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Today, I finally went to see “The Stepford Wives”. It’s a movie filled with promise and good ideas, completely destroyed by Paul Rudnick’s surprisingly dumb script (which thinks it’s clever, that’s what’s really bad about it!) and Frank Oz’s messy direction, unable to find a tone for the story and ending up with a bland, unsubtle and, worst of all, embarassingly unfunny film. To think that Tim Burton was once attached to direct this! I feel he’d do a great fusion between the suburban fairytale of “Edward Scissorhands” and the dark weird comedy of “Beetlejuice”. It would be PERFECT. Anyway, the ghost of Burton and Danny Elfman seems to be around in David Arnold’s score! I usually love Arnold’s music, but his soundtrack to “The Stepford Wives” seemed to me a complete rip-off of Elfman’s style! The choruses, the “To Die For-ish” orchestral pieces… It almost looks like the usually original, cool and stylish David Arnold had exact orders to replicate Danny Elfman’s style! Not that the score is bad – in fact, it’s one of the few enjoyable things in this mess of a movie – it’s just that it sounds so Elfman-ish! Well, it’s nice to see Elfman’s huge influence among his fellow composers (and the good ones, like David Arnold), it just shows how important the man is. And the truth is – the movie’s so bad, I really wouldn’t like to see the genuine, the one and only Elfman attached to such a thing…
I just found out today that another movie Tim Burton almost directed was the Martin Scorsese’s cult classic “After Hours”. I bought the Scorsese’s Box Set, which is a delight, and in the “After Hours” DVD there’s a nice little documentary where Griffin Dunne tells that since Scorsese went to direct “The Last Temptation of Christ”, they chose Tim Burton to direct “After Hours” instead. When “The Last Temptation of Christ” was stuck once more, Scorsese said he’d love to do “After Hours” after all and Burton stepped out graciously, not wanting to be on the way of anything Martin Scorsese chose to direct.
Either that, or Scorsese called a Goodfella friend to scare Burton!
I love “After Hours” and its incredibly cool electronic score by Howard Shore, but I can’t help thinking what it would be like directed by Burton with a wicked orchestral Danny Elfman score. The presence of Catherine O’Hara in the movie lends it a Burtonesque flavour, anyway…
BUrton was also GOING TO direct Mary Reilly, the Dr. Jekell and Mr. Hyde Movie. He dropped out though because the big-heads in Hollywood were telling him to do it “their way”. Tim said… “No way”.
I haven’t heard the score, but David Arnold is my second favourite composer (Elfman being the first).
Arnold got it tough on this score. He had 4 days to write it (and possibly record it I Can’t remember).
4 DAYS ON A SCAORE – THAT WOULD BE I THINK ALMOST NEXT TO IMPOSSIBLE.
FFC
I agree with FFC… It seems to me a bit unreal to create and record a score in 4 days! But, anyway, maybe it was the short deadline that made him work familiar Elfmanesque motifs (I’m almost sure he had “To Die For” as a reference for this) instead of creating something more personal like he did recently on “Changing Lanes”. Have you listened to that one? To me is the most imaginative recent use of electronic music in a film score.
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