Career
“One day, while dressed in suit and tie and selling jewelry on credit, I received a call from an old friend from Brandeis who had married a young film director,” Safan recalled. “They had just arrived in L.A. to attend the American Film Institute; he had made an independent Super 16mm horror film and they needed music for it.” Asked if he knew anyone who could do it, Safan suggested himself – and thus was born his career as a film composer at the age of 24. The film, never released, was called The Demon’s Daughter and the director was John McTiernan. “I was hooked and loved the freedom to put together all my talents, from the dramatic writing of theater, to the melodic and rhythmic world of songs, to the esoteric world of contemporary classical music. It just suddenly all came together at that moment.”
One assignment led to another. Writing the title music for California Reich, a 1975 documentary for Walter Parkes, led him to score a low-budget exploitation film called The Great Texas Dynamite Chase (1976), which began his long relationship with Michael Pressman, for whom he would score five more pictures through the 1990s. Meanwhile he started studying film music and sought out the wisdom of Fred Steiner, Ernest Gold, and Elmer Bernstein. They, each in different ways, became his mentors.
He scored a number of independent action comedies like The Great Smokey Roadblock (1977), Acapulco Gold (1978), Corvette Summer (1978), Roller Boogie (1979) and the like: fast-paced youth-oriented films with lots of rhythmic vibe. It came as a change of pace to score a dark thriller like Fade To Black (1980). Initially the music was to have been done by Chris Stein, guitarist for the rock band Blondie, but a contract had never been finalized for him to do so, so Safan was brought in late in the process to provide the film’s score instead. Fade To Black would launch Safan’s most active period in film scoring, the era in which he would be known for a number of large scale action, thriller, and science fiction films, including such films as the atonal and aleatoric Wolfen (1981; after recording, the score was excised from the production along with original director Michael Wadleigh and a new score was composed by James Horner), the jazzy and nourish comedic thriller, Tag: The Assassination Game (1982), the sweeping orchestral spectacle of The Last Starfighter (1984, one of Safan’s finest scores), the swashbuckling adventure of Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (1985; Safan’s score mixed large orchestra with electronics and Korean instruments), a powerful electronic score from Synclavier for Warning Sign (1985), the Western science fiction TV-movie Timestalkers (1987), the purely electronic score for A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988), the compelling and poignant music for Stand And Deliver (1988, also featuring Synclavier), and the sumptuous orchestral score for the 1991 TV Western docudrama about George Armstrong Custer, Son Of The Morning Star (1991), and the effervescent, heartfelt, and occasionally zany scores for the popular comedies Major Payne (1995), Mr. Wrong (1996).
Safan has also composed extensively for television, notably the hit sitcom Cheers (1982–93), which won for him numerous ASCAP awards for his music. He also scored occasional episodes of the TV anthology shows, Amazing Stories (1985–86) and the revived The New Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1985) and The Twilight Zone (1985–86), Supercarrier (1988), the National Geographic Channel special Secrets of the Titanic (1986), and several fistfuls of made-for-TV movies in a number of genres, including Mission of the Shark: The Saga of the U.S.S. Indianapolis (1991), Terror on Track 9 (1992), and the Hallmark Hall of Fame film, A Season for Miracles (1999). All of these varied experiences precluded Safan’s being typecast in any one type of film. Safan’s style has often consisted of improvising as a form of composition that allowed him to quickly express himself to the visual story unfolding on the screen.
In recent years Safan has returned to composing for theater, though he remains active in scoring for film and television as his time allows. In 2005, he was asked if he would compose music to accompany some of the acts for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Safan accepted the challenge, immersing himself in the world of dare-devilry, superhuman stunts, and performing beasts, and he continued to compose music for the circus through its 2010 season.
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