An Interview with Elmer Bernstein

An Interview with Elmer Bernstein by Daniel Mangodt and Luc Van de Ven
Originally published in Soundtrack Magazine Vol.12 / No.48 / 1993
Text reproduced by kind permission of the editor, Luc Van de Ven

Transcribing an interview from a cassette is one of my least favorite activities as far as editing this magazine is concerned. Transcribing this interview, however, was pure pleasure. Elmer Bernstein looks and sounds much younger than his 71 years. He's funny, he's an excellent raconteur, he has a prodigious memory for anecdotes, and I suspect he is something of a bon vivant. We met him briefly last October when he was at the Ghent Film Festival to introduce Martin Scorcese's AGE OF INNOCENCE. - LVDV.

What's the biggest problem you have to face when you score a movie? The director's total ignorance of what music can do for his film, or his fear of what the score will do to his movie?
(Laughs) In the way you're asking this, you're already answering your own question! The biggest problem that you run into could be the greatest help, but also the greatest problem - it's what the director is like. How ignorance expresses itself can either be a help or a problem. If the director says, “Look, this is really not my field, this is your problem, I expect you to solve it”, then you have a free hand to be creative.

These directors must be a minority…
Yeah, the minority. What's happening in recent years is that directors tend to be much more invasive of the creative process. There's an old saying, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” The director is always making a big mistake if he lets the composer have a free hand. What bothers me is this: there is a tendency these days to put a temporary score on every film. I refuse to listen to such a score. They must take the score out for me when I see the film, because if you hear a temporary score your creative process is already inhibited. What I really want from a director is that he talks to me about mood, about style, about what he wants from the music, not the music itself. Then, if he is open-minded I can tell him what to expect, what I think the music ought to do. Whenever I start to do a film, I look at the film and I ask myself some questions: What is the role of the music in this film? Music can play different roles in a film, depending upon what the film is like. Why is the music there? And then, when we go through the film, somebody says, “I think we ought to have music here”, or I say, “I think we ought to have music here”, and then I must ask myself, “Why would I put music here?” What is the music supposed to do in this scene? How is it supposed to make people feel? Generally directors like to have music in scenes that they think are not working (bursts out laughing), I always much prefer to have music in scenes that are working! If something is dull you put music in, it gives the audience something to concentrate on so to speak. But it's much better for the music to have a real function, a real reason for being there, and that is what I look for.

In the case of a temp-track, that is what happened with Alex North's music for “2001”… One of the sad cases where a director falls in love with the temp-track he uses.
Generally speaking, if the director has engaged a composer to do a score for a film, he should have engaged a composer for whom he has some respect. If you have respect for the artist, then you should let the artist function. If you hire somebody you perceive to be an artist, and you say, “I want you to do so-and-so-and-so,” and you actually start to direct the music, the chances are that he's not going to get as good a score as he would if he let the composer function.

I was wondering whether a good score can save a bad movie...
No (laughs). No, a good score can't save a bad movie. However, a bad score can hurt a good movie.

Have you tried to save some movies that way?
I don't think anybody ever sets out to do a bad movie. I've never heard a director say, “Well, we're making this bad movie…” (laughter). Nobody tries to make a bad movie, but some movies don't work as well as others. Music can do amazing things. Take a movie for instance like THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN. When I first saw THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN without music, the pace was essentially fairly slow, there were some longueurs. The music is very energetic. This way you can help a film. You can give energy. I remember that from Cecil B. DeMille as a matter of fact. We were working on THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. There was a scene where Moses leads the Hebrews out of bondage and out of Egypt. When I first wrote a piece of music for that scene, I wrote a piece of rather slow music, because they seemed to be moving very slowly. And DeMille said, “No, no, don't do this. It already looks too slow. I want more energy in the music itself,” and I said, “Won't it look wrong?” and he said, “No. This is one way you can help.” And he was absolutely right, that was a great lesson I learned from him. Music can add energy.

We've heard that THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN will be out on compact disc...
As a matter of fact, there are going to be two CDs. As I understand it, the Phoenix Symphony is making a version of the entire score, and MGM has a plan to release the original sound tracks, which were never done. The album called THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN was actually made by me, for the second film, RETURN OF THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, which is essentially the same music, but they're not the original sound tracks.

