Jeron

Mostly because of the hours I do, they are mostly nightmares not dreams, and it means I've got a long day tomorrow.

Rather cool nughtmares though!

Pliskinn

In a similar vein, I dreamed once of being at a party and running into Oliver Stone and Werner Herzog, who were chatting. Stone seemed uncommittedly friendly, but Herzog gave me a deeply cynical "Who the hell ya think YOU are" kind of look before peeling off with Stone in tow.

I remember the first time a dream of mine ever had original score music was for a "scene" in which I was at the bottom of a vast canyon and suddenly tons and tons of water came gushing in. With the water came Goldsmithian swirling strings backing up an odd brass theme that sounded more like Carter Burwell. It fit the mood perfectly! (But, its a dream, so that would only be suspected...)

You guys are weired.

Scott

I'm more of an armchair head doctor than a proper one, but here we go anyway.

Our first question has to be: Why Elliot Goldenthal? Is it because the scores to ALIEN 3 and suchlike scare you? (ALIEN 3 scared the hell out of me, and that's tough to do.)

Second question: Do you actually know what Elliot Goldenthal LOOKS like, or were you just sure, in that dreamlike sense, it was him?

Answer those and I'll have some followups. I'm serious.

Scott,

I'm reluctant to tell you the WHOLE dream because it's likely to form the basis of one of my upcoming stories (no, not to be posted here). I'll tell you this much: it opened with a room full of middle-aged-to-old men, all blind, yet all tapping away at computer keyboards which they can feel only by braille marks -- and they have no comprehension as to what it is they're typing.

That in itself might not make you freak (well, the fact that they're also all of them castrated might do it) -- but the payoff might. But that I keep to myself for now ...

Scott

"Give an extensive analysis of Danny Elfman's scores."

I remember being jubilant at the time. You figure out the link to theatre, though...

I also remember a dream, in which I was back in my high school days, practising with the local teen choir. Then suddenly, out of nowhere came Jerry Goldsmith and started conducting. His facial expression was kind of wild, and as he eventually stepped up on the scene, he started lashing out atonal harmonies on the keyboard, while simultaneously banging his ponytailed hair and waving his arms ferociously. Sort of a maniac version of Jean Michel Jarre.

Later I found out that he had locked his wife into a closet on the first floor, and as the poor woman was helped out, she stuttered:

- "Oh, that's ok. He does that all the time!"

Weird indeed.

I have at many times over the years dreamed of meeting a composer (Goldsmith, Williams, Barry, and on one notable occassion JOHN CARPENTER!?). In the dreams, we speak about their work, most of the time with me as the kind of falling-down, hysterical teeny-bopper fan that I just could never be.....
Anyway, in many of these dreams the composer in question somehow comes to realize that THIS GUY TRULY LOVES MUSIC. At that point I am directed to read a book/take a college course/begin a journey that WILL UNLOCK THE BRILLIANT INNER COMPOSER THAT DWELLS WITHIN ALL OF US. One time, the eminence in question simply touched my head with the palm of his/her hand and "conferred" the Great Gift upon me!
Wow.
You guys are problably never going to speak to me again. I really am NOT on medication (should I be?). I've never really gone "digging" into these dreams -- I've just always assumed that they represented a quiet resolution to my frustration over having received absolutely NO gift of music, nor alliance w/Muse of same.....

DREAM #1
Browsing through Tower Records and finding the complete score to THE TEMPLE OF DOOM.

DREAM #2
Browsing through Tower Records and finding the complete score to JAWS.

After she finished reading them, she warned me "Okay, just remember that this is just off the top of my head, I don't know anything about these people."

Cole-
"It seems like he's in a bad situation with someone and he feels paralyzed, that he can't make a difference."

Dantoris (second dream)-
"Hm... it's interesting that the old is coming back and destroying the new... I wondering if he's feeling some stifled creativity."

Thor-
"Okay, I have no idea."

Mark Hatfield-
"This guy needs to listen! He needs to read the book, take the course, begin the journey, he needs to do what this dream is telling him to do!"

Just thought you all might be interested in the *professional* opinion. Just keep in mind (like she told me to), she doesn't know any of you as well as she would know a regular patient, so it is easily possible for her interpretations to be completely false.

Man, I never expected to get my dreams analyzed on a film music messageboard by a professional therapist! That's a new one!

Oh, this is a WONDERFUL thread. I've gone to the trouble to save it on my "Favorite Places." That way, short of a serious crash, I'll be able to refer to it again. Also helps me sort you guys out (I'm still a newbie here, after all).

