Michael Small: Scoring the Director’s Vision | Music from the Movies

by Rudy Koppl

This article originally ran in the magazine Music from the Movies—Issue 21, Autumn 1998—and features interviews with Small as well as directors Alan J. Pakula, Arthur Penn, John Schlesinger, and Bob Rafelson.

Every once in a while a special film composer emerges making history with some of the great directors of our time. His music can define the way we feel about a film, in fact this person can define a whole genre with his technique and sound.

This composer’s psychological interpretation of a film and its characters brings the director’s ideas to life. It can be any style of music you want, but in the end this is loosely based on its definition and the creative process becomes film music.

Composer Michael Small has scored over fifty motion pictures in a multitude of different styles. Some of these films are classics like Klute, The Parallax View, and Marathon Man. His other scores serve great films like Night Moves, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Black  Widow, Mountains of the Moon, and the recent HBO film Poodle Springs. When you score these type of films, there is no doubt that you can score anything, theatre, ballet, or any film genre.

Submission is a requirement for Michael Small opening himself up creatively in order to give the directors exactly what they want. He takes the ideas that are on the screen and becomes them in order to find a special sound that works for the film. From full orchestra to MIDI composition, this composer gives the film what it needs, a special brand of sound that relates to a concept on which his scores are usually based. It’s the emotional rhythm of the film that you are hearing, film scoring at its best.

Why did you get into film scoring?
My father Jack Small was a well known and beloved figure in the theatre business of the fifties. He booked the shows for the Shubert organization, was General Manager and before that acted a bit. When I was four I could pick out the tunes from Showboat which was in my father’s summer stock engagement in Louisville. I dreamed of being a Broadway composer. My father was great friends with the likes of Jerome Robbins, Jule Stein, and Harold Rome. It was Harold who introduced me to Lehman Engel and the BMI theatre workshop years later when my dad had passed away and I was on my own out of Williams College. But the unexpected happened, as it always does. As a result of hearing my work at a showcase at BMI, a twenty­-something film producer (Ed Pressman) heard my music and asked me to score a film called Out of It. So I fell into film scoring by accident and it really fired my imagination to work with an orchestra, far more than writing ‘show tunes.’

How did you learn to score films?
I studied orchestration privately with Meyer Kupferman, a self taught and inspired concert composer, who at the time was scoring the early films of Philip Kaufman. We found that by giving me imaginary film scenes to score I was able to learn orchestration. He sort of tricked me into it, as my theatrical sense comes so naturally. I learned all of the other film techniques of timing and so forth from him as well. Somehow he had possession of Rosza’s score for Lost Weekend copied into short score with all the internal timings indicated!

How do you feel about your first film score in 1968, Out of It?
I consider it an early work, but it was a great deal of fun because it had a George Martin / Beatles-like quality in which I combined some rock and roll elements with classical elements. I even did some reversed flutes and slowed down drum effects à la The Beatles. A fascinating feature is that I used a band of brilliant Julliard seniors who called themselves the New York Rock and Roll Ensemble, incredible kids with all this dynamism and classical training. In the band was Michael Kamen, who was the oboist and vocalist. He was twenty years old and I asked him if he would sing the title song, which he did. By the way, the drummer was none other than Mark Snow. They must have learned a lot from this experience, just kidding.

Explain your approach to scoring each film?
I try to come up with a concept that relates to the whole idea of the picture rather than trying to just underscore dramatically each little moment. I will say that my teacher in this regard is Alan Pakula, because when I did Klute his expectation for the score was far beyond anything that I had attempted. He wanted the score to not only be a suspense score, but to underscore the psychology of the main character. Ever since that experience I always look for that extra voice that a score can add to a film.

What is your first step in scoring a picture?
Rudy, after forty movies it”s always different; either I get a script, see a screening, or a video of it. A script does not always reflect what the film is. I’ve gotten myself into trouble by talking to directors about the script and scoring the script, only to realize later that the script and this film are two different entities. I prefer to see a director’s cut of the film. The first time I see a film I never think of music. I try to be as open to it as if I were paying for it at the theatre, really absorbing what the film is saying and really responding. That first take on a film is very valuable for scoring because then you know the emotional texture of that particular film. Only on a second or third screening do I really think about what music can and should do for the film. I always ask myself, “What is the role of music in this particular film?”

Did you have a unique experience with any particular orchestra you’ve used?
I had a very special experience with The Postman Always Rings Twice because there was a musicians strike in Hollywood at the time. The movie having been made by an off-shore company was given a special dispensation to record in California. I had a bunch of musicians very eager to play who artistically missed working. We had the most exciting sessions full of  feeling and committed playing for that film.

Do you write, orchestrate, and conduct your scores?
I’ve done all of those, but I only orchestrated my earlier scores. I’ve gotten used to using an orchestrator. I like having another set of ears and eyes. I try to sketch my scores very completely and have an orchestrator realize my sketches. As far as conducting, I have conducted pretty much all of my scores except for Mobsters and The Mountains of the Moon.

At what point did you start using an orchestrator?
Working on Klute I did eighty percent of the orchestrations myself and had someone else help me on some of the cues. I began to realize what an orchestrator can contribute. It’s a very meticulous and time consuming process tucked away in a schedule which doesn’t ever have the proper amount of time. Having this extra set of ears, this different perspective, this highly skilled purely musical addition to the team is not hard to get used to! When I started doing big features in California, I always used an orchestrator. I worked in the early years with one of the finest orchestrators in Hollywood, Jack Hayes. Recently I’ve been working with a Canadian composer named Christopher Dedrick, who’s a very fine musician and orchestrator. I do look forward to doing my own orchestration for certain projects.

Each score is personal to you, like children. Which do you feel were your best three scores?
The top four, if I may, are Klute, The Parallax View, Marathon Man, and The Postman Always Rings Twice. Let’s make that a top five and add Mountains of the Moon.

