 Welcome to our Beastmaster event. My name is Jeff Bond. Please welcome the composer, Lee Holdridge. Hello, hello, hello. I'm the original Beastmaster, right? Right, exactly. You know, that's me. That's actually me. That's what I used to look like. Yeah, right. The most incredible composer body sculpting ever. Special effects. What can I say? This comes from a huge, like not just a period of science fiction and fantasy films, but like a whole year. This is so often considered like the greatest year in fantasy and science fiction movies. And you're kind of in the middle of this. So tell me how you got involved with Beastmaster. And I think people might think that this was like a ripoff of Conan the Barbarian. It came out a few months afterwards, but I have to assume it was well into production and being made while Conan was being made. I think they were both kind of going on at the same time. And there were other films too that were very similar. All of a sudden, everybody caught on to that subject. It's a great subject for films. Come on. I mean, you know, it's never going to stop. They're going to be making those kind of films forever. But I got a phone call one day from Don Coscarelli, the director. And he said, I just heard your violin concerto. You're perfect for my film. And I was thinking, oh, great. It must be an L.A.J., romantic kind of film. And I found out it was the Beastmaster. And I'm sitting there saying, what did he hear in my concerto that made him think of the Beastmaster? But I said, I'm not asking questions. You know how it is, composers. You say, oh, yeah, sure. Great. Wonderful. Thank you. But I think he heard something that he liked in that. And he literally just hired me on the spot. And they threw this film at me. And the good news was I got hired. The bad news was we need the score in two weeks. And I said, OK. And we're doing it in Rome because Cam Music is going to pay for the score. Cam Music is Ennio Morricone's company in Italy. They have a studio and he has access to the Rome Symphony in this orchestra of Santa Cecilia. And I said, OK. That's very exciting. But that means we have to go there to record. That takes a day or two out of the schedule. So I wound up 10 days working like a maniac. I got some wonderful, incredible help from Greg McRitchie, the legendary orchestrator who had worked for Alfred Newman and worked on Conan also. So I kept saying to him, how did you get those low? He said, oh, we use this. We use that. I said, OK. I know what to do. And he told me stories. Composers, you'd love this. He said that in Alfred Newman's day, if they made a picture change, the composer would get another two weeks. I said, those days went away fast. They just are gone, you know. But you know, you just kind of fasten your seat belt. And it was a fun movie. I liked it right from the get go. I was very dazzled by everything Don did. I knew it was a tight budget. But I couldn't believe what it looked like, you know, what he did. And I would ask him questions in the spotting. I said, well, the guy says we leave it Don. And then, you know, three minutes later they arrive. What happens? And he looked at me and said, you. So that was the answer. Yeah. The spotting on the film is interesting. I mean, I was watching it and, you know, watching like there's a scene where he falls into quicksand. It's like, well, there would be quicksand music now. There's a lot of interesting choices. Like, you know, you've got a theme for these two ferrets. The ferrets, right? But it's not like when the ferrets appear, make their first appearance, they get their theme. They get the theme when they go into action to help the hero. Right. Well, I was trying to look for, you know, I mean, when you don't have a lot of time, you don't really have time to think about it. I used to say to my friend Alf Kloss, and I said, just close your eyes and write. You know, don't worry about it. Just go, you know, because you just never know when the schedules are really tight. But a lot of it was the director. I mean, he had, he's very musical. And he had very strong ideas about what he wanted. There was a producer, a foreign producer involved, who kept saying to me, Lee, I want boom, boom. I want boom, boom. Okay. Boom, boom. So when I went to Rome, and we were going to do the main title, I had talked to the orchestra contractor and the percussion guys. I said, find me the largest bass drum you have in your life. They brought it to the studio. It was this thing. It looked like... I think it marched with the Roman legions. I think it was that old. And when he hit it, the dust went all over it. But that's what you hear at the beginning here. And I looked over at this producer who had a big grin on his face. He got his boom, boom. Yeah, it's funny, because you have that, but if they were thinking at all about, oh, we want to have this sound like Conan, you don't go in that direction at all and the main title is very warm and romantic. Well, I think I like the idea that the rhythmic aspect of the main title, but it's also, it's lifting. And because of who he was as a character, I felt that because he was sort of a champion of good and he talked with the animals and he had everything on his side. I said, you know, he is a very hero kind of