Anyway ... Mark Hatfield (hiya buddy), I know intimately what that last dream is about. I have that one all the time, although it's usually directors in my case, and they're usually scorning me. (I mentioned Werner Herzog above, and as well, there was the one where Quentin Tarantino insisted I not sit on the white leather couch. And I don't even like Quentin that much!) I consider myself a writer (well I AM published) and find myself often telling one or two of my better friends that there's no magic to it -- it's just a skill like anything else, and they could do it as well. Not EVERYONE can, or even should (Robert Ludlum, anyone?), but half of getting there is WANTING it. Not being great at it the first time, or even the second, but WANTING it. In my not-so-long life (I'm 31, a relative geezer as this board goes), I've so often seen people who didn't WANT something enough ... so many people with so much potential who never even imagined the brass ring could be theirs, as well. There's a lot of brass rings in the world, after all. Mark, I know almost nothing about you, but I'm curious as to your real ambitions, and hope you get it up to follow them.

Cole ... I'm glad you followed up, and sorry to say that I don't really get it. Not all dreams have cosmic meanings, and, again, knowing virtually nothing about you personally (putting INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE on at a date isn't that weird to me -- ALIEN 3 would be weird, but not INTERVIEW, especially with all these Goth Anne-Rice-worshipping-flower-sniffing-vampires one keeps running into ... and hey, the CD closes with that nice long cover of "Sympathy for the Devil"! Hwoo-Hwooooo!

Well, like the professional therapist cited above, I don't know any of you well enough to offer more than an offhanded theory. Nature of the web, I guess.

James -- thanks for offering that up to your counselor. An interesting note for ya: I kinda figured this out some time ago.....can't say it was all that hard for me, even given limited higher brain functioning. She was dead on. I was badly injured a few years ago while I was in the Army (faulty ammunition cost me some hearing, eyesight, and the loss of my dominant left hand). I spent YEARS convincing myself that I needed to be "gainfully employed" & a productive member of society to be a worthwhile person. I thus spent several years working for a non-profit organization, hoping to give back and work at SAVING lives for a while. Long story short (too late!!!).....I recently resigned & have elected to take up the VA on their offer to send me to school under Vocational Rehabilitation - pays for tuition, books, classroom materials, tutoring, the whole nine yards. I am starting FILM SCHOOL in the summer! Don't know if I'll ever make it; finally decided that while I have done much worthy of regret, I was no longer prepared to regret that which I had NOT done. So, here it goes. During the days lately I have been working on a screenplay, 'natch.

H Rocco -- Hey, buddy! Having stated most of my response to you above I'll try to keep it brief (sound of crowd cheering). Geezer, hell! I'll be 37 in July. Thank god I finally gave myself permission to get out and try following the dream! Would that I had the muse and aptitude for music, though. I'm afraid some folks just can't/shouldn't dive into some waters. You were dead on (as usual) about that. Can I get your e-mail to correspond with you outside of these threads? I'd love to pick your brain & not irritate the good folks at this board that have to scroll past responses like this one! One last thing: in perhaps the ultimate cliche of all time.....what I'd really like to do is Direct.
Apologies to all of you kind people that didn't need The Autobiography of M. I've said it before on other boards & posts -- I love getting to commune with you guys and value the ability to more than you can possibly know. Thanks.

"All I want to do is direct."

I reply,

"Hey, you too?"

Now we must scuffle in the arena to see who gets to go first ... grrrr ... (actually I'm getting closer and CLO-ser ... this time next year ... well, it's a jinx to say so ... too late, I just did it ... )

Sorry about your injury, buddy, but sometimes God hurts us for very specific reasons. (I speak largely metaphorically. I'm not sure I even believe in God.)

(Oh NOW I've done it ... !)

(Actually that's partly what that script is ABOUT ... )

( ... )

Of course, all of that philosophical breadth comes from a guy who VEHEMENTLY argued with the doctors and commander of the military hospital (where he spent 18 months, surgery & rehab) that he should be allowed to keep his amputated left middle finger! I thought that it would be cute to put into a block of Lucite or something, with a little plaque that said "THIS is what I think of your idea". Then I got incensed when they wouldn't let me keep it; I HAD fed & trained the stupid thing, right? It WAS mine, right?

Turned out it wasn't.

Thank YOU, Cole, and the others out there who might stumble into this thread. My own experience has shown me that life is precious & fragile. Sharing this mutual passion for film scores and the movies they adorn helps me to LIVE.

