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The Best Music in Film
David Arnold
(Composed the music for Independence Day, Zoolander)
- S&S: What is your favourite film soundtrack music and why do you like it so much?
- "Absolutely impossible for me to say that I have one enduring favourite. I have many and they change fairly frequently. There are scores that I admire for their technical or musical complexity, structure and approach, others that I like for their sheer emotional power, some which combine all the above and others that simply appeal to me and I haven't got a clue why. Ask me tomorrow and I may have a different list but among my many favourites are On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), Taxi Driver (1976), Robin Hood, Once Upon a Time in America (1983), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), E.T. (1982), Psycho (1960), 633 Squadron (1963). Which all adds up to a greatest hits of popular films and scores really, but I guess that's why they're popular."
- S&S: In what ways does music best enhance a film?
- "It enhances a film best by retaining a voice for itself which can tell us something about the truth of what is actually happening in the story whether it is, or is not, on the screen"
- S&S: Which film either has music that you wished you'd written or is one you would like to rescore and why?
- "I wished I'd written every single score in my favourites list, because I would have been single handedly responsible for creating just about every genre of film music ever heard. I don't think there is a film I would like to rescore, I've never felt that a film that I have enjoyed so much that I would want to score it myself, would have been anywhere near as enjoyable without the music first written for it. Even though its the toughest part of the job of a film composer, to look at a movie and then a blank sheet of manuscript, potentially at that point you are about to start work on what might be the most incredible piece of music ever heard by mankind.......then of course, you actually have to mess it all up by actually writing something. I would love to work on a Pixar movie though; my playground status at my (at the moment) very young children's school would rise dramatically. 5 year old girls aren't that interested in James Bond or Changing Lanes (2002) yet. Not only that, but I love Pixar too."