It was the Summer of WATERWORLD. Granted, this statement was probably not uttered by the general public during the latter half of 1995. Regardless, the much-maligned, not-half-bad movie and its score unexpectedly turned into a totem for me and my roommate at the time, Mark. It wasn't necessarily due to the film itself, a guilty pleasure if there ever was one, or the score by composer James Newton Howard, which we both loved. Instead, the memorable WATERWORLD emblem emerged in the form of the soundtrack CD I purchased, which then subsequently broke Mark's stereo system... twice.
Mark and I both graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill that year. In order to ensure that the fun times continued along uninterrupted with our happy group of friends, we decided to room together in an apartment not far from the UNC campus. You know, because extricating yourself from college can sometimes be a slow process, only achieved in stages, similar to carefully removing a Band-aid from a hairy body part. It was a two-bedroom apartment, granting us each our own personal space, plus there was a bullet hole in the living room window acting as a daily reminder of what a low-rent neighborhood we chose. Early cooking attempts included the lesson I learned that burning ravioli on the stove
resulted in enduring endless yet valid mocking. Our sole television set was Mark's postage stamp-sized model. Menial jobs included my stint at Blockbuster, during which time I was tasked with calling customers early each morning to politely insist they locate and return overdue videos, such as THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION and STREETFIGHTER (that's a double-feature God never intended).
WATERWORLD was on our movie-going radar that Summer, as was other genre fare like BATMAN FOREVER and SPECIES, simply because our youth and newly acquired (yet paltry) disposable income allowed us to frequent the movies. I wound up seeing several on my own in order to check out the music scores in context. In some cases I dragged Mark along, later having to apologize to him for JUDGE DREDD. I spared him from TANK GIRL. This was also the age at which I could better handle midnight showings, as twenty-something stamina seemed to perpetually renew itself. Those initial months into post-collegiate life felt like emerging from a sixteen year long slumber inside a classroom-shaped cocoon. No longer being beholden to a syllabus and teachers filled me with such giddiness and sheer joy that I accepted almost every new thing placed in front of me. I shake my head in amazement now at how back then I actually went clubbing, saw small-time bands at small-time venues, sledded on the nearby frozen highway and bought cigarettes. Yes, I briefly was a smoker, but it'd take me a week to finish just one pack. Whatever, I still bought them.
Concerning WATERWORLD, Mark and I knew very little about it outside of its infamously ballooning budget and a MAD MAX-inspired look and feel set on the high seas. In terms of its music, composer James Newton Howard had that task, the second such composer who had been hired on the film. As examined in a prior post, I'd been following Howard's projects since 1991's THE MAN IN THE MOON. In the best tradition of Jerry Goldsmith, he'd shown himself to be eclectic and unpredictable, able to effectively tackle any genre and always create compelling music. Additionally, each score was infused with his own personal stamp - not an easy feat in the art and craft of film music. By the mid-90's, his career trajectory gradually shifted from primarily scoring dramas and comedies over to becoming an A-list name for action, thanks in large part to 1993's THE FUGITIVE.
THE FUGITIVE successfully blended together his groove-oriented licks from FALLING DOWN into a larger orchestral palate, crafting a propulsive "urban" sound at which he still excels, as heard in last year's NIGHTCRAWLER. However, it was the sprawling sonic landscape of 1994's WYATT EARP that demonstrated Howard's immense creative range with purely orchestral colors. Here, his music was informed by the melodicism of his preceding dramatic works and the rural instrumentation of THE MAN IN THE MOON, married with an arresting, kinetic action style and solo woodwind and violin spotlights. It proved to be an incredible symphonic work. So with all of this as prologue, I was pretty eager to find out what type of scoring he would provide WATERWORLD.
Surprisingly, Howard's score emerged as almost a cross-section of the disparate styles he'd explored up until that point. A nimble and spirited main theme accompanies Kevin Costner's begrudgingly heroic "Mariner" character, embellished by rousing brass and acrobatic orchestral flourishes. Next, a lyrical and hopeful secondary melody provides counterbalance, representing the two female leads played by Jeanne Tripplehorn and Tina Majorino. Intermingling with this are ghostly synth elements, pulsing grooves, hypnotic chimes, a battery of exotic percussion and even a solo vocalist, all adding to the strange melange that is one of Howard's most enjoyable works. The soundtrack album generously presented many of the highlights. I rushed to grab a copy as soon as it was released. Little did I notice, unfortunately, that a slight warping defect on the compact disc itself would cause equipment failure in Mark's stereo system.
