# Stories of replaced very famous hollywood composers



## impressions (Jul 20, 2011)

i don't know if it's ok to post it, as it may be bad publicity for the composers involved, but my curiosity (killed the cat).

so here is the story of "troy" movie blogged by the very composer:
http://thescreamonline.com/film/film4-3/yared.html

the composer worked for a whole damn year, the director loved it, but as the screening with the test groups and producers came, it was totally rejected.
what a HUGE bummer, and to top it-you can never hear that soundtrack anywhere since it's the production's company propriety.
i can understand them, since he probably over-did it, and they were forced to hire a new guy, paying twice the money and getting a fast made soundtrack.

second story which i don't know why-"treasure planet" alan silvestri which i'm a huge fan of him, was replaced by james howard newton. 
couldn't find the google-reason for it, i don't believe it was money issues, right?
they had the same artistic acclaim, and probably the same fee.

edit:
got it, 
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133240/trivia?tr=tr0746486
alan left to work on lilo & stich..i guess those deadlines can really get you, i hope he didn't pay a fine for leaving his contract, don't give any ideas to the producers in hollywood.


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## CouchCow (Jul 20, 2011)

There's a nice list here: http://rejectedfilmscores.150m.com/list.html

I didn't know the original pirates score was rejected because of woodwinds heh..


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## impressions (Jul 20, 2011)

thanks!
well i guess that sums it up then


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## Justus (Jul 20, 2011)

Unbelievable story!
I wonder if they did test screenings with Horner's score?


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## handz (Jul 20, 2011)

impressions: you do know that you can find the rejected score on the net dont you? In case you dont it is also on youtube. 

Listened to few things from Yareds Score and Horners while ago - Producers (or whoever is responsible) are bunch of dumbasses, if they ae telling that Yareds score was old fashioned etc etc - it WAS (in a a good meaning of the word ) BUT Horners score is almost same in nature - orchestral, melodic, reminds me classical movies in some parts .


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## lux (Jul 20, 2011)

i vaguely remember an old story which involved Kevin Kostner, but cant recall who the composer was.


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## handz (Jul 20, 2011)

from the web: "Mark Isham did write and record a complete score to Waterworld. It was thrown out after director Kevin Reynolds was fired and Kevin Costner replaced him. James Newton Howard was brought in literally at the very last minute to write and compose a score just before the movie's release on July 28, 1995"


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## Christian Marcussen (Jul 20, 2011)

handz @ Wed Jul 20 said:


> from the web: "Mark Isham did write and record a complete score to Waterworld. It was thrown out after director Kevin Reynolds was fired and Kevin Costner replaced him. James Newton Howard was brought in literally at the very last minute to write and compose a score just before the movie's release on July 28, 1995"



Great adventure score by Howard. It was the first score of his to put him on my radar.


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## lux (Jul 20, 2011)

Yeah, but i kinda recalled that urban legend where Kostner disappeared with an excuse during a session at Ishams studio and never came back, automatically firing him without a word. Something like that...not sure where i read that.


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## impressions (Jul 20, 2011)

handz @ Wed Jul 20 said:


> impressions: you do know that you can find the rejected score on the net dont you? In case you dont it is also on youtube.
> 
> Listened to few things from Yareds Score and Horners while ago - Producers (or whoever is responsible) are bunch of dumbasses, if they ae telling that Yareds score was old fashioned etc etc - it WAS (in a a good meaning of the word ) BUT Horners score is almost same in nature - orchestral, melodic, reminds me classical movies in some parts .


thanks handz, my mistake i saw some fake youtube links wasn't sure if that was gabriel's.

i know from my sources, that it was way too bombastic for faces like brad pitt, when you see brad pit, supposedly powerful and beautiful-putting such bombastic music on that particular face-would only caricaturize him. and obviously it did.
in the end the money calls the shots, doesn't matter how pure and artistic your music is.
they want to get payed for their investment, they want it to be a success and especially a commercial success, who can take that from them?


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## lux (Jul 20, 2011)

aaahh,

here's the thread i remember

http://vi-control.net/forum/viewtopic.p ... 18&start=0


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## EastWest Lurker (Jul 20, 2011)

Thee is a saying in L.A. that goes "you are not a real composer until you have had a score thrown out."


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## David Story (Jul 20, 2011)

John Williams went through a phase where he bowed out of projects early. He had a sense for when it wasn't going to work out.

I saw the Goldsmith score to Legend played live to picture. It's wonderful, dark, Ravelian music. The images are stunning. But the story seems week at times, with both scores helping some. Just different. Though the famous Dance is more magical with Tangerine Dream. Goldsmith could have done that too, so it's a puzzle. Or confused direction...

