#West side story composer movie#
#West side story composer update#
#West side story composer series#
#West side story composer crack#

There’s a misty quality to the way Newman discusses film music. It’s just more muscular, more filmic.” Film Score Composition is a Collaboration with the Film, Not the Director. It still looks like Jerome Robbins’ work. The choreography is different, but it’s not not West Side Story. “Our goal with the music,” he says, “was for it to seem inevitably Bernstein. The worst thing he could do was inject an ounce of himself or anyone else into it. Newman saw Bernstein’s music as holy, untouchable. Each director is going to emphasize something different, but no matter what, it’s still La bohème.”

But you’re going to see wildly different productions, from the way it’s set to how it’s dressed and how it’s lit. When you go and see it in New York, or see it in Washington DC or Vienna, you’re going to see the same music. La bohème is done all over the place all the time.

And many operas are done over and over and over. “Opera is another sort of canon thing with classical music. “The best analogy I can make is opera,” says Newman. Fiddling about causes some to scream blasphemy. The original film is a beloved creation, an all-timer that seems untouchable to many. When you walk into a room and say you’re going to do your West Side Story, eyes raise, and maybe even roll. Plus, I know I’m very familiar with the Bernstein estate, so politically, I was in a good position to help Spielberg through this with them.” What’s So Weird About Remaking West Side Story? I know where to grab stuff, and that’s the reason to hire me. “The reason is because I know West Side Story backward and forwards. West Side Story was a first, and he doesn’t imagine himself doing it again. Newman has composed over a hundred films but never before has he arranged music for someone else. There was a feel to it that I still can’t really articulate for myself. That movie, I’d never seen anything like it.

#West side story composer movie#

“And then we saw the movie in Chicago, on one of our trips with my mom. “Listening to that with him was great,” he continues. From Alfred’s heart to David’s, an unconquerable passion for cinematic composition continues and thrives. During a career that spanned more than 40 years, Newman’s father won nine Academy Awards and was nominated 45 times! We’re talking about movies like The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Mark of Zorro, Miracle on 34th Street, All About Eve, The Diary of Anne Frank, and How the West Was Won. Alfred Newman’s my father, do you know who that is?”ĭo we know Alfred Newman? Uh…yeah, just a little. I have fond memories of listening to the entire LP, both sides, with my father, probably a few years before he died. “It goes back to when I was like eight or nine years old. How David Newman Became the Only Man for the Job

#West side story composer crack#

And Williams told Spielberg, that’s exactly who you want on board if you’re going to take a crack at adaptation. He understands Leonard Bernstein’s score better than anyone on the planet, and he would protect it with his life against anyone who tried to muck it up. The composer has toured West Side Story throughout the United States and Europe, conducting countless live-to-picture concerts. In Williams’ estimation, no one loved or knew as much about West Side Story as Newman.

He nodded at the idea, thought about it for a second, and told Spielberg to hire David Newman immediately. The man who helped us believe Superman could fly and propelled Star Destroyers into our imagination did not scoff at the director’s hubris. When the notion of doing his West Side Story first tingled through his brain, Spielberg went to his friend and musical collaborator John Williams. Only a maniac would conceive of such egotistical absurdity, and director Steven Spielberg is no maniac.

#West side story composer update#

When remaking West Side Story, you can play with the choreography, you can intensify the cinematography, and you gotta update the casting, but whatever you do, you cannot, and I mean, you cannot, tinker with the music. His credits on the new West Side Story might read “all songs produced by / score arranged by,” but David Newman really only had one job: not to mess it up. In this entry, we chat with composer and song producer David Newman about maintaining the majesty of the old West Side Story in the new West Side Story.

#West side story composer series#

Welcome to World Builders, our ongoing series of conversations with the most productive and thoughtful behind-the-scenes craftspeople.