character. And in the end, you should kind of go up with him. You should ascend as it were. And I wanted the theme to do that. Yeah, and you also have to write, literally ascending music for this kind of eagle flight that's recurrent. Yeah, definitely. I mean, you know, he wanted, I didn't, I had that theme for the eagle, but that works as a nice counterbalance to the opening titles. That was kind of the counter theme and the two went back and forth. And I saw his relationship with the eagle as, by the way, they dyed the eagle sort of brown. By the way, that's why he looks that way. That was Don. He wanted, he said, I don't want an eagle. I want a brown looking thing. So this poor eagle had to go to make up every day. Yeah, they did. I mean, they did the same thing where they wanted a black panther and they couldn't get a black panther. Exactly, exactly. It's like the, it's a black panther but it has like a white mouth. I always, I was always thinking like the people, you know, painting that tiger every day if they get to the mouth and be like, that's okay, he looks great. You know, directors have very specific things that they visualize for their films and you have to go with that. And they see things a certain way and I think, I don't know, that was his idea. He wanted the animals to look like that. I'm like, hey, whatever, you know, it's great. And you know, it's funny at the time you're doing the film, you record it. You haven't slept in, you know, two or three weeks. You collapse, you know. And the next thing, somebody calls you 10 years later and says, you know, it's a cult film. You say, it is? Yeah, this movie, I mean, you had so much to play with, you know, visually and just sort of the ideas. Oh, a car alarm? No, no, we're okay. You know, I remember, you know, actually being disappointed watching Conan because, you know, when I saw it in theaters originally because it seemed to me it was like all sword, no sorcery. There wasn't a lot of exotic, crazy stuff. It was like, you know, Daryl and Ronas is like, all they could do before it was a snake. It's like King Kong, he just gives you a snake and the same thing in Conan. But this movie had some amazing visual stuff and the whole sequence when they're moving the, you know, unborn infant from his mother into a cow, there's a glowing poison they put on their necks. There's the whole idea, the animals and the powers you have to work with. There's these bat men that come back. You turn into a soup. Yeah, I mean, and the witch, you know, climbing up the ceiling, I mean, there's some incredibly imaginative stuff in this. Well, again, this is his, you know, he basically created this thing. I think it's his script too, isn't it? Yeah, he co-wrote it. He co-wrote it, yeah. So he really envisioned this, you know, and I was very fortunate because he happened to be a music lover, you know. And so he was an ally to me. You know, he kept saying, I want the music to do this here and do this here and do this here. And I said, yeah, I'm writing notes as fast as I can, you know. And I had to do it and I did it fast. But I love this stuff. He pushed me a certain way and that was great. That's what you look for, you know. What do you remember him talking about in terms of, like, treating some of the specific things like the bat men and the kind of whore? There's basically, you know, a ripped horns villain. There's this kind of mongled whore to come in at the beginning and at the end. And the bat men, all that he had to create like a dark, kind of different dark things. No, no, no, he wanted that. But like I said, we didn't have a lot of time. He left some of it up to me, but he told me specifically, he said, I want this to happen here. I want this to happen here. He said, give me a beautiful theme for the eagle, you know, that kind of stuff. And then he said, go right, you know. Right, right. So that's what you do, you know. And by the way, the stuntman told me that that eagle was very lazy. He would only fly downwards. So they would take him way up on this high tower, and they would release him, and he'd make these circles. And they put the camera at certain angles, you know. Those of you shooting, you know what, you probably know what they're talking about. So it looked like he was going up, you know. He was just going down. And the eagle was like, where can I land? And nothing else. I love stuff like that, you know. And then when you see the movie, you're like, wow. And Don kept saying to me, he said, with music they'll think he's flying, you know. Were you thinking of, I think, are they the Johns? Yeah, yeah. And they're not the Huns, they're the Johns. The Johns, yeah. For their kind of motif, were you thinking at all of the D.S.E. Ray? A little bit. There's that drum, that drum. I thought a little bit of Stravinsky crypt in there, maybe possibly, you know. You can't help it, you know. I grew up in a symphonic world like many of you. And, you know, all this great stuff is around you. So if you kind of, a little bit here and a little bit there, that's what, but I can go through Beethoven and Mozart and Brahms and show you where they kind of listen to stuff, you know. So it's just the natural thing that you do as a composer. You're influenced by what's around you. And certain things that