David Shire - Film and Television Scoring

Film and Television Scoring

Shire began scoring for television in the 1960s and made the leap to scoring feature films in the early 1970s. He was then married to actress Talia Shire, for whose brother Francis Ford Coppola he scored The Conversation, perhaps his best known score, in 1974. Additional screen credits include Two People, All The President's Men, The Hindenburg, Farewell My Lovely, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, 2010, The Big Bus, Return to Oz, Short Circuit, Max Dugan Returns, and Zodiac. He composed original music for Saturday Night Fever (for which he received two Grammy Award nominations), and also worked on several disco adaptations including "Night on Disco Mountain." He won the Academy Award for Best Song for his and Norman Gimbel's theme song for Norma Rae, "It Goes Like It Goes." He was also nominated the same year in the same category for "I'll Never Say Goodbye," from the motion picture The Promise, with lyrics jointly written by Marilyn and Alan Bergman. In 1980 his song "With You I'm Born Again," recorded by Billy Preston and Syreeta, was a top five international hit and stayed on the pop charts for 26 weeks.

The Conversation featured an austere score for piano. On some cues, Shire took the taped sounds of the piano and distorted them in different ways to create alternative sonic textures to round out the score. The music is intended to capture the isolation and paranoia of protagonist Harry Caul (Gene Hackman). The score was released on CD by Intrada Records.

For The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Shire used serial techniques and a funky jazz-rock rhythm section for the main theme. It is intended to evoke the bustle and diversity of New York City, and is an unofficial theme for the 6 subway line (the local Lexington Avenue Line that is depicted in the film). The soundtrack album was the first-ever CD release by Film Score Monthly. The end titles contain a more expansive arrangement of the theme. Shire received two Grammy nominations for his work on the film.

Shire's television scores have earned five Emmy nominations. His hundreds of scores for television include: Sarah, Plain and Tall; Raid on Entebbe; The Kennedys of Massachusetts; Serving In Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story; Christopher Reeve's Rear Window; Oprah Winfrey's The Women of Brewster Place; and The Heidi Chronicles. He also composed themes for the television series Alice and McCloud.

Shire's film and television scoring style is often compared to his late counterpart and contemporary, Jerry Fielding.