Directors and music

Another thing that surprises me about the state of film score conversation is how directors feel about film music. These are the people who ultimately call the shots — or, sometimes don’t call the shots when they should be — and yet their attitudes and motivations regarding film music remain largely a mystery. And when they do get talked about, it’s always in the context of a director-composer partnership. Maybe once in a while the director ought to get the sole attention.

My favorite director happens to be Peter Weir (at least, he consistently produces films that I really like). He is one of the few mainstream directors who actually almost never uses commissioned music (he has used Jarre for this or that on occasion, but not lately). Weir may make film music purists’ teeth grit over his use of pre-existing material, even pre-existing film scores (Powaqqatsi in The Truman Show, for instance), but it’s clear that he feels strongly about the use of music and, well, wants what he wants when he wants it. We often forget that the use of commissioned music, by a single composer, is not a rule but a tradition and that, but for the successful films worked on by talented Golden Age composers, the way Weir works could very well have become the norm. (Not counting the sales-driven songtrack approach.)

Directors like Weir already know what they like; there are other directors whose tastes and approach seems to be evolving. Kenneth Branagh is currently working on a film version of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, a type of project which almost seemed inevitable for him. It’s been clear for a long time that what Branagh has really, in his heart of hearts, wanted to do is to make cinema out of music — which explains a lot of why he has always been attracted to Shakespearean verse, Patrick Doyle’s scores with singing in them, and finally a Shakespearean musical (Love’s Labours Lost), and now this.

It seems to me that some of the most frustrating jobs for composers must be when a director doesn’t understand his own self and perhaps doesn’t want a relationship with the composer at all. In that case, when a director discovers he really would rather stick with the pop song he fell in love with in the first place, it should be a cause for rejoicing if they don’t commission a score again.