I was also at the rescoring of Troy, again the new score helped in parts, in others, not so much. 

Most composers are brought in late, and have to support scenes that don't work, as well as ones that do. You can't save them all, so the filmmakers may get desperate and bring in someone else. But they can't save them all either. 

Jaws is an entire film that was saved by music. And that's because there was really only one problem, and when that was fixed, everything else worked.

A really notable replacement is JNH over HS for King Kong. I heard that HS was noted to death, and walked.

It's all about keeping the producer and director calm and steady in the face of pressure. Often replacement scores are Frankenscores, bits from many sources. "OK, this one here. That works, right?"


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## handz (Jul 20, 2011)

impressions @ Wed Jul 20 said:


> handz @ Wed Jul 20 said:
> 
> 
> > impressions: you do know that you can find the rejected score on the net dont you? In case you dont it is also on youtube.
> ...



I dont know I would not say that it was too bombastic, Yareds music was in fact more modern than Horners "classical" OST, he uses some intensive percussive passages with some ethnic singing pasages (I hate that but it is nowdays considered "modern") other than that it containing some pretty cool choir and orchestra epic music which for this kind of film (anyway it was nothing so special in the end) was great. 

Horner did his classical late fill score (using his signature riff again as he doing it from Willow (then he was The Man) or maybe earlier. 

It was proven that almost EVERYTHING works in movies, we who are like movie music are reviewing it too criticaly as we are listening it whitout movie itself, but for movie audience even crappy synth score worked in the past and I dont think that music can affect the movie in negative way (unless it would be very bad and loud) in reviews the music is almost never mentioned, at least I never red something like "movie suffers from medicore music"- medicore SFX, Playing... but not music


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## lux (Jul 20, 2011)

Man, Troy was such a hyper-crappy movie that i hadnt a chance to even listen the score...i was so upset. And i'm a big popcorn movies eater. But that one was full of ridicolous story shortcuts, embarassing dialogues and various goofs that really....


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## handz (Jul 20, 2011)

Agree, boring, sad that even those once great directors are not proof of good blockbusters anymore.


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## impressions (Jul 20, 2011)

so its the old saying, "normal" people still can't tell between junk and art?

nice, but i completely disagree, and here's my explanation: those people might not even be aware of the music quality or sound, but it influences them just as much-whether it's crappy or its great. you come outside the theater after watching a film with a sense of some kind, that's what counts. 
most hollywood movies are total trash, even woody allen began to fake it, they are as much forgettable as the next one.
so, you may think you are right, right? no-depends on the composer. everyone remembers jaws,star wars, enterprise, i mean- every normal person even. so that's all the proof i need between great music and crappy one.


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## handz (Jul 20, 2011)

Yeah but that is something absolutely diferent - 
Everyone remembers GREAT scores, because they are Great itself, but do you heard many people saying things like -"the movie wasn´t bad, but the music pulled it down" "wish there were better music" Im saying it! - because Im the fan of film music but people usually dont care so much ... great music will remain in memory, medicore not, but did not ruin good the movie.

and yes, people who are not fans of classical arts usually can´t tell between junk and art -at least most of them, show someone who isnt interested in arts Pollock or Piccasso and you probably would hear "this is art? I can do this too, what is this? " 

And also is good to point out that the Yareds Score is good, better than Horners IMO, but even his score have high standard, the movie would be crap with both, so it is irrelevant 



Movies are not done for music fans but for movie audience which are from very different ranks. Orchestral music is still standard for filmscoring (God bless) but how many of the movie audience is listnening to orchestral music on its own - 5%?


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## impressions (Jul 20, 2011)

you're going in circles.

movies that have the highest budget from marketing or for special effects, aren't necessarily successful-there are proofs of movies that used 100-200 million dollars and got 10% incomes from it. why? because it didn't work, the people who first saw it gave it a shot, and it sucked.

troy didn't suck, it was a blockbuster and the testing groups didn't have a clue about orchestral scores. you can see the difference of the bombastic'ness of gabriel's and the calmness and romanticism of horner-which fitted much better to pitt's character, IMO as well. 

normal people aren't aware of the music-that's what's so great about film scoring, you can really make them feel something different on that picture, especially if they don't have a clue about music, they just listen to the atmosphere.

why do you dismiss the power of music so easily? as film composer you won't have fans like rock stars, but you'll know if you're score worked according to people's reaction.

i've seen the effect music has on people-for worse and bad. bad music just doesn't take you out of your seat, its just too stuck in itself, like it's talking to itself and not showing it to the audience, it get's you down instead of lifting you, it blurs your vision of the picture, making it dull, boring, and you can't relate to that. it just sucks. you may not know it, as a normal person who hasn't got a clue in music, but you're feeling like you're being hassled. 

maybe it'll work a few times, but you can't just give bad scores and expect people will have a positive reaction.

i'll say again, don't dismiss the power of music. when played true-it strikes hard!


