TRACKLISTING
1 Another Bleeding Heart
2 Almost Martyrs
3 Ominous Lacan
4 Ellis (Waterside Dub Mix)
5 Pascal/Shack 2 Cell/Ominous Lacan
6 La Peña Huasteca (performed by Correo Aereo)
7 The Life Of David Gale
8 Arrest/Bitsey Runs/Hospital
9 Huntsville Epitaph
10 Media Frenzy
11 Motel/Houston
12 Just To Hear Your Voice (performed by Toni Price)
13 Ominous Drums/Ominous Pascal
14 Waterside
15 Dusty's Cabin/Almost Martyrs
16 Tu che di gel sei cinta (from Turandot by Giacomo Puccini)

ABOUT THE MUSIC AND THE COMPOSERS

When I first got to Austin, a block away from my hotel I soon discovered 6th Street, where for ten blocks on either side it was jam-packed with bars — all of them blaring out live music. The banners across the street proclaimed Austin to be “the live music capital of America,” and although some other cities might boast the same thing, you couldn’t deny the quantity and diversity of music on offer. Catering as they do for the eclectic tastes of a student population of 50,000, the local record stores had plenty for me to pore over, as I narrowed down the source music relevant to The Life of David Gale.

At the same time, during the pre-production period, I began to experiment with the music that would become the score of our film.

Over the years, I had worked with my two sons, Alex and Jake, on the music for many of my films. Often they have helped me, uncredited, with temp scores, and on Come See the Paradise they provided the main theme. Both are very different in their musical backgrounds. Jake is classically trained, having earned his Masters degree in composition at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. Alex, who trained in audio engineering, and who plays many instruments, has mainly been involved in contemporary music. However, my films in recent years have involved different musical situations — with The Commitments (soul music), Evita (Andrew Lloyd Webber) and Angela’s Ashes (John Williams), there had been little opportunity for Alex, Jake and me to work together since.

During the preparation and shoot of The Life of David Gale I asked Alex to experiment for me in areas where I thought the score might go. I wanted a primarily modern, rhythm-driven score to serve the thriller aspect of the movie and I also wanted it to echo the themes within it. I sent Alex a pile of research materials to do with the political heart of the film and included some biblical quotations, which had been often used both for and against the death penalty. He sent me many demos in Austin, which were very promising.

When I had completed the shoot and returned to London to edit the film, I showed Alex and Jake the scenes that we had already cut and the hours of footage that we were still working on.

The first thing that we completed musically was the song that Alex had been working on — “Another Bleeding Heart” — and which he then took into the studio. Jake wrote the string sections for the song and we were suddenly off on a musical experiment. I have to say now, that as proud as I am of my sons’ accomplishments, I would always be far too selfish with regard to my film to mess it up with notions of nepotism. But, little by little, we started to nudge towards a score that I felt was fresh and original, and one that I couldn’t possibly replicate with a more starry-named composer. Universal were very patient during this period: “Who’s doing the score, Alan?” they asked weekly. “I’m experimenting,” I would answer. “All will be clear when I show you the finished film.” Alex and Jake would immediately work on each scene as it was hot off the Moviola. Jake took the scenes that needed more traditional, orchestral pieces and Alex worked on the rhythmically driven “thriller” scenes. It was a completely organic process — the music was created simultaneously with the cutting of the scenes, which I had never been able to do before. They adapted their work as we cut: Alex, in his back room studio, layering dozens of complex tracks to affect the scenes and Jake, working to picture on his Clavinova, adjusting his music bar by bar.

There came a point when the film required the two of them to work together — something they hadn’t done for some time. Alex’s contemporary multi-tracks had to fuse with Jake’s classical themes. They had named the cues from the script, so Jake’s “Lacan” theme (named for the French philosopher in Gale’s first lecture) suddenly became musically and nominally “Ominous Lacan” as Jake’s ensemble cello pieces fused with Alex’s less elegantly entitled cues, i.e. “Ominous House Vibe”. The very titles themselves are a reflection of their different musical backgrounds. The two of them worked through the night to work and rework their music for my film: Jake’s pieces “Almost Martyrs” and “Huntsville Epitaph” and Alex’s pieces “Shack 2 Cell”, “Dusty’s Cabin” and “Media Frenzy”. Frankly, I doubt that any director ever got so much work out of his composers, especially as they hadn’t been paid a cent at this point — another advantage of keeping it in the family. (We were still in the experimental zone, as far as Universal was concerned.) And, as closely entwined as we are as a family — and also, it has to be said, as opinionated as we usually all are with regard to our different musical tastes — miraculously we got through it without a single argument. Finally, Universal saw and approved the film with its (up to now, electronically recorded) score. We then had to finish the music. At Abbey Road in Studio 1, Jake — who had orchestrated his pieces for a 70-person orchestra — received a round of applause at the end of the sessions from the collected players (not usually known for their altruism). Alex worked away in Studio 3, laying down the dozens of tracks he had created himself in his backroom studio and augmenting them with live musicians.

Needless to say that, family connections aside, I am immensely proud of the score Alex and Jake did for my film.

Alan Parker, November 2002

© 2002 Universal Pictures International

ABOUT THE FILM
The Life of David Gale, a taut suspense thriller directed by Alan Parker, stars two-time Academy Award®-winner Kevin Spacey and Oscar®-nominees Kate Winslet and Laura Linney.

In Charles Randolph’s original screenplay, David Gale (Spacey) is a man who has tried hard to live by his principles, but in a bizarre twist of fate this devoted father, popular professor and respected death penalty opponent finds himself on Death Row for the rape and murder of fellow activist Constance Harraway (Linney). With only three days before his scheduled execution, Gale agrees to give reporter Elizabeth (Bitsey) Bloom (Winslet) the exclusive interview she’s been chasing. But Bitsey soon realizes that this assignment is more than she bargained for, and that a man’s life is in her hands. Putting her own safety in jeopardy, she frantically races to piece together the shocking events surrounding Constance’s death, before it’s too late.