There have been various periods in your career. First you were labeled as a jazz composer with STACCATO, THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM... Then the Americana music period with TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD… Then you started scoring westerns, then came war movies. In the last 10 years, you've scored a lot of different genres. Is there a particular genre that you prefer scoring?
Well, obviously, from your comments you can see that I've consciously tried to keep changing. One thing that can happen to you, particularly in Hollywood, is that you can be typecast. If you do a successful war film, then everybody wants you to score a war film. You do a successful comedy, everybody wants you to score a comedy. I really never wanted to do that. My first great success in Hollywood was jazz, with THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM, and then everybody wanted me to be a jazz composer. So I said, “No, I'm a composer, I want to feel that I can do all kinds of other things.” I consciously moved from genre to genre.

Twice in my career I really got stuck. The first time was with westerns, after I did THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN they wanted me to do THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN again! So I got stuck for 10 years with westerns, but I finally got out of that rut. Then, beginning in 1977, I did 10 years of comedies and finally I said, “No, I don't want to get stuck with comedies,” but I did them for ten years. The first few years I really enjoyed it. But after a while I wanted to move on, I didn't work for about a year and a half at that point, because I wouldn't do any more comedies. Then I did the music for MY LEFT FOOT.

There's an instrument you use a lot in that score, the Ondes Martenot... How did you come to use that particular instrument?
I was at a seminar, about 11 years ago, and a colleague of mine, Richard Rodney Bennett, kept talking about this instrument, which I didn't know. I first used it in a film called HEAVY METAL. Subsequently Cynthia Millar has played the instrument for me, and she has also played electronics for me and she is now also a composer in her own right. It's an instrument of which I've been very fond. It's a very unusual instrument, because it can sound electronic, but also unearthly, it sounds like nothing else.

It doesn't sound like a synthesizer at all...
The way the instrument is played, the technique of playing the instrument is very similar to playing a violin, it’s very personal, it's very hands-on. The instrument sounds very, very different depending upon who plays it.

Let's go back to westerns. THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN has a definite Mexican flavor. Did you do any research?
Since very early in my career I've always been interested in folk music of my era, basically United States and Mexican. I really enjoyed doing THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN because it gave me a chance to use that genre of US-Mexican border music.

You did 3 sequels for THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN...
I think I only did two of them. I may have done all of them, I don't remember (laughs).

That does say something about those sequels… The album TRUE GRIT contains pop music instead of the real score from the film, although you conducted the music for the album. I've always wondered what the reason was for releasing such a pop version?
This was the only time I ever did that. This was the brainchild of a record producer. Artie Butler did the arrangements. When this album was released, I got a really angry letter from a fan…

It wasn't from us!
...I wrote a reply and we became great friends and correspondents. I said, “It wasn't my idea!” (laughs)

You did a great western, THE TIN STAR, with Anthony Perkins and Henry Fonda. I remember the scene where the boy rides the horse, and you had some playful music for that scene...
It's a film I tend to forget because it came very early on in my career. That was my first chance to use western themes, but it was a more personal kind of score, it wasn't as big as THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN. It was a film I very much enjoyed doing.

Your last western was THE SHOOTIST. In that score you can hear really every theme you ever wrote for westerns.
(Laughs): It's funny you should say that, because during the western ‘period’, people would say, that the western scores always sounded very similar - which is why I stopped doing them - to which my reply was, “Well, they all sound alike because they're all the same story!” (laughs).

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD is one of my favorite scores... The film begins with the little girl humming, but in the actual score - which can be found in Irwin Bazelon's book Knowing the Score... - there is another beginning…
There is another beginning, and if you listen to the record, that beginning is on the record. What happened was - and this was the source of some disagreement - it was the producer's and director's decision that they wanted to have a sort of introduction and then go to the little girl humming like that, that was their idea, not mine.

So that was why there is a difference between the score and what was used in the movie... You used an interesting combination of instruments, piano, vibraphone, celesta...
That's correct, and they had to convince me that having the girl hum was better than the score (bursts out laughing). The whole point of that score was children seen in an adult world and the adult world seen through children’s eyes. The vibraphone, harp, glockenspiel, piano, music box, all of these instruments were associated with children’s sounds, which is what it was all about.

