On David Shire and "Zodiac"

An architect of the '70s paranoia thriller sound...

There isn’t a lot of score in “Zodiac.” Nearly thirty minutes out of a hundred and fifty-eight, which isn’t unknown for a movie of its sort. “It didn’t need a score,” thought director David Fincher, who had already curated a large and personal playlist of songs for the film which both served to reflect the general mood as well as illustrate the passage of time. But then he was reminded of David Shire.

Even today, David Shire certainly isn’t anywhere near the household name he deserves to be. He doesn’t get mentioned in the conversations that usually take place around the densely saturated vinyl soundtrack market, and his name is rarely brought up in film journals. But he’s responsible for some of the greatest scores in cinema, with an influence that stretches from Broadway to hip-hop, not to mention the deadly streets of Fincher’s San Francisco.

Shire started off scoring Westerns at Universal and independent dramas – one of the earliest pictures he scored was Jack Nicholson’s 1971 directorial debut “Drive, He Said” – but his stock quickly rose when he took on a paranoid thriller from Francis Ford Coppola in 1974, with the director fresh from “The Godfather.” Shire scored “The Conversation” as a piano score on instruction from Coppola, to echo the lonely hidden life of the film’s surveillance expert Harry Caul, but worked with sound designer Walter Murch to alter the texture of the score as the film went on, using the mixing board to modify the piano to match the rising tension of the film’s narrative. He would later create a score for Coppola’s Vietnam epic “Apocalypse Now,” although it went unused in favour of music composed by Coppola’s father Carmine.

In the same year as “The Coversation,” Shire created another landmark score - for Joseph Sargent’s subway heist picture “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three,” orchestrating a funk landscape that would go on to make several appearances in hip-hop, in songs by such artists as J Dilla, Mix Master Mike, and Xzibit, as well as a namecheck in the Beastie Boys’ track “Sure Shot.” He would later go on to score another iconic thriller, Alan Pakula’s 1976 picture “All The President’s Men,” about the Watergate scandal, and with fellow composers Michael Small (“The Parallax View”) and Dave Grusin (“Three Days of the Condor”) established a unique sound for the political thrillers of that decade and onwards.

It was sound designer Ren Klyce’s love of “The Conversation” that led Fincher to hiring Shire for “Zodiac,” placing cues from the score, along with “All The President’s Men,” into a temp-track despite having no budget for original music. “Even though the studio was getting a sense we needed a score, I sort of had to do this under the radar,” Klyce said in the film’s original production notes, “I knew my head was on the chopping block.” Shire would look to composer Charles Ives for inspiration, and his 1906 work ‘The Unanswered Question,’ which has sections of the orchestra asking musical questions, only to have no resolution, which he felt suited “Zodiac.” “This whole movie is an unanswered question,” Shire said. “Even at the end you don’t get the answer 100 percent; even after more than 20 years and still you question. There is this awe of irresolution about it.”

Shire kept plenty busy over the years, whether it was winning an Oscar for best song for “Norma Rae,” adapting Mussorgsky’s ‘Night On Bald Mountain’ for “Saturday Night Fever,” or composing for the Broadway musical adaptation of “Big.” Some of his scores include Philip Marlowe detective thriller “Farewell, My Lovely,” the Dustin Hoffman neo-noir “Straight Time,” and disaster movie satire “The Big Bus.” He also did remarkably well with a pair of sequels to two bonafide classics; Peter Hyams’ “2010: The Year We Make Contact” followed Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” while “Return to Oz,” directed by Walter Murch, was the successor to “The Wizard of Oz,” with the latter an absolutely gorgeous symphonic score.

One can hope that with the increased reputation “Zodiac” has found since its release, the composer might eventually receive the kudos and respect his music has deserved.