affect you and you think about, well, you know, I like what so-and-so did with that. You know, maybe something along those lines. And when you're in a hurry, you do that a little more than all of them. Well, it's funny because, I mean, there are many movies that very explicitly reference the D.S.E. Ray. This doesn't really, it's just like almost the first couple of notes that goes off. So I think most people wouldn't make the connection. You know, I can go to a big blockbuster movie nowadays and I know what they tempt the movie with because I hear the composer struggling to write something just like the temp but avoid a lawsuit. And it's embarrassing and it's terrible what that does to you. And they didn't have time to tempt this movie. So they kind of turned me loose on it. You know what I'm saying? And that was a big advantage for me because I wasn't being told it has to be this way. It's like, well, something like this, something like that. Do something over here, do something over here. And I really, I really believe that in a sense I wanted to see, like I said earlier, this sort of ascent, this man that is reaching for a higher plateau and that's what powers the whole thing. And all the dark stuff, that's just fun. You know, you just write the darkest music. You can write, you know, get those string clusters down there and get those drums and just throw it in there. And it all works, you know. What were you using for this? I don't know whether it's an electronic or something. There's a little bit, yeah, a little bit. Yeah, there's a little bit in there. We had to sort of kind of overdub that a little bit because they didn't really have that in the orchestra in role but we added it in a little bit and put some electronics on it. And you have a beautiful love theme. You don't really get to use it a lot but it's almost like a madrigal, kind of theme. Again, he said write a beautiful theme for her. And I thought that kind of renaissancey thing would fit. I don't know why. You never know what period these movies are in. You know, you say, what year is that? Shhh. Same thing with Conan. What year is that? 857 BC. It's a high-hyborian. I mean, another thing that's struck me about this movie is that, you know, you have a fantastic villain in Rip Torn. And there's a scene where, that's a white-knuckle amazing scene where he's sacrificing the second kid. You watch him throw a little kid in the flames and then he calls up for another one. Yeah. And they build this whole sequence and you have your eagle circling and the Beastmaster trying to do it a thousand feet away from this guy. And then they actually throw this kid in. He's like being shoved down into this pit of flame. Oh, gosh. Flash crawling. I think Don read some of those Mayan Aztec legends, you know, about throwing people in these temples. You know, they would throw people in. If you ever read any Mayan history, it's pretty bloody and awful. You know, they would throw people in down pits and stuff in temples. So I think he vaguely was kind of referring to that a little bit. It creeps me out. Yeah, I mean, what's really amazing about the movie, they set up, you know, that he's really one of the most fiendish villains you could possibly have, but they kill him before the climax of the movie. And I mean, I was going to ask you, and I didn't even realize how little time you had to write this. So I'm sure like, you know, architecture was probably the last thing on your mind, but when, you know, the standard thing when you're doing this kind of score is you key in unlike the death of the villain, and that's going to be a huge moment for you. So you had another whole gigantic battle scene to score after that. The big battle with the horde that comes and that big finale, that is kind of the last big moment of the film and that thing that he did in slow motion was fantastic for music, I thought, you know, and I just literally pulled all the stops out there. And I love the way the film goes into the ending from there and it's very lifting and he goes up into the mountains and she follows him and, you know, the whole thing. Also, very touching when the one ferret dies, you know, I cried. Sacrificed his life. That little guy. Well, yeah, even earlier, too, when the quicksands, they pull the ferret down into quicksands. I was like, where's the... I wonder if the animal people were wrong. I know they have the usual thing about that, but they didn't say no animals were harmed. I'm sure they were, animals were at least severely annoyed. I love that. That's great. That's the ending, too. It's such a complicated... You've got the juns and then the Batman come in. So you really have to... That was so interesting to me because you have to bring back this kind of disturbing music for the Batman because they're frightening characters initially and then you have to basically underscore the fact that they're heroic. There's a noble moment in the score when he looks up and he sees the Batman and it's kind of like, you know, we owe you. We're loyal to you. I played that. I said, you've got to play the loyalty because they are coming back and paying a debt back to him. And then they're scrunching everybody to death. So you get this heroic moment and you... I think, you know, people probably assumed