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## germancomponist (Jul 20, 2011)

EastWest Lurker @ Wed Jul 20 said:


> Thee is a saying in L.A. that goes "you are not a real composer until you have had a score thrown out."



Exactly what a friend told me last week... .


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## devastat (Jul 20, 2011)

Surprisingly Howard Shore was replaced by James Newton Howard in the middle of production for Peter Jackson's King Kong. How much he had scored the film already I do not know.. (My guess would be that the Howard Shore score was too "Lord of the Rings" alike)


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## handz (Jul 20, 2011)

Of course that expensive movies are not always succesful, but again it had NOTHING to do with music used. 

it is point of view but in comparsion to what I call good blocbuster it sucked a lot. (And even Woody is now old fart, his movies are not so good like before, still they are better than majority of todays cheap stories) 

I dont dismiss power of music, you still dont understand me, Im just saying that people would not find difference between movie with two different good scores. Movie with Yareds score would still be succesful blockbuster like with Horners, both music were good, have subtle romantic passage and epic. 


And for example Beltrami (how did he get for scoring blockbusters anyway, there are better composers here on VI, not mentioning todays great game composers who sometimes doing absolutely stunning music. ) and his HellBoy score - music itself is total bore but in movie it working - it "weaves emotions" like it is modern to say  and that is just what movie usually needs, extra things like melody and memorable themes are just bonuses. 

There would be more current examples of bad movie msuic that worked in movie of course but I almost stopped listening to new scores at this time as everything was so weak and standard is gone to a Zimmer oriented symphonic metal rather to nice melodic theme based stuff from then.

Of course - everybody have different tastes, and many people have no complicated taste at all, they are consuments, and this is why the world is working, if everybody have high standards for everything it would be sooo hard


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## Christian Marcussen (Jul 20, 2011)

James Newton Howard is such a gifted composer. His Kong score is perfect for the film and done in like 4 weeks - wall to wall score.


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## impressions (Jul 20, 2011)

i understand you as much as before. 
i just don't agree with your claim that "music that works" , or "weaves emotions" is just as good as any other. there is a big difference between horner and yareds-not professionally but tastefully, he went for the bigger sound the make more impact, and it created the opposite thing. horner already knew that wasn't the right approach with the music, so he went that way.

no matter what if you watch that scene introducing pitt( i hate to do this because i respect them both):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2BxJoWgoyo

and horner's-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SP74aJBbIoY

you'll see it gives a different experience, even to your highly trained ears.

that's as much as i'm going to spend talking about this topic


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## soul_studios (Jul 29, 2011)

I prefer the score that was used in that bit. FOr one, it makes better use of silence.

As for that rejected scores list, for some reason it misses Alien 3, where both composer and director were replaced, and Elliot Goldenthal created a score that got me interested in film music.


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## handz (Jul 29, 2011)

impressions @ Wed Jul 20 said:


> i understand you as much as before.
> i just don't agree with your claim that "music that works" , or "weaves emotions" is just as good as any other. there is a big difference between horner and yareds-not professionally but tastefully, he went for the bigger sound the make more impact, and it created the opposite thing. horner already knew that wasn't the right approach with the music, so he went that way.
> 
> no matter what if you watch that scene introducing pitt( i hate to do this because i respect them both):
> ...




Yareds music is absolutely better in this, i sooo HATE that boring vocal fill like Zimmer using everywhere, that Horner add there to make epic scene "emotional" and those drums... oh man, this trend is os lame, brrrr, todays movies really lacks thing like true epicness. This is why you enjoy Star Wars or even Barbar Conan movies - because there are heroes, fights, action and epic orchestral music that makes it shine and they are not try to pretend that it is some "serious" drama, or at least they pretend it nicely, Horners music is trying to make it "chamber atmosphere" but this is fu*king epic war, heroes and fights, not some serious drama.

_-) o=<


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## SvK (Jul 29, 2011)

Kingkong 

Concerning wall to wall music....thats usually a sign that the film is not working.....

And that the composer is being asked to fix the lousy picture with wall to wall music...

