Among Basil Poledouris' latest scoring assignments was the controversial television mini-series, AMERIKA, which told the story of Americans living in a near future after a peaceable takeover of their country by the USSR. Poledouris wrote some five and a half hours of music for the series, in a schedule so hectic that the final recording session...
Tag: Basil Poledouris
Randall Kleiser on Basil Poledouris
How did you meet Basil? Basil was a classmate of mine at the D.S.C. film school. We were both studying directing and were working on each other’s films as crew members. I even played a corpse in one of his student films! What films has he scored for you? He did BLUE LAGOON, SUMMER LOVERS, WIDTE FANG, and IT’S MY PARTY...
Paul Verhoeven on Basil Poledouris
I met Basil around ‘84 when I was doing FLESH AND BLOOD for Orion. We were looking for a composer and Mike Medavoy, head of production at Orion, mentioned him together with Horner and Goldsmith. At that time we were beyond our budget. Originally I used the temp music of James Horner. I used STAR TREK 2 and one of his older Roger Corman movies...
Emilio Estevez on Basil Poledouris
I’ve been a fan of his work for years and I was thinking, with a movie with a total budget of 4.2 million dollars, the chances of getting someone like Basil, who does enormous orchestral scores, was slim to none. I don’t really know that many film composers. On the two previous films I directed, Danny Elfman did WISDOM and Stuart Copeland did MEN AT WORK...
John Milius on Basil Poledouris
What films has he scored for you? All of my films except THE WIND AND THE LION and DILLINGER because they wouldn’t let him then. And the one I just finished, THE ROUGH RIDERS, he didn’t score because Verhoeven wouldn’t let him. He scored BIG WEDNESDAY, CONAN THE BARBARIAN, RED DAWN, FAREWELL TO THE KING, and...
Basil Poledouris: A Man and His Music
Film composer Basil Poledouris unfolded a tapestry of musical styles in over 55 television and motion picture scores. When you have a wide palette of styles and ideas that can fit almost any film genre, your talent is welcome in an industry that demands flexibility. This gift combined with sensitivity can take you a long way. Basil s emotions speak for themselves...
Basil Poledouris on Scoring Crocodile Dundee
CROCODILE DUNDEE IN L.A. reunited composer Basil Poledouris with director Simon Wincer, for whom Poledouris wrote one of his most profound and eloquent scores, 1988’s LONESOME DOVE. The director and composer collaborated on another Western, the Tom Selleck vehicle, QUIGLEY DOWN UNDER, as well as HARLEY DAVIDSON AND THE...
Basil Poledouris on Scoring Flesh+Blood
Basil Poledouris believes that film composers “collide” with films on certain occasions. CONAN THE BARBARIAN is an example he cites as this kind of career collision: it was the right film for him to score at that particular moment, it gave him the right kind of inspiration and the result was a highly rewarding experience both for the composer and for the film.
Basil Poledouris on Scoring Lonesome Dove
Simon Wincer’s eloquent, character-driven western saga, LONESOME DOVE, remains one of the best television mini-series ever broadcast. The brilliant dialog and characterizations from Larry McMurtry’s grand, sweeping novel were translated faithfully and brought to life by a cadre of outstanding performances. Wincer and his producers made the most of...