

That fire was at Universal Music Group, a company unrelated to Universal Pictures. Album masters were stored there, not original scoring elements for movies. 

I realize I was too vague: there were multiple backlot fires at USH.

I'm speaking specifically of this one in which original reports were that original film stock dating from as early as 'I LOVE LUCY' up to films from 2001 went up in the fire, they THEN came back and did a second statement saying "No, it was COPIES that burned" which just seemed like playing PR to me. They had to admit to the film stock burning because of the color of the smoke which indicated certain chemicals which were present.

And I wasn't speaking of LEGEND's score burning up but rather potentially film stock. Universal has been very hesitant to give much of a list of anything lost in the fire, again, claiming "nothing lost was irreplaceable" 

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Ahhh thank you!  My memory failed me and I forgot the fire affected BOTH UMG and Universal Pictures.  My bad!

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On 28/11/2021 at 1:29 AM, Brundlefly said:

The production of Legend must have been one big catastrophe - starting from the first day of shooting

 

For my money it was a catastrophe since they started writing it.

 

Its a terrible, terrible, TERRIBLE screenplay!

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11 hours ago, Disco Stu said:

Scott clearly just had these images in his head that he had to get on camera, and the story was created just to give some excuse to do that.

 

That's what it often comes across like, yes.

 

Earlier drafts of Legend are even dumber than the finished film. Scott's writer clearly had a furry fetish, because in these drafts Darkness is a furry creature, and Lilli is magically transformed into one. Hjortsberg has Darkness whip her into submission, and by page 105 they are, to use his term, "mating"...

 

And just the structure of the whole thing, the way its plotted, the dialogue - everything about this script is terrible.

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  • 1 month later...

This album has been nominated in this year's IFMCA Awards for "BEST NEW ARCHIVAL RELEASE - RE-RELEASE OR RE-RECORDING"

 

http://filmmusiccritics.org/2022/02/ifmca-award-nominations-2021/

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Good will hunting is currently OOP, I already have Fitzwilly, I already have Obsession conducted by Herrmann on a 1994 CD, it's enough for me, okay, I will only order Legend, thanks!

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I'm sure it was worth it, Bes.

 

 

 

2 hours ago, Bespin said:

Is there any other essential things to order directly from Music Box??? Suggestions?

Why don't you touch me, touch me? Why don't you touch me, touch me? Touch me now, now, now, now, now!

 

Oops, sorry; not that Musical Box :lol:

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  • 3 weeks later...
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  • 1 year later...
2 hours ago, Jay said:

Less than 250 copies left before this goes Out Of Print

 

https://www.musicbox-records.com/en/cd-soundtracks/11031-legend.html


Well those aren’t likely to last long… to be honest at only 500 more copies total, I’m surprised this one lasted so much longer than the Varese Deluxe Edition of Lionheart…

 

Yavar

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11 hours ago, Bespin said:

20230522_165950.jpg

I LOVE that score. Goldsmith should have won an Oscar for it. 

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44 minutes ago, GerateWohl said:

And in the US the score wasn't even in the movie, which probably additionally limited his chances of winning.

I’ll never understand how they could ditch Goldsmith’s masterpiece for Tangerine Dream. 
At least us, Europeans got the better deal with Jerry’s score. 

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4 hours ago, JTW said:

I’ll never understand how they could ditch Goldsmith’s masterpiece for Tangerine Dream. 
At least us, Europeans got the better deal with Jerry’s score. 

 

According to Torn Music it appears to be a combination of the studio wanting the film to appeal to a younger audience, and Scott/others deciding that the final movie didn't match the 'fairytale' tone they'd tried to do, and that changing the score might help.

 

Hence it doesn't sound like it was one single person or decision, but shifting perceptions of what the movie is and who they want it to appeal to.

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45 minutes ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

 

Do you mean the TD version? It has been released, by Varèse Sarabande.

The cheapest price on Amazon is £45.20.

Happy buying ;)

Since I asked Chris Siddall, I was referring to the sheet music of the masterful Goldsmith score of course. ;)

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3 minutes ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

Psst, d'ya wanna buy a second hand cd of LEGEND?

are you asking me?

I have the Goldsmith score. Both the original Silva, and the expansion.

If you're referring to the Tangerine Dream score, this is not my cup of tea.

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37 minutes ago, Richard Penna said:

but shifting perceptions of what the movie is and who they want it to appeal to.

Yes, but still it was a dumb decision. 

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21 hours ago, Yavar Moradi said:

Well those aren’t likely to last long… to be honest at only 500 more copies total, I’m surprised this one lasted so much longer than the Varese Deluxe Edition of Lionheart…

 

Wasn't Lionheart harder to get for a longer time than Legend?

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2 hours ago, Marian Schedenig said:

Wasn't Lionheart harder to get for a longer time than Legend?

 

Well, Varese did the thing where they started out with 1500 copies in their domestic (US) store, and the other 500 copies at their international store. Those 1500 copies sold out super fast here...within a matter of weeks, I'm pretty sure. After that some folks ordered from the international store still, and eventually I think they transferred remaining copies from the international store (now defunct anyway) to the US store, and briefly had it available again there for another couple months before it sold out. That's how I remember it anyway. In my opinion they underestimated demand for the score since the film is so obscure. They should have made it a 2500 copy edition like Music Box did for Legend. Then they probably would have had it similarly available for a couple years, which would have been nice for fans who couldn't afford it right away.

 

Yavar

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3 hours ago, Chen G. said:


There were A LOT of dumb decisions on that movie.

Well, Tom Cruise is very bad in it, but I kind of like everything else. It’s one of Ridley Scott’s most underrated films. Tim Curry as Darkness is one of the best villains in film history. 

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14 minutes ago, JTW said:

Tim Curry as Darkness is one of the best villains in film history. 

 

I'm sure he was acting his grubby black heart out underneath all of that. But you couldn't tell and even worse they messed with his voice!

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10 hours ago, JTW said:

Well, Tom Cruise is very bad in it, but I kind of like everything else. It’s one of Ridley Scott’s most underrated films. Tim Curry as Darkness is one of the best villains in film history. 

 

Oh, in its own fairytale-y way, its as good looking a movie as any, and Goldsmith's score is more than match for the incredible visuals. I also think that, apart from a young Cruise, all the actors play they're parts well. 

 

But...all those luscious visuals and sounds, all those performances, are placed in the service of a truly terrible screenplay, and the editing - in all the film's versions - is trying to work around the terribleness of the screenplay, effectivelly attemping to polish a turd.

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14 hours ago, Yavar Moradi said:

Well, Varese did the thing where they started out with 1500 copies in their domestic (US) store, and the other 500 copies at their international store. Those 1500 copies sold out super fast here...within a matter of weeks, I'm pretty sure. After that some folks ordered from the international store still, and eventually I think they transferred remaining copies from the international store (now defunct anyway) to the US store, and briefly had it available again there for another couple months before it sold out. That's how I remember it anyway. In my opinion they underestimated demand for the score since the film is so obscure. They should have made it a 2500 copy edition like Music Box did for Legend. Then they probably would have had it similarly available for a couple years, which would have been nice for fans who couldn't afford it right away.

 

I was talking about the previous releases. The Silva Legend was I think still widely available when I got it, whereas when I bought the Japenese Varese/Volcano Lionheart (which contains almost everything on the two individual Varese releases) was very obscure, and I remember people complaining about the Vareses being hard to find even back then. So I figured the initial demand for Lionheart must probably have been much higher than that for Legend.

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