Did you always use video to score to?
Rudy, I go back to Moviola and 35mm film. I used to have to rent a Moviola and had a little rewind table where I would have to rewind by hand every reel. If I wanted to check out how a theme worked in reel one and then check it out in reel ten, there was a lot of physical work involved. Still there’s a mystery and magic when working physically and directly with a piece of film. Despite all the inconvenience, the noise of the Moviola, and the storing of huge cans of film in your studio, there’s something about watching an image flickering at twenty four frames a second right in front of you and scoring to it. I will never forget the day that the rough cut of Klute was shown to me on a big screen in a screening room at Warner’s, while I plunked away at an upright piano they had on the side. Talk about direct involvement!

It seems like most directors want to hear a mock-up of the score.
For the last couple of years directors want to hear the entire score to the picture on a synthesizer, every single cue, before it is recorded by an acoustic orchestra. This has created a very unfortunate misunderstanding that a real orchestra sounds like synth samples. It does not. It is both more and less. In today’s world of endless demos, of endless attempts to second­ guess the creative process as if it were some sort of word processing program, many composers get stuck in the trap of making great sounding synth demos that really limit the use of the color range and blending potential of a real orchestra. Then there’s ‘demo-love,’ the poor musicians get brow-beaten to imitate a synthetic sound! It is no accident that there is so much sameness in sound of most of today’s ‘orchestral’ scores. They are copies of copies! That’s why I prefer a mixture, I like to have the synthetic sounds noticeably so, and the orchestral sounds pure. As you know, I’ve written some purely synthetic scores that really had little to do with live instruments. Two scores like this are Target for Arthur Penn and First Born for Michael Apted.

Which of your film scores were the most difficult to realize?
Frankly, I don’t remember any being easy. I think The Postman Always Rings Twice was very difficult for me because it involved a style of music that I really never wrote before. I had to do some research on the thirties style and aesthetic of film music which was really technically foreign to me. I wound up dropping the research and going with instinct and memories of being scarily enchanted by suspense movies as a kid. I found the style by trial and error and finally internalized it. It became fun and natural and I have drawn on this ‘thirties’ feel in unusual, somewhat disguised ways ever since.

Which of your scores came to you immediately?
When the motifs and the approach came for The Parallax View, I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited in my life. It was one of those ideas that just come out of left field and worked! I knew I was in unexplored territory, not like any other film score I’ve ever heard. What came was a skewered patriotic anthem that worked not only as underscore, but became signature for the overall point of view of the story. It’s been copied a lot.

Klute 1971

Warner Brothers Starring Donald Sutherland and Jane Fonda

This was the first film you did with director Alan J. Pakula?
There’s a fascinating connection to Out of It. Out of It had an advisory editor, Carl Lerner, who was one of those rare beings who really go out on a limb to share what they know and support new talent. Lo and behold, he was the editor on Klute and recommended me to Alan. So Klute came through my first film, believe it or not. What’s interesting is that Alan Pakula’s degree of control over this film was very great. It’s the same in all the films I’ve done with him. When you work with him it’s one on one and you’re not overly aware of the studio, their ideas, and concerns. It’s still that way, even today.

What was your approach to scoring this film?
I would consider Klute a thriller score that has a psychological overlay, because it really depicts the inner workings of a character along with the suspense elements of the genre. It’s really scoring Bree Daniels’ (Jane Fonda) inner life. That made it a very different kind of score.

Can you explain your theme that uses the girl’s voice?
Let’s call it the siren call theme. It really works through most of the film as if it were just suspense music and telling the audience that the killer was near. Very often you’d have a P.O.V. type of shot, and the music played that triggered the audience into knowing the killer was nearby. The scene where this music dovetails in function as her theme as well is when they’re in her apartment alone together. She’s trying to seduce Klute so he’ll give her incriminating tapes. They get very close. Suddenly his eyes look up at the skylight and he pulls away and says, “There’s someone on the roof,” at which point the ‘siren call’ music is played. For me at that moment you identify that music with what she’s just been doing as well as the presence of the  killer. I think that she has this chilling realization that it’s her own obsession with control and seduction that’s haunting her, literally stalking her.

During one seduction scene, what was the music you composed playing on the old phonograph?
I wanted the music to be as if it was part of the old man’s record collection. So it was very old, perhaps the music reminding him of a woman he loved long ago in the old country, which I took to be German or Austrian. I used a cimbalom solo as the main instrument, playing a rather sad sentimental type of melody of the twenties. Nowadays, this ‘source’ music might be an actual period recording, but here in composing an original piece, I could follow the arc of the scene exactly. I find this touching, in that she creates a whole romantic scenario for him, and they never actually make physical contact.

How did you feel about your score to Klute?
I don’t think anyone had ever scored a big studio thriller with a chamber orchestra, weird ethnic percussion, and female voice before. Also, it was my first trip to California. So this unique little score was a tremendous hit, not only with the filmmakers, but with the Los Angeles musicians who played it. Suddenly everybody was shaking my hand and inviting me to their house! This was in 1971, where the ‘A’ pool of jazz/studio/rock musicians was perhaps the greatest of all time. It was a breakthrough, a real happening. But, remember those times were incredibly supportive of new ideas. There did not seem to be ‘us’ (the creatives), and ‘them’ (the suits). We were all ‘us.’

The Parallax View

1974/Paramount Pictures Starring Warren Beatty and Hume Cronyn

Do you think The Parallax View was one of your first conspiracy thriller type film scores?
Now Rudy, it’s an interesting term. Did you make this up or is this currently used?

I came up with this term with another friend of mine who loves your film scores.
Because I never thought of it, that’s quite an accurate term. In fact The Parallax View is a conspiracy film and I don’t know of many before that except for Frankenheimer’s Seven Days in May (1964), or The Manchurian Candidate (1962).

Do you think you started to develop a style with this film genre?
It certainly became known to certain producers and directors, but that was only one of the approaches of interest to me. As you know, one gets typecast in this business. However, I must say I find the ‘conspiracy’ genre one of my favorites. The intrigue of it, the topicality of the  political dimension can be so intense and involving, it really lends itself to music so well.

