Elliot Goldenthal
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I’m pretty close to FINALLY completing my Elfman walkthrough now (have some 5-6 albums left). And next in line is Goldenthal, which I will stay with for a while. I have everything he’s ever done that’s released in some form or another (although I miss 5 items on CD).
He quickly became my third favourite film composer in the 90s, and I decided to become a completist. Met him and interviewed him a couple of times. But then something happened in the 2010s. He had his accident, which made him mostly step away from film scoring. And I wasn’t that into the big and boisterous orchestral music anymore, even though his merger of modernistic landscapes and more traditional ones was my way into his music. Combined, it means he’s veered somewhat off my radar. Now he’s located in Waiting Room No. 1, slightly outside my top 10. I’m very curious to see how this walkthrough will ignite some old passions (or not).
Anyways….while I’ve often hailed ALIEN 3 as his magnum opus, I’ve been more and more drawn to his more down-tempo scores in recent years. Especially something like GOLDEN GATE, which is gorgeous.
How about you?
I think I have nearly all by Goldenthal as well, except some TV stuff that had no releases. Although many newer things digitally only. My first conscious encounter might have been ALIEN 3 as well, although for sure I saw PET SEMETARY in cinema before that. I think I got really fond of him with INTERVIEW OF A VAMPIRE and BATMAN FOREVER.
I loved his over the top style clashes. To bad he doesn’t do much film scores anymore. The 300 law suit certainly has a lot do do with that. Some of his concert works are tough listening. The latest work I heard is the 3rd symphony which is quite calm though.
Yes, PET SEMATARY is first out. It’s not a score I return to very often, because it’s so creepy and crazy. In fact, I consider it the creepiest score ever written. Even more so on album than in the film. Freaks me out every time!
He reunited with Mary Lambert on GRAND ISLE two years later, which I’ve not been able to see or hear. One of my top wishes of unreleased Goldenthal!
I like him and have a smattering of his scores. I’m no completist though.
He’s a ‘in the right mood’ composer for me, much like John Barry or Leonard Rosenman.
He has a singular voice that can be easily recognised, most of the time.
I was disappointed by his law suit thing against 300 and thought it was VERY misguided (and ultimately self destructive).
Especially bearing in mind how Lalo Schifrin could have done exactly the same thing to him, after he copied the Amityville Horror temp track for Pet Sematary, when he was starting out.
Schifrin showed more class, and/or understanding.I love Elliot Goldenthal, and for me, if pressed, Alien 3 is still his magnum opus… that score is just… wow! It got everything. Hyperaggressive and snarling atonal passages out to attack you as well as some of Goldenthal’s most poetically mythic writing, it’s just a powerhouse of a score. But I love just about everything he’s done, but Alien 3 will be very hard to top. It’s just one of the best film scores.
Definitely agree on ALIEN 3. I wrote a love letter to it here in 2022, Google translated.
And yes, HEAT is a bloody masterpiece. That, along with GOLDEN GATE, were entries in the thread about “Ethereal Cityscapes”.
Goldenthal is one of the few composers whose music I can listen to and really “get”. John Corigliano was developing his architectural method of composition at the same time as he was mentoring Goldenthal, and I can definitely hear that sense of structure in EG’s music in a way I don’t hear in most others’. He can do the big orchestra avant-garde thing and still keep a lot of clarity for the regular joe, which is not easy. His music introduced me to Penderecki, Ornette Coleman, Corigliano, all this stuff I’d never heard before floating around in movies he’s done. He has really original ideas on how to score scenes, for instance the opening credits to an action movie like Demolition Man sounds like something Bernard Herrmann might have done.
Everyone goes nuts for Heat but I’ve never been interested in that one; he did the electric guitar idea much better for In Dreams a few years later. I like just about everything else he did though. Sphere is definitely his most original, the orchestrational verve there is awesome. He and his orchestrator should publish a book on all the little tricks they developed over the years, like Henry Brant did.
The lawsuit thing, KMCG mentioned he was out of line to do that. Making WB publish an apology with all the DVD marketing was overkill. But keep in mind that Titus was a little film which ran in like a dozen theaters, whereas just the CD for 300 had sold 150,000 copies by the time Goldenthal filed suit, and he probably recouped a pretty penny from that. I kinda wonder if he made a grab for the royalties to help fund a recording of his Grendel opera, but obviously that never materialized. In any case Bates had been going around telling the press that those specific cues were all his own great ideas, which just isn’t cool. Goldenthal has acknowledged other rip-offs of his music with amusement because they were little foreign films, or projects which his conductor/orchestrator were directly involved in, but when a rock and roll guy rips you off three times in the very first reel of a WB blockbuster, it’s a little much.
Same here, Wesley (and welcome!). Goldenthal also opened me up to a great deal of contemporary concert music, via his mix of modern and traditional.