You've scored a lot of war movies, the most famous being the BRIDGE AT REMAGEN and THE GREAT ESCAPE.
THE GREAT ESCAPE was a very enjoyable film to do. As a matter of fact, all the films I did with John Sturges were fun to do, I enjoyed very much working with him. John never pretended to know anything about music. He would bring me in, he didn't give me the script, but he would tell me the story in person. The way he would tell the story was so inspiring and so exciting, that from the way he was telling the story, you began to understand what you were supposed to do. It was very exciting.

The march from that film has been recorded many times and it has been used by other composers, more or less ‘borrowed' let's say.
(Laughs): I'm aware of this, but I'm flattered.

The film ESCAPE TO VICTORY has a march that sounds very similar to your theme from THE GREAT ESCAPE.
As they say, imitation is the best form of flattery.

In THE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN there is a scene where George Segal walks across the bridge, it's a really impressive application of film music.

Actually I find a lot of war films very difficult (to score), because there are certain things that are obvious in a war film. For example you want to express that it’s dangerous, that the character can get killed. It's hard to find for the music to say something, to make a contribution in some other area. Actually in my opinion the best war film, in terms of the use of music, is MEN IN WAR. In MEN IN WAR there's a scene where the men are marching through a mine field. At any minute they could get blown up, but the ‘look’ of the film is very beautiful, it's a forest, the birds are singing, things like that. And I had the sense of “Here is terror, in the midst of some beauty.” I thought it was a very interesting approach, because the tension is obvious.

When I looked through your filmography I noticed that you have scored quite a few shorts, more than fifteen.
I did a whole series of them. First documentary films for television, but also a series of short films for Ray and Charles Eames, which were very effective learning films. Many were for universities, about computers for instance, about silence... Some were just for fun, TOCCATA FOR TOY TRAINS is just a film about toys.

Do you approach scoring a short film differently from scoring a feature film?
Well, TOCCATA FOR TOY TRAINS was a case in which I was given a scenario, and you write a piece of music first. Obviously, if you're writing a piece of music first, you approach everything quite differently.

You have scored films which were previously scored by other composers, SEE NO EVIL (aka BLIND TERROR) and FIVE DAYS ONE SUMMER. Do you know what went wrong?
In the case of BLIND TERROR or SEE NO EVIL as it was called, I had no idea when I was given that film that André Previn had written a previous score. Had I known, then I would never have touched it! I had no idea that such a score existed until I was halfway through it. The producers were very quiet about it. In the case of FIVE DAYS ONE SUMMER, I knew that there had been a previous score but I had no idea who had written it. I learned subsequently that Carl Davis did the score, but I never heard it. In that case, Fred Zinnemann, who directed the picture, was an old, old friend and that was quite a different situation.

You've been on the other side of the fence a few times yourself, with NATTY GANN and MURDER IN MISSISSIPPI…
(Laughs) I've been on the other side of the fence many times! I don't know what happened on NATTY GANN. They were worried about the film, they kept changing things. We did the score, we made some changes, they said they loved the changes, then the next thing I know, James (Horner) was engaged to do the score. I think that the director was not feeling well, he must have been going through some sort of crisis. James is very good friends with Jeffrey Katzenberg who basically runs the studio, and I think that, as a last attempt to deal with the director, he had James do it. I spoke with James before he undertook it and I warned him about the director and that time, I really don't know how he got on. By that time I had already written maybe 3 scores for the film (laughs).

You said there were other occasions...
Yes, most recently, with A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT, directed by Robert Redford. That was my fault. Robert Redford and I saw the film in totally different ways. I thought it was a good film. To me, the film was a very poetic film, and I had done some themes which were sort of abstract because I perceived the film as a very poetic film. He did not, he perceived the film as more sort of down-to-earth, a folk tale, and he wanted a much simpler approach in the music than I was interested in doing. Eventually, he ended up with Mark Isham at the last minute. I think Robert Redford, as a director, has a great deal of difficulty making up his mind, he is not certain, he is the opposite of Scorcese. Scorcese always knows.

