Alan Silvestri ­ The Mummy Returns

Excerptedfrom FSM Vol. 6, No. 4, On Sale Now...
 

Alan Silvestri's task on The Mummy Returns was to write an epic score worthy of Rózsa or Bernstein, and turn it around in only three weeks. "It's definitely 'cast of thousands,'" the composer admits.. "It was the most I've ever had to do. The schedule didn't reflect the minutes count in terms of accommodations. You walked in to spot a film kind of at the normal time and it was like 'whoops!' What about that other movie? Who's doing that? But it worked out great."

The original 1999 The Mummy was an elaborate effort with a large cast up against Arnold Vosloo as Im-Ho-Tep, an ancient Egyptian prince cursed to walk the earth shrouded in tannis leaves. The Mummy Returns features not one but two heavies, plus the Mummy's reborn lost love, Anak-Su-Namun [Patricia Velazquez]. The resulting mix of characters and relationships turned out to be a challenge for a score that had to be highly thematic while treating multiple situations, locales and storylines. "It didn't turn out to be a million themes, but it was certainly one of those logistical questions you had to come to some agreement on with yourself early on," Silvestri says. "The interesting thing about the heroic side of the film is that it's really an ensemble heroic kind of film, where it's not like one person is the focus of the heroism. Rick [Brendan Fraser] and Evie [Rachel Weisz] have their moments of heroism; Jonathan [John Hannah], the goofball brother, has his moments; Alex the kid has his; Ardith Bey is back and he's got his moments, so that's one of the things I had to figure out -- are we really going to have a separate theme for every player or are we going to find some themes that transcend the person and be more like when one of our team is heroic, like the Dirty Dozen. That's how it worked out. Otherwise I think it would have been too fragmented and had all this material that was dragging you from one place to another. So thematically there was a very definite heroic theme, there was a romantic theme for the Rick and Evie relationship. Then we've got some scales of themes, where you've got everything from a full-blown melody to a fragment that becomes identifiable with a character, more like the Scorpion King who's there at the beginning and there at the end. His presence is all through, but he's kind of always there in thought if nothing else -- he drives the entire film in a sense."

The composer also faced multiple romances in the movie, one between hero Rick O'Connell (Fraser) and his wife Evelyn (Weisz) and the timeless love between Im-Ho-Tep and Anak-Su-Namun. "In a sense they're separate from the point of view that his romantic involvement with Anak-Su-Namun is very clearly between those two," Silvestri says. "When those two are off doing their deeds it's something different. We're moving in and out of material based on how the film is tracking, but I didn't try to inject any menace into their romantic theme. Their love theme and their love is as important as Rick's and Evie's. Which is interesting because now you've got these two great loves on the screen, one between the bad guy and the bad girl, and one between the good guy and the good girl. You couldn't make less of one or the other without diminishing what the film is about."

The 1999 The Mummy was notable for its often broad comic tone, which was reflected in Jerry Goldsmith's heroic theme for Rick O'Connell -- a comic theme performed in a heroic mode. "I think the humor is maybe slightly different in this," Silvestri says of The Mummy Returns. "There's no less of it, maybe there's even a little more. In a funny way I think you could say the humor in this film is slightly less broad than it was in the first one, although you're not going to feel like they changed the character of the whole thing. In talking to Steve Sommers about the heroic theme and what might be needed, when you see Rick's battles, his kind of mano y mano things, they're very reminiscent of a pirate movie. That was kind of a key in terms of how to approach the heroic theme. You always feel it's this band of guys and there's a lot of swordfighting, not just gunplay. It's very swashbuckling and I think Jerry captured that in the first film, and I'm hoping to capture that in this film."

Adding to the complications of a special-effects-heavy storyline and an abbreviated scoring schedule was the fact that the bulk of the score needed to be recorded in London. "It was not convenient at all for the filmmakers because they were coming down to the final wrap-up of the film," Silvestri says. "They had an enormous amount of effects shots coming from ILM, and for these guys to truck all the way to London three or four weeks before this thing has to be completed was a big inconvenience. But the studio was pretty firm about that, so we did go there and it was a pleasure. It was fantastic."

Nevertheless the completion of the score still required work in Los Angeles. "Originally they wanted me to do the entire score in London," Silvestri recalls. "It required me to be completed by a certain date, and I finally had to say 'Look, I'm going to work as hard as I can seven days a week for three months, but even with that we need to get whatever time we can get here.' It was just a function of not having everything written and the dub starting by the time we made that first trip. It was a scheduling issue ultimately."
 

Don't forget to check out the full story in FSM Vol. 6, No. 4!
 
 

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