A-List: Film Composers
By Josh Spiegel
April 22, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Granted, there are plenty of names, contemporary and otherwise, that won’t show up here. Some of that is simply because I couldn’t fit the people on this list or justify their placement (I love Jonny Greenwood’s score for There Will Be Blood, but he’s only done the one major film composition). Some people deserve an honorable mention, including Hans Zimmer (his score for The Dark Knight is one of my absolute favorites, of course) and James Newton Howard (I love his themes for The Fugitive, and he also happened to work with Zimmer on The Dark Knight). One name I can easily ignore is James Horner. Though his work on films such as Apollo 13 is inspiring and moving, he lately just reuses themes from films he’s worked on in the past. Sorry, folks. Let’s get to the list.
Bernard Herrmann
Some of the composers on this list work primarily with one or two directors or film companies. Bernard Herrmann, however, can say that he jumped from iconic director to iconic director with ease. Though he’s best-known for his frequent collaborations with the great Alfred Hitchcock (with films such as North by Northwest, Psycho, Vertigo, and The Birds), Herrmann began his career as the composer for Citizen Kane, directed by Orson Welles; ended his career as the composer for Taxi Driver, directed by Martin Scorsese; and worked with directors such as Brian de Palma, Michael Curtiz, Robert Wise, Nicholas Ray, Henry Hathaway, and Joseph L. Mankiewicz in between. This is a diverse career, folks. And yet, as diverse a career as it is, Herrmann only won one Oscar for his composing. It’s not the movie you think, either.
You’re guessing Psycho, of course. The slashing violin chords that accompany the shower scene that remains one of the most famous sequences in all of cinema, the fast-paced opening credits theme; it’s got to be that, right? No, it’s The Devil and Daniel Webster, Herrmann’s second film, also from 1941. I haven’t seen that film, but it’s still something amazing to consider that Herrmann was never nominated for a single film he did with Alfred Hitchcock. Imagine the same for the iconic composers who currently live. It’d cause riots among film geeks, and frankly, the fact that the man only got one Oscar is a shame. Without this man, do we even have the shower scene in Psycho? His music made that scene and that movie as memorable as it is, more so than the mere presence of Janet Leigh getting stabbed. A shame that he only ever won the sole award.
Elmer Bernstein
It would take me far too long to merely list the entirety of Elmer Bernstein’s filmography. Let this much be said, though: anyone who’s able to compose the score for The Ten Commandments, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Magnificent Seven, and Ghostbusters…well, he’s a capable, capable man, to be sure. Bernstein’s career spanned over 50 years, starting with such classics as Cat-Women on the Moon (no, I am not making that up) and ending with an Oscar-nominated score for the 1950s throwback Far From Heaven. Bernstein also has a few interesting rejected scores, those that never made it to our ears, including A River Runs Through It and Gangs of New York. To be rejected by Martin Scorsese might hurt, but Scorsese cherished the composer, using his work for his remake of Cape Fear.
Bernstein’s later years were filled with less epic scores, and more from crowd-pleasing comedies, including the aforementioned Ghostbusters (though, no, he didn’t come up with the famous title song), Spies Like Us, Three Amigos, and Airplane. Still, his work was so memorable in his earlier work that he was able to easily slide into scoring goofy comedies whose audiences may not have ever heard of Bernstein’s name. Bernstein won just one Oscar, for his work on Thoroughly Modern Millie, but was nominated countless other times. He also received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, an Oscar Lifetime Achievement Award, and on and on. Among composers to look up to, it’s Herrmann and Bernstein, and very few others. This man’s work is among the most prolific and unobtrusive (an important quality in composing) throughout American cinema.
