Saturday Night at the Movies

by Jenny Nelson

  It was nearly a decade before Howard Shore and Peter Jackson would return to Middle-earth, so before focusing on the Hobbit trilogy it is instructive to explore the composer’s long-standing partnerships with other directors, starting with David Cronenberg. They have worked on an impressive fifteen films together, from The Brood in 1979 to Maps to the Stars in 2014. Many scores are consciously uncomfortable to suit the subject matter – the director may be best known for his contribution to the ‘body horror’ canon – but musical recommendations are plentiful. Eastern Promises (2007), featuring guest soloist Nicola Benedetti, and A Dangerous Method (2011), with its Wagnerian influence, are great places to start, and the more adventurous should seek out Naked Lunch, which boasts a superb contribution from acclaimed jazz musician Ornette Coleman. There is clearly a lot of trust between Shore and Cronenberg, stemming from a rapport built up over the decades, and the two artists seem to work in tandem. The composer’s affection for the director is clear: ‘I’ve worked with David Cronenberg for thirty years, but each film grew into the next, and we tried many different ways of using music in film, many different techniques, and David was very adventurous and allowed me a lot of creative freedom. It was joyful, really, to work with him.’

  Shore has collaborated with Martin Scorsese on six films over three decades, including The Aviator (2004), The Departed (2006) and Hugo (2011), and the working process is different, but equally fulfilling: ‘Marty has a great mind for music. He has a vast collection of recordings in his archive. It’s one of the great fun things of working with him and Thelma Schoonmaker, the great editor that he’s worked with for many years, is that there is so much information being exchanged in the meetings, in the discussion of the film – we’ll discuss other films, other pieces of music and it’s just a very creative process to making movies.’ It’s interesting that, as with Jackson, this is not a clear-cut director–composer partnership but that there are other strong contributors. As Shore remarks, ‘When you work with Marty and Thelma, you’re on a journey to discover the story, find what works best for the film. You know, it’s a lot of work, but it’s really a period of discovery.’

  According to Shore, the secret to building a strong composer–director relationship is: ‘You need to grow. I think that’s a very important part of working with a director over different films.’ Looking back over his career, and what drove him personally, he says, ‘My interest in film was in music and how I could express ideas using live musicians, live recording, but also working with electronics and working with the recording studio as an instrument itself. So it’s important to allow the creative energy to flow, and as the years advance to keep creating new works. Not looking back, but always forward.’

  When he considers the power structure between director and composer, Shore maintains that it’s all about balance: ‘The best relationships are the ones where there’s a meeting of minds, where the ideas are presented and respected and the work is always creative. You can present your ideas in the most open way. Things can be adjusted here and there.’

  Jackson and Shore returned to Middle-earth for An Unexpected Journey (2012), The Desolation of Smaug (2013) and The Battle of Five Armies (2014), but it’s worth noting that shortly after The Lord of the Rings they also worked together on Jackson’s passion project, a remake of his beloved King Kong (2005). The director had been working on this before The Lord of the Rings but Universal Pictures cancelled production in 1997, partly due to the release of similar films around that time, such as Godzilla and Mighty Joe Young. After the success of his Middle-earth trilogy, Jackson was in demand, and chose to return to the Kong. He brought along most of his trusted crew from The Lord of the Rings, including Shore, and so it was quite a shock when they announced they were parting company a mere seven weeks before the premiere. Shore was replaced by James Newton Howard, and Jackson’s official statement offered this by way of explanation: ‘During the last few weeks, Howard and I came to realise that we had differing creative aspirations for the score of King Kong. Rather than waste time arguing with a friend and trying to unify our points of view, we decided amicably to let another composer score the film. I’m looking forward to working with James Newton Howard, a composer whose work I’ve long admired, and I thank Howard Shore, whose talent is surpassed only by his graciousness.’

  This raises an important point when it comes to creative collaborations: just because some projects are conducive for two individuals, there is no guarantee that all will be. We can only speculate about the exact creative differences. Jackson may have been less amenable to sharing ideas because King Kong was such a personal project for him, or perhaps the pressures of the production were a contributing factor, considering its scale rivalled The Lord of the Rings – in fact, more visual effects were created for this film than for the entire trilogy. Early in his career, Jackson spoke of wanting ‘total control of every aspect’ of his films, and this has been corroborated by crew members: a production designer on The Lord of the Rings described the director as ‘the last word’ because designs had to be run past him. Only after receiving the thumbs-up from him – a message stating ‘P.J. approved’ – could they proceed.

