Intrada Soundtrack Forum

No mention of Tim Burton & Danny Elfman?

My personal favourite is Joe Dante & Jerry Goldsmith. (Gremlins, Innerspace, Matinee, Small Soldiers not to mention my favourite THE BURBS).

...and we can't forget about John Carpenter & John Carpenter.

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Most Wanted Unreleased scores:
Howard Shore's AN INNOCENT MAN (1989) Touchstone/Buena Vista
Richard Halligan's THE OCTAGON (1980) American Cinema
Sante Maria Romitelli's GOD'S GUN (1976) MGM/Cannon
Trevor Jones' FREEJACK (1992) Morgan Creek

What about Explorers and Looney Tunes ?

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Most Wanted Unreleased scores:
Howard Shore's AN INNOCENT MAN (1989) Touchstone/Buena Vista
Richard Halligan's THE OCTAGON (1980) American Cinema
Sante Maria Romitelli's GOD'S GUN (1976) MGM/Cannon
Trevor Jones' FREEJACK (1992) Morgan Creek

I think about this a lot. Apart from Williams/Spielberg and Herrmann/Hitchcock, I actually somewhat appreciate Brian De Palma's series of collaborations over the years on various pictures. Composers with whom he did more than one film, and who did great work for him:

Herrmann (Sisters, Obsession)
Donaggio (Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, Body Double, Raising Cain)
Morricone (The Untouchables, Casualties of War, Mission to Mars)
Sakomoto (Snake Eyes, Femme Fatale)

Among the one-off's, you had Doyle's CARLITO'S WAY, and of course Williams's masterpiece THE FURY, doing his best Herrmann impersonation.

I think De Palma was able to consistently collaborate over the years with his composers, and has been able to draw more great scores than almost any other modern-era director that I know of.

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Randy Wilson
Dallas, TX

Honorable mention for Cronenberg/Shore! What a great body of work... I especially love their work in the late 80's and 90's beginning with DEAD RINGERS and especially CRASH, EXISTENZ and NAKED LUNCH.

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Randy Wilson
Dallas, TX

Ishiro Honda and Akira Ifukube

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Most Wanted Unreleased scores:
Howard Shore's AN INNOCENT MAN (1989) Touchstone/Buena Vista
Richard Halligan's THE OCTAGON (1980) American Cinema
Sante Maria Romitelli's GOD'S GUN (1976) MGM/Cannon
Trevor Jones' FREEJACK (1992) Morgan Creek

One of my favorite collaborations hasn't been mentioned yet, which is Kenneth Branagh and Patrick Doyle. This is a director/composer partnership that extends all the way back to stage productions before either of them ever started working in film. I've liked a lot of Doyle's work for other filmmakers, but Branagh generally brings out his best.

-Jeff

There have been a lot of great collaborations and I see all of the famous ones here. One could argue that Michael Curtiz and Max Steiner also had a great collaboration but just doing many pictures together doesn't guarantee a real "collaboration". And to that end, I must repeat one mentioned earlier but perhaps not loudly enough: Blake Edwards and Henry Mancini. A true collaboration is one where a composer can anticipate what a director will want, can happily subdue his artistic talents to primarily assist in the director's points of view... and in return, find that same director willing and able to trust the composer do what he does best even if their collaborative instincts may collide. This defines Edwards and Mancini. I've always heard it also defines Spielberg and Williams. I guess ultimately it became a collision point for Hitchcock and Herrmann.

John Sturges was pretty keen on Elmer Bernstein from what I can see. And certainly Eastwood had plenty of faith in Jerry Fielding, and later Fielding's orchestrator Lennie Niehaus.

What a cool topic.
--Doug

Here's a collaboration no one cares about (except me), but it was a fruitful one - director Randa Haines and Michael Convertino.

1. Children Of A Lesser God
2. The Doctor
3. Wrestling Ernest Hemingway
4. Dance With Me

The first three scores are exquisite, as are the films. The fourth... well, I didn't have the strength to watch it.

And they even worked together on an episode of TALES FROM THE CRYPT.

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Let's be careful out there

Although it doesn't fit my definition of a longterm collaboration, how about Oliver Stone and John Williams? ( Born on the Fourth of July, JFK, Nixon ) Three of the best efforts from each. Why didn't this pairing continue?

How about Christopher Young and Jon Amiel - "Copycat", "The Man Who Knew Too Little", "Entrapment", "The Core", "Creation" so far.

I'm more than a little shocked that no one has mentioned (unless I missed it) one of the longest and greatest director/composer marriages in the history of film - maybe THE longest - Fellini and Nino Rota. It doesn't really get better than that.

And the second longest in terms of time might well be Pietro Germi and Carlo Rustichelli - Rustichelli scored every Germi film save for Germi's very first - that's eighteen films over twenty-something years.