What is Scorcese like to work with?
Well, he is what every composer should dream about. Just as he is this great genius of motion picture making, he is also the best person to work with as an artist, he treats other artists like artists, it's just a pleasure.

What was scoring AGE OF INNOCENCE like? It's set in the nineteenth century…
First of all, the great thing about Scorcese is that you're not called in just at the end, you're with him all the way. I was involved with AGE OF INNOCENCE when it was still only a script. We talked about it and even before the film was shot, I began to develop concepts. I wrote four or five themes that I recorded with a small orchestra, so that he would begin to have a sense of what I had in mind. Even before I wrote these themes we had discussed the character and style of the music and how we were going to approach the late nineteenth century period. I said, “To me, the model would be Brahms”. And that was fine with Scorcese. So we had already discussed that much. Then I wrote some themes. When he was still editing the film, I went and did a temporary score (seeing the question mark on our faces, he hastily adds), based on my music! (laughter all round), so that while he was editing the film he was living with this music at the same time. Music is very important to him, he'll cut a scene to music. When we recorded the final score at the end of June, seven months later, we were already well acquainted with the material.

You've done several television scores for Jacques Cousteau… DIVING FOR ROMAN PLUNDER and THE SEARCH FOR THE BRITANNIC. How did that come about?
Actually, I did a lot of work for National Geographic in the old days. As a matter of fact, the theme they use is still my theme, written 25 years ago. I did a lot of work for them so it came about through these connections. It was very interesting meeting him.

The budget seemed pretty decent, it was an English orchestra…
I think it was the Royal Philharmonic. I guess the budget was all right, I don't remember.

In Film Score Monthly you said that you hate all record companies. Did you mean that as a joke or were you quite serious?
(Bursts out laughing) I said this? There are several senses to this. One sense is, of course, that record companies seem to be only interested in the kind of records that can sell a million copies. If it’s under a million, they're not interested. They're not interested in a special audience. The other thing is, that they also have very interesting accounting methods.

You mean they tend to fiddle with royalties?
They're very difficult to get!

Yet you nearly always work with the same company…
Yes, I don't include Varèse Sarabande among those companies I mentioned before! Varèse Sarabande has really made a business of soundtracks. I think in that sense they have been very, very important to those people who want to have soundtracks. I think they’ve been very good in that field.

Yes, sometimes you have to wonder how they can break even...
Well, sometimes I'm sure they can’t.

Let's go back to your Film Music Collection (FMC). You have done a few albums with Varèse Sarabande, so we were all thinking and hoping you were reviving the FMC series, and then it suddenly stopped…
They just had a license for some of them. My wife and I started the Film Music Collection because we just thought that something ought to be done - that was the very beginning of general interest in film soundtracks, that was in the sixties. The LPs were distributed through a private club. We never had the time to get enough members in the club to break even, although that was all we wanted to do - to break even. We were not looking to make money. But we couldn’t and it got to be very expensive, and that's why we stopped.

In those days, people were not in touch with each other the way they are now, there were no specialized magazines around such as Film Score Monthly, Soundtrack!, or The Cue Sheet with a combined readership of maybe 3500 to 4000 readers. If you launched the FMC club today, you'd have a much better chance to break even...
That is entirely possible.

You don't have any plans to re-launch the Film Music Collection?
Not at this time!

Suppose someone wanted to buy some of those titles to put them out on compact disc, would you willing to license them?
Not really. I'm taking a more mercenary position on the Film Music Collection (laughs), I'd be willing to sell the entire collection but not at a price anybody wants to pay! (bursts out laughing).

Maybe a major company might be willing to pay the kind of money you'd need?
Well, I don't know. There are some titles in the Collection that would be very hard to do again. We had access to some fairly basic material. Things like TORN CURTAIN by Bernard Herrmann... And probably the best recording ever done of Herrmann’s THE GHOST AND MRS MUIR.

I'm talking as a businessman now, if I may do so for a second.... The FMC means capital that is lying dormant, so to speak. Not using it goes against the grain, somehow...
True. Forever is a long time, and I might change my mind at some point. But it just got very difficult for us. Varèse Sarabande licensed a few of them and sales were disappointing. WB licensed three of them (TORN CURTAIN, THIEF OF BAGDAD, TO KILL AMOCKINGBIRD - LVDV) and that didn’t work out either. The WB thing for a moment was quite promising. But then there was a change of command.

