Intrada Soundtrack Forum

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[quote="STEVENJ
I was not familiar with this score or documentary until I read your comments, Robert, so I checked Amazon and ordered a second hand copy for about $8.00. The subject matter is repellent (to this day I have seen Schindler's List once and have no desire to ever sit through it again) but the music sounded intriguing. I noticed Intrada released this![/quote]

Hi Steven,

After writing those comments, I read the booklet for the disc. The print is quite small and I don't think I had bothered to read it when I purchased it many years ago. In this case, the booklet contains probably the definitive commentary on this score by one, Douglas Fake. No surprise there! The score is a good example of how Bernstein faced the challenge of scoring information-dense documentaries. I hope that we will one day have access to his many scores for David Wolper.

ROOMATES was mentioned by the original poster. That one is playful Elmer joyfully essaying the persona of a mischievous anti-authoritarian senior living outside the culturally scripted ideas about his twilight years. I think our dear maestro understood that dynamic well, and it plays in his music. There are at least two 'snoring' cues, one 'drunk' cue, and the "Beer Barrel Polka" in the score. No kidding!

On a separate note, I underdstand entirely your compassion and sentiments towards the commodification of the Holocaust in films like SCHINDLER'S LIST. I saw the film with an audience that included many Holocaust survivors and I left the theatre viscerally upset. GENOCIDE is a little different, I think. It came out of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

b.

I doubt that'll make him feel any better about seeing it (and I wouldn't exactly consider Schindler's List a "commodification" of the Holocaust, any more than Spielberg's underrated Amistad trivialized slavery - but any further discussion would probably take this way off topic for a film music board...).

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"Now I don't wanna kill you and you don't wanna be dead!"

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WE HAVE COME TO VISIT YOU IN PEACE AND WITH GOOD WILL.

I actually picked up "My Left Foot/Da" and have listened to it a couple times... very nice stuff, I'm really enjoying it. "The Good Son" is in the mail, should arrive any day now. I'll let you know what I think once I get a chance to hear it.

Back at ya later