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Welcome to Doug's Corner!
2/24/2019 - Join us here on Tuesday for our...
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2/24/2019
Join us here on Tuesday for our newest Intrada CD release, turning the wheels backwards many decades to examine some exciting orchestral music from a period Disney film. We get mail asking us to pay attention to the legendary studio’s vintage years and not just their post-70’s soundtracks so for you folks - and everyone else, of course - here’s one from yesteryear.
And in a more-recent yesteryear tidbit, dating from 1995, and one just for fun, Jeff and I were processing orders during a summer afternoon when the phone rang. I reached out to answer it. Jerry Goldsmith was on the other end. His hello was brief and he jumped right into the purpose of his call. How were the sales on the new CD for First Knight? For anyone wondering if he cared about such things, the call kinda proves he did… albeit with qualifications. I said it was doing well, having literally just come in stock. I then told him the activity on Congo was also doing well. That’s the movie of his that came out I think just a few weeks prior to First Knight. He literally said “I don’t care about that one. I’m just wondering about First Knight.” Hence the qualifications. Sometimes he cared about how well his music was being received. Sometimes he didn’t.
2/10/2019
Tidbits, Teases and Taste Treats. Three terms the late Len Engel, veteran music editor at 20th Century Fox and friend to Jerry Goldsmith, would use in descriptions of various musical comings and goings in his work with Intrada, which was pretty extensive back in our early years. The taste treat comes this Tuesday, February 12. We’ll have our newest CD available on that day and it’s a good one. A nice expansion of an 80’s hit by one of our favorite composers. Melody and action galore! Check out our sound samples and view the artwork and contents on Monday the 11th, late in the afternoon our time.
The tease: I’ll be working here at Intrada’s studio this week with a terrific composer in attendance. He’s also a really good friend. We’ve released a number of his soundtracks in the past and are this week collaborating on a really big one, both in terms of scale and duration. The picture itself chronicles a famed American historical event. The score is by turns elegiac and powerful, moving and exciting. In my opinion it’s a truly great one. Look forward to it after we bring everything across the finish line.
The tidbit: A few listeners have written and suggested, in lieu of publishing some mammoth coffee table book covering our 34 years in business, I at least offer personal anecdotes gleaned from our work with numerous composers and their music. So perhaps I can toss some recollections out when I get opportunities to post in my corner here. They’ll be at random and sometimes pretty lame… literally just tidbits. Anyway, here’s one for starters: Back many moons ago, when arriving at Jerry Goldsmith’s home to pick up a master on a project we were working on together, I recall walking up his front steps with a smile. The cause for my grin was hearing way off in the distance the faint but unmistakable strains of The Blue Max, specifically the main title. I had to pause for a moment and think about it. Here was the great Jerry Goldsmith, listening to his own music just like the rest of us mere mortals would do. He was even conducting it, baton in hand, leading an imaginary orchestra sitting in front of him. Who of us hasn’t at some point conducted our own imaginary symphonies in our own living rooms? But this was Jerry Goldsmith, not just one of “us”. Turned out, he was practicing for an upcoming concert performance and nothing more. Or so he said to me a few moments later when the cue ended. Actually I prefer to think he simply enjoyed his music… just like the rest of us.
1/20/2019
News of Nick Redman’s passing this last Thursday had an impact on myself and Intrada that would be difficult to fully express. We had collaborated on the productions of numerous soundtracks for Intrada, drawn from the 20th Century Fox vaults. One in particular is worthy of note because it was the result of a fun meeting in Los Angeles with Nick and myself plus, my memory is murky, but I believe Julie Kirgo and Roger Feigelson. I think it was around 2011. The topic de jour was our preparations to release the soundtrack for The Kremlin Letter through Fox and Nick’s new video company, Twilight Time, for which The Kremlin Letter was to be one of the early DVD offerings. What a joy it was to see that new company of his expand rapidly into a world class leader of DVD and Blu-ray releases from the Fox library and soon other studio vaults such as United Artists and Columbia. If you collected movies you couldn’t wait to find out what his next “batch” was, as he referred to his groups of new releases.
My reflections on Nick go much further back. Our soundtrack collaborations began a decade earlier, back in 2001 when we premiered the James Horner score for Jack The Bear on CD. Nick helped us secure the rights from Fox and came to Intrada to guide the album’s assembly. On a more personal level, he spent time at my home and we admired posters to Zulu, The Searchers and The Wild Bunch, three of his favorite films. In fact, his wealth of knowledge and film making talents led to a 1996 Academy Award nomination for his production of a compelling documentary on Sam Peckinpah’s celebrated The Wild Bunch. He furthered his film career with a 1998 documentary he produced and directed on John Ford and John Wayne and their 1956 western masterpiece, The Searchers. Yet another film achievement was his feature documentary Becoming John Ford, which chronicled the complex relationship between director Ford and Fox’s studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck.
At about that same time in 2001, Nick and I also worked together on the soundtrack album from Hugo Friedhofer’s The Barbarian And The Geisha. Again joining me here at Intrada, Nick and I walked my younger daughter Veronika to school and talked at length about his goals and aspirations. Incredibly, those aspirations of his came true: His desire to build a comprehensive restoration program with 20th Century Fox on the thousands of music masters buried in their vaults, his championing of countless soundtracks by Jerry Goldsmith during his Fox years and of Lalo Schifrin including Bullitt and Jerry Fielding, especially from The Wild Bunch and his seemingly wild dream of one day getting many of his favorite films available on home video himself.
So this last Thursday night, I watched a movie “in memorium” of Nick. It was a Blu-ray on his Twilight Time label and featured commentary with his own insights to the film at hand. Sam Peckinpah’s Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia with a score by Fielding. And I listened to Nick’s words. And as I did so I couldn’t help but think about and admire all of those achievements he once talked about and then actually realized with regards to his own film heroes: Sam Peckinpah. John Ford. John Wayne. Jerry Goldsmith. Jerry Fielding. All of them up there somewhere.
And now Nick Redman joins them. One can only imagine what incredible project they must all be talking about doing together.
1/11/2019
Next week we’re back on course with our newest soundtrack CD release. More accurately, it’s a 2-CD set to a terrific score by an Oscar winning composer. In fact, the score itself was an Oscar nominee. Artwork, contents and sound samples will be available here to peruse this coming Monday. The release will be available on Tuesday, January 15.
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