Hey folks, Harry here... and ya know what? My favorite part about getting reports from 'the ghost of Bernard Herrmann' is the nice little musical cue he composes and digitizes as a WINAMP file for me to listen to while I read his nice little letters. I'm under orders not to share this music with anyone, so alas... It's a lonely sense of enjoyment. Here's the scoop and enjoy...
Hi Harry, how ya doin'?
We've talked before, but I'm sure you've forgotten--no one ever pays any attention to me!--so let me reintroduce myself. I'm the Ghost of Bernard Herrmann. Yeah, yeah, sure, you thought you'd heard the last of me after Taxi Driver, but even though Twi, my post-mortem mutt and I spend most of our time haunting the moors of jolly old England, we still do our fair share of moanin' and chain rattlin' back in that sunny cesspool known as L.A.
But of course, even the dead need a place to roost. DePalma lets me use his attic now and then, and I advise him on how to mix his scores. But after he let Sakamoto steal from me and Stravinsky in Snake Eyes, and after he let Morricone get away with that Mars score… well, my vapor trail ain't gonna be hanging around his house anytime soon! Fortunately, Danny Elfman is good enough to lend me out his basement once in a while. I taught him how to score for low woodwinds, he granted me free access to his theremins and gamelans--a perfect deal. I even wrote the lad a new intro to my Psycho score. (You didn't think *he* wrote that glassy little preamble, did ya!?)
So why am I bothering you? Impatient, impatient! I'm here to chew your ear about THE GIFT. Looks like ol' Danny boy is gonna be scoring the thing. I'd have done it better, but I guess they want a living composer. But beyond this, look for Danny playing a bit part in the film: a Southern-fried fiddle player (complete with accent, no less) in a dream sequence. You've read the script, you know the guy. He trades quips with little Miss Blanchett.
And incidentally, THE GIFT positions Elfman exactly one film away from Raimi's SPIDERMAN, and without saying too much, you may be hearing more news on that front soon.
Oh sure, there's more. I could tell you about Elfman's involvement with the upcoming EDWARD SCISSORHANDS DVD, or about the fact that his JULIAN--a ghostly script he penned years ago… gee, I wonder where he got the notion!--is picking up some momentum right now. Heck, I could tell you all about Jonny Williams landing THE PATRIOT, or the long-off but very real possibility of Tommy Newman scoring TRAFFIC and OCEAN'S 11. But you know what… I'll tell ya later.
The Ghost of Bernard Herrmann signing off.