Not so weird actually, but a few nights ago I had one of my music dreams (the ones that still have a certain amount of sanity), in which I lied on the floor of my grandparents' house (don't know why) and all this fantastic music came flowing to me - a coupling of Williams, Elfman, Zimmer and the "Dies Irae"!! A majestic symphonic odyssey with choral accompaniment. The cool thing was that the players performed exactly what I thought, so that for every time I decided to turn the music from e.g. a bombastic crescendo to a subtle woodwind theme, the music followed. Now, that's rapid composing!

And thanks to Mark for telling us (and sorry for your injury, of course). It's always fine to learn more about the other persons on the board. In fact, we did have occassional posts back at the FSM board for exactly that purpose. Thanks to Thor, who started most of them.

BTW, I was stationed in Germany for about 6 years (I HATED leaving Europe!) and had occassion to visit your fine, fine country on numerous occassions while on pass or leave. One of the truly wonderful experiences of my life - I mean, absolute epiphany - was being present for a performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony in Wien. Such power! I cried and laughed & have never forgotten it, or the tremendous courtesy & affabilty accorded me by Austrians in my visits there. Wonderful country, pal. I wish that I could remember the conductor, but I DO remember reading in a paper during that visit that the Russian Premier, Chernenko, had passed away....so it was sometime in 1985, if memory serves.
Honestly, that concert and my great good fortune at getting to see the "Passion Play" in Oberammergau, Germany, are two of the finest things that I have ever been witness to. While my military career may have ended in trauma, I have ZERO regrets. I was exposed to a great deal more, culturally and otherwise, than any little Southern California brat had any right to expect.

Cribbing from Thor & from a tangent we got into on a Horror movie thread a while back, I am going to start a new "bio" thread here just as soon as I hit "Submit Reply" on this one. Go there, won't ya?

Back to dreams.....

While the only composer-oriented film music dream that I have had is listed above, I CAN tell you that almost all of my dreams are "scored". Not much of it is recognizable (although "O Fortuna!" showed up once - sorry, H Rocco! ), but it is all of a "type". Bombastic, chorale-driven, and probably indicative of some subconscious delusions of grandeur!

Actually going back to the Stone/Herzog thing, I met Michael Horse from Twin Peaks and he had just been on the set of NBK to hang out with Downey Jr., and Sizemore-- he was introduced to Stone who kind of distractedly shook his hand with this weird "what the f'k are you doing on my set" look.

I once met Jerry "Shogun" London on some tv movie location. He was at the roach coach getting a hot dog and didn't seem too eager to socialise but I went up to him anyway and said, "hey man, you did Rent-a-Cop! I bought the soundtrack!" "I didn't know there was a soundtrack for that... Jerry Goldsmith. We shot that in Chicago, and Rome." Then he walked off. On that same location I talked to Rodney Grant (who tried to mack on a female friend of mine) from Dances with Wolves and asked him what it was like shooting a Walter Hill movie (Geronimo)-- he made this screwed up face and said "Walter HILL? ... Walter HILL? Why would you want to know about him? EEww. He should quit doing westerns. Did you see 48hrs? He should go back to those."

Anthony Zerbe did that scene from Papillon for me after a lecture two years ago. Surprised anyone my age could remember movies that old. Told me to go make a movie.

Director Jun Fukuda (SON OF GODZILLA, THE WEED OF CRIME, PLAYING WITH FIRE, chief AD on RODAN and Inagaki's SAMURAI TRILOGY) was once amazed that I even knew who his cinematographers had been. We were chatting in special effects guy Koichi Kawakita's former office; Kawakita was all dressed up to go to a wedding. Fukuda waved at him and pointed at me and said "Hey! You oughtta talk to THIS guy!" (pointing at me!) Kawakita stared at us with that rabbit-in-the-headlights expression that is the principal face that he wears, then ducked out. Strange to see him with his hair combed.

GODZILLA MILLENNIUM is all the better movie for the obvious LACK of Kawakita's greasy hateful thumbprints. And it proves that Takao Okawara is a genius waiting for a chance to really show it. He should quit waiting and just do it: the industry as it exists in Japan isn't going to encourage him.

1) I had this just after seing Alien 3: I was on a mental institution (but I was ok) where everydoby were baldhead. The Alien was there and I had a whater(???) pistol to defend myself... Oh, man what a nightmare!

2) Another time I dreamed I was driving my Jeep(???) and stoped at Goldsmith's house. I was with a friend and Jerry invited us to come in. We talked while eating donuts and drinking milk with coffe...

3) This was weird... I had about 18 years old. It was the last night before my trip to USA with my basketball team. I dreamed I was on a CD shop, with hundreds of incredible score albums... I had the money and the enthusiasm, but... when I looked down I discovered I was completely naked!!! Man, it was embarrasing to wake...

Freud could explain, I presume...