Jerry Goldsmith interview

I thought I'd share two interviews from Jerry Goldsmith (and an expert on film music) regarding Chinatown that gives a better sense as to why its one of the greatest scores in the history of Hollywood cinema. (The first interview in particular.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dcn4Z8b337o (It starts at 27:45)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utgHa-b6CO0

One of the greatest aspects of the score is its sparseness and minimalism and people overlook the fact that Polanski definitely had more scenes scored in his terrible score with Phillip Lambro and Lambro himself confirmed this point in his autobiography:

"Goldsmith was no fool. I could see that he had avoided as much work as possible in scoring Chinatown. He, naturally, circumvented all the difficult scenes, such as the Orchard Lanes sequence, which genuinely needed energetic chase music as Nicholson (Gittes) has a run-in with some 'Red-faced Farmers.' This section (which Polanski definitely wanted scored) required a lot of fast aggressive music..." (p.329)

So when Goldsmith mentions his only brief, 3 hour meeting with Polanski to spot the film, it undoubtedly included correcting Polanski's devastating and ruinous mistakes, such as scoring the orange grove/orchard chase and the moment when Evelyn is shot.

I'm not saying that Polanski is terrible in evaluating film music in general because he did a great job with the (lesser) scores for other films he directed but he absolutely failed with Chinatown.