Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email

2009 February 16 • Monday

The forty-eighth Soundtrack of the Week is George Delerue's score for The Day of the Dolphin.

Apparently director Mike Nichols wanted Bernard Herrmann to score this movie, and flew to London to screen it for him. The story goes that when Nichols told Herrmann that the score had to be finished in five or six weeks, Herrmann kicked him out of his house.

I haven't seen The Day of the Dolphin, but I'd kind of like to, despite not being a Mike Nichols fan. It certainly sounds, uh, worth seeing. George C. Scott apparently plays a scientist who has taught dolphins how to speak English. Government agents then swoop in and tell the dolphins to assassinate the president of the United States. The dolphins say "Righto" or whatever it is dolphins say and off they go.

Sounds great. I really love most of the music Delerue wrote, consisting as it does of haunting and lyrical passages for strings with occasional underwater-type noises. There's also some baroque/classical kind of stuff that I can live without.