Jerry Fielding

November 13, 2009 8:29 AM

Jerry Fielding (1922-1980) was one of cinema's most distinctive voices in the 1960s and especially '70s, the perfect musical complement to the films of Sam Peckinpah*, Michael Winner, Clint Eastwood and others. His scores are marked by modernism and intricate orchestrations but also a poetic beauty and intensity—an appropriate accompaniment to the decade's strange and often sad (but never sentimental) criminals and antiheroes, be they in westerns (The Wild Bunch) or crime films. He was, however, capable of numerous styles (he was a former Vegas bandleader), and wrote a great number of scores (from sticoms to dramas to sci-fi) for television. - Film Score Monthly

This bootleg version of Fielding's soundtrack to Donald Cammell's Demon Seed ends with a 40 minute assemblage of snippets from the recording sessions that provide a unique look at the creation of such a work - as well as Fielding's reaction to his father's suggestion that he become bar mitzvahed. (previously)

posted by Joe Beese (2 comments total)

This is something I want to immerse myself when I get home this evening. Thanks!
posted by myopicman at 2:03 PM on November 13, 2009

Interesting timing because I just went to The Wild Bunch 40th Anniversary Screening at the Million Dollar Theater last night. First time I've ever been to a movie surrounded staff dressed like cowboys with rifles, it was a trip. Anyhow, prior to the movie The Jules Verne Society presented awards to Fielding and Peckinpah's family and to Ernest Borgnine (who at 93 has more energy, life, and inspiration in him than most people do at any age). Anyhow, Fielding's daughter gave a speech that actually made me cry, having lost my dad last year. She was saying how her father had passed away when she was very small and it wasn't until the award and all of the people honored her father last night that she'd really realized how much she missed by not getting to know him as an adult. Everyone was sniffling when she spoke.

I didn't want to tell anyone in the theater that I couldn't remember if I'd ever seen the movie before... I was sitting in a section of strangers (some familiar, some not) who worked on it or visited the set or had seen it fifty times and owned every copy ever made. It really made the evening and movie more interesting to me, listening to all of them reminisce and discuss the film and the people involved in it and how their lives were affected by it. You just don't know about those kinds of back stories when you watch a movie most of the time. Anyhow, from what I heard about Mr. Fielding, he sounds like he was a real character.
posted by miss lynnster at 7:11 PM on November 13, 2009