this was the first kind of epic-sounding score that you may have done and I talked to you about this earlier but the thing... The first music I ever heard from you was the score of Jonathan Livingston's Seagull which is another very unusual project and this was like 1973 but it also has like an incredible like first flight to one of the most exciting pieces of music from my childhood and it's got a very epic quality to it. Yes. Well, I... It's been one area that's been good for me is the epic sort of quality. There is a movie of mine called The Pack which is not well known. It's an early Warner Brothers film where I did try out a lot of horror stuff. It was about an island that was ruled by a pack of dogs and it was attacking everybody on the island and there was a lot of really stirring dark music and that and that kind of got my chops going a little bit in terms of what to do for that kind of stuff. So I've been... I've lurked around it but you don't get asked to do those things a lot. Well, what happened after Beastmaster was not a huge success when it was originally and eventually became a cult film but did you get work? Shortly after that I think you did Wizards and Warriors Yeah, Wizards and Warriors was a... Yeah, Wizards and Warriors was a complete valentine to Eric Wolfgang called Corn Dome and it was like, you know, and those guys, you know, that's all that was and the producer of that loved that music and he said, I'll write you some of that music. But I don't see necessarily the kinship Beastmaster was kind of in its own thing. If anything I see the Beauty and the Beast TV series it came so after that kind of having some elements but you know, I don't know, like you said the movie wasn't a success right away it was ten years later somebody tapped me on the shoulder and said it's a cult film and I said it's what? It is? Yeah, I was reading that they showed it so much on like TNT and they just called it the Beastmaster Channel Yeah, I mean, you know, I did remember that there was a period where it was on TNT every week Were you ever approached? Did you do the sequel? There was talk about it but then all the producers, the whole thing changed in the different companies It was all like weird I never thought it was quite as good Does anyone here have the score to End of Thin Air? Okay, this is my favorite work by you and it's a score for a TV movie about people climbing Mount Everest and like this huge disaster that happened but that is, I mean every bit is epic if not more epic I think than Beastmaster, it's an incredible recording I'm not even sure how it would have happened because of the TV movie Well, they did want an orchestra and they did give me 60 pieces in London members of the Philharmonic Orchestra which is one of the top orchestras in the world but the budget was tight so one of the beauties of that CD if you can get it, if you're an audiophile that orchestra was recorded basically with some stereo mics and some overheads and that's what's on the CD there's no tracking, nothing what you hear is literally like a live performance right off the floor and the engineer did a brilliant job of capturing it and that CD is amazing because it's literally, you see the orchestra sitting right there and what I heard on the podium is what you hear in that orchestra there were no baffles, nothing in the room and I had a lot of fun in that because we used these Tibetan gongs and the percussionists at the Philharmonic loved this oh yes, we call them nipple gongs because they have the little so I'd say that nipple gong do you have one in the key of C? do you have a C? yeah, this nipple gong is in C he loved this this went on all day long I was watching Everest which has got 3,000 times the budget of that TV movie and I just kept thinking, jeez, I wish this had the score to get to Daenerys it's got this, I mean somehow you created the idea of the effort of climbing the mountain it's incredibly percussive it's got this fantastic rhythm that drives through these cues it's an incredible cue when they actually reach the summit it's amazing if you guys like the Beastmaster you have to have the score it's fun to listen to because there's no edit it's totally just the recording naked as it is it is a thunderous it's interesting thing about certain directors like Don Cascarelli directed this and my friend Robert Markowitz who directed Into Thin Air and I did Tuskegee Airmen with him he doesn't believe in temp scores he gives you the film naked so if you play a note he's, oh, that's beautiful you know, I mean, it's like, oh, yeah, you like that, huh? but the marvelous thing about that is being able to say, okay you just have to create whereas if you get the film with a temp score on it and they say, this is what I want you sit there and you're haunted by something else, you know and it's very difficult it's very difficult but Into Thin Air, Tuskegee Airmen, Beastmaster these are films that I came to a blind canvas and just the director being a cheerleader and saying, I want this Robert Markowitz, big classical music lover built big film score lover loves all the great classics and he would say to me, I want, you know this is what I want here and I want here and I want this to soar over here and I remember him saying to me the