  Whatever Jackson’s working methods, it would have been unthinkable for the Hobbit films to be scored by anyone other than Shore, considering the vast and multifaceted sound world he’d constructed for The Lord of the Rings. When the films were announced in 2007, originally as a two-part series, Jackson was involved as co-writer and producer, but Guillermo del Toro was hired as director. The two worked closely on pre-production for two years but, by 2010, when the films had still not been officially green-lit, del Toro left the project due to the long production delay, and Jackson was a natural choice to replace him. The production schedule was not adjusted to allow for the replacement director to fully get behind the wheel so he was, in effect, chasing his tail from day one. Compare this to The Lord of the Rings, for which Jackson, Walsh and Boyens had had years of pre-production and the luxury of time to explore details, plot devices and characterisation. A noted perfectionist with a reputation for his attention to detail, known for taking days to shoot single scenes, it cannot have been an easy experience for Jackson. Filming started in March 2011 and continued through to July 2012, with two breaks of a month or two in between, allowing the cast and crew to get their breath back while Jackson and a small team recced new locations.

  Shore devoted three more years to Tolkien, adding well over sixty more leitmotifs and reprising and recrafting earlier themes to create thematic ‘families’ for, for example, dwarves, hobbits and elves. ‘It’s really a tangent to The Lord of the Rings,’ the composer explained in 2017, ‘and it’s a story that Tolkien created for his children. It’s a much lighter story.’ These light tones are evident in stand-out pieces ‘Old Friends’ and ‘The World is Ahead’, and his aim was to start off with these, then allow the music to become darker as the trilogy progresses, leaving the audience in the right musical environment for The Lord of the Rings and keeping things seamless in case fans chose to watch all six in succession. Even though Shore had reams of music as a starting-off point, the trilogy still required extreme commitment: ‘We took our love of The Lord of the Rings and we infused it into The Hobbit because we loved the story, and we used our best techniques from the Ring story and developed that further in terms of themes and motifs.’

  As with the first trilogy, even if the director and composer weren’t in the same room, or on the same continent, there was regular communication. When recording the first Hobbit film, Shore would call Jackson while the orchestra was on a break to play him the short sections that had been recorded that day, and the director welcomed these pieces because they often influenced his creative process – music and film each informed the other. A busy schedule did not allow for Jackson to spend time in London, so recording for the second and third films was relocated to the Wellington Town Hall, with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra recruited to perform. Despite reported time co
nstraints on the production of the final film, the composer still managed to create new themes for The Battle of Five Armies, and for developed characters like Bain and Bolg, and the score contains treasures and surprises. ‘Courage and Wisdom’ and ‘There and Back Again’ instantly transport the audience back to Middle-earth, yet still feel fresh. Shore has said he had become so disciplined in his composition process for these films, and so open to his musical universe, that he still had more music to write, but had to drag himself away.

  The collaboration between Shore and Jackson is founded in a shared vision, mutual respect and a focused faith in the original text, which the director described as ‘not just a book, but a whole mythic philosophy’. What sets their creative partnership apart from the others examined here is the inclusion of other key individuals on an equal footing with the director and composer, namely fellow screenwriters and producers Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens. Shore and Jackson both put in the lion’s share but such a huge project could never simply be a job for only two people, and with the support of additional collaborators the composer was able – for want of a better expression – to ‘think big’. He has said that The Lord of the Rings ‘completely changed the way I work’; in turn Jackson credits Shore for teaching him more about the scoring process, and that not only did he learn about instrumentation but ‘I’ve also learned a lot about patience, he’s one of the most patient people I’ve ever met.’ But perhaps the strongest bond between them, in Jackson’s eyes at least, was their joint devotion to the source material: ‘It’s a wonderful thing in a professional relationship to move beyond work into a friendship. That’s the product of who he is and the time that we spent together. What I ultimately appreciate most about what Howard has done for us, which is separate to the music, is the fact that he has become as obsessed with Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings as Fran and I have.’

  Collaboration History

  The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

  The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)

  The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

  The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

  The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)

  The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)

  Suggested Playlist

  The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Concerning Hobbits

  The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Council of Elrond

  The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Many Meetings

  The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Breaking of the Fellowship

  The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The Riders of Rohan

  The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The White Rider

  The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Forth Eolingas

  The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, The Lighting of the Beacons

  The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, The White Tree

  The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Twilight and Shadow

  The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, The Return of the King

  The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Old Friends

  The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, An Unexpected Party

  The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, The World is Ahead

  The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, The Quest for Erebor

  The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, Feast of Starlight

  The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, The Ruins of Dale

  The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, Courage and Wisdom

  The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, There and Back Again

  If we measure the director–composer collaborations in this book solely by number, Robert Zemeckis and Alan Silvestri, who have worked on sixteen films together, are hot on the heels of Steven Spielberg and John Williams in terms of pedigree. Since their first collaboration in 1984, Romancing the Stone, Zemeckis has chosen Silvestri to score every single one of his movies, from the Back to the Future trilogy to the wartime spy drama Allied in 2016. These films hop across genres but whether they’re suspense, children’s movies or black comedy, each has a sense of playfulness and a sheer joy in their craft that have propelled both director and composer from big-budget blockbusters and award successes, such as Forrest Gump, to more serious drama in later years, such as Flight. There is an unashamedly broad appeal to the Zemeckis–Silvestri partnership, which has provided entertainment and escapism for many households across the decades. If you don’t have fond memories of watching and rewatching, say, Who Framed Roger Rabbit on VHS, or The Polar Express on DVD, more’s the pity.