His was our only proper stereo system. My boom box, with its cassette-driven portable CD player precariously perched atop it, hardly fit the entertainment bill. Mark's featured a front-loading cartridge capable of holding up to ten CD's, thus extensively increasing our "shuffling" options during parties. I was dependent on his system for assembling my painstakingly crafted mix tapes and always treated it with kid gloves. Imagine the pit in my stomach when I discovered that the WATERWORLD disc, once loaded into the stereo, caused the entire cartridge to lock up. Prying it open proved impossible, even trying gently with a butter knife. To boot, nine of Mark's albums were trapped inside along with WATERWORLD. It cost $100 to have them all freed by a professional and that was probably my income for an entire week, no thanks to $4.25 an hour at Blockbuster.
And then, several months later, it happened again, inexplicably. Specifics are hazy now, but I must have simply spaced and forgotten the lifetime ban enforced on the WATERWORLD CD entering Mark's stereo. No doubt it was a mix tape of mine that needed updating. The end result once more was $100 paid to the shifty guys at the electronics store plus a week-long wait while they milked the job. By then I was at least earning an increased hourly wage after trading in Blockbuster for Waldenbooks (both sadly defunct now) and thus the dollar-shaped dent left on my checking account wasn't quite as cringe-worthy. It also stressed, with nary a suggestive comment offered by Mark, that I should begin saving up for my own deluxe sound system and leave behind my days of stereo mooching.
I can't recall if I ever saw WATERWORLD again after that Summer '95 theatrical viewing. Without a doubt the soundtrack album received more plays than I can count (by way of a cassette copy). Twenty years later it remains a favorite from James Newton Howard's overall canon and he's continued to impress as a composer since then. Now, in this all-digital era of music played on phones and streaming through the "cloud", it's not often that the album itself travels far from my CD racks. It's usually only when I'm assembling a new, painstakingly crafted playlist for my iPod, a holdover habit of mine from those mix tapes days. So, I always smile to myself when loading up this warped CD, the Stereo Breaker totem from 1995 and hope to heck that it doesn't choke up my computer.
THE FUGITIVE successfully blended together his groove-oriented licks from FALLING DOWN into a larger orchestral palate, crafting a propulsive "urban" sound at which he still excels, as heard in last year's NIGHTCRAWLER. However, it was the sprawling sonic landscape of 1994's WYATT EARP that demonstrated Howard's immense creative range with purely orchestral colors. Here, his music was informed by the melodicism of his preceding dramatic works and the rural instrumentation of THE MAN IN THE MOON, married with an arresting, kinetic action style and solo woodwind and violin spotlights. It proved to be an incredible symphonic work. So with all of this as prologue, I was pretty eager to find out what type of scoring he would provide WATERWORLD.
His was our only proper stereo system. My boom box, with its cassette-driven portable CD player precariously perched atop it, hardly fit the entertainment bill. Mark's featured a front-loading cartridge capable of holding up to ten CD's, thus extensively increasing our "shuffling" options during parties. I was dependent on his system for assembling my painstakingly crafted mix tapes and always treated it with kid gloves. Imagine the pit in my stomach when I discovered that the WATERWORLD disc, once loaded into the stereo, caused the entire cartridge to lock up. Prying it open proved impossible, even trying gently with a butter knife. To boot, nine of Mark's albums were trapped inside along with WATERWORLD. It cost $100 to have them all freed by a professional and that was probably my income for an entire week, no thanks to $4.25 an hour at Blockbuster.
I can't recall if I ever saw WATERWORLD again after that Summer '95 theatrical viewing. Without a doubt the soundtrack album received more plays than I can count (by way of a cassette copy). Twenty years later it remains a favorite from James Newton Howard's overall canon and he's continued to impress as a composer since then. Now, in this all-digital era of music played on phones and streaming through the "cloud", it's not often that the album itself travels far from my CD racks. It's usually only when I'm assembling a new, painstakingly crafted playlist for my iPod, a holdover habit of mine from those mix tapes days. So, I always smile to myself when loading up this warped CD, the Stereo Breaker totem from 1995 and hope to heck that it doesn't choke up my computer.