When music is wall to wall it can't make a dramatic entrance because it never left....wall to wall music defeats a score's primary purpose, to add drama.

There is nothing worse.

Best,
SvK


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## clarkcontrol (Jul 29, 2011)

Unless it's Williams and the star wars franchise.

If he was a chef he could make dog sh!t into gourmet food. And he did with the phantom menace.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Jul 29, 2011)

The most famous example is Alex North's score to 2001 (which Kubrick ended up tracking with Blue Danube, of course - he fell in love with his temp track).


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## mducharme (Jul 29, 2011)

The 2001 example is very different. Kubrick intended to use the temp-track as the final score from the very beginning, but the studio forced him to hire a composer.

So, he hired Alex North with the intention to throw out the score before North even wrote a note. He did not tell the studio execs that he used the classical soundtrack until it had premiered. North himself did not find out until he saw the film at the premiere and discovered it did not have his music.


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## JonFairhurst (Jul 29, 2011)

SvK @ Fri Jul 29 said:


> Concerning wall to wall music....thats usually a sign that the film is nor working.....


+1


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## impressions (Jul 29, 2011)

mducharme @ Fri Jul 29 said:


> The 2001 example is very different. Kubrick intended to use the temp-track as the final score from the very beginning, but the studio forced him to hire a composer.
> 
> So, he hired Alex North with the intention to throw out the score before North even wrote a note. He did not tell the studio execs that he used the classical soundtrack until it had premiered. North himself did not find out until he saw the film at the premiere and discovered it did not have his music.



wasn't that Also Sprach Zarathrustra by strauss?


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## mducharme (Jul 29, 2011)

Yes, that's what Kubrick used as the temp-track and planned to use (and did use) in the final film. He hired Alex North as a smoke-screen so that the studio would think that he was going to use an original score instead.

I bought North's score on CD, it was really quite good, but it's hard to imagine him topping Strauss for that opening.


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## impressions (Jul 30, 2011)

if that's the case it's impossible to beat, it's like trying to come up with the same level of soundtrack for tarantino's films without temp tracks, doing it from scratch.


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## choc0thrax (Jul 30, 2011)

I still remember watching Horner record his score for Troy live via webcam. Thank you Mr. Ralston!


Here's a Horner interview from a while back about Troy.


DANIEL SCHWEIGER: Now, two films, two recent films that you've scored that I imagine were very challenging were Troy and The New World.

Now, on Troy, you were coming in as the replacement composer for Gabriel Yared and you had already done The Perfect Storm for the director, Wolfgang Petersen. In a way, was it as hard as it was easy? Because, I think you've got two to three weeks to do this score, but because there is like no time for you to do it, that there isn't gonna be the kind of studio second guessing that may have, you know, messed up the first score that was done for it.


JAMES HORNER: Uhm, let me see where I start with Troy.

Wolfgang is very opinionated. And a very proud man. And he wants everything to be huge. The biggest ever, the most grand. "We've never had a shot of 5,000 people or 50,000 army before - look at the shot of the ocean and you see 5,000 ships - that's the biggest shot in history!" I mean, he's very much into this huge old-fashioned grandure, and I think that he was making what he felt was the best film of the decade. I think that was his mindset.

And I wasn't asked to do the original, which was sort of - at the time - a bit of a twinge for me, because I did such a nice job, or he seemed so pleased on The Perfect Storm. Even though everybody, including myself, very very vocally begged him to take down the ocean water sound effects, which he wouldn't do in The Perfect Storm. And I think ultimately it didn't do as well, because people just got overwhelmed by the constant barrage of noise. So it didn't do as well as it was supposed to or as it was promised and hyped to. And I think he felt that he probably could do better musically.

So he started Troy with Gabriel, and of course Gabriel is very well known in Europe. He was going to make this huge Movie of the Decade, the Trojan War, you know, very dramatic. And he worked with Gabriel and gave Gabriel free reign to do whatever Gabriel wanted, without thinking of how an audience might react, or whatever. And the two of them worked, and Gabriel dutifully did whatever was asked of him by Wolfgang, and Wolfgang's musical tendencies are to overscore everything, like a Wagner opera. He's not into subtlety. At all. Not in the slightest. And emotion to him is a 3,000-pieced orchestra playing a sappy violin theme.

I mean, I'm being nice, but not being nice. I'm being - this is what I mean by being direct.

He's a lovely man. These are only issues that become issues when you're in the trenches and you're really working on a film and it has to be stunning and these are the issues you come up with another -- with your employer, or your -- somebody you're working closely with.

