{"id":11306,"date":"2024-06-26T14:47:14","date_gmt":"2024-06-26T14:47:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=11306"},"modified":"2024-06-26T14:47:53","modified_gmt":"2024-06-26T14:47:53","slug":"dave-grusins-good-and-bad-memories-scoring-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=11306","title":{"rendered":"Dave Grusin\u2019s good and bad memories scoring movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>By Ray Bennett<\/p>\n

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, \u2018He\u2019s a chameleon, he can do anything.\u00a0 <\/span>His range is enormous.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

Grusin has more than one hundred movie composing credits with eight Academy Award nominations for scores to films including Pollack\u2019s \u2018The Firm\u2019 (1993) starring Tom Cruise (bottom photo) and Steve Kloves\u2019s \u2018The Fabulous Baker Boys\u2019 (1989) starring Jeff Bridges, Beau Bridges and Michelle Pfeiffer (below), which Pollack produced. He won the Oscar for Robert Redford\u2019s 1988 picture \u2018The Milagro Beanfield War\u2019 (above).<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Grusin (left\u2019 had varying experiences on those three films.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018\u201cThe Milagro Beanfield War\u201d was both a dream and a nightmare,\u2019 he told me. \u2018The 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\u2019t know why. The Academy Award notwithstanding, in the final analysis it became a disappointing experience. I\u2019d rather not comment further, particularly regarding Robert Redford. For the record, it was mysterious and painful.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018The Fabulous Baker Boys\u2019, he said, was \u2018nothing 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.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Sydney Pollack told me that he decided his Memphis-set thriller \u2018The Firm\u2019 should have a bluesy score. \u2018I didn\u2019t want one of those conventional straight-ahead thriller scores\u2019, \u00a0he said. \u2018I 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\u2019s a lot of music in that picture.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

Grusin said, \u2018\u201cThe Firm\u201d was, of course, a tour-de-force for a piano player. I will always be grateful for Sydney Pollack\u2019s determination to stick with the solo keyboard format. Ultimately, his dedication was what made the score work.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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, \u2018He\u2019s a chameleon, he can do anything.\u00a0 His range is … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,8],"tags":[3163,487,5459,4529,1747,1132,1765],"class_list":["post-11306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-interviews","category-music","tag-beau-bridges","tag-dave-grusin","tag-jeff-brudges","tag-michelle-pfeiffer","tag-robert-redford","tag-sydney-pollack","tag-tom-cruise"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11306"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11313,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11306\/revisions\/11313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}