Lalo Schifrin scores Rush Hour 2

Excerpted from the FSM Vol. 6, No. 7 Downbeat...

Summer 2001 proved to be a killing field for big-budget Hollywood blockbusters, most of which managed spectacular openings only to plummet 50 percent or more in their box office the next weekend after audiences were able to determine just how rotten they actually were. Repeat business was uncommon, but one of the few movies that could claim to be pulling in patrons a second or third time was Brett Ratner's Rush Hour 2, the sequel to his 1998 teaming of martial arts star Jackie Chan and motor-mouthed actor Chris Tucker. This time, Detectives Lee (Chan) and Carter (Tucker) have to break off a vacation in Hong Kong to face down a Triad crimelord named Ricky Tan (John Lone) and female assassin Hu Li (Ziyi Zhang of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), who are in cahoots with a Los Angeles criminal mastermind played by Alan King.

For Rush Hour 2, Ratner brought back veteran composer Lalo Schifrin, who says he hasn't really done a follow-up to his own work since his scores for the Dirty Harry franchise. "The Four Musketeers I did but Michel Legrand did the first; FX2 I did but I didn't do the first one [Bill Conti scored it]," Schifrin points out, adding that Rush Hour 2 gave him the opportunity to revisit some earlier material but with an entirely different approach. "Brett Ratner, the director, he said to me -- he has a lot of energy and he's very inspiring, to me he's a good director because he doesn't look over my shoulders, but he says the right words to show the direction, and that triggers what people call inspiration," Schifrin says. "On the first Rush Hour, he said why don't you do it like Enter the Dragon of the '90s, which I did and I enjoyed doing that. This time he said 'why don't you do a symphonic score?' Forget about Enter the Dragon or the '70s and the '90s, just do a straight symphonic score. So the only thing I did from the first one was the first 20 or 30 seconds of the main title, which is more than two minutes long. I made a reprise, a contracted reprise, of the Rush Hour main title, to give a kind of signature like James Bond or Mission Impossible. But then after that I did an epic score, and the only exception to that is a little section in Las Vegas where I have a big-band source music. When the men come in with the water and before they get into the casino, that particular cue I did with a big band. But in general it was scored with a symphony orchestra and 96 musicians, and I didn't use electric guitars or anything...."

Lalo the Straight Man

Schifrin also says he didn't see the need to accentuate the comic performances of Chan and Tucker with overtly "funny" music. "I did it straight," he points out. "These two comedians didn't really need my help; I think it would be redundant and in bad taste to try and accent their jokes. The counterpoint between the dramatic adventure music I write and their jokes, it works. I totally ignore their humor." For the film's action scenes Schifrin wrote a variety of throbbing, rhythmically driven orchestral cues that dovetail beautifully with the elaborate choreography and movement Jackie Chan brings to his fight scenes. But Schifrin says he didn't key off any specific rhythms or movements in the action when he scored the film's action scenes. "I just get a very exciting rhythm and I don't try to mickey mouse or key into their rhythm like a cartoon. It's impossible to do that because I know martial arts and I admire very much the technique that Jackie Chan has, but there's no one rhythm in martial arts. There are several and although he's very fast, it would be very difficult to play off him. What I try and do is find the rhythm of the movie in general."

Schifrin has been scoring Hollywood blockbusters for 35 years now, and he's seen a lot of changes between The Cincinnati Kid and Rush Hour 2. "The movies now are different than the ones we were doing in the '70s," Schifrin acknowledges. "I think that technically they are more sophisticated, the way they don't use movieolas anymore and the way they can change scenes and edit on the computer, and the special effectsÖthere is a different basic look and sound, with the addition of THX sound, it's a better sound now that movies have. In that sense there has been some progress. But the thing that never can change is the content of the movie dictates everything else, and if the filmmakers and the team that works in front of the cameras or behind the cameras, if they can involve the audience and make them care about the character in a comedy or drama, then the movie's a success. This goes back to theater and right to the beginning of mankind, in the Greek theater of Aeschylus or Aristophenes -- after all, movies are an extension of the theater. So screenwriters have to involve the audience...."

Check out the full story in FSM Vol. 6, No. 7...

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