John Hughes podcast

[Carl Wonders]

Hi Clark, I didn't see an "official" thread for the podcast, so hope you don't mind my creating one for myself....

Good stuff as usual, although I always thought that Hughes' films were typically weak in the music department. IMO, the majority of the better tracks are soundtrack based instead of score for most of his movies (the most memorable bit of music for me in Ferris Bueller was Hughes' wonderful use of the theme from Star Wars, a bit that always makes me crack up). In fact, I'd venture that the Hughes/Ira Newborn collaboration ranks up there along with James Cameron/Brad Fiedel on the most unfortunate director/composer pairings list. The fact that some of the best music from the films (the museum scene from Ferris Bueller in particular) wasn't even written by Newborn makes me think even less of him.

Bruce Broughton is another one of those composers along with John Debney who always makes me wonder why the guy doesn't get better assignments. Broughton's scores for Silverado and Young Sherlock Holmes are fantastic, but too often he ends up scoring tripe like Baby's Day Out.

[cdouglas]

Hey Carl,

Yeah, my apologies about forgetting to create a thread for last week's show. Shame on myself! I agree with you that Hughes' films weren't exactly loaded with terrific music. Newborn wrote a lot of less-than-listenable film scores back in the day. And yes, I also agree that Bruce Broughton is an amazing composer. He's done a lot of very fine work, but for some reason he just doesn't get good assignments any more. These days, he's mostly stuck scoring Hallmark films and such (writing rather good music for them, too). Part of the problem is that Hans Zimmer's Remote Control crowd has more or less hijacked a vast chunk of the mainstream films these days, leaving little room for old-fashioned traditionalists like Broughton.

[Andrew Forbes]

In fact, I'd venture that the Hughes/Ira Newborn collaboration ranks up there along with James Cameron/Brad Fiedel on the most unfortunate director/composer pairings list.

Brad Fiedel may be a semi-hack, but his score for T2 is fantastic, and the music in True Lies when Jamie Lee Curtis is trapped in the speeding limo is brilliant in its mounting tension.

[Carl Wonders]

In fact, I'd venture that the Hughes/Ira Newborn collaboration ranks up there along with James Cameron/Brad Fiedel on the most unfortunate director/composer pairings list.

Brad Fiedel may be a semi-hack, but his score for T2 is fantastic, and the music in True Lies when Jamie Lee Curtis is trapped in the speeding limo is brilliant in its mounting tension.

I agree with you on the True Lies comment. The opening cue to the film and the one you mention are quite good. Unfortunately, the rest of the music is typical Fiedel droning, though at least he used an orchestra this time around. My biggest beef with Fiedel is that he often comes up with really good themes (i.e. Terminator) and doesn't know what to do with them. When Arnold pulled Jamie Lee Curtis from the limo, I found myself thinking "Where was this kind of music earlier in the film?"

To be honest, I didn't think the T2 score was anything special, and I found myself wishing that someone else had been given the theme to play with (one of the big things missing from the last two scores in the series).

[Carl Wonders]

Part of the problem is that Hans Zimmer's Remote Control crowd has more or less hijacked a vast chunk of the mainstream films these days, leaving little room for old-fashioned traditionalists like Broughton.

Ugh..don't even get me started on Remote Control nee Media Ventures. The only composer I really care for who came out of that group is John Powell, mostly because he's managed to find a style for himself other than "Zimmer Lite"

edit: the fellow (I'm blanking on his name) who ghostwrote for Zimmer on Hannibal was also quite good -- the Dante opera cue is easily the best from the film IMO.