World Wide Web James Horner Shrine

[Jonny]

Please accept my apologies for this coming out of the blue - I know I virtually never post here any more - but I just had to share this with you all...

I met James Horner today.



Yes, my long-standing ambition to finally shake the hand of the man who inspired my love of film music was finally achieved! This afternoon I went to the "Cinema Legacy" event at the Skirball Center in Los Angeles, to see Horner introduce a screening of The Mission and wax lyrical about Morricone's score, and why it means so much to him as an artist.

Before the event I had the rather unexpected pleasure of being "recognized" as I sat in the Skirball patio minding my own business having a drink! A rather quiet-looking young man crept over and, in a strong German accent said "Are you Jonathan Broxton?" Turns out that this nice young fellow is called Stefan and is from Switzerland, studying at UCLA, and has been lurking at Movie Music UK and at Filmtracks and FSM and Score Reviews and Movie Wave for years and years, and he recognized me from my online pic! So Stefan and I chatted for a bit, until we were joined by one of *his* acquaintances, who turned out to be Jason Worner, Christophe Beck's assistant! So the three of us chewed the film music fat until the doors opened.

There were about 250 people in the auditorium, and the session was moderated by Jon Burlingame, who introduced Horner and basically did an "Inside the Actor's Studio" kind of thing with him on his career - how he got started, why he left academia, his early work with Roger Corman, his whole thing about 'musical colors' and how he approaches his movies, and so on and so forth. It's stuff we've heard him talk about a hundred times before, but it was really neat to be sat 10 feet from him listening to him say it.

He spoke about his frustration with modern filmmaking, about how traditional scoring is a dying art in Hollywood, about how digital editing has forced composers to do double the work in half the time. And then Burlingame threw it open to the floor for open questions. One older gentleman told a really nice story about the movie Iris - about how this man's wife had Alzheimer's, and how the story and the music really touched him - and Horner seemed really moved by this.

After a while, I stuck my hand up and Burlingame pointed at me, so I got to ask a question! I asked the old chestnut - what does he consider to be his own best work - and he said doesn't have a particular favorite score, but that he likes certain scenes in certain movies: the ending of Glory, the execution scene in Braveheart, the finale of Apollo 13, and the scene where Burt Lancaster saves the little girl from choking in Field of Dreams. He went on to say about his liking for musical juxtaposition in movies - rather than scoring the forefront emotion, he scores the subtext, which again is kind of obvious to us, but it was nice for the lay audience to hear about his approach.

Then some bright spark asked a thinly-veiled 'self-copying' question, phrased as "How do you maintain freshness in your scores", and you could see him take a deep breath and go into the whole explanation about musical propriety in Hollywood, about how its a unique facet of film music that you're never allowed to develop an idea from an earlier score in a later score because of who "owns" the music, but how as an artist its unavoidable - he used the Monet example again, about how Monet could basically paint the same painting 20 times, in a very distinct style, and that was acceptable but in film music it isn't. You can tell that, by this stage, he's so used to facing that question that it just doesn't faze him anymore.

This Q&A lasted maybe 45 minutes - and then Burlingame wrapped it up, everybody gave him a round of applause, and that was it. So a few of us (including me) went up to the front to grab a few words with him. I sort of hung back, letting the more rabid fanboys have their few minutes - one woman presented him with a gift bag from Pottery Barn with something in it! - and after they had thinned out I went over and shook his hand and said hello, and got him to sign my Legends of the Fall CD.

I sort of know now what Lukas Kendall meant when he said 'he's not the sort of guy you could go out for a beer with". He really is most *painfully* shy, almost to the point of introversion. He seemed genuinely surprised, almost embarrassed, to hear people saying how much they loved his music, and he looked a little sheepish at all the positive attention.

Stefan and I spoke to him for probably 10 minutes, told him how much I admired his work, asked him how Spiderwick Chronicles and Avatar were coming along. He told us that he was currently working on the new film for Vadim Perelman, the director of House of Sand and Fog, called “In Bloom”, and that he’d just signed to score a new film called “The Boy in Striped Pyjamas”, due to come out in 2008, which is a scoop – you heard it here first folks! And then I asked if I could have my photo taken with him – and he said yes! Et voila…



And with that I shook his hand, said thank you again for all the wonderful music he’s written, and that was that!

And then if that was not enough, we had the pleasure of being able to watch a pristine print of The Mission on the big screen, with Morricone’s masterful score in huge stereo surround sound!

A good day was had by all!

Jonny

[Nick]

Thank you so much for sharing this wonderful event.

Obviously you sort of vanished from here, what with your own film music forum and review site, but it means a lot that you returned to share this.

You are now the envy of everyone on this forum.

Cheers to you, sir.


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(saying it as trailer-trash as you can...) Ya dun goof'd and the consequences will NEVER be the same!

[Saavik]

OMG!!! That must have been quite a day! Thanx for sharing your memories and emotions of it with us! And, BTW, great pic!

[Dimitri]

Dude...I am so jealous!! Wish I could have been there to see Horner face that question. Had I been a bodyguard, I would have had that FilmScoreMonthly fellow fed to the lions down below...

Great opportunity, Jonny - thanks for sharing it with us
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Dimitri Ntatsos

[Antineutrino]

Thanks for sharing this very interesting story with us.

[Shoes]

Hey Jonny-

Thanks for the detailed story! Glad you got to meet him, but it's a shame that (like you said) he doesn't seem the type of guy to go grab a drink with ever.

I think the questions he gets asked by people are completely valid and legitimate, though. He deserves to be asked those kinds of questions. And it seems he has found his answer to them, as well. I think some people keep asking him these questions, hoping to get a different answer from him one of these days, and we/they just need to realize that his answer isn't going to change. We're never going to get a 100% satisfactory answer from him, and that's fine!!!!! People need to learn to live with it, that's all.

Nice pic though! Either you're extremely tall or Horner is a little shrimpy guy! Maybe he needs to stand on a book in order to see over the podium when he conducts??

I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm jealous, but I'm glad you got to fulfill your ambition. Congrats on doing that!

[Jonny]

[Shoes]

[Saavik]

[Nick]

[Saavik]

Nick, take it easy, will you? Mine was meant to be a joke, that's all.

[Nick]

What the hell?

All I did was quote the man who commented about the accent in an UNRELATED discussion, written by the same man who started this thread. So there's no need to tell me to take it easy.
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(saying it as trailer-trash as you can...) Ya dun goof'd and the consequences will NEVER be the same!

[Saavik]

[Nick]

I wasn't correcting anything.
In the thread I linked, someone asked Jonny about Horner's accent, and what I posted was his exact response. I said that he is easily the best person to know because he is British, now lives in the U.S., and is being affected by American speech. Horner is the opposite - an American who grew up in and still commutes to and from the UK, and is therefore very affected by both cultural speeches.

That makes Jonny the best person any of us could ask about Horner's accent because he is living through that change in speech himself, and spoke to him personally.
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(saying it as trailer-trash as you can...) Ya dun goof'd and the consequences will NEVER be the same!

[Shoes]

I formally rescind my joke about Horner's British accent. In retrospect, it wasn't that funny to begin with anyways. It was just Horner's flipflops that caught my eye and made me laugh. I mean what's more Hollywood and American than wearing flipflops to public relations functions??!! It just made me giggle.