first time in Tuskegee Airmen the guys go into it the guy goes into a dog fight he says, what can you do musically that changes somehow this is the first time he's in a dog fight what do you think? and he threw that at me he said, think about it you know, and I went home and I said, serial music 12-tone music haven't used it yet it changes at that point so you say harmonically it's a subtle thing but you're saying the guy's gone into a different place you know but I love directors that challenge you like that because that pushes you out the window so to speak and say, go do something different what kind of inspired you to actually get into the scoring movies and was there anyone you saw as a role model or an inspiration well, I grew up in Costa Rica and I was studying violin and I wanted to be a classical composer but my mother took me to the movies all the time and I saw all the great movies everything from Ben Hurd or whatever and you just sit there wow, that sounds fantastic so it's always there I studied in Boston and New York and I was more going towards the concert world I did some operatic writing and some ballet writing and everything and then this guy approached me one day he had done a ten minute film and so I did some music for him and the next thing you know the bug bites you but I used to haunt the old theaters in New York and go to the New Yorker theater and see like Francois Truffaut festivals and stuff like that and I was always marveling at the scores that Giorgio Zellerou did four, five, six, maybe a small chamber group and they were marvelously evocative and they had great little thematic things and they were quirky like shoot the piano player don't shoot the piano player that score and that sticks with you and that goes with you as you think about it yeah, people always think of him for those kind of small little like Vivaldi scores but he did a couple of epic he did a couple of medieval things absolutely anybody have any questions for Lee Holdrich? you sir oh wonderful, yeah, Jack Bender is the director of that was a good friend of mine we had done a number of TV movies together and we had a great great rapport we worked really well together and he did call me said I'm doing this marvelous movie I want you to do the music so I was on board right from the beginning which was very fortunate and loved the movie I just loved the movie and that would help Harold Arland's ghost staring at you from the other side of the world but you know the movie was different because it was not about it's about the guy that wrote it and about what he went through so I had a lot of fun with that and a lot of fun with that and it was very beautiful, very touching and again Jack, I've been very fortunate Jack Bender loved music he loves music so when you get to work with a director that loves music they really sort of they make you feel good they make you want to write you kind of do something really beautiful for this he would say make me cry here you know like the Dorothy the little girl he said make me cry here and man I spent days on those eight bars where was it recorded? that was here that was here was that the old remember there used to be a studio on the old CBS lot it's gone now in studio city thank you they're gone what's going on? why are these studios disappearing? it's not a good thing anyone else? splash oh yeah I love splash I love splash I mean that still to me is one of the best romantic comedies that anybody ever did and I'm going to tell you something I really think you know I see a lot of romantic comedies what they're missing is the writing the script the writing in that is absolute gem when you think about it right from the get go every bit of dialogue every bit the same guys wrote Night Shift which is another one this is hysterical hysterical script but I think it makes a huge difference and I mean that movie was so well done so well put together they didn't use all my score for it you know they were very sort of anti they were a little anti music yeah a little bit it's weird talk a little bit about the little animated return to the world of barbarians Korgoth Korgoth Korgoth it was on YouTube yeah it's on YouTube it's a little bit of a cartoon version of Beastmaster that's kind of very strange more rock and roll I had some guys come in put your guitar on it and everything and stuff so it sounds that way it's a good little score oh thank you a lot of people don't know that I could do that stuff I said you know I did have a little bit of a rock and roll year before Neil Diamond when I was kind of a rocker but I don't like to tell people about it too much not this crowd I'm curious on something like Beastmaster where you have crazy time pressure and your stuff is so thematically distinctive and to be just sort of delightfully tuneful but committing to these notes in this order and then start writing and how tough is it to know you know it's going to be it's right enough how do you write it that oh gosh I don't know you have to really you know I've been composing since I was 10 years old you know I mean this is like breathing to me composing I mean I I drive on the freeway down things are going through my head all the time it's a very natural process to me to compose it really is and you know it's even more