I first saw you in 1976 at the Royal Albert Hall. You played a few of your own themes and also themes by others - Herrmann etc. Do you like conducting?
I do like conducting, but I got tired of conducting only film music concerts. I've had a lot of offers to conduct film music concerts, I generally don’t do that. I do albums. I've just done an album on Denon and I did the Herrmann album on Milan, which is a really nice album.

Are there any scores which you'd like to see on CD? KINGS OF THE SUN perhaps?
(Laughs) This is so funny! That is the most requested score! And I have to tell you the truth: I listened to the tapes, I don't understand this. It must be the percussion, it's interesting percussion. One day I’ll do it. That is definitely something I have in mind to do.

What do you think of the newer generation of composers?
Of the younger composers, that is, a generation younger than me, I would put Bruce Broughton and James Horner at the top of the list.

Horner has been known to borrow from classical composers…
You know, it's interesting. I hear this complaint about him a great deal. If it is true that he borrows, then he makes very good use of it. I find his scores generally speaking very good - the score for FIELD OF DREAMS was brilliant. For me, it's the best electronic score I’ve heard.

Apart from the Ondes Martenot, do you like electronic instruments?
Actually I've always been interested in electronics but in a very different way. There are scores that I did as early as 1953… ROBOT MONSTER, it's full of electronics of that period, an electrified flute, things of that sort. The very first sound you hear in HAWAII is a synthesizer! I've always had an interest in that sort of thing, but only an integral interest within the orchestra. Just as another instrument in the orchestra, not as an identity itself. Except in the case of the only score I did which was highly electronic, THE GRIFTERS. Much of THE GRIFTERS is electronic. More than most people even realize. There are a lot of electronics too in RAMBLING ROSE. The piano was electronic, it sounds slightly different. Generally speaking, these days I'll have at least a synthesizer in the orchestra, but only as an instrument within the orchestra.

You've worked several times with Christopher Palmer. Does he work like an orchestrator?
There are composers for whom orchestrators do a great deal, they do half the composing. I'm not going to get into that. When I first came to Hollywood, I had a clause in my contract which said that they couldn't give me an orchestrator, that I wouldn't allow it. Then later on I realized that you're called upon to work just too fast, you can't do it yourself, you have to make sketches. Christopher Palmer is absolutely the most brilliant orchestrator. When you have an orchestrator, you have a colleague, there's no question. The orchestrator is going to do some things differently to what you'd do. It's a kind of collaboration, and you have to enjoy the collaboration. Christopher Palmer is not called upon to write any music, but he makes a rather different sound sometimes than the sound I would make myself, and scores that I've orchestrated myself would have a different sound. For instance THE GRIFTERS, MY LEFT FOOT, RAMBLING ROSE are all scores that I orchestrated myself. They're slightly different. Christopher Palmer is probably the greatest living orchestrator I know, he does wonderful things. You have a colleague, you must let him make his own contribution, you can't say, “Just be a copyist”. So we have a deal, Christopher and I: “If you have an idea, do it. But you must be prepared that if I don't like it, I'll take it out.” We have this agreement. The last few films have been orchestrated by my daughter, Emily.

Peter Bernstien no longer orchestrates your music?
No. Peter is a composer in his own right now. That's what happens. André Previn sometimes played keyboard for me, obviously he's a great conductor-composer. Then it was John Williams, who was my keyboard player on GOD'S LITTLE ACRE for instance - then he became a composer. My next keyboard player was Dave Grusin - so he became a composer! Then Artie Kane, now he's a composer. And now my ‘Ondiste’, Cynthia Millar, she's a composer! (laughs).

What can you tell us about THE GOOD SON?
THE GOOD SON is a kind of horror film in a way, it's a kind of horrible story about a bad kid, sort of a deranged child. I kept the sense of beauty as well, although there is some suspense, you have to see it in the film. It lends a very strange, interesting quality to the film.

What about your future assignments?
It's vacation time now. I did four films last year, that's too much. I'm resting.