Basil Poledouris

I seem to recall reading on the Movie Music UK message board that Poledouris underwent a divorce recently, which might help explain his near-total lack of new scores recently. I'll search the info out ans post it if I can.

On the plus side, I suppose, Poledouris' small body of work makes it easier to collect his complete works than someone who's been incredibly prolific like Morricone. Still, I'd rather he did more.

Oh, and "Hunt for Red October" rules too. I need to find a complete version of that without SFX.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Here we go; here's what MMUK had to say about Poledouris' current status:

Originally Posted by Jon Broxton

Not wanting to resort to tabloid gossip, but Poledouris also split with his wife Bobbi a few years ago; my understanding is that, after doing Crocodile Dundee in LA and The Touch, he decided that he didn't need the stress of scoring movies in addition to everything else, and that he had more than enough money anyway, so he went and lived in Seattle for a while and played around on his boats. Since then, every score he's done has been pretty much as a favour to friends and former colleagues - although as Southall rightly said, he was in the running to score Troy, but didn't for the reasons stated.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by PUG1911

Musically, I'd say that Poledouris, Christopher Franke, and Jeremy Soule have similar styles. Dunno, might just be me.

I have to disagree. Poledouris' writing is much more boldly presented than either Soule or Franke; while he's capable of more intimate scoring, Poledouris is at his best with powerful, thunderous statements of theme.

Franke uses synthesizers to create long, flowing ambient works that use atmosphere rather than theme, even when the volume goes up. Soule is more thematic though his stuff tends to be ambient as well; he uses much better samples than Franke, but his big action material isn't as complex or thematic as Poledouris'.

I say this as a huge fan of both Soule and Poledouris (although not so much Franke).

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.