fun when there's a film because now you put your focus on it you know I gotta tell you it's tough when somebody says write a concert work and say about what you just have to make it up but a film helps you and like I said these directors are great because they give you little things that they want but I was just jazzed with Beastmaster I was just having a good time with it and you know you gotta make the timings to change things have to hit but they didn't always hit they were still editing a little bit so I just said oh well it'll work out in the wash but it did but things like you know that when he does the sword and the orchestra it's like he's conducting the orchestra that scene where he's up on the cliff it just kind of worked out but I just watched him and I made sure the tempo went with him you know Can we talk a little bit about the Longway Home? Now the Longway Home is a very beautiful touching film I don't want to keep boring you guys but they they had a composer for that film and they were not happy and I have to quote the rabbi he says can't you find me someone who could write a melody so I don't know through various sources I came on the scene and I wrote that opening sequence I played it for them on the piano and they loved it and who knew that film would win an Academy Award you know I mean it was like Billy Crystal had that great line he was the host that year when Rabbi Hire and Rick Trank went up to accept the Academy Award for the film Billy Crystal said even my rabbi is winning Oscars what's going on here I always remember that so I think we've got another montage to show right? ascending four chord thing I used that all through the film there's a four note thing at the beginning of that sequence that you take things like that it's like a symphony you take building blocks that you have and then you bring them back and then you elaborate on them and maybe you reverse them and you do all that stuff all my friends Dimitri Shostakovich and Bella Bartok they all did that and Hindemith and all the great guys you know that's such a great encapsulation of the whole score all the heroic elements the kind of texture for his power over the animals you have the eagle music and the Beast Master theme they're all intertwined and I think that's what you try to do in symphonic writing is that they may sound different but then you realize they're part of the same feeling that's what I love that in my heart I'm a symphonic sort of that's my background that's where I came from so I always go back to that well and I sit in awe of the guys that did that came before me and I say how dare you even let me into your room to listen to your work much less you know what happens to me a lot in LA I'm sitting there and I'm writing and I think I'm doing a good job and everything and then I've got to go run an errand I get in the car and I put on serious radio and then I say oh that's how you're supposed to compose music so we also have the what is the climactic battle scene right right right yeah yeah so we can show that and then I think we're going to get stuff signed right yes that's okay tailwind yeah right that was a really difficult project to work on because of his animation and trying to fit to what he had done and make it work with his tempos you know I had to work literally to his cuts because he had already done the animation it was very hard and in a lot of cases he didn't have the rights to certain songs like he wanted Sinatra but he couldn't get permission to do Sinatra and we did that beautiful montage where he gets married and the guy sounded like Sinatra I forget his name he's a studio singer here in LA he could do Sinatra and you know it was fun to do but it was hard to do I have a funny funny story for you guys about that but I don't know if we have time alright so he wanted blue suede shoes with Presley towards the end of the film okay I said you know I know all the he couldn't get the permission to use the record I said let's re-record it get the permission to do the song we'll re-record it we'll do it as an instrumental I said you know I know the guys that worked with Presley they're around their studio plays I'll get those guys they went on a road with him they know the song we'll do it we'll take him into the studio we'll do blue suede shoes I said you know Ronnie Todd they were all James James I forget his name from Nashville good great guitar player anyway they were the original Presley guys and so I took them into the studio and we start playing blue suede shoes I said Glenn do we need music no no no we know the song yeah okay so you know guys start playing it so they start playing it Ralph Bakshi comes on it's too slow I always said Ralph these are the these are the original guys I'm sure they know the tempo no it's too slow well Ralph no it's too slow we were yelling at each other so finally we cut a track but the music editor and I went to Ralph's house the next day okay let's go listen to the record at your house we'll listen to the tempo and compare it to our tempo he had one of those old turntables you've already figured out the ending it was playing too fast it was like a quarter tone high we were like oh no so the music editor had to speed up our track but that's why you thought it was too fast but