Elmer Bernstein 1922 - 2004
A few quotes:
** "Music is the ultimate secret world. It's hard to understand the inspiration if you don't work in it. For me, I really have to make my own decisions about what the music should do in the film, although obviously I'm interested in what the filmmaker thinks."
"If you're doing a Western, your music will inevitably be tied to the scenery more so than the characters....Comedies are very difficult. I think if a comedy is good enough, the composer shouldn't write funny music. Write music against the comedy and the story is funnier. I did this in Animal House and Airplane...."
**"My only concern, if I am writing a score for a film, is what's best for this film. What's going to make this film go? I never think of the CD because that's not what this art is about. It's about helping the film go. [T]he minute you're directed to worry about the CD, the art goes out the window."
"Mass communication has brought basically children into the film world, in the United States at least. The demographic of the box office is twelve to twenty. Those are the people who buy the tickets to go to the movies. So in effect, we're making movies for fourteen-year-olds. Now if you make movies for fourteen-year-olds then you've got to have music to match the fourteen-year-old taste."
- Bernstein scored over 100 films including:
The Man with the Golden Arm, The Ten Commandments, The Magnificent Seven, To Kill a Mockingbird, Hud, The Sweet Smell of Success, The Great Escape, True Grit, National Lampoon's Animal House, Airplane, Meatballs, Ghostbusters, My Left Foot, Age of Innocence and Far From Heaven.
Check out
Elmer Bernstein's official site.
