- The Wild Bunch (1969) gave me a chance to illustrate to the public, and the entertainment industry, that if a composer is given real freedom to create, he can produce a score that is unlike any other ever written. [on the film score that put him on the map]
- I was able to evaluate it at a screening for an advanced film class at USC. It was much too long, over three hours, and no music had been inserted. After the final shootout, the film reached a point that should have touched the sensitivities of the young audience. But this is a generation of kids who don't like to be pushed into emotional corners, so instead, they laughed, out of embarrassment. I added music after all the shooting and carnage in that final bloodbath, so that there was no silence: instead, I had a heavy entrance of the lowest possible strings, the beginning of a long dirge. After the edited, two-hour version was shown, there was still almost 75 minutes of music - and the critics thought the closing scene was one of the film's strongest points. [on the evolution of the final scene in The Wild Bunch (1969)]
- What you hear in a dubbing room is not what reaches the screen. You have to deal with laugh-machine people, dialogue people, sound effects people, all screaming for their own causes, and invariably it's the music that takes it on the jaw. Producers and directors are partly to blame. They don't know how to manipulate the medium, when to use music and when not to. They put in music as soon as there's a moment of silence, even though there are occasions when silence can be the most eloquent effect. But the main fault lies with the cost analysis people. They pressure the producers. They try to run the whole operation the way you'd run a tire manufacturing company. When you start cutting creative costs to the bone, the product must suffer. Maybe they read somewhere that a Moog synthesizer is the new thing - well, they'd rather use that than hire a 70-piece orchestra. [on the trials and tribulations of a film composer]
- I've had it with Eddie - there's not enough money to make me work for him again. I'm going back to Hollywood to start working on the 'Danny Kaye' television show; he's a REAL talent. [on the frustrations facing a conductor working for Eddie Fisher]
- Every time I make a very special arrangement of a tune to be used on the quizzer, the contestant invariably gets it on the first few notes. Out the window goes the arrangement. Not that I begrudge anyone winning Groucho's money, but I do enjoy listening to music. [on the frustrations facing a musical director on You Bet Your Life (1950), the comedy / quiz show hosted by Groucho Marx]
- They told me I was not going on with any name as Jewish as Feldman. I don't think there's any lessening of prejudice today. There's just more politeness about where and how it happens now. I think it's going to be one of the things to render the downfall of homo sapiens - [on how Jerry Feldman became Jerry Fielding at the age of 23, in order to land a job with Jack Paar]
- He's practically psychotic. He lives in England. He won't even come back here. He's become impossible to talk to, and rightly so. The man is a giant, and no one has ever given him his due. [on composer Bernard Herrmann (1972)]
- He's impossible. He's a very bright and well-educated man who plays games with people. I owe him a great debt though, because he gave me my first big picture after I was blacklisted and out of commission. It was a brave thing for him to hire me because I was so politically unpopular. [on director Otto Preminger (1972)]
- Peckinpah and I hit each other a lot. He's a terribly volatile person. We are close friends, but we fight an awful lot. In many ways Sam doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. In other areas, he's a fantastically gifted man. He has very strong instincts about the job music ought to do. He has less than no idea of how to go about accomplishing that. I usually know what he wants to do. Sometimes he tells me what he wants and I let it go in one ear and out the other. Then I do the score, and if he hates it, we have a fist fight. But it all comes out in the end. [on his relationship with director Sam Peckinpah (1972)]
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