Spencer Proffer – HuffPost 4.14.10

[Note: This is taken from my interview with Spencer Proffer and contains information that might be useful for artists desiring to have a career involving music in film and related fields.]

Mike Ragogna: You worked on a lot of Showtime movies by handling the music and deals in the ’90s.

Spencer Proffer: I worked on 54 movies and a few miniseries for Showtime over a seven-year period while doing other music and film work during that time as well. For Showtime, I hired the composers for their original films, created the musical blueprints, co-wrote many songs that appeared in the films, and even mixed a number of the scores. That really taught me the new skill set of putting music against film. I owe that opportunity and great result entirely to Jerry Offsay.

MR: It’s said you really pushed the envelope on many of them, not approaching the art of film scoring and visual punctuation in the traditional way. Which were some of your favorite projects that you worked on during this run?

SP: The most prominent movie was Gods And Monsters on which I became a co-executive producer. I also co-wrote the one song in the movie as well as did the music direction and deals for the picture. I was very proud when that work went on to win an Academy Award for the brilliant Bill Condon. But Mandela and de Klerk, which starred Sidney Poitier and Michael Caine, is probably my favorite from that period of my career. I did not want a traditional Hollywood score interpretation of South African music to punctuate the acting and drama of the relationships and Mandela’s life. I wanted it to be truly authentic.

I went to Jerry and said that I would do the research and find an African composer who would use the colors of his continent and make that our sonic tapestry. He agreed. I hired composer Sedrik Samson from Johannesburg who had a studio in a tree house. I got to go to South Africa to produce it with Sedrik. While there, I so went on safari and visited other parts of the country as well. That was in 1997, and it was my first entrance into that wonderful culture. What is fortunate and cool for me now is that with our Citizens project, I got to work with one of the great African musicians and performers of all time, King Sunny Ade, from Nigeria.

MR: Were there any other projects you oversaw that showcased unique approaches to the work you did?

SP: Yes, in fact I loved working on “Elvis Meets Nixon.” Based on a true story, Elvis actually left Graceland to go to D.C. and give Richard Nixon his perspective on the (Vietnam) war and how to conduct it. We needed the “sound” of Elvis to permeate the drama, and we did not have the budget to license the original Presley masters from RCA or license the copyrights to the hits from the music publishing arm of his estate. So, I reassembled Elvis’ original band and added a reassembled Jordanaires for vocal backing textures as well as the original sax soloist, Boots Randolph. They were the key elements of my score. This gave the film the right musical vibe and sensibility. I also did the research and found four Elvis classics that his estate did not control music publishing licenses on.

MR: Which songs?

SP: “Blue Christmas” and “Good Rockin’ Tonight” come to mind, and two others which I can’t remember now. We did the score in Nashville and used a singer named Ronnie McDowell who was a great “Elvis voice.” I knew we would be ok there since Pricilla Presley had worked with Ronnie on her Elvis and Me film. So Ronnie sang those songs with Elvis’ original band. It turned out very well and was reviewed as inspired.