Intrada Soundtrack Forum

I came across an interview with Jerry Goldsmith in a 1988 issue of Starlog magazine by Marc Shapiro. At the time, Goldsmith was working on his score for an upcoming alien/human cop thriller "Outer Heat". We know it today as "Alien Nation" with James Caan, and we also know that his score was rejected. But, at the time of the interview, that was still in the future.

Some of the more interesting points brought up were:

As many sci-fi, fantasy & horror films he scored, Goldsmith never sought any of them out. People responsible for the films always came to him. Need a good composer for an upcoming horror film?, dial up G for Goldsmith. He stated he could not understand why they sought him out. (Maybe you were that good, Jerry!)

He stated he had a hard time watching many of these type films. "Every time The Omen comes on, I close my eyes during the decapitation scene." Likewise, with the hand being cut off when scoring Psycho II. "I guess, I'm just squeamish about those things."

When Goldsmith got a fantasy film job, he looked for the non-fantasy element to build the music upon. "The human side of a film is what's important, not the hardware...There is no formula to finding what musically fits a science-fiction film. I just look for emotion. When I don't find those, it makes things more difficult." Case in point was his score for Alien. "None of the characters were very sympathetic and the only emotion to exploit musically was rampant fear."

His foray into a major electronic score came with Runaway. Up to then, he had always been a traditionalist. Even though he considered it a success, it did not prompt him into entering the electronic age even though he did several afterwards. He felt a strong loyalty to "flesh and blood" musicians. "A good string section and an orchestra are the first things I think of when I start a project." He particularly felt the strings were the most important. "With them, I can do any kind of picture. After the human voice, they are the most expressive instrument I know."

It was a rush job scoring Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The film was brought to him in bits and pieces, and this was close to its release date. He called on Fred Steiner for help and they ended up finishing the music three days before the film was scheduled to open in the theaters.

Of course he touched upon the Legend fiasco and stated how his work on The Secret of NIMH was very enjoyable and educational. "There's the problem of animated scene length being shorter than live action scenes...Because scenes don't take as long to unfold, it was more difficult to get a flowing musical line." (I found this to be very revealing. Never thought how the speeded up action in animation can pose time sequencing problems for composers).

Finallly, commenting as to his influence on others, "I do seem to hear traces of myself on other people's scores...I know I hear pieces of my Planet of the Apes score on other people's music more than I do mine. But hell! There's a lot of Igor Stravinsky and Bele Bartok in what I do." (I guess he really did not mind the presence of other's music in one's own composition).

This interview was a joy to read once again. I wanted to bring the man's own words to you in this post. I hope you enjoyed reading it as well.

Thanks for sharing.

There was also a previous Jerry Goldsmith interview in Starlog published somewhere around the fall of 1981. I must have it stacked somewhere with my old Starlog collection. It was quite an interesting interview. I remember reading some nice comments from maestro Leonard Slatkin who had attended sessions for Capricorn One and Star Trek: the Motion Picture, praising Jerry Goldsmith's incredible perfectionism on the scoring stage podium. I don't have total recall ( ) of the complete interview, but there were some quite humorous quips from our beloved maestro: particularly when asked if he did attend vintage black masses for inspiration on The Omen("How can people believe such rubbish!"). I'll try to look it up.

I have both Starlogs with the Goldsmith interviews. The '81 interview was the first Goldsmith article of any kind I ever saw. Prior to that I knew nothing about the man. Was he American? English? How old was he? It was also a revelation to read he had scored Papillon and old Twilight Zone episodes.

I admired Starlog for making the effort to interview fim composers. In adition to the two Goldsmith interviews they also ran interviews with Basil Poledouris on Conan (but I never got that issue! ), James Horner, Elmer Bernstein and Alan Silvestri. The Bernstein interview was particularly good, as it dealt mainly with his sci-fi and fantasy scores (scores which were often ignored in other articles / interviews with the composer).