James Horner - The Voyage Home

[Admiral Archer]

So he just pretended every movie he ever scored was a flop I guess.

I love this quote from him which simultaneously shits on Basil Poledouris' score for RoboCop while stroking himself for his Robo2 work.

"I thought the score for the first film was so absolutely dreadful. There was no sense of the orchestra, no sense of drama. It was just a dopey, lousy score and it just didn't work. I'm not a fan of Poledouris. The end credits, which is the best opportunity for any composer, was just pasted together. My end title is a real piece of music, and the middle part is something very different from most film scores."

For anyone who may not remember, Rosenman's score includes a bunch of voices chanting "Ro-bo-Ccopppppp!" Stirring stuff.

Rosenman is my least favorite film composer of all time. I actively despise his score to Star Trek IV, to the point that it nearly ruins the movie for me (with a score by Horner or Goldsmith or literally ANYONE ELSE, it might contend to be my favorite Trek film with the original series cast, even higher than The Motion Picture). The music that plays during the shot where the whales are jumping out of the water after chasing away the Probe just sounds to me like cliche 1970s carnival music, like something played on the beach in Jaws when the crowd is rushing onto the beach. To hear his critique of Poledouris (which is simultaneously super petty and borderline narcissistic) makes me think he was a terrible human being too. Poledouris scored Conan the Barbarian, one of the greatest works of not just fantasy film music, but of film music altogether. What else did Rosenman do other than Star Trek IV and, apparently, Robocop 2? The freaking 70s Lord of the Rings, whose score was inferior to even the Rankin and Bass "The Hobbit Movie", which was made for TV. And that's about it.

Sorry, I think this just hit a nerve. I already hated Rosenman for disgracing one of Star Trek's all-time best movies with his bad music, but to hear he was a unjustifiable snob is particularly annoying.

 

[tharpdevenport]

Rosenman was a highly talented composer who did many excellent scores, but he was, however, one of the more guilty parties when it came to re-using ideas and orchestration (Horner was another seriously guilty party, mind you). What he did for the film was right and worked. Granted, some of that was because of changes (like taking ht opening theme and making it the end credits and dropping his arrangement of the TOS series theme).

TVH is a truly awful film in tons of ways and it's damn lucky to have gotten a composer like Rosenman. It didn't deserve Horner. In fact, I dare say Lenny should have gotten a better project than this. This is bottom barrel Trek movie fare, right there with Nemesis.


Rosenman and Nimoy were friends and it's no surprise he asked him to score the film. In fact, if you listen to an interview with Lenny, you'll find his voice is strikingly similar to later-life Nimoy.

 

[mb22]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Rosenman#Filmography

He won an Oscar for Barry Lyndon (1976).

 

[Tosk]

In fact, I dare say Lenny should have gotten a better project than this.

I dunno. By this point in his career he was relegated to a lot of TV movies and stuff. He was in his grumpy egotistical hack era.

 

[tharpdevenport]

At some point during his life Rosenman not only had a medical issue that changed him and left him more grumpy and verbal about things, but his wife died suddenly. He wanted to do serius scores, producers kept going with what was the sound of the day. I won't defend everything he ever said, but I would state that people often don't read what he said and the points he made. All they recall is people pointing out grumpy things he said about scores and films but remove all explanation.

I highly suggest anybody interested in learning more about him and reading his thoughts on various projects, read a three-part retrospective by Film Score Monthly. Immediately the first part of it opens up with why the Robocop film he scored was bad:

Film Score Daily: THE LIFE OF LEONARD ROSENMAN

 

[Daddy Todd]

What else did Rosenman do

He did a couple of the Planet of the Apes sequels -- Beneath and Battle, IIRC.

 

[Tosk]

people often don't read what he said and the points he made. All they recall is people pointing out grumpy things he said about scores and films but remove all explanation.

So I read the opening part of the link you provided. Where he talks shit about Basil's Robo1 and details some of the ways he approached Robo2. Perhaps I'm dense, but I'm not seeing greater context. Just a person with a high opinion of their own work. I appreciate that he had thought behind why he did certain things, but I never assumed that was not the case.

The final two quotes on that page certainly don't alter my perception of him as someone who thinks themself better than almost everyone else. I'll compare him to McG...sort of the directing version of Rosenman. Talk a good game, have great intentions, sell yourself well...but the end product is often (but not always!) just the same old slop. Or a writer example, Akiva Goldsman. He's a good example because he has also won an Oscar like Rosenman, despite large chunks of his output being just awful.

 

[tharpdevenport]

I cannot speak for every single thing said here, nor could a dead guy address all points, but specifically my comment about his opening statements about how Robocop 2 was a good film in script, but ruined in production, was aimed at (off hand) one user who thought he thought many films he did were flops according to Lenny.

 

[Tosk]

I cannot speak for every single thing said here, nor could a dead guy address all points, but specifically my comment about his opening statements about how Robocop 2 was a good film in script, but ruined in production, was aimed at (off hand) one user who thought he thought many films he did were flops according to Lenny.

That was me, and I was being facetious. Someone else said that Rosenman liked to re-use scores if the film they came from flopped, and my comment was in regards to the fact that a lot of his scores sound alike.

 

[tharpdevenport]

A more comprehensive list of credits (although still not complete, due to lack of videos for some TV series) is found on IMDb. I've contributed a number of missing credits there for him over the years and corrected a small number as well.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

Rosenman is a very accomplished film composer but he’s not nearly as prolific on genre films the way Goldsmith and Horner were. The 50s and 60s style of scoring was always closer to his sensibilities, and that wasn’t aligning with where scoring was by the 80s, especially in sci-fi/adventure. In spite of that, he somehow scored an Oscar nomination for TVH.