Where did you start in this film to get the idea for your score?
This is a case where I really did start from the beginning, from the first frame. The opening of the film was constructed with this very long dolly shot of appeal judges who look so august and solemn in the act of pompously dismissing a case in a way in which the audience senses may be a total whitewash and fraud. This is where I found the whole pace which is very slow and portentous in the spinning out of this patriotic anthem-like musical theme. Although you might expect to hear ‘official’ sounding music in this type of scene, here there is a strange and ominous tone to it. But then there is a paradox. The music opens up on a certain chord, you’re taken in, swept along, and even moved by it. Something irresistible is pulling at you. Anthems have a mysterious power to move you, almost in spite of yourself. Therefore, in a certain way, the film is exploring conspiracy as skewered, inverted loyalty. If you haven’t seen this film recently, see it, this is a great and courageous film, way ahead of its time.

These films take you to the edge, the music creates enormous tension. How do you emotionally take it this far?
In Klute I made the mistake of getting a little too involved. I was living in the west side of New York when I was scoring Klute and someone passed away in my building and was taken away in a bag. I watched the whole thing and thought, “This is like my movie.” You start attracting these kind of grisly scenes to your attention when you’re working on a dark score. I have since learned to be very careful, to keep a distance, to portray but not get overly involved.. I always give the audience an ‘out,’ an elegant escape route. That is where artistry should enter into it. After all, fear of what is going to happen next is not what it appears to be at all. Perhaps it is really dealing with the unknown, an archetypal human impulse that involves awe and wonder as well. This is why I like films that are suggestive, not specifically horrible or repulsive. To me ‘noir’ style always has mystery and distance. There is the space provided for an experience that can be quite subtle.

After you scored The Parallax View, did you feel it was as effective for the film as it turned out to be?
There’s a whole sequence in that movie which we call the Parallax test. It was a sequence with a psychological test where all these images were being flashed before Warren Beatty and his responses were being monitored. The test was designed to whip up the rage of a potential assassin. Yes, I knew that we were onto something really important in that. You have to remember about The Parallax View, that was a time politically when there was a lot of tension. I remember when I was scoring it, Patty Hearst was being held hostage and they were broadcasting her statements every day. It was a time where there was a lot of paranoia and speculation about the Kennedy assassination. It was still a very alive feeling in the mid-seventies.

Did you know that your scores would define the conspiracy thriller genre in scoring?
No I didn’t know that. That’s why I emphasize the disturbing political climate of the time this movie was made. It was not just fiction, but very alive to me and I really questioned what was behind it all. Perhaps the conspiracy thriller genre has as its feared villain not a single bad guy, a killer lurking in a doorway, but a state of mind. That state of mind could infect anybody, it has such a universally seductive pull. This is perhaps why the skewered anthem of The Parallax View was so effective.

Alan J. Pakula

Director

When did you meet Michael?
We met on Klute when I decided that he was right for the film. For me, this was one of the best scores I’ve ever had, that and The Parallax View. These were two of the most important scores in films of  mine in terms of the part they played in telling the story. He created this whole theme in Klute and used this girl singer’s voice because it was the story of a woman who had this obsessive need to seduce. Then in trying to solve this murder case of this man finds herself like Scrooge, going back to Christmas past, seeing what’s happened to this other woman, what could happen to her and being pulled into a realization of her own tragedy in her own nightmare. He did this theme that was like a sick calling, a thing within inside herself was pulling her to her own destruction. This worked on a suspense level, but it also worked deeply on a character level and it gave the film a very strong subtext, a textural richness which is wonderful. Another  remarkable piece of music he did for that was a scene, you know she’s a call girl, when an old man pays her just to undress in this kind of strange erotic romantic way that reminds him of his childhood. He’s an old middle European man and she tells him these kind of romantic stories while slowly undressing him, he doesn’t really touch her. Michael created this piece of music that the man plays on an old fashioned phonograph in his office. It sounded like an old Viennese or Austrian turn of the century piece of music. It was sensual, haunting, and nostalgic.I can’t imagine that whole sequence working, which was very important to the film, without that piece of music. The music was really a co-dramatist of the film. One of the things I love about Michael is he can work in so many different styles. Later when we did The Parallax View, the score became essential to its music because in many ways it characterized the heavies. The heavies were the assassins or some kind of organization trying to take over this country, probably fascists of some kind. We never discuss who they are, but they hide behind this patriotic music that whips people up and makes it seem like they’re all American and patriotic. It has a kind of John Phillip Souza march feeling about it, but he also did a trumpet thing with it and it was almost like playing taps for an America that was. It worked on so many levels and it was really what characterized the heavies. For me it was as an important dramatic use of music as I’ve had in any film I’ve done.

Don’t you think there’s more underscore and less concept now in a film score?
You can’t say that John Williams, Jimmy Horner, or people like that do not have a dramatic sense of the whole. I think the concept of wall to wall music goes way back. Jack Warner was known to want music in everything, underscoring almost all of the film. That goes back to the thirties and forties when you just sometimes could ache for silence. I think with the big adventure films and with all the big digital stuff and all that, we’re going back to a lot of that. It’s like playing the same theme over and over again, make the orchestra as big as it can be and hit the audience over the head with it. I think there’s a tendency for subtlety to be sliding away.

How is Michael’s technique to scoring your films different than other composers you’ve worked with?
They all worked conceptually. I only work with people I feel can work that way. The score can say things that nothing else can say. It can in some ways make you feel inside a character. That’s my favorite use of it. There’s something when the music plays back in your mind, it should bring up some subtext of that film for you. On an emotional level you understand the film better because of the music. Not just feel it more, but you understand it more.

Isn’t it great having a relationship with a composer like you do with Michael Small?
It’s wonderful because you have a shorthand. The other thing I love about working with Michael is that every film is different, which is what I try to do myself. He doesn’t try to go back to old scores for old solutions. He has the same excitement about starting over each time. The best film composers are wonderful dramatists, as much as a screenwriter is. They understand dramaturgy and they contribute to it. Michael really understands that, he really has a great sense of story telling.

Will you hire Michael Small again?
I’m looking forward to work with Michael again. When seeing The Parallax View recently I was again struck by what an extraordinary accomplishment that score was and what it did for that film.