it's really a brilliant film it's a very strange film it's kind of strange but there's some marvelous sequences in it and very eclectic very eclectic you know supposedly a history of pop music but Owen I almost came to blows with it L.A. Times music critic pop music critic we'll leave names out he couldn't get a white rabbit you know the what's her name Grace Slick he couldn't get that record he wanted it I said I'll do a sound like he said you can't do that I said oh yeah I bet I can and I knew this girl who sang with Eric Clapton who toured with him named Marcy Levy she could do Grace Slick like that so again we did a take down of the original track I had got all the guys got Lisa all the best studio session players we went in with Marcy Levy we cut this track and the L.A. Times pop music critic argued with me he said no that's the original recording I said no no it's not I know it when I hear it and he he was I thought he was going to hit me and I kept saying you know it's Marcy Levy in the studio guys no it's not he said okay whatever whatever whatever you say alright let's watch oh what one more thing about there are I told about that the violin concerto yeah oh okay okay well so let's watch Rip Torn finally finally takes forever oh oh you plenty of time to compose because they stall off on killing him for like ten minutes in the scene to me I remember you know they wanted a lot of theme through that they said we want to hear the theme a lot through this and say okay okay because this cue came a little later and I liked making the ultimate climactic moment when he picks up the ferret you notice that that's the moment of triumph because that you know just to me that's the thing it's there it is that's his caring and his goodness that he has yeah that's such a tricky mind when I was watching it like well they robbed you at the moment of you know really celebrating the death of Rip Torn because you have to voice to the sadness of the ferret sacrifice but I didn't mind that in a way because I thought it was nice to make the epic point really the picking up of the ferret and standing there that to me is like it's like in an opera one that's the moment you know yeah it's funny you'd say that because watching the film is the way Cuscarelli directs actors is a very theatrical especially a lot of the early people are posing and being very declamatory well and Rip Torn is a lot of fun what a great villain to have he just milks it for whatever it's worth they milk it I mean they keep cutting back and he's just kind of like you know he's not dead I made a choice for a reason that when he stabs Rip Torn the character it's a major chord it's not a minor chord often composers like to play that chord but I play it as major because to me it's like his triumph over that evil that's to me is my head is always working on those other things yeah yeah it's a you know when you're watching it you know the only way to kill this guy he has to go into the sacrificial night sooner or later watch two kids but you know that's the only way to dispose of it so he's not going to get killed by some little knife you know if you watch a movie an action movie and for some reason the establishing shot is a pit of snakes and then they go over here you know sooner or later someone's one that's coming it's like okay when are they going to get there any final questions before you rush to have him sign your yes I guess it was curious though when you went to Rome to record this it was sort of a little movie in a way and you get then it makes a question about like when you work with different orchestras around the world I was curious it's like how are different things received do you feel you were treated as seriously just based on the music even though it was a star film oh yeah absolutely they gave me five days of recording with this large large orchestra and it was great the percussion guys had a blast they kept bringing all these old gongs and things and you want to use this you know whatever but I was very I loved doing it I had a blast conducting it because I felt like it's really this is what I liked doing I loved doing this kind of music and I felt I feel like because I I'm a classical guy that the way I work with an orchestra is I don't say this is not serious music it's all serious and we play it as well as we can and we get I get as much out of them as I can and we do it quickly because you know the clock is going and they were like school kids because you know that week was the semifinal in Rome of the World Cup soccer and Italy won the semifinal and they went nuts they got so drunk they came to the studio Thursday morning with dark circles we'll just do some quiet cues this morning you know and as you know that year 82 Italy went on to win the World Cup soccer and the loser that year was Argentina and that was also earlier that year Argentina had lost the Falklands war so in September of 82 Argentina had a new government you know they said look we can lose the Falklands war but we lost the World Cup soccer you guys are out of here alright yes yeah I'm thanks to Lee Holdridge and if you have something for him to sign please open it don't make him open it nice man strong man but this take it out on him I was stronger then thanks for this wonderful score