Scores vs. Songs: The Godzilla Syndrome

by Edwin Black

You're watching Godzilla stomp through Manhattan skyscrapers. People are fleeing in terror as special effects crash and explode everywhere. And what music do you hear? Chances are you will hear rap and hard rock. The producers of the supersecret Godzilla film have made no secret about paying as much as a million dollars for hit music from an array of pop-rock musicians, including Puff Daddy, Rage Against the Machine, Jamiroquai, Foo Fighters, Green Day, and the Wallflowers. Singles have been released, and the videos are already playing on MTV.

You may ask, why does Godzilla need a song? Godzilla soundtrack composer David Arnold scored the producers' two previous hits, StarGate and Independence Day and no hit song was needed. Answer: since Men in Black scorched the charts and Titanic sailed to global bestsellerdom, money-minded Hollywood is aflame with the notion of turning movie music into revenue-producing Top 40 hits. So while music industry circles buzzed for months with advance details of the soundtrack songs, no one seemed to know if, when and how much of the real score composed by Arnold would be released.

Lead Foo Fighter Dave Grohl spoke volumes on MTV radio when he recently described his musical contribution to Godzilla's soundtrack: "It seems like it's almost a movie score. ...It's pretty cool." It's actually pretty piteous and Godzilla represents a monster step (excuse the pun) along a road seriously diminishing the quality of movie music and the moviegoing experience.

Soundtracks have long been America's leading wellspring of serious ensemble composition. Movies generate more extended music heard by more people than any other source. Last year, approximately 200 movies required original scores. This body of music is more than just an exercise in notation, it indispensably enriches the movie experience during the dramatic moment. When a producer arbitrary replaces original music with a "hit record," often created without any regard for the screen action, the art of filmmaking is undermined.

Hollywood composers are now feeling studio pressures to include songs like never before. The question is: when is the right time to call for pop music as opposed to an original score.

Certainly, popular songs have long been a staple of good filmmaking. The list of dramatic movies made memorable by their pop songs is long and stellar. Henry Mancini gave us the commercially successfully "Days of Wine and Roses" and "Moon River" (for Breakfast at Tiffany's) which are forever linked with their Oscar winning movies. The Graduate is inseparably associated with its Simon and Garfunkle songs, not Dave Grusin's original score. Midnight Cowboy was defined by "Everybody's Talkin'" just as Saturday Night Fever's was by its Bee Gee music. In those cases, the pop musical genre sprang from the character or thematic content of the film.

But it depends on the film. Famed director Stanley Donen recalls that when Mancini asked if he could write a song for Charade, he was told yes, but it had to be sung "very quietly" so as not to interfere with the film. Donen added that in Two for the Road, Mancini was denied a song outright. Director James Cameron asserts that when the studio as expected insisted on a song for Titanic, he vehemently rejected the notion as inappropriate. "Would you use a song for Schindler's List?" he objected. As is known, composer James Horner secretly recorded a song anyway, played it for Cameron one day without warning, and won the director's complete approval. Many rightfully say the song, "My Heart Will Go On," was crucial to the film's emotional success.

However, the arbitrary use of pop songs, especially those not arising from the storyline, will hurt a film. For example, in Mike's Murder, some mood-setting helicopter shots of a moving automobile are accompanied by the swell of John Barry's tension music; in nearly identical scenes later in the movie, the director used pop-rock that did not relate. The result was integral to the disjointed mess that made Mike's Murder an immediate fatality. K2, a beautifully photographed mountain climbing adventure, was severely undermined when at the last minute an unhappy director rejected Hans Zimmer's brilliant mood and action score in favor of a playlist of rock tunes. K2 was a flop, in large part because the background music did not connect for moviegoers to create the awesome spectacle of man vs. treacherous mountain. Yet Zimmer's rejected score was released on CD nevertheless.

Unfortunately, many studio execs and not a few directors want to force a song into a film because they see CD licensing dollars and they believe a Top 40-style song is going to nail in audience approval. If the song can be released as a pop single, that's helps recoup investment. Ironically, often the music will only be heard in the end credits which most people walk out on. Or a snippet will be used in incidental music for nightclub, car radio, and party scenes. Yet great production and postproduction resources can be devoted to the pop-rock playlist, orphaning the original score. When the CD is issued, 30 to 60 minutes of quality original score plays second fiddle to barely heard pop music or is abandoned all together. Mark Mancina's music for Twister was omitted entirely from the CD (released on its own disc later). Hans Zimmer's music from Days of Thunder was also excluded from the soundtrack album. Dick Tracy (Danny Elfman) and The Specialist (John Barry) were the first in a new trend of first distributing a well-promoted "pop soundtrack," and then quietly issuing the original score some months afterwards to appease the much smaller soundtrack market.

Some say that movie content has a built in limitation. It's easy to insert rock music in contemporaneous storylines. What happens when you shoot a Western, or a medieval tale? Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves gave us the chart-topping,"I Do It All for You" by Bryan Adams. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid did likewise when Burt Bacharach added "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head." Strangely enough, songs can work in those dramatic settings, which only encourages more hit mentality regardless of storyline.

If the song trend continues, filmgoers may be in for another of Hollywood's pendulum swings as it recedes from orchestral soundtrack music in favor of pop-rock. That last happened in the 1980s. If the trend goes too far, movies may seem more like MTV videos than the dramatic experience America has come to love.

Edwin Black is Master of the Obvious. Send your reactions: MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com