I suggested to him that he was the father of conspiracy type thriller film scores.
We’ve shared our paranoia together. For a very loveable man it’s true. He’s certainly a master.

What did you find unique about Michael Small?
An almost childlike joy in composing and in working on the film. He has a great joy in the work that I find remarkable.

Do his scores satisfy your vision as a filmmaker?
That’s what I admire about him. You as director have to transmit your vision to the other people since I don’t write music and do all those other things. The great thing with Michael is he takes your vision and makes it his own, giving it an added dimension. I love surprises and Michael always gives you surprises too. There’s no part of making a film I enjoy more than working with the composer.

What are your future plans?
I’m doing a screen adaptation of No Ordinary Time. It’s a biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and America during the second world war by Doris Kearns Goodwin. It won the Pulitzer Prize a few years ago. That’s going to need a whole recreation of the music of the forties.

Night Moves

1975/Warner Bros Starring Gene Hackman and Jennifer Warren

How did you like working for director Arthur Penn?
Arthur Penn is one of the great filmmakers, he’s one of the real American artists. He really gives space to his actors, his editor, and his composer. He when to say “no,” but never at first. It’s very organic, the right way is discovered, not pre-known, not forced. He can recognize an idea, point it out to you, fan it, and make it grow. That takes a certain kind of man and what I expect from a great director.

What style did you score this film in?
Arthur started with a rather abstract idea, the final locale of the film is Key West, Florida, and that was near Cuba, so he felt that the score could have some Latin jazz elements in it. So the style was found where a bit of percussion here, a Latin nuance there forecasts this location even when we are in Los Angeles.

Did this film present more of a challenge because of the style you were having to score in?
It brought me to a side of my musical background that I haven’t mentioned, which is that I play jazz piano. So I enjoyed using some jazz feel, which I haven’t used very much in my scores.

What is that really nice theme you developed throughout this film?
I use the same melodic material for both what I would call the mystery or questing theme, which opens the movie, and another aspect of the film, personal loneliness, a longing for a lost past. I wanted a connecting thread between the inner and outer drama. The plot revolves about a detective (Gene Hackman) on a journey looking for a missing young girl, but the deeper level of the film is that he’s looking to find who he really is. The solo instrument is the vibes, there’s a bossa nova feel and a haunting melody line. Michael Franks adapted it and it’s a beautiful song on his first album.

Where did you get the idea to start scoring this film?
There is a wonderful night sequence in a boat moving through murky waters of the Keys with strange Florida underbrush at the water’s edge. That sequence is where I started thinking about the score. I always find my favorite sequence to start a score with and then I work backwards from that point. So I found my slow Night Moves theme. Later, I made an interesting discovery, that the theme would work as a full-out samba which plays in sudden modulation in a new key. The musical shape is circular, and that is where we are at the end of the film with a boat going round and round without a captain, the existential mystery not having been solved. It’s a    Latin jazz “La Ronde.” This scene always gives me a lift and I don’t know why. I think Night Moves is actually a puzzle, it’s about searching and really not necessarily finding. The more that is known, there is always still an unknown. Isn’t this often implied in the ‘noir’ approach?

Arthur Penn

Director

How did you meet Michael Small?
I remember going to see a film with Terry Malick and we both commented on the score. He knew more about Michael Small and recommended him. We also know each other socially through our kids going to the same school at one point.

Of the two films he scored for you, which did you prefer?
The Night Moves score I prefer much more. It’s a much better movie and the score is a great part of why it’s a better movie. There’s a great deal of complement there. Target is much more of a commercial movie and the score is right for it, but it just didn’t hold any weight.

Why did you hire Michael Small to score Night Moves?
I thought him very subtle and interesting, a composer who is able to deal with complexity in a really quite wonderful way musically. Night Moves is a very complex film and I thought he was the perfect composer to do it.

Do Michael’s film scores satisfy your vision as a filmmaker?
Totally. We work wonderfully well together. He’s able to take the words that I use and convert them into a magical sound. I sort of describe the sound and away he goes and comes back with it. We’re great together, and between us we add a good deal to the film.

How important is the communication between you and the composer?
We have to share a common vision as we look at the film. Every once in a while when I see that an area needs to be heightened by the use of music I suggest that. Sometimes the composer comes back and surprises me. Michael is full of surprises.

When I interviewed Michael, he thought Night Moves was a kind of puzzle. Could you explain this?
The unknown is the central character, he’s (Gene Hackman) unknown to himself. That was the central theme, it’s basically a detective story, a mystery story, and we determined that we would try to end the film where we discover what the mystery is and how it has played out without any dialogue, but with only images and sound. The exchange of images and music is terribly important and that’s what we kept heading toward in the film. There’s a lovely theme, a particular theme that Michael has developed in it. It plays again and again, but Night Moves is also a play on words because he also is talking about a chess move in which the knight moves. It’s a film of ambiguity and some degree of complexity.

Did his music capture the total mood of the film here?
Unquestionably. There’s an ever so slightly hint of Cuban music here. I think it helped the location of the film and the mystery aspect of it as well. It’s also a film ostensibly about the recovery of an ancient Aztec piece of sculpture. So it does play on some ethnic themes in the film.

How is Michael’s approach different to other composers you’ve worked with?
He’s much more hands on with the film. He gets in there with me a lot more than the other composers. I like that and his enthusiasm, he has a natural ebullience and enthusiasm that is really wonderful to work with. Michael and I have a different kind of relationship, we know each other better than I do the other composers.

What is unique about Michael Small?
His musicality belongs totally to him. He’s an extraordinary musician, a gift of that kind of talent is rare.

Would you hire him again?
In a minute!

What are your plans?
I’m working on a play at the moment, not a film. I can’t really tell you the title, but this will be done in New York sometime this season.

Marathon Man

1976/Paramount Pictures Starring Laurence Olivier, Dustin Hoffman, and Roy Schneider

This was a very important film in your career.
Working with Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Olivier, and John Schlesinger is quite a trio of talent to collaborate with.

