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Yes, but composers can only do what the director/producers will let them get away with.
Randy Newman scored Gary Ross’s two previous films… on the first, PLEASANTVILLE, Ross insisted that Newman model one cue after a segment of EDWARD SCISSORHANDS (which Newman did, while trying to avoid copying it wholesale). On the second, SEABISCUIT, Ross insisted that Newman basically copy cues from his cousin Thomas’s THE HORSE WHISPERER, which Newman ultimately refused to do, and left the project. William Ross (no relation) came in and did the HORSE WHISPERER sound-alikes after Newman left.
I’m not bringing this up to prove any point other than that Ross has a history of being very heavy handed with composers (which is totally his right: he’s the director!). As such, he probably got exactly the score he wanted out of JNH.
I do agree that a director should always fight to get what he wants but good directors know that they also have to give to their artistic collaborators a certain amount of freedom and respect in order for them to try to give their best.
I had no idea Gary Ross was like that. Looks like Elfman didn’t leave because of ‘scheduling conflicts’ after all.
No, I still do think it was scheduling conflicts.
It sounds like the HUNGER GAMES sessions happened a little late… around the time that Elfman would have had to have been deep into getting everything ready for the DARK SHADOWS sessions. My guess is that as the schedules grew tighter for both movies (and who knows how MIB3 figured in), Elfman realized that he just couldn’t do all three and had to make a change. It makes sense that HUNGER would be the one that he’d bail on… he’s not going to risk damaging his relationships with either Tim Burton or Sony Pictures (which paid him a King’s Ransom, I’m sure, for returning to score MIB3, much as they did for MIB2). HUNGER GAMES was already expected to do well, which of course it has, and potentially might have kept Danny aboard for the sequels, but often times keeping up established relationships are more important than these things.
Then again, maybe scheduling had nothing to do with it, and he simply wasn’t coming up with material that Ross liked. He did leave the picture only a few months before it was released, and JNH said in an interview that he only had about 4 weeks to write the 80 some minutes that he recorded. As usual, only those involved know for sure…
I didn’t see Elfman’s name in the credits for this bit, but in the film, the music during the video that played before the each of Hunger Games participants’ names were drawn sounded quite Elfman-esque to me.
Wow!
But like someone mentioned above Ross likes to micromanage the music/score to his films. So this shouldn’t really surprise me, but to hear that Elfman was “fired”. Just…wow. Going by Burnett’s description of the score he and Elfman were trying to create sounded promising and a game changer for Elfman. I would love to have heard that score. It seems like it was an actual collaborative process between Elfman and T Bone. I still have yet to see the first film so I have no idea of what Newton Howard’s score is like, but I doubt if it’s as inspiring as what Elfman and Burnett were trying to compose.
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