LALO SCHIFRIN   

(*1932)

"Don was a funny guy. In a way he reminded me of Dizzy Gillespie because Dizzy was very secure about himself and had a great sense of humor, except when it came to music - then he became very serious. Don and I both liked what we were doing and understood what each other wanted. I did Coogan's Bluff, The Beguiled, Dirty Harry, Telefon, and Charley Varrick for him. In Charley Varrick, he has a plan to get past the Mafia, the police, everybody. You don't know what his plan is, so the music has to tell you what he's thinking. That was very difficult! Don Siegel was very generous with young filmmakers, like John Cassavetes. Don was always busy but he would always make time to talk to young directors who were on their way up. It's like jazz musicians who would come to Dizzy and ask for guidance. He also encouraged Clint Eastwood as a director; in fact, Don played a bartender in Clint's first film, Play Misty for Me. Don and I used to play jokes on each other. For example, Charley Varrick starts out in a little town in Nevada during the '70s. In the first few minutes, there's a very violent bank robbery, but in the opening shots you don't know it's a thriller. I wanted a sort of gentle pastorale, Aaron Copeland style, to play against the fact that the main character is a thief. So Don came to the booth during the scoring session to see the main titles. We were rehearsing at the time. Don couldn't hear the sound in the booth, so he didn't know what I was saying to the orchestra. I knew when his credit, "Directed by Don Siegel," would come up on the screen, during the pastorale and before the action starts. I told the orchestra all kinds of directions I hadn't written - smash the cymbals, woodwinds play anything you want, strings play really fast, very atonal and dissonant. So then we rehearsed with the picture. I couldn't see Don because he was behind me. We started off with this gentle Americana sound, and as soon as it read "Directed by Don Siegel," there was complete pandemonium! As soon as he realized it was a joke, he said, "You are going to give me a heart attack!" So then we did the real thing, and I did the whole score for him. He liked it, fortunately! He always liked me to come to the dubbing sessions. He was mad at me once because I had to go to England and couldn't attend one dubbing session. I told him, "Don, my contract runs from one studio to another. If you want me to do that dubbing session, you have to extend my contract and pay me pro rata." He understood that and let it go. He moved really fast. One day during Charley Varrick, I had some time to work with him on a reel. He said, "Don't come in the morning; come after lunch." I came in around two o' clock at the studio, and I could hear my music. I said, "Why are you doing my music already? I thought we were working on that this afternoon." Then I turned to look at the movie, and he had put my music into a hardcore bestiality porno movie! There was my beautiful pastorale up there on the screen with this woman and a horse! It was his revenge for what I had done to him during the scoring session. I was completely aghast. I thought, now I can have a future writing music for extreme porno movies! That should give you an idea of what working for Don could be like!"

"The Beguiled is the best movie he's done and the best score I've done. That's the score I would really like to have rerecorded and more recognized -- It's too bad the original never came out on album. In fact, I think it's one of the best American movies, period. It's almost medieval when they're bringing Clint Eastwood down the stairs, all those shadows. The sequence where Eastwood is telling a story offscreen, and it's beguiling, it's lying, and you see the reality on the screen. It's brilliant! He's telling you one thing but you see something in front of you and realize it's a lie. There's a real double jeopardy in that movie that I love. He's a Northern soldier in the South, and there are patrols coming by the school to see if anything's wrong. The women there don't want them to know; the tension that creates on top of the tension among the characters themselves is wonderful. That movie should be taught in film schools for directors to learn all kinds of techniques and how to use film language. Film has its own language, it tells stories in its own way. Don broke a lot of rules telling this story, and he told it the best way it could be done."

Canons for String Quartet

The Cat for Jazz Band and Percussion

The Jazz Mass

Symphonic Sketches of Cool Hand Luke

Concerto for Double Bass and Orchestra

Pan American Games Overture

La Nouvelle Orleans (For Woodwind and Orchestra)

Dances Concertantes (For Clarinet and Orchestra)

Cantos Aztecas (Opera)

Lili'Uokalani Symphony (Symphony No. 1)