By Ray Bennett
Great keyboard jazz player Dave Grusin, who turns 90 today, has written many wonderful movie scores including several for the late director Sydney Pollack, who told me, ‘He’s a chameleon, he can do anything. His range is enormous.’
Grusin has more than one hundred movie composing credits with eight Academy Award nominations for scores to films including Pollack’s ‘The Firm’ (1993) starring Tom Cruise (bottom photo) and Steve Kloves’s ‘The Fabulous Baker Boys’ (1989) starring Jeff Bridges, Beau Bridges and Michelle Pfeiffer (below), which Pollack produced. He won the Oscar for Robert Redford’s 1988 picture ‘The Milagro Beanfield War’ (above).
Grusin (left’ had varying experiences on those three films.
‘“The Milagro Beanfield War” was both a dream and a nightmare,’ he told me. ‘The musical opportunity was fantastic and totally wonderful but the director developed a major problem with the score and, basically, decimated it. After all these years, I still don’t know why. The Academy Award notwithstanding, in the final analysis it became a disappointing experience. I’d rather not comment further, particularly regarding Robert Redford. For the record, it was mysterious and painful.’
‘The Fabulous Baker Boys’, he said, was ‘nothing but fun. Everyone involved, including the actors, the writer-director, the producer and the musicians got into the story and the intent. I got a chance to see some true acting talent up close and the two-piano pre-recording was a joy.’
Sydney Pollack told me that he decided his Memphis-set thriller ‘The Firm’ should have a bluesy score. ‘I didn’t want one of those conventional straight-ahead thriller scores’, he said. ‘I thought that one of the things that would make it unique was if we were to try doing the whole thing with piano only. That would be a very audacious thing and the only guy in the world I thought could do it was Dave. Scott Rudin, who was a producer with me on it, thought that was a terrific idea and he supported me totally. I think the studio was a little bit leery because they had a very commercial hot property in the book and suddenly this sounded a little bit weird. But then when they heard it, they all loved it. What he did was amazing because there is nothing but Dave and nothing but a piano in that entire score and there’s a lot of music in that picture.’
Grusin said, ‘“The Firm” was, of course, a tour-de-force for a piano player. I will always be grateful for Sydney Pollack’s determination to stick with the solo keyboard format. Ultimately, his dedication was what made the score work.’