So, Wolfgang gave a lot of instructions to Gabriel that were hugely wrong. And just so old-fashioned. And Gabriel dutifully did his job and Gabriel also brings to the project a certain quality that is not necessarily the most cinematic, but perhaps is a little more operatic, and didn't have the experience of scoring a big action movie. His movies are a little bit more refined.

And, you know, his previous, The English Patient, was really very much based on Bach's music. I mean, if you listen to Bach's preludes and fugues and those things you'll hear Gabriel's score. And I suppose I could say you would have to be a trained musician or a musician with some sort of education to know that, but when you hear the two things you think: "That's Bach."

I don't say that to denigrate Gabriel, I only say that to give you an example of how Gabriel was not familiar with this big action movie thing that Wolfgang wanted. And Gabriel and Wolfgang made the score together, fifty-fifty.

So what happens is, they have The Score from God in The Movie from God and they're in London doing post-production. Gabriel has a huge choir, huge percussion, huge this, huge that. And, before they put the chorus on, they brought it to California to preview - the studio insisted on a preview. And Wolfgang was so sure of himself he thought, "Oh my God, you wait until you see the reaction to this movie." And Gabriel hadn't even put the choir on. The choir was doubling some of the string stuff, and it was going to make it more massive, okay?, and he had lots of sort of Middle-Eastern stuff and --

The audience -- They played it for an audience in Sacramento and took the usual focus group and the cards, and there were lots of comments about flaws in the movie, but to a man, everybody said the music is the worst they had ever heard. To a man. I mean, 100 percent take out the score. I'd never heard of a preview where people are so in tune to the music that they even notice it, much less demand that it ruins the movie for them. And in the focus group, the same reaction, they all said, "it's horrible music. Who did this music?" And, you know, I hadn't seen the film. I didn't -- this is all sort of in hindsight, cause I hadn't -- I didn't keep up with the movie.

They previewed it again with the same result, and Wolfgang was white. Completely shaken. Totally lost his confidence. Warner Brothers asked me, I guess because I had experimented with so much music of different cultures in various films, but somebody suggested me, and they approached me, and said, "would you look at the film and tell us what you think? And do you think you could do this if we took out the score?"

And I looked at the film, and it was -- I don't even know how to describe how atrocious the music was.

It was like a 1950's Hercules movie.

And it wasn't because Gabriel's not a gifted writer, it's because he just doesn't have any knowledge of writing film scores. Real film scores like that. And it was like -- It was so corny. It was unbelievable.

And apparently it made the audience laugh in places during serious scenes. And this combination of this "please do it bigger and bigger and bigger" and "more is better" from Wolfgang and Gabriel's, you know, not knowing what cinematic, big cinematic action music should be, they both came up with this score that was absolutely dreadful. Absolutely dreadful.

And I looked at it and I said, "when do you need this score?" And they said, "well, they're dubbing it now, they basically need it -- you have to be finished nine or eleven days at the very most." So I didn't even have the two or three weeks that you alluded to before. I had nine or ten days to do it.

And I met with Wolfgang, and he of course, is completely cowed out, apologetic, emberrassed, everything. Gabriel, meanwhile, in Europe, is furious. Because -- And he's going on his website saying he was cheated and short-changed and they put his music in the film without the chorus and the chorus makes the differenc. And you know, you're saying to yourself, "this guy just doesn't get it." The chorus would have made it worse. If the problem was it was like thick, thick, black loudness over everything. And corny at that. But they hadn't completely -- I hadn't taken on the assignment yet. And I met with Wolfgang, and he was very emberrassed, and said I would be allowed to do whatever I wanted - would I please, please, please, do this, as a favor? And how grateful he would be at that trouble.

Well, that's Hollywood talk. I don't ever expect people to be grateful. If it happens, it happens. Usually it happens with the low-budget filmmakers, because they truly are grateful. But with the big guys, when they say how grateful they are, I, it's not something I put on the bank and put in my pocket. And the example is that, of that is that he didn't ask me to do the next movie he did. He, after all the work we went through, I would not have done - what was the movie he just finished? - the one with the wave that turns the boat over.


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## JonFairhurst (Jul 30, 2011)

James Horner, tell us how you really feel. 

Great interview!


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## impressions (Jul 30, 2011)

now do you believe me?


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## MacQ (Jul 31, 2011)

James Horner complaining that Yared lifted from Bach? Haha, now that's rich.

~Stu


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## impressions (Jul 31, 2011)

it's like complaining that williams sounded like holst in starwars.


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