Saturday, August 16, 2008

The FUGITIVE Kind

Jon Burlingame provides a full, detailed explanation of why CBS/Paramount replaced the music of The Fugitive in the most recent DVD set.

The short version, and this is a problem that occurs with many, many DVD sets, is that CBS/Paramount didn't have anyone who was intimately familiar with these music cues, and didn't go outside to consult with the people who do know who wrote which cue.


But here's the rub: No matter how complicated this may have seemed to the executives at CBS/Paramount, the action they took – ruining one of the all-time classic TV dramas – was unnecessary. There are experts in Los Angeles who are intimately familiar with this music, among them music editor Ken Wilhoit, who performed all that detective work in the first place. And he's not the only one.

These people can instantly spot a Herrmann cue versus a Goldsmith cue, and could, with a few weeks and a little effort, correctly identify every piece of music in the second season of The Fugitive. And those very few Capitol cues in dispute could easily be removed and replaced by generic music, salvaging the vast majority of original score for fans to enjoy.


This happens a lot, doesn't it? Studios frequently release shows with episodes out of order, cut versions included by mistake, music replaced that wouldn't actually cost the studio anything -- mistakes that die-hard fans of these shows could spot instantly.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jaim, this haoppens all the time...as you, know, the same librayr and replacement issue was done with the Gumby's (and also, you';ll notice someone with my name, Nick CARRAS< was involved..wonder if ANY relaiton..after all, I DO have some folks in old time show biz AND---I DO hate t'brag--:)--a baseball playing cousin, Steve Shifflet, in the Kansas City Royals.

The GUMBY sets were revived wityh the original music, the early Hanna-Barbera shows likewise, so was one of the Roadrunner with it, and the Fractured Fairy Tales, though the didn't once have the music replacements.:)

[But the composers for those carotons shows were not the ones JUon Burlingame, who's touched on this in an excellent 1996 book "TV'S Biggest hits" in first chjapter, through page 11, mentioned. ]


John Seely and Bill Loose as yuou may know, co-controlled (later with Jack C.Cookerly, also mentioned by Mr.Burlingame,) the Capitol library, whose name proper itself, I first noticed in Ren and Stimpy by name, consisted of music from also Spencer Moore, Jack Shaindlin, Ed Lund, Phillip Green, George Hormel, Emil Cadkin [who worked with both Loose and Cookerly], and Harry Bluestone [both opf whom were both as a atema, and separately], Alex Laslo, Hecky Krasnow, Dave Buttolph, Jack Belasco, Clarence Wheeler (best known for Universal/Lantz work), Raoul Krausshaar [allegedly], Jack Meakin, and Roger Roger (pronounced Roh-JAY, Roh-JAY-he was French.)]

But by the the Fugitive ended Ole Georg had taken over ther library.:)

Anonymous said...

NOTE:THe fancy little name below shoulda been.."Steve Carras-who may or may not be related to the composer Nick (see Bluringame's article)."?

Anonymous said...

Another current problem anymore is that executives in their twenties refuse to hire anyone the age of their parents. This means that the execs have yet to grow up.