Speaker #0The Musee Sacem and his stage present Bandes originales.
Three years after the success of his film Les Enfantiles Adrian Lyne again calls on Maurice Jarre for his film L'Echelle de Jacob. On the hills of Los Angeles, he remembers the originality of Maurice Jarre's compositions and his demanding and talented personality. like something or you like it less than something else, he doesn't get upset at all.
You know what I'm saying? It's a real collaboration. And I remember, especially on Jacob's Ladder, most of the... He had a kind of a selection of musicians who played electronic instruments whereby you could sample any noise. and then play it. Almost like they would have instruments that looked a little bit like a clarinet or something. And you could achieve practically any sound with these things. It was wonderful. So he created layers that built up. And then he would always, I think, as I remember it, have one day when he would have a big orchestra, would have strings, you know, for a string pad, because strings... electronically never works. It may do now, but it never did then. I don't think it does work, actually. So he would always fill the soundstage with an orchestra, with strings. But in Jacob's Ladder, the noise, the sounds, the instruments were created, really, while I was there. It was the most exciting process, because he always used the same musicians. to create these instruments, if you like. It created... So they would play instruments, but the music was actually electronic. But it wouldn't sound that way. Because they were playing an instrument... quite often that looked like a clarinet or an oboe as i i remember something like that but the sound obviously was was electronic that you that you changed at will it was a terrific experience and and he would um i remember that we got in we used voices a lot um sometimes sort of classical a woman's voice or something but but but like extended extended notes um And he also used, as I remember, Arab singers. He would use North African singers. I'm shamed. I've forgotten their names, but they were very, very famous. And because we sort of felt that a kind of... the story of Jacob's Ladder that was so strange and kind of complex because when you see the film, you're not actually looking at what you think you're looking at. You think that you're watching a man who's lived after Vietnam. And in fact, the movie is about a man dying in Vietnam. You have the impression from watching the movie that Vietnam's in the past, but in fact, Vietnam is the present. And he's dying in Vietnam, and you only find that out at the end. So this North African, sometimes Middle Eastern sort of music seemed to fit the strangeness of the story. He's enormous. I mean, I really like him. I mean, he's a friend apart from anything else. And it's terribly easy to have a, you know, with a... I think it's easier for me because as I say I was not a great musician but I remember once when I was with Morris I said that's a major seventh or a ninth or something like that and it's funny because he didn't say anything about it and then five minutes later he said Yes, it was a ninth. He says he says there's not many directors that I work with who could have told me that So I was kind of incredibly flattered, you know, I'm thrilled But I think it helped me a little bit that I was a that I had been a musician I was just, I was trying to remember Jacob's Ladder because I hadn't looked at it in 10 years or 15 years probably. And it was nice. I was just flicking through it then, you know, looking at different scenes on the DVD. And it was nice seeing, or rather listening to his music because it hasn't dated at all. I mean, as I say, I love... musical scores that don't draw attention to themselves, that make the visual better, that make the sound better, but don't suddenly become a different competing thing, you know, like a kind of almost like another movie, side by side. And that's why I love, as I said before, I love it when, I remember there was a scene in Fatal Attraction where... Michael Douglas is going up in an elevator in a parking lot. And this thing is clanking. It's a big industrial elevator. And it's making sort of grating noises and sort of groaning noises. And what was fabulous was the noises of this elevator became music. Out of these noises, Morris' music... came and it was the same it was seamless the way the music arrived but but and then became menacing and then there was a menacing because Glenn Close the Glenn closest character is watching him but it was I remember how great it was that there was no kind of a start to the music the music was insinuated its way into the into the picture
