Mark Doran

Well, it's not often that I can't sleep at night; but in the last month I've had more than a little difficulty getting my customary seven-and-a-half hours. Partly, of course, it's been the strain of flat-hunting in Cambridge (a task surprisingly like looking for a needle in a haystack which doesn't contain any needles); but mostly it's been the guilt.

Yes, guilt. You see, it struck me a few weeks back that this column's discussions of film-musical ingenuity, inventiveness and creative bravery-under-fire might be producing a false impression. Readers, I realised with a shock, might assume that all film composers have a terribly hard time – their lives spent struggling to produce the finest possible results under desperately difficult circumstances.

So for the sake of my future shut-eye, let me show once and for all that it isn't always so – that another part of the truth about being a film composer is that you can have a terribly, terribly easy time if you really want to.

Suppose, for example, you are Michael Kamen – yes, the same Michael Kamen whose leitmotivic ingenuity we praised a month or two back – and have been asked to work on the action blockbuster Die Hard (1988, dir. John McTiernan). How can you save time and energy without giving the impression that the movie is under-scored?

Easy. For a start, you won’t have missed the fact that the film is set at Christmas – so anything seasonal you can cram in (Winter Wonderland, say, or Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!) will fit just fine. Then there's that sophisticated office party: no need to write your own music for it when you can just bung in fragments of Bach's 3rd Brandenburg Concerto, one of Haydn's Op.77 string quartets, and an arrangement of the Ode to Joy tune from Beethoven's 9th Symphony.

For the background score, you're going to need something to characterise the appearance of the German guy who's the main villain. But that's a piece of cake: just bring back the Ode to Joy tune, and once you've attached it to the character, go on to use its first few notes to build up other bits of music. No, it really doesn't have anything to do with anything; but people who notice it will think that both you and they are being immensely clever – and anyway, didn't Kubrick use that tune in one of his films?

Oh, and if the director hasn't already done so, try and have one of the bad guys hum a bit of Singin' in the Rain. No, it really doesn't have anything to do with anything; but if your score refers to it later on, people who notice it will think that both you and they are being immensely clever – and anyway, didn't Kubrick use that tune in one of his films?

And what are you going to do for the death of the last surviving bad guy? Well, it may be that you don’t have to do a hell of a lot, since someone or other might see to it that what ends up on the film is an unused track from James Horner's Aliens score (1986) – in which case you're home free.

Well, time was when such an obvious blend of the second-hand and the second-rate would have got you fired; nowadays it gets you a job on the sequel: Die Hard II (1990; dir. Renny Harlin). My advice here is that you take a slightly different approach, and save effort by hiring no fewer than six other people to help you turn your sketches into the fully orchestrated final score. That way, you can keep yourself fresh for the job of writing something heroic and affirmative to fit that all-important final sequence where at last the airliners find they can see the runway. On the other hand, coming up with a really good cue here could take days, even with your team of orchestrators – so why not just borrow a few minutes' worth of Sibelius' tone poem Finlandia, and use that instead? Of course, there isn't enough to fit the sequence; but no matter – just go back and do some of it twice…

Having now demonstrated your complete mastery of post-modern composition, you will have hardly any problems when it comes to Die Hard III (1995; dir. John McTiernan). For a start, the fact that the new villain is German and has a connection with the one in the first film means – yippee! – that you can use the Ode to Joy tune again. And since we've got a really beefy Kraut in this gang, let's give him a quote from Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries. Yes, I know a Valkyrie is female, but what the hell – by now you can get away with any old crap. Like when the gang arrive in their big trucks: don't write your own tune, just whip up an orchestration of When Johnny Comes Marching Home. No, it doesn't have anything to do with anything – but didn’t Kubrick use it in one of his films? And when your main character McClane (Bruce Willis) gets soaked at one point, don’t forget to refer again to Singin' in the Rain – people who spot it will think that both you and they are being immensely clever…

But in fact, your cleverest bit is still to come. When McClane is fighting hand-to-hand in the ship's hold, use a segment lifted bodily from a really obscure orchestral work from the 1920s – like Mossolov's The Iron Foundry (1926-28); I mean, who would possibly spot a thing like that? Lastly – and this will raise your score to a new level of pointlessness, since by now the film is over – put a big slab of Brahms' 1st Symphony in the music for the closing credits. No, it doesn't have anything to do with anything – but what do you care? I mean, you may have produced a piece of work that leaves the musical listener feeling sullied, but you can always relax safe in the knowledge that you've earned more money from it than most people see in a lifetime.

And now for this month's competition. All you have to do is re-arrange the letters of  ME  MENIAL  HACK'  to make the name of that highly paid Hollywood action-film composer whose credits also include the score for David Cronenberg's The Dead Zone (1983) – in which some of the music is actually taken from Sibelius' 2nd Symphony. All answers on a postcard. The first three contestants to correctly name the composer each win an autographed portrait of his photocopier.

Mark Doran

The films Die Hard, Die Hard 2 – Die Harder, and Die Hard – With a Vengeance are now available on DVD.





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