In most cases, the concept of the score will be built around the quality and nature of the
central character or characters. There are other aspects of the film that the concept can
successfully key in to, but more often than not these aspects will relate back to the central
character(s).
The Butcher Boy (1997) is a film about a maladjusted boy with a dysfunctional family.
When Elliot Goldenthal was developing his concept for the film, “I put myself in the
character of the boy, Francie Brady, and if he were to compose music for his own world
and for his own movie, that was the way I imagined it.” This philosophy can be the basis
for a very sincere and honest dramatic approach. “The musical solutions were that
however that child thought of himself, whether it was in religious rapture, or whether it
was in nostalgia, or whether it was reflecting an environmental situation—where he was,
what he was thinking about in that place—I was very, very true to that emotion. I didn’t
try to have any opinions about it. I was just composing to what I imagined he was actually
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thinking. So if it was religious rapture, it was taken seriously and not as an editorial on
my part as to what he might be. It was completely honest to him.”
Mike Post tells us how Pete Carpenter and he looked at the character of Rockford for
the classic television series “Rockford Files” (1974–80): “First of all, [James] Garner is
southwest—Oklahoma. His accent is not real southern, but he’s definitely not East Coast
or West Coast. His father was played by Noah Berry, Jr., who’s an ex-trucker.
Rockford’s character is more interested in $200 a day plus expenses than he is in saving
the girl or trying to be a hero. So it wasn’t heroic music. It was music that had a hand-onyour-
hip, tongue-in-cheek, wry attitude to it. And I was real interested in being the first
rock-and-roller to score for television. I really wanted to be the first guy to come in there
and sound different. I wanted to make some sort of statement.”