I kinda wonder if he made a grab for the royalties to help fund a recording of his Grendel opera, but obviously that never materialized.
That’s something to ponder. I know he was VERY set to record the opera some 15 years ago, but I can understand it was too expensive in the end. I have it, at least most of it, and it’s got plenty of typical Goldenthal-isms here and there. Although contemporary opera is a hard reach for me.
Yeah in your interview from long ago he said he was really close to getting at least the vocal portions recorded. It’s too bad it didn’t come to fruition because he killed himself working on it (almost literally), it was something he’d wanted to do since his high school days. Is what you have the really crummy bootleg?
That’s something I wonder about someone like him, he goes around saying how his life is 1/3 movies, 1/3 concert, 1/3 theater. Yet the only music of his that really has continued to have a life past its premiere is the movie work on CD; most of his theater and a lot of his concert material disappears after its performance — 2/3 of his work! I wonder how he feels about that.
Is what you have the really crummy bootleg?
It’s a bootleg, but the sound is pretty good. I have no idea about the source.
Yes, you’re right there’s a massive gap in regards to his concert music. He basically did zero films between 1980 and 1989, only theatre, concert works etc. And only a small portion of it has been released. I think he really wants to release it, on Zarathustra or some other label, but he’s fallen so much off the radar these days, it’s difficult to get the money needed. At least that’s my guess.
Elliot Goldenthal supposedly wrote about 20-something scores for student films at New York University in the late 70s. He didn’t attend that school himself, he went to the Manhattan School of Music, but he hung around campus to do these little gigs inbetween studies. Most of them are lost or hidden away, but ONE of them appeared on YouTube some 10-15 years ago, called “A Fistful of Fantasies”. The date isn’t clear, but it’s somewhere between 1977 and 1979. It’s a fun little score – with Goldenthal approximating both Morricone and Barry (as the film takes spaghetti western or Bond turns), all the while sounding exactly like himself. Well worth a watch, if you haven’t seen it already, for curiousity’s sake:
Cool. Didn’t know about these. Checked out some other films with unreleased score I found and extracted a few tracks here and tehre that were relatively “usable”.
I assume you mean other unreleased Goldenthal film scores, and not other student film scores? As far as I know, only “A Fistful of Fantasies” is available anywhere.
I assume you mean other unreleased Goldenthal film scores
Yes, I meant that. But unreleased score is unreleased score 😉
There are a few. These are the ones I can think of:
STUDENT FILMS (allegedly about 20 films from NYU and others)
COCAINE COWBOYS
BLANK GENERATION
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
GRAND ISLE
FOOL’S FIRE
ROSWELL (not counting shoddy BSX rerecording)
VOICES (FROM A LOCKED ROOM) (adaptation & original music)
BATMAN & ROBIN
ACROSS THE UNIVERSE (score)
FOREST (art installation film)
OUR SOULS AT NIGHTSTUDENT FILMS (allegedly about 20 films from NYU and others)
COCAINE COWBOYS
BLANK GENERATION
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
GRAND ISLEI don’t think he wants to see or hear these again.
FOOL’S FIRE
Tapes lost!
ROSWELL (not counting shoddy BSX rerecording)
BATMAN & ROBINUnreleased but very available. There are good-sounding bootlegs floating around.
ACROSS THE UNIVERSE (score)
FOREST (art installation film)
OUR SOULS AT NIGHTForest is here, but you’re not missing much. The others, I’m a little surprised they weren’t on albums. I assume Goldenthal wasn’t interested for some reason.
VOICES (FROM A LOCKED ROOM) (adaptation & original music)
Strange that there wasn’t an album because the movie was financed by a record label! He turned it into a concert piece which also was never commercially recorded.
I don’t think he wants to see or hear these again.
Just like many artists who “dismiss” their early work. The student film above at least had a nice pastiche-parody score. Maybe not earth shattering.
Same for COCAINE COWBOWYS which I think has not much Goldenthal music besides the nice groovy main theme.
BLANK GENERATION as COCAIN COWBOYS has many songs but some nice moody jazzy tracks and some more dissonant every now and then.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE is of course a rather low key TV score but a nice finger exercise and a suite would probably be nice.
GRAND ISLE I don’t know.FOOL’S FIRE
Too bad that sounded much like the classic Goldenthal we know. (What a weird movie…)
Unreleased but very available. There are good-sounding bootlegs floating around.
I have BATMAN & ROBIN (even two bootlegs I realized). I think I have that BXS re-recording which even in parts does not sound like the actual score in the movie at all which is on Youtube.
ACROSS THE UNIVERSE (score)
Is there much score actually besides the song arrangements he was involved? Probably a rights issue if he interpolated melodies from the songs…
OUR SOULS AT NIGHT is of course a rather unspectacular low key score for basically solo acoustic guitar only.
Forest is here, but you’re not missing much.
Thanks, didn’t know that. Peeked into it and the mood reminds me a bit of his last symphony.
