Alex Wurman may not be the most widely recognized name in film composing today, but he has scored more than two dozen projects in the past decade, including films like 13 conversations About One thing, Play It to the Bone and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. With Ron Shelton’s buddy cop movie Hollywood Homicide however, Wurman is set to jump into a different league entirely. Hollywood Homicide stars Harrison Ford and Josh Harnett as cops investigating the murder of a rap group that may or may not have been set up by the president of their record label. While the score started out adapting a hip-hop sensibility, Wurman very much wanted to keep a strong orchestral presence in the mix, and the result is one of the more elaborate, action-driven comedy scores in recent memory.
“I have a tendency toward post-French Impressionist and 20th-century [writing]; that’s all coming out right now, and I’m becoming more of a classical type person,” Wurman says. “I was going to be a contemporary jazz musician-film composer, and then I discovered that film composition was much bigger than I had thought it was. I always loved film music; the first record I ever bought was Star Wars, and Close Encounters was my favorite score back then. I understood the music in a certain way, but when I started to actually do it I realized just how huge it was. The first score I did was for an absolutely horrible movie, and the music supervisor took a lot of the money from me and basically ripped me off. But he also showed me how to do what I was doing, so it was an interesting experience.”

Wurman’s arranging work with Hans Zimmer led to his writing some music on a Zimmer project called Younger and Younger in 1993, a project that eventually led to the composer’s work with director Ron Shelton and, ultimately, Hollywood Homicide. “Ron Shelton is a friend of Percy Adlon who directed Younger and Younger,” Wurman says. “Ron produced a small movie [1999’s No Vacancy] directed by Marias Balchunis, a friend of Ron’s, and I got that job and worked closely with Ron because he know more about dealing with a composer than the actual director did. We had such a good time that it was a very easy thing for me to get on my first movie with Ron, Play It to the Bone.

Bigger indie hits like 13 Conversation About One Thing and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind put Wurman in a good position to work on a high-profile project like Hollywood Homicide. “Ron loves songs and he likes combo kind of music; for Hollywood Homicide I ended up doing combo music that grew into a massive orchestral score,” the composer says, noting that Shelton managed to insulate him from an oversensitive studio mentality on such a big movie. “Ron protected me as much as he could. He actually fought for me. I worked on Hollywood Homicide for a long time. We started with the idea that it would be kind of a Dr. Dre thing, and mix that with other influences, one of which was John Adams. Ron liked that Dr. Dre sound and I came up with a lot of things that were working. We ended up with some very different music; it was like Shostakovich and Gershwin when it blew up into a big thing.”

Wurman started out with an electronic core to his music that was appropriate for the subject matter and the lighter feel of the film’s opening reels, and gradually layered his orchestral approach on top of that. “I have a fairly strong knowledge of sequencers and loop software that plays back certain two- and four-bar grooves, and I could balance the ingredients,” he points out. “I knew that there needed to be an orchestral presence in all of the music, so I wrote a string riff that was supported by the winds and found a way to make that feel good with the loops that I selected. As the action and the drama and the momentum of the movie increased, the orchestra increased. I’m a believer that you can’t support big action solely with electronics; in a really classic Hollywood film the orchestra is a voice that’s just unbeatable.”

The composer worked with orchestrator Conrad Pope (a veteran of numerous John Williams scores) and Tom Calderaro to detail the orchestral elements of the score. “I use a sequencer; I kill a bunch of birds with one stone here,” Wurman explains. “I’m producing the electronic part, I’m writing the orchestral part into the sequencer, and I’m creating demos for the director and producers so they know what they’re getting. The big problem with a computer and not writing it on the page is there is so much to be understood with regards to the sound of the orchestra; to put it in the most simple way, an orchestra doesn’t like to play parts that are very keyboard intensive. Fortunately, I’ve been able to listen to orchestral music all my life and I understand it, and I could orchestrate it myself if I had enough time. I’m nowhere near as fast and as skilled as Conrad, but I could do it. When I write the music, there’s an understanding of the orchestra so that when Conrad gets it, it makes sense. It’s not piano music played by a string section.”

Concert composer John Adams, a notable influence on Don Davis’ Matrix scores, also inspired some of the Hollywood Homicide score. “There was one piece of music called ‘Fearful Symmetries’ which is an unusual piece that sounds like a swing orchestra with a little hi-hat, and these unusual dramatic harmonies, which end up being funny. I ended up writing something for one scene that’s sort of a big band, Gershwin orchestral sound.” Wurman says that he tried to avoid the usual pitfalls of scoring comedy on the picture. “I think one of the key words is intelligence. If there’s a piece of music that has depth to it, it’s usually incorporating a lot more than just comedy. Comedy is much more than the actual act of doing something funny; it’s about being in the situation that creates that funny moment and what led you to be there, and the whole backstory is what gives you that sense of irony. Film scoring is a similar thing; you don’t want to play the actual moment but you need to play the character of that situation, and I think it requires a more mature sound to be able to do that. You don’t need to replay what’s on film in most situations, but there are situations where you do need to bring it to life.”

Wurman tried to spot Hollywood Homicide carefully, acknowledging that the current tendency is to go for more music and less impact. “I’ve not written very many scores that exceed 40 minutes of music,” he says. “I did one that was about 75 minutes, which was a case where I felt the movie needed it because it wasn’t a very good movie. For Confessions of a Dangerous Mind I wrote 15 minutes. I love movies that don’t overuse music. When you get to a point where you’ve got the audience comfortable with what they’re being shown, then you’ve got freedom. I love a movie where you use the music sparingly and you’ve attained this freedom with the audience where they’re comfortable getting what they want. And when you get this music you’re so sucked in by the fact that the movie had taken on a magical quality and you didn’t even realize how. You’re shocked in the beginning of this movie because there’s so much character to it, so I tried to be very patient with it.”

While Wurman’s score won’t be featured on a soundtrack album, he does have plans for the work outside of the film. “This is my first big orchestral score, and I’m really pleased with what I did. So I’m going to take the time to make a nice compilation and send it around to directors and producers.”