  As with many of the collaborations featured in this book, while the director hasn’t, to date, worked with any other composer, you can’t say the same for the composer. Alan Silvestri’s remarkable back catalogue incorporates superhero fare (the Avengers series), animation (Lilo & Stitch and The Croods) and action and sci-fi (Predator and The Abyss). He’s worked on three projects with director Stephen Sommers, including The Mummy Returns, and on all of the Night at the Museum films, directed by Shawn Levy. He has also collaborated with other notable directors including Sam Raimi, Gore Verbinski and even Steven Spielberg, in a rare project scored by someone other than John Williams, 2018’s Ready Player One. For those of a certain vintage, there’s a strong chance Silvestri soundtracked your formative film viewing in the 1980s or 1990s, with films including Flight of the Navigator, Father of the Bride, Overboard and The Parent Trap.

  Alan Silvestri spent a few years at Berklee College of Music and had a brief spell as a drummer in a rock band called The Herd, formed in his hometown of Teaneck, New Jersey. His first scoring project was the low-budget film The Dobermans in 1972. He did most of his musical groundwork in television, including Starsky & Hutch and crime drama CHiPs, for which he was the main composer from 1977 to 1983. He has continued to contribute to the small screen throughout his career, teaming up with Robert Zemeckis on episodes of Amazing Stories and Tales from the Crypt, and he won two Emmy Awards in 2014 for his music for the science documentary series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. When he met Robert Zemeckis in 1983 he was still learning his craft, with regular TV work and several films under his belt, and was on the lookout for a project he could really sink his teeth into.

  Robert Zemeckis spent a large portion of his youth watching television and going to the movies. He can recall the first film he ever saw – The Blob – and quickly progressed from a young film fan to an aspiring film-maker: ‘I was fascinated by the illusion of the movies before anything else. I was always trying to figure out how they did something, like a visual effect, or how they did an action sequence, and I became obsessed with how they synched sound up with the picture. I tried to do that with home movies. So I guess my passion for film came from the technical end first.’

  He studied film at the University of Southern California, where he met his early writing collaborator, Bob Gale. After winning a Student Academy Award at USC for a short film called Field of Honor, he found himself face-to-face with Steven Spielberg, who became a mentor to the aspiring director and executive produced his first two films, I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978) and Used Cars (1980). Both received some critical praise but didn’t fare well at the box office. Zemeckis and Gale then provided the screenplay for the Spielberg war romp 1941, which turned out to be an uncharacteristic flop for the director of Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. So, during the early 1980s, Zemeckis was feeling the need to prove himself. He and Gale continued writing, and pitched their idea of a teenager who accidentally travels back in time to the 1950s but it was turned down by the major studios.

  Steven Spielberg would go on to executive produce the Back to the Future trilogy and Who Framed Roger Rabbit but at this stage, in 1983, Zemeckis was keen to find his own feet as a director. As luck would have it, Michael Douglas hired him to direct Romancing the Stone. Studio executives were expecting a flop and many critics dism
issed it as a Raiders of the Lost Ark rip-off – despite the fact the screenplay had actually been written before the first Indiana Jones film – but it was a box-office hit, providing Zemeckis with the clout to get his time-travelling tale into production. A definitive turning point in his career, and also his first encounter with Alan Silvestri.

  By his own admission, Zemeckis hadn’t concerned himself too much with the matter of who to hire to score Romancing the Stone before Silvestri, keen for the challenge of scoring an adventure film that would require a range of styles, from action cues to love themes, walked into his office and played him his audition tape. Despite Silvestri not having seen footage of the film, the composer’s music felt instinctively connected to the story, and the director, whose initial impression was of ‘a good guy who laughed and smiled easily, just a solid human being’, signed him up. The resulting score brings the romcom elements to the forefront with jazzy elements like the jolly saxophone providing the centrepiece to the end titles, creating an atmosphere of light-hearted warmth.

  Perhaps not even Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale themselves could have anticipated the success of Back to the Future. It was the highest-grossing film of 1985, spawning two sequels and receiving four Academy Award nominations – including one for Zemeckis and Gale for Best Original Screenplay – and it won the Oscar for Best Sound Effects Editing. Few films have made as much of a mark in our collective psyches or continue to feature in ‘must-see movies’ lists, and fewer still have been quoted by the American president in their State of the Union Address, as was the case with Ronald Reagan in 1986 when he quoted Doc Brown’s famous line: ‘Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.’