What was it like working with John Schlesinger?
John Schlesinger is extremely knowledgeable about music. He’s very open minded, but very tough. He’s an artist who has a great delight in the creative process, who likes to be surprised, who always pushes a performance to a new level. He might say, “You can do better than that trombone note,” rather than “I don’t like it.” There is always the underlying confidence, which is so infectious and makes one work always a little harder. John;s initial instruction to me was rather shocking, since I had all sort of notions about meaning. “This film is about pain,” he said. Of course I did the famous dental scene, but there was the same effect at the very opening titles which was used all through the film that my keyboardist, Ian Underwood, created. This was a kind of a scream which went not only with terror and torture but with the limits pushed by being a marathon runner.

At this point didn’t you take your conspiracy thriller scoring style to the limit?
The script in Marathon Man is ingenious, as you know, because it brings a character from Nazi  Germany into the contemporary world. He’s lurking and disguised as a business man, but people recognize him. I find that an absolutely chilling concept, so his music to me was the music back from when he was The White Angel in the concentration camps. I wanted to bring the quality of terror from another time into that movie, partially disguised in modem dress, as he was. So I had to come up with a musical idea to fit this concept. I think my main theme to Marathon Man has an almost Kurt Weillish German quality to it, but the presentation on a piano and sometimes electric keyboard is never obviously in period style.

When you think about it, this was an amazing film. You have the audience on edge, especially the scene where Dustin Hoffman’s running down the street in his pajamas in total fear.
In the terror music in Marathon Man I used a tone row. This is the first and last time I have gone this route. Some of it is bona fide twelve tone à la Arnold Schoenberg, a twelve tone row in various formations. It’s an unusual musical technique and I think that’s why this music sounds so different. There is a felt unity (because the notes are the same) between the heavy running sequences and the sparkly sounds when Hoffman throws the diamonds down the drain at the end.

Did you connect with the feeling of fear when you were composing this?
In that film I really did.

How do you create this amount of fear through your music?
I really try to tune into the movie. Being a film composer is like being in the best seat in that movie theatre and having the most incredible experience, also being able to express that in music. If I feel great fear as a member of an audience in that moment of a scene, I’m able to set that feeling to music.

Are there any other scenes in Marathon Man that became key to your composing?
I loved the scene on 47th Street in the jewellery district when Laurence Olivier is recognized by people working in the jewellery stores who recognize him from Germany and the concentration camps. He starts running away. That to me is the most chilling moment in the whole film. There’s one particular person that says, “It’s him, it’s him!”, then he has that hidden knife and he slashes this person in the throat, gets into a cab and rides away. An absolutely chilling moment, it’s unbelievable! The other moment that I like a lot is when Laurence Olivier arrives. He gets off the plane and walks down this passageway at the airport. The music, that sort of his entrance music, is actually very much like The Parallax View music, it’s kind of a skewered anthem.

In which scene did you find the main key to your score?
Right in the ‘Main Title.’ I needed to find a motif that would go with these shots of Dustin Hoffman running in a very rhythmic way. I felt that the score needed music that had the pulse of a man running. In fact the sound effect of his feet is the ‘rhythm track.’

Did this film give you a major breakthrough as a film score composer?
It did. I worked constantly for another ten years after this.

John Schlesinger

Director

How did you meet Michael Small?
I think I heard the score or saw The Parallax View. It was the first encounter I had and I liked the music to that very much.

Was directing Marathon Man a key point in your career?
It was my first suspense film which I suppose was key. I did a number of others, never quite as successful as Marathon Man, but I’ve tried this genre a number of times and I like it very much. It’s fun.

What was your main objective in doing this film?
It is about pain and the endurance of pain, which a runner has to do. I made a film in 1972; eight directors did the Olympic Games which took place in Munich, Germany. I chose the marathon race because it seemed to me to be the biggest test of endurance. You have to run through the pain, so to speak. The pain comes and goes. I know that from having followed a runner in that segment of that official Olympics film. When I came to do Marathon Man, which was three years later, the pain of the dentistry, the pain of the brother’s death, the pain that Babe the runner had to go through, even after he’d been severely treated, were all very important aspects of the film as well as the mental pain that the Nazi had inflicted on his victims previously. So there is an element of pain running right through it

How did you feel about the score portraying this?
I think the score did it very successfully. The score linked up with these feelings, it was one of those things that we discussed.

In the scene where Dustin Hoffman is fleeing down the street in terror, do you feel the score did an accurate job of representing the emotional content?
I think music in a movie has to add something, not just support it, you have to add another color. I think that Michael’s score was really excellent for us, it’s a terrific score.

Michael said his key to scoring your picture was rooted in the beginning where he scored these shots of Dustin Hoffman running in a very orderly way.
Yes, there was a sort of sustained note which turned itself inside out. There were certain things in the first cut of Marathon Man in which I laid over bits of his score for The Parallax View. We used it as a sort of temp, in fact there was an occasion where I asked him to really rip himself off  and copy The Parallax View score which fitted perfectly.

Doesn’t this take away from the originality of the film?
It probably does, but sometimes you want to keep something that works terribly well the first time. I had to find a way of doing that.

Did this score satisfy your vision as a filmmaker?
Yes! Very much so. It worked so beautifully.

What was the most chilling moment in Marathon Man?
I think the most chilling moment in the film for me is in the second dental scene when Laurence Olivier plugs a plug into the wall and then playing with the flex, the wire, that extends from the plug in his hands, there’s a close-up following the hands and the wire until it disappears behind the lid of an open suitcase. Then you just hear the burr of the motor, the sound of the dental drill. That to me is one of the most chilling moments without showing anything. There’s nothing like a thriller for putting in all one’s phobias.

Are you influenced by the great amount of fear you generated?
I’m not frightened because of it, I’m excited by causing the audience this kind of horror and thrill. It’s a great thing constructing a suspense piece, which I enjoy watching and I enjoy doing. In this film the audience reacts.

How is Michael Small’s technique different from other composers you’ve worked with?
Michael has his own individual method of scoring. You go through the process of the film taking shape and I always use music at an early stage, quite often using music composed for other films by the composer I’m using. When they see how their music has been used it points them in a direction in which you wish to go. It’s much easier listening to an orchestral score being recorded than an electronic score which is always sort of pieced together with overlays, overdubs, and that kind of thing, which is a rather long process. In an orchestral session you can actually talk to the composer about the orchestration.