I think these could make a nice compilation album.
Yes, I have the BATMAN & ROBIN boot, the original CD programme that was scrapped last minute. Shame it never came to fruition. I also have a ROSWELL boot with decent sound.
GRAND ISLE is the one I’m most curious about, the only film I haven’t been able to find. It’s probably nothing spectacular, as this brief clip on YouTube (with Italian dub!) attests to, but enough to make me curious:
Yes, I have the BATMAN & ROBIN boot, the original CD programme that was scrapped last minute.
Yeah, got that one from you. I do have some 2CD version of that as well which I totally forgot about… Assume some DVD rip but I think is clean, too. Would love to hear the ROSWELL one.
GRAND ISLE is the one I’m most curious about, the only film I haven’t been able to find. It’s probably nothing spectacular, as this brief clip on YouTube (with Italian dub!) attests to, but enough to make me curious:
Found that trailer as well. Goldenthal in romantic mood might be nice even if not spectacular.
I do have some 2CD version of that as well which I totally forgot about… Assume some DVD rip but I think is clean, too.
I had that once, but threw it in the bin after I got that CD programme. Rather terrible, because the volume fluctuates. I think LLL has tried to release this legitimately, but there are some hurdles that I can’t remember off the top of my head. It’s a great score — it’s more than just a rehash of FOREVER, even though it obviously has some of the same elements.
Here’s Grand Isle. I haven’t seen the whole thing yet but it seems like period piano noodlings.
The Roswell tracks are on Youtube (1, 2). Only interesting because they show how his demos sounded at the time. The harp glissandos at the start sound very good. I’ve always been amused at how much work he puts into making very thorough, original electronic textures, and then for Titus just plopped in a loop lifted straight from the Distorted Realities CD. I guess he really liked it.
I do have some 2CD version of that as well which I totally forgot about… Assume some DVD rip but I think is clean, too.
I had that once, but threw it in the bin after I got that CD programme. Rather terrible, because the volume fluctuates. I think LLL has tried to release this legitimately, but there are some hurdles that I can’t remember off the top of my head. It’s a great score — it’s more than just a rehash of FOREVER, even though it obviously has some of the same elements.
Yes, like many of these “complete scores” being DVD rips. But at the time it was all you could get… I have it only digitally so it does not take “space”. I am hording 😉
Here’s Grand Isle. I haven’t seen the whole thing yet but it seems like period piano noodlings.
Ah, of course on that site you always find things no one else has (for obvious reasons…)
The Roswell tracks are on Youtube (1, 2).
Ah, thanks found them but assume it’s just the re-recording as well not haveing compare them.
’ve always been amused at how much work he puts into making very thorough, original electronic textures, and then for Titus just plopped in a loop lifted straight from the Distorted Realities CD. I guess he really liked it.
Funny but if it fitted…
Hey, thanks for that GRAND ISLE link, Wesley! I can finally get to see it.
I actually got Jim Titus to design a ROSWELL cover for me back in the day, with front/back and CD sticker and everything, so the CD-R on my shelf looks pretty much like the real thing (yes, we fixed the misspelling of his first name). Not a terribly exciting score, but maybe the most noteworthy one of his TV works.
Not a terribly exciting score, but maybe the most noteworthy one of his TV works.
Not compared to his masterworks but interesting steps on the journey. It’s probably not a coincidence that it reminds me a bit Mark Snow’s X-FILES.
I have a very stimmt on-off relationship with Goldenthal. Got to know him through Alien 3 which Iliked a lot. The came Final Fantasy my way and I mostly recognized the obvious similarities with Alien 3 and was not so impressed anymore.
Then I was again rather enflamed by Batman Forever which I liked more than Elfman’s Batman music.Then I got this album at a second hand store and it sounded more or less like a cat walking the piano.
Meanwhile it doesn’t sound completely random to me. But it’s still not something that wakes too much of my interest.Another score of his that I rather like is Interview with a Vampire even though also here I recognized lots of Alien 3 similarities.
Never was a fan of his oscar winning Frieda score.So, here is where my relation with him ends.
I’m similar to Gerate. I really like him in small doses.
I would add Michael Collins, Demolition Man and Cobb to those mentioned above, that I like.
But I can never make it through a whole album (apart from Demolition Man).
I find that whittling a nice 20-30 minute programme suits me best.
I don’t think he troubles my Top 20 of fave film composers.Yes, Gerate, “The Stone Cutters” is very heavy duty. But I’ve only played it, like, twice, so maybe there’s something more to find there.
It’s probably not a coincidence that it reminds me a bit Mark Snow’s X-FILES.
Reached it now, in my walkthrough. I wouldn’t mistake him for Snow, he sounds like himself. But there are definitely similarities in sound, due to the fact that they were using the same MIDI tech at the time (so the synthetic strings, flutes, harps etc. are similar).
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