Blake Neely

(2004)

Buy the DVD, which contains a special feature about the scoring of the film and Michael Kamen's legacy.

Notes

In early November 2003, my good friend and mentor Michael Kamen showed me an early cut of his new film. He said his idea was to score it as a fairy tale and played me 4 great themes he'd written. He asked me if I could take them and do full orchestral synth mockups to send to the director, Forest Whitaker. On November 17th, at around midnight, I emailed four cues to Michael for review. The next morning, I awoke to a horrible phone call: Michael had died.

In a surprisingly un-Hollywood move, rather than ask for another composer, Forest Whitaker immediately asked how we could honor Michael by using his music to score the film. Still grieving our loss but with an enormous sense of responsibility, I accepted the challenge and began what would become my most personally difficult yet gratifying project.

Forest and I worked closely throughout the many months of scoring. We spent many nights in my studio talking about the music, how Michael might do it, how I was trying to do it, the meaning of life, you name it. We even wrote songs together with Damon Elliott to give the entire musical score its own identity and sound world. We recorded a large orchestra and boys' choir for the final score and Forest's own daughter supplied our lead voice in the opening titles.

It was a surreal but wonderful time. I felt like Michael was next to me each night in the studio and on the podium in front of the orchestra. I miss him still. Fittingly, we finished the final mix of the final cue on Michael's birthday, April 15, 2004.