Is it easy for you to imagine an orchestral score before it’s performed?
I’m reasonably musical and I can usually say what I think is wrong with a piece of music as I watch it with the film in the scoring session. I can be specific about how I want it altered. Musicians, who I find quite remarkable animals, are usually able to do that very quickly. I prefer an orchestral score because it’s more controllable.

Do you guide the composer as he works on the score?
Usually you wait until the composer is ready to play the whole thing through for you or you may do it in a number of sessions with them. Michael and I had had some very good sessions in Los Angeles when we recorded the music to Marathon Man. It seemed terribly good.

What is unique about Michael Small?
He’s a wonderful musician who got the point of the film and what we needed in musical accompaniment for it. Perhaps I hamstrung him a bit with The Parallax View score, a lot of which I used for a temp track. He accepted it with goodwill. I was very happy with the results of his score, extremely so.

Would you hire Michael to score another film for you?
Certainly I’d hire him again, I don’t know why I haven’t. Unfortunately I’ve lost touch with him. I have nothing but high regard and admiration for him. After Marathon Man I went off to do rather different sorts of films. The music called for something quite different like the electronic needs of The Believers and The Falcon and the Snowman.

What are your plans?
I’m working on a screenplay to be done at the end of the year by Madonna and Rupert Everett. I don’t have a title at the moment. This is a relationship type of story, it’s a comedy drama. Also I have a lot of other films in development at the moment.

The Postman Always Rings Twice

1981/Lorimar Pictures Starring Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange

What was it like working for Bob Rafelson?
Bob Rafelson is very dear to me as a man and as an artist. His films are very deep, I find there are many levels to his films. They’re not always the most commercial films, in that they are not ingratiating to an audience and sometimes have a more realized subtext than main theme. He is recognized as a great director in some quarters, especially Europe. He always encourages me to dive deep into the waters of emotion.

This was quite an erotic film.
That was the intention, but it’s more than an erotic film, it’s a tragedy. In a way it’s almost like an opera, with clearly defined act breaks.

Did you enjoy scoring a film like this?
When I worked on that score, Bob Rafelson wanted to hear the music for the famous kitchen love making scene first. That was obviously to him the key to the whole score. I had to work on that and get that right before I could work on anything else. I’ll tell you a very interesting anecdote. This is as accurate as I can be. I don’t know what conclusion to draw, but that film was shown to Jack Valenti and those people. It seemed to be getting a ‘NO’ rating at one point when shown without the score. It was then shown with the score and was given an ‘R’ rating. I really feel if you view that scene with and without music, the music gives a sense of humanity and longing to those characters, that’s why I say it’s a tragedy or opera. It’s not just about eroticism, it’s about these incredibly lonely characters who have no means of expression other than sex. That’s how I approached it. This is both dark and also very romantic.

You seem to transfer yourself into the director’s ‘mind’ perfectly and explore their wildest fantasy through their film ideas.
In that famous kitchen love scene I thought of having a very dark and almost mean sexuality about it until a certain point is reached, then the music becomes love music. Strangely enough, out of all this animal attraction, there’s really a very erotic scene. It’s never romantic love as we know it, but since they had a very satisfying sexual moment, the music has a kind of beauty to it.

Black Widow

1986/Twentieth Century Fox Starring Theresa Russell and Debra Winger

How strong did the Theresa Russell character influence your score?
Actually I was influenced by the relationship between the Theresa Russell and Debra Winger characters. To me that was the key to the film because there was something very unexplained about the fascination of the cop for the person she’s pursuing. It’s the twisted persona, but it’s also the fascination with that. It’s another character viewing and secretly being fascinated by almost admiring it. I wanted the score to be very seductive.

What was your favorite scene in this film?
One of my favourite scenes in that movie is when they go diving togethe That underwater sequence is strange and erotic.

Do you remember your favourite cue in the score?
The cue that I’m most fond of, which is very unusual musically, is hard to hear. Parts of it are used all through the picture and that’s the ‘Main Title.’ It’s a very unusual effect where the three or four approaches to hitting string are all used. That’s pizzicato, hitting them with the wood of the bow, and pulling the strings. They are all combined and it creates a very eerie wooden effect. This is combined with a synthesizer playing a brief string sound, which goes into a repeating echo. I liked this effect so much. I want to use it again.

While you were scoring Black Widow did you find yourself scoring in a devious style for the Theresa Russell character?
That’s a good way of putting it because the music, especially in the earlier part of the film, was like carrying out her plans. She would pretend to be one way and then the next thing you would see was that the husband was dead. The music would score the sting of that, of her stinger so to speak, the black widow. By the way it’s one of my favorite scores, I should have listed that earlier.

What kind of score is this?
This is really a character suspense film where the music is another character or the music illuminates one of the characters in the film. Generally speaking I used a very unusual tonal approach to Black Widow which was modal, but with some very chromatic harmonies added. It still sounds very fresh to me and is a very unique style of harmony.

Mountains of the Moon

1990/Carolco Pictures Starring Patrick Bergin and lain Glen

This was your third film with Bob Rafelson?
That’s right. We have a wonderful relationship. One of the things that’s great in those relationships with a director is that he’ll bring a film in a genre that he’s never done before to you which you’ve never done before, and both of you work on this in a very new way. That’s a rare and happy event for a composer. Mountains of the Moon was a very different score for me. I had to really do a lot of research about African music in order to write that score, which I enjoyed thoroughly. I found a music consultant in Nairobi and have tons and tons of tapes of east African music that I was drawing from.

How did you approach using this African music in the film?
Actually it’s a very complex film. One of the examples of how the music works in that film is that there are two distinct styles of music here. There is music that I wanted to express civilization with, which was in Victorian England. The whole main title sequence is this heroic classical music and then you cut to a scene of one of the character’s arriving in Africa on a boat with Africans tending the boat. The music suddenly becomes totally African yet it is still orchestral. I love the contrast between the two styles and the combinations that are possible.