Universal Pictures’ and Intermedia Films’ The Life of David Gale is a Saturn Films/Dirty Hands production, which Alan Parker is producing with Nicolas Cage.

DIRECTOR’S NOTE
For twenty-odd years now, I have written the notes on the making of my films. Originally, it was a knee-jerk reaction to the practice of distributors handing out unhelpful hyperbole — hastily assembled info often written by someone who wasn’t even around when we made the movie — usually dished up on a few sheets of stapled-together paper. Equally, as has often been pointed out to me by my journalist friends, perhaps a few sheets of superficial information are exactly what journalists and film writers require — especially if they don’t like the movie! (They sarcastically tease me that when it comes to me spouting on about my film, they find a list of cast and crew credits, preferably spelled correctly — plus a tote bag full of CDs, T-shirts, baseball caps and passes for the Universal Studios tour — to be infinitely more preferable. After all, shouldn’t watching the actual movie for two hours be enough?) Boy, do I agree.

But anyway, I persevere. Not least of all, because something of what I’ve scribbled down here, as honestly written as it can be, might be of help to anyone interested in how we made the film and, more importantly perhaps — considering the subject matter — why we made it.

This film began with a strike — well, at least the threat of one. There I was in September of 2000 tapping away at my keyboard working on a novel when my co-producer (and wife), Lisa Moran, gently pointed out that the threatened strikes by SAG and the Writers Guild could mean that I might not be making a film for a whole year. Maybe longer, as the strike, set for June 2001, was nine months away, and who knew how long it would last? In fact, as a member of the Writers Guild, I might not even be allowed to write either. Consequently I joined the frantic scramble, along with many of my fellow filmmakers, to seek out (always difficult) and get financed (always impossible) what became known as a “pre-strike” movie. In short: get your movie made before the sword of Damocles falls and the factory gates slam shut for who knows how long.

I quickly read eighteen supposedly “hot” scripts, and disliked them all. It’s always agony for me to decide what to do next in normal circumstances, having been sent over two hundred scripts in the previous year — films take two years of your life to make, after all, so it’s not a good idea to be hasty (I have made fourteen films in twenty-eight years) and the clock-ticking exercise didn’t seem to improve my ability to decide what to do. I asked my agents in Los Angeles to send me anything that they had, even if it didn’t quite fit into what the studios were snapping up in those days of frenzy or, more importantly, into the ever more debilitating exigencies for commercial success. Lisa was the first to read Charles Randolph’s script, The Life of David Gale. And, like her, I then read it in one sitting, astonished that such a well-written, page-turner of a script hadn’t already been made. Although the script — an original story, a fiction — most certainly had an important political issue at its core that I strongly responded to, it was also a terrific thriller. It had been gathering dust on a Warner Bros. shelf since it was written in 1998 when Nicolas Cage’s production company commissioned it and the script was now in “turn-around” from Warners. Charles Randolph, originally from Texas, had written it while still performing his day job as a professor of philosophy at a Vienna university.

I flew to Los Angeles and had lunch with Nicolas Cage, who I knew, having directed him as a very young man in Birdy (1984). He had two pre-strike films lined up as an actor and a small film he wanted to direct himself post-strike and so he graciously passed the ball of The Life of David Gale over to me.

Stacey Snider, the boss of Universal, with whom I had a long-term deal, read it overnight and phoned to say that she wanted to make it and proceeded to secure the rights.

We immediately left for Texas for a preliminary recce — as always, on films at this stage, paid for on my credit card — studios being too canny to commit their dollars too readily, especially with a strike looming. I knew Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana well, having filmed there, but although I had visited Texas many times, I had never been to Austin, where our story is principally set. I also visited the Ellis Unit prison in East Texas where Death Row is set in our story and “The Walls” unit in downtown Huntsville where all executions in the state take place — at this time I was merely an observer, viewing from outside the high, red brick walls for which the prison is named. Later, I would become much more familiar with what goes on inside.

Returning to London, Stacey Snider called me to say that she thought it more prudent if we went “post-strike.” Her theory being that the casting cupboard was becoming somewhat bare as actors, like everyone else, were scrambling and signing up for one, or even two, films before the feared June strike deadline. She also contended that the studio/unions strike negotiations were going well and there was increasing optimism that there wouldn’t even be a strike. Ever the skeptical pragmatist in dealing with studios, who are traditionally judicious with the truth, I agreed that regarding casting, there was sense in her cautious philosophy. And as David Gale might say, “Philosophy could clip an angel’s wings.” Anyway, I went along with this, and we — Lisa Moran, David Wimbury, the line producer, Charles Randolph and the various key crew members who had committed themselves to the film and to myself — all found ourselves on hiatus, still without pay, for another five months until the strike was finally resolved. However, time is never wasted on the preparation of a film and the breather allowed me time to work with Charles on honing the script, to meet with actors and to briefly return to my novel.

In May the studio released a small amount of money so that we could return to Texas for a more thorough recce to inform our eventual production. The office of the new governor, Rick Perry, and the Texas Film Commission were most helpful in easing the way for us to approach the prison authorities — the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, a surprisingly (to me, anyway) open organization. With regards to Death Row and the administration of the death penalty, they have “a job to do,” as charged by Texas law, and are extremely transparent and helpful in explaining how it all works. For instance, their website (www.tdcj.state.tx.us/stat/deathrow) gives every detail of the tasks they dutifully administer, from the cost of each execution ($86.06) to the last statements and last meals of each condemned inmate (aspects of which we put into the script).

Alan Parker, November 2002


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