Equalibrium
Courtesy of Institute for Regional Education
I’m still not entirely sure what kind of dark arts Cathy had to practice to get us an audience with Philip Glass, but I’m eternally grateful to her for the experience!
We filed in early to watch the sound check for the performance of Koyaanisqatsi (1983) at Vancouver’s Queen Elizabeth Theatre. The members of the Philip Glass Ensemble played sections from the score of the film and negotiated the the sound engineer as he adjusted their monitors—“Michael’s can I hear your right hand?”, “Can you take down the violins?”
Our brief conversation with the man himself was both jovial and illuminating. He talked about his enjoyment at rediscovering the power of live music with film, his working relationship with different directors, and the affinity between sound and image in cinema. Along the way we heard about how Martin Scorsese was hesitant at first to accept the score before a frame of film had been exposed on Kundun (1997), but how, as the production progressed, he would plead for more cues as Glass fell behind due to touring commitments! We also heard about how Errol Morris can be a hard taskmaster and particularly difficult to satisfy. Most recently this resulted in Glass writing a total 80 separate music cues for The Fog of War (2003), which in his experience the average on a feature film is closer to 30! Glass is convinced that part of the problem is the result of Morris insisting he play the music himself!
The performance of the score was enjoyable, but the film has always been a little too didactic for my tastes.
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