So you really captured the mood here?
It’s not just about Africa, it’s really about friendship and loyalty. I think the music has lots of feeling. The last third or quarter of the film is scored top to bottom. I haven’t really done that in any other film. There is an unbroken line of through scoring, as in opera.

Poodle Springs

1998/HBO Pictures Starring James Caan and Dina Meyer

Did you find anything new working with Bob Rafelson this time?
What was new this time working with Bob is that with every other film we did I sat down at the piano, played him the theme, and improvised a few notions for cues. That’s all he heard of the score before the scoring session. Now we’re in the age of MIDI and I basically sent him every cue to listen to before we recorded it. We both laughed thinking we’re in the new cyber age. Bob and I still talk in rather overblown mythological notions, no matter what the film is.

Was the ‘Main Title’ the key to you scoring this picture?
Actually no. The ‘Main Title’ that you see is a totally different ‘Main Title’ than the one I worked with for most of the time. The original ‘Main Titles’ were very, very stark. They were black with just lettering that looked like a very old Royal typewriter, à la the forties. HBO wanted the titles to be more vibrant, to employ animated abstract images. About two weeks before scoring I began to see some fragmentary ideas, and I didn’t see the finished version until practically the eve of scoring. At some point I threw out the music that I had for the titles, which was very moody but didn’t have any real pulse to it. I started working on the 12/8 material that became the titles. I had already written most of the score, so it’s kind of an abstracted version of what you’re about to hear.

Can you describe the musical style of your score?
I started with the notion of a period jazz score, but that turned out to seem like commentary and wasn’t involving enough. So I invented a unique harmonic and compositional approach that used jazz as a reference point, a coloration. However, there’s always a touch of period all the way through the score.

Could you compare your work here to your other scores?
The main difference of Poodle Springs, compared to everything I’ve done, is that it has a real balance between sample/electronic and live elements. I wanted that balance to be seamless. Much of the score is done with sampled and MIDI sounds, not all of which are even acoustic oriented. Therefore some of the suspense music has some quite processed sounds in it. On top of that bed the live instruments were put down later, so that there was a lot of recording time put into this score because the MIDI score was perfected and then the live score, which was about twenty instruments, was added later.

How can you make a score like this sound so natural?
The final score is not primarily played in real time. Once I get my ideas I basically write the score on the computer by playing the parts in sections, but not in real time. Like my traditional scores, a conception is arrived upon in this case by playing a bit against picture, but then I stop ‘chasing’  the picture. I stop playing and do what’s necessary to write a composition, as if I were writing it on paper. Then the performance is scrutinized and refined and made to sound musical and natural. I rarely use a click track, so the music is allowed to breathe. Also, programmer Rick Martinez helped me to create a palette of MIDI colors that I liked and stayed with, so that the score is consistent in its coloration.

What were your feelings about the outcome of the score?
I felt after having approached this film technically in a very different way than Black Widow or The Postman Always Rings Twice that the end result was very Rafelsonian. There are certain gritty, sensuous, and emotional elements in all his films, and I was surprised to find that I had accommodated these in a different format and style.

Bob Rafelson

Director

How did you meet Michael Small?
When I was about to do The Postman Always Rings Twice, I was listening to a lot of music for it and finally called him on the telephone and said “I want to meet you.”

Which of your films did he score more effectively for you?
None is more effective than the other. They’re all uniquely different from one another. I would say that the score, as pure music, I often turn to for my own personal pleasure is Mountains of the Moon. It’s almost the opposite of what Michael is known for.

Why do you hire Michael Small to score your films?
I don’t go to Michael because I think he has great gifts in the suspense area. I go to Michael for two different reasons. Number one, he has gifts as a movie music composer, regardless of the genre. He has personally a delicious and somewhat elegant, if satiric sense of humor. When I need that in a given movie I turn to him for that kind of music as well. I also go to Michael because he has the clearest, most articulate, most informing sense of my work on a movie. You show a movie to a composer usually after it’s finished with its first or second or final cut, but it’s finished basically. By that time you have sort of surrendered trying to figure out why the fuck you made the movie in the first place. You have surrendered any clarity of understanding. You’ve reached new levels because the picture has changed so much in the editing room. So for a composer to come in and sort of abstractly say, “I think your movie is about these elements, Bob.” You look and say, “What in the devil is he talking about?” When Michael says something like that he knows what he’s talking about. He can, for me, make my work clear for me from a total outsider’s perspective. He’s about to work, he’s only seen the picture one time, and that conversation is the one that I find the most informative, it’s the bedrock of all future discussion.

When you work with a composer, do you go to a key scene in the film, like the kitchen love making scene in The Postman Always Rings Twice, and start there?
Certainly often I think the key scene dictates what the score will be. If you get it right then everything else falls into place. The easiest thing to score for the film composer, easy because it’s classical, difficult perhaps because it can be cliched, is a man taking out gun, going upstairs, wondering whether or not he’s going to be killed when he gets to the top. That’s a classical scene. You can see it written badly, shot badly, scored badly, but it’s classical, you’ve seen it in a thousand movies. A man making love to a woman where their relationship is somewhat sadomasochistic, according to James M. Cane the novelist, and you’re trying to make a love story about two people who have fallen for each other on a different subterranean sexual level. That requires huge thinking in the scoring. That’s what the movie becomes about.

Do Michael Small's film scores satisfy your vision as a filmmaker?
Totally!

Is Michael’s technique different to other composers you’ve worked with?
On my film Blood and Wine, Michael Lorenc didn’t speak any English, that made it different right there. His favorite score was a Michael Small score, not a picture I did, but Marathon Man. I couldn’t afford Michael for that picture. It was a very tough post budget, so I went to Michael  Lorenc, this rather extraordinary Polish composer. He said, “It would be my biggest honor and thrill to write music for you, Mr. Rafelson. I love your movies, Michael Small’s music, and have seen all your movies with his music.” This helped him get the job.