Michael Giacchino
If anyone should be thanking J.J. Abrams for their career, it’s not Evangeline Lilly or Chris Pine. Michael Giacchino, the man behind the scores for Mission: Impossible III, Star Trek, Ratatouille, and The Incredibles, owes Abrams quite a lot. Before Abrams’ ABC series Alias premiered in 2001, Giacchino was working with high-profile video games, composing as much as he could. Abrams picked Giacchino to score Alias, but his most notable and often contribution to the world of television is finishing up its six-season run. Yes, Giacchino is the guy behind all those trombone blares, soft piano notes and rumbling bass on what is still my favorite show on TV, Lost. Giacchino’s work is just as much a character as any of the performers, and garnered notice almost instantly, including Giacchino’s first Emmy award.
The composer finally got an Oscar a few months ago, for his evocative and moving score in the Pixar film Up. In fact, if Giacchino was planning on, like Tracy Jordan on 30 Rock, trying for being an EGOT winner (that is, someone who wins an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony), he’s only missing the Tony, having won a few Grammy Awards as well. Giacchino’s first big score, or the first that got him a lot of attention at the multiplex, was his work in The Incredibles, making us all long for the spy thrillers of the 1960s and 1970s, which is exactly what the film’s director, Brad Bird, was searching for. Yes, I’m a huge Pixar nut, and equally in the tank for Lost. But still, do those films and TV shows work as well without the memorable music? Easy answer: no.
John Williams
How do I have an A-List about composers without putting John Williams on this list? If he had been the man behind the blaring, brass-infused theme to Star Wars, it’d be enough. If he had created the infamous, heroic introduction to Indiana Jones, it would be enough. If he’d done the same for Jurassic Park and Jaws, it’d be enough. That he’s created all of those themes, plus the haunting opener to the Harry Potter series, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Superman, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Saving Private Ryan, and Schinder’s List makes him one of the most influential, most important, and most amazing composers of all time. How do we look at the man’s filmography and not walk impressed? Frankly, how would any of us walk away from that list and not end up humming the various themes he’s come up with over the past 50 years for the rest of the day?
Williams, winner of numerous Emmy, Grammy, and Oscar awards, is best-known for his collaboration with Steven Spielberg, who’s been using the man ever since his first feature film, The Sugarland Express. But, as we all know, it was the theme for Spielberg’s next film, Jaws, (Da-dum, da-dum, dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-DUM-dum…) that solidified Williams as the go-to blockbuster composer. Two years later, it was Star Wars: A New Hope and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The next year, he had Superman. In 1980…well, the list goes on and on. Though he doesn’t work as much now (I will say, however, that the Catch Me If You Can soundtrack is amazing, and some of his best scoring), John Williams is forever going to be the ideal American film composer, someone whose work is as recognizable over the world as anything else from this country.
Thomas Newman
Is it a good sign or a bad sign when your film scores are so ingrained in the public consciousness that people automatically know it and make fun of it? For good or bad, Thomas Newman is a composer who’s managed to make enough great and easy-to-recall scores in enough big movies over the past 20 years that his style of composing is almost a bad sign when copied. Newman shares a similarity or two with Michael Giacchino: both have Emmy and Grammy Awards (Newman for his singular and amazing main theme for the HBO drama Six Feet Under), and both have put their personal stamp on the sound of Pixar movies (Newman is responsible for the scores for Finding Nemo and WALL-E). Newman, however, is more mocked for his “quirky” themes, heard in films as varied as those Pixar films, American Beauty, and The Shawshank Redemption.
Newman’s work is not often bombastic, but some of his most moving music has been featured in movies that truly deserve it. What’s more, it makes the films he’s part of even more moving. It might just be me, but the final 20 minutes of The Shawshank Redemption (granted, my favorite movie, so I’m a bit biased) are not nearly as powerful without the plaintive, regretful piano tones behind Morgan Freeman’s understated narration. Though his score for American Beauty, one of many films for which Newman was Oscar-nominated (he’s never won), is what people so often rag on—it doesn’t help that the common themes of the film’s score have been copied and ripped off for the past decade on TV and in film—his entire body of work, ranging over the past 30 years, is very impressive and lovely, as is every one of his scores.