La retranscription texte pour la partie "gabriel yared"
DANIEL SCHWEIGER: Now, two films, two recent films that you've scored that I imagine were very challenging were Troy and The New World.
Now, on Troy, you were coming in as the replacement composer for Gabriel Yared and you had already done The Perfect Storm for the director, Wolfgang Petersen. In a way, was it as hard as it was easy? Because, I think you've got two to three weeks to do this score, but because there is like no time for you to do it, that there isn't gonna be the kind of studio second guessing that may have, you know, messed up the first score that was done for it.
JAMES HORNER: Uhm, let me see where I start with Troy.
Wolfgang is very opinionated. And a very proud man. And he wants everything to be huge. The biggest ever, the most grand. "We've never had a shot of 5,000 people or 50,000 army before - look at the shot of the ocean and you see 5,000 ships - that's the biggest shot in history!" I mean, he's very much into this huge old-fashioned grandure, and I think that he was making what he felt was the best film of the decade. I think that was his mindset.
And I wasn't asked to do the original, which was sort of - at the time - a bit of a twinge for me, because I did such a nice job, or he seemed so pleased on The Perfect Storm. Even though everybody, including myself, very very vocally begged him to take down the ocean water sound effects, which he wouldn't do in The Perfect Storm. And I think ultimately it didn't do as well, because people just got overwhelmed by the constant barrage of noise. So it didn't do as well as it was supposed to or as it was promised and hyped to. And I think he felt that he probably could do better musically.
So he started Troy with Gabriel, and of course Gabriel is very well known in Europe. He was going to make this huge Movie of the Decade, the Trojan War, you know, very dramatic. And he worked with Gabriel and gave Gabriel free reign to do whatever Gabriel wanted, without thinking of how an audience might react, or whatever. And the two of them worked, and Gabriel dutifully did whatever was asked of him by Wolfgang, and Wolfgang's musical tendencies are to overscore everything, like a Wagner opera. He's not into subtlety. At all. Not in the slightest. And emotion to him is a 3,000-pieced orchestra playing a sappy violin theme.
I mean, I'm being nice, but not being nice. I'm being - this is what I mean by being direct.
He's a lovely man. These are only issues that become issues when you're in the trenches and you're really working on a film and it has to be stunning and these are the issues you come up with another -- with your employer, or your -- somebody you're working closely with.
So, Wolfgang gave a lot of instructions to Gabriel that were hugely wrong. And just so old-fashioned. And Gabriel dutifully did his job and Gabriel also brings to the project a certain quality that is not necessarily the most cinematic, but perhaps is a little more operatic, and didn't have the experience of scoring a big action movie. His movies are a little bit more refined.
And, you know, his previous, The English Patient, was really very much based on Bach's music. I mean, if you listen to Bach's preludes and fugues and those things you'll hear Gabriel's score. And I suppose I could say you would have to be a trained musician or a musician with some sort of education to know that, but when you hear the two things you think: "That's Bach."
I don't say that to denigrate Gabriel, I only say that to give you an example of how Gabriel was not familiar with this big action movie thing that Wolfgang wanted. And Gabriel and Wolfgang made the score together, fifty-fifty.
So what happens is, they have The Score from God in The Movie from God and they're in London doing post-production. Gabriel has a huge choir, huge percussion, huge this, huge that. And, before they put the chorus on, they brought it to California to preview - the studio insisted on a preview. And Wolfgang was so sure of himself he thought, "Oh my God, you wait until you see the reaction to this movie." And Gabriel hadn't even put the choir on. The choir was doubling some of the string stuff, and it was going to make it more massive, okay?, and he had lots of sort of Middle-Eastern stuff and --
The audience -- They played it for an audience in Sacramento and took the usual focus group and the cards, and there were lots of comments about flaws in the movie, but to a man, everybody said the music is the worst they had ever heard. To a man. I mean, 100 percent take out the score. I'd never heard of a preview where people are so in tune to the music that they even notice it, much less demand that it ruins the movie for them. And in the focus group, the same reaction, they all said, "it's horrible music. Who did this music?" And, you know, I hadn't seen the film. I didn't -- this is all sort of in hindsight, cause I hadn't -- I didn't keep up with the movie.
They previewed it again with the same result, and Wolfgang was white. Completely shaken. Totally lost his confidence. Warner Brothers asked me, I guess because I had experimented with so much music of different cultures in various films, but somebody suggested me, and they approached me, and said, "would you look at the film and tell us what you think? And do you think you could do this if we took out the score?"
And I looked at the film, and it was -- I don't even know how to describe how atrocious the music was.
It was like a 1950's Hercules movie.
And it wasn't because Gabriel's not a gifted writer, it's because he just doesn't have any knowledge of writing film scores. Real film scores like that. And it was like -- It was so corny. It was unbelievable.
And apparently it made the audience laugh in places during serious scenes. And this combination of this "please do it bigger and bigger and bigger" and "more is better" from Wolfgang and Gabriel's, you know, not knowing what cinematic, big cinematic action music should be, they both came up with this score that was absolutely dreadful. Absolutely dreadful.
And I looked at it and I said, "when do you need this score?" And they said, "well, they're dubbing it now, they basically need it -- you have to be finished nine or eleven days at the very most." So I didn't even have the two or three weeks that you alluded to before. I had nine or ten days to do it.
And I met with Wolfgang, and he of course, is completely cowed out, apologetic, emberrassed, everything. Gabriel, meanwhile, in Europe, is furious. Because -- And he's going on his website saying he was cheated and short-changed and they put his music in the film without the chorus and the chorus makes the differenc. And you know, you're saying to yourself, "this guy just doesn't get it." The chorus would have made it worse. If the problem was it was like thick, thick, black loudness over everything. And corny at that. But they hadn't completely -- I hadn't taken on the assignment yet. And I met with Wolfgang, and he was very emberrassed, and said I would be allowed to do whatever I wanted - would I please, please, please, do this, as a favor? And how grateful he would be at that trouble.
Well, that's Hollywood talk. I don't ever expect people to be grateful. If it happens, it happens. Usually it happens with the low-budget filmmakers, because they truly are grateful. But with the big guys, when they say how grateful they are, I, it's not something I put on the bank and put in my pocket. And the example is that, of that is that he didn't ask me to do the next movie he did. He, after all the work we went through, I would not have done - what was the movie he just finished? - the one with the wave that turns the boat over.
- Compositeur .org - Forum des Compositeurs : Musique et Composition
C'est pas très sympa pour les arrangeurs/orchestrateurs de Gabriel Yared surtout
Bon ok je sors aussi - Compositeur .org - Forum des Compositeurs : Musique et Composition
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