How was your reunion with Michael eight years later on Poodle Springs?
It was fantastic. We see each other on occasion in a social way in New York. I went back to New York, saw Michael, we got right into it, and it was very intense. From Michael’s point of view something clicks into an extra gear for him. If I hear some notes played, while I may not be able to project those notes fully in my mind orchestrally, Michael can help me do that. I usually know whether I’m going to be satisfied early on in the game or if I feel the notes are going to be off. I’m free from Michael’s point of view to make that comment, he encourages me to. Once emboldened by that everything becomes a lot easier. We’re just completely honest with one another. He’s a delightful, brilliant, funny man, and somebody I want to spend time with regardless of whether there’s music involved or not.

Has Michael grown as a composer since you last worked with him?
Poodle Springs represents a slightly different opportunity. First it has a great deal of comedy in it and so Michael was required to do that. Secondly we were on a very low budget, it being an HBO movie. Thirdly this is the first time that Michael has used in a score by me an electronic based score. The picture takes place in 1963, he wanted to get the feeling of the period, but in order to do this on budget he had to do some sampling. I’ve never had that kind of score before, so I had to do a lot of adjusting in my head as to how this would sound since I was listening to computer writing and then having to imagine what it was like when six strings came in, the proper horns, etc.

You were happy with his score to Poodle Springs?
Yes of course. Ecstatic would be more like the word.

What’s Poodle Springs about?
It’s Raymond Chandler’s last novel with Philip Marlowe written in 1958. He died four chapters in, a guy named Parker finished it, Tom Stoppard wrote the script, and it’s a typical Marlowe story with the exception that he’s now ‘of age,’ meaning now he’s approximately sixty years old, time has passed him by, there’s a bit of dust in the closet, he’s frayed physically and so is his lifestyle, he’s in top form, and he’s just married a thirty-year old woman. His courage comes into question. The score has quite a bit of jazz feel to it, but if you listen to it you will not say “Ah, it’s a jazz score.”

Is there anything you find unique about Michael Small?
His joy, his seriousness of purpose about music, and how widely exposed his intellect is to things other than movies. If you start to talk to him about music from Mountains of the Moon, it’s not the first time he will be exploring, because he would do it naturally and normally. Music from French West Equatorial Africa 1850. He would have done it because he’s interested.

Do you have a project planned at the moment?
No, I’m usually two to three years between jobs, so I never have one in mind right away. I’ve only made eight movies in my life and I’m not the quickest one in the world to get to the post, but when I’m there I like my friends around. Fortunately I’m on the list of things that Michael wants to do, he hasn’t turned me down yet.

Thanks so much for the interview.
Now a little antidote [sic] and we’ll be through here. When I was doing the score to Mountains of the Moon in Oakland, California, because we were out of time, we were all staying in the same hotel and working every day. It was the music editor Curtis Roush, Michael Small, and myself. Downstairs in the lounge area there was a piano. When I was a little boy I’d fantasized that when I grew up I was going to be a lounge pianist. I can hardly play a note of music. Curtis could play very well and Michael Small can play. We decided that every night we would have a small competition, sit down at the piano one after the other, put a glass on the lid of the piano, and see who would get the most amount of tips, thereby being able to claim that we were the better pianist. Of course I won. I only played one song, it’s the only song I can play, but I put so much pedal on it. Michael and I laugh about this every time we see one another, this odd little competition. The only non-musician of the bunch is the one who won. Stunning!

Conclusion

What composers influence you?
I would say Bernard Herrmann and Alex North of course. Also strange people you may not think of like Nino Rota, Georges Delerue, or John Barry; these are the people who influenced me at the beginning and that’s always important. Today though, Goldsmith and Williams are major influences on me.

Why were most of your film scores never released on CD or LP?
The ones that we were talking about, so many of them were from the seventies and early eighties. They just weren’t putting out soundtracks then. However, there is one thing that will make people crazy. There is actually a Japanese record of Klute. For some reason Klute was mastered by Warner Brothers and they never released it, but it does exist on a Japanese label as a record. In the near future there are plans to release Marathon Man, Klute, Black Widow, and The Postman Always Rings Twice. These will be the original soundtracks, but I would very much like to do some re-recordings, like an orchestral suite based on Marathon Man. I’m very excited about what Nonesuch is doing now and I’d be thrilled to have my music in that series.

What types of films do you want to score?
I would like to do more scores like Mountains of the Moon which are very grand, lyrical, and wondrous. I like the surreal and magic realism (loved The Truman Story). I still love the ‘noir’ style, and the political. For a change, I would like to do more romantic types of films. That’s what I would really enjoy. I’d like to find a fresh solution for that genre the way I found it for the conspiracy thriller genre.

Could you explain the difference between scoring now and twenty years ago?
There really is a big difference right now. I feel the difference is only superficially a technical one. Obviously we’re now dealing with computers, a different technology. Scores can be demo’d on a synthesizer more readily than when I was scoring twenty years ago. There is less risk factor on the part of producers, but with that comes less trust factor, less understanding of the creative process. There is less space to develop an idea in a full blown way, which often might not come together in the first version. The composer is often fielding responses to premature critiques of his ‘mock­ ups’ before the whole architectural statement has been discovered. Then again, the deeper consideration for me is that the change in the business has brought with it a vast cultural difference. This is something I’ve really been pondering. I think that we live now in much more of a consumer culture. More and more people are involved in the creative decisions in finalizing a score who give advice about moving this or that idea around in a computer, who are not musicians but ‘educated’ customers. They have lots of knowledge of what ‘product’ is out there to buy and they may have lots of taste and discernment, but they’re still functioning as consumers rather than as artists. This is why we’re getting mostly clever ‘new spins’ on established styles, rather than real innovation. The basic difference is that an artist and the real friend of an artist knows how to plant a garden, when to water it, when to weed it, and when the blooming is to happen. The bright side of the picture is that many have become weary of all this ‘mechanics’ and are really searching. This is why there is so much interest in the seventies. They will never come back of course, but the present holds some promise for a new, soulful, and authentic approach. Personally, I’m optimistic about what will open for me as a composer in the coming days.

What are your plans?
I’m scoring a play with a theatre group called Earth Stage Actors. Also I’ll be writing a ballet score and there are some very exciting possibilities ahead.