Two musicals are among the five Oscar nominees for best original score. But what’s really being honored in that category? The songs, the background score, or the entirety of the music in the film?
It’s a question that has plagued Oscar voters for many years. Four of Alan Menken’s eight Oscars are for “original score,” all for Disney animated musicals. But did voters understand that they were not voting for Menken’s songs—which dominated films like “The Little Mermaid” and “Beauty and the Beast”—but rather the dramatic music between the vocals?
That’s the case again this year, with original-score nods for both “Emilia Perez” and “Wicked.” “Perez” was also nominated for two of its original songs (“El Mal” and “Mi Camino”), while “Wicked” was not, because all of its songs are directly from the Broadway show and were not written specifically for the movie.
In the past, dramatic underscore in musicals was often disqualified under Oscar rules (“a score shall not be eligible if it has been diminished in impact by the predominant use of songs”). But in recent years the Academy music branch executive committee, which rules on these issues, has been more forgiving.
Both “Wicked” and “Emilia Perez” passed muster, partly because of the sheer quantities of music involved.
In fact, only 33% of the total two hours and 32 minutes of music in “Wicked” consists of the songs performed. The other 67% (approximately 101 minutes) is the dramatic score, a collaboration between songwriter Stephen Schwartz and composer John Powell (“How to Train Your Dragon”), both nominees.
Creating the “Wicked” score, Powell says, involved “trying to absorb the shapes, the harmonic language, that Stephen was giving me, but then trying to see through the camera lens and (director) Jon Chu’s perspective so that it always felt like it came from the same place, but for this new way of looking at the story.”
To achieve the magical sound of Oz, they recorded a 60-voice choir at L.A.’s Sony scoring stage, which was once the MGM stage where the original “Wizard of Oz” score was recorded in 1939. “That language is part of the history of this storytelling, and Jon really wanted to keep that,” Powell reports.
The percentages in “Emilia Perez” are different, in part because there are 11 songs in “Wicked” but 14 original numbers, totaling 40 minutes, in “Perez.” The songs account for 40% of the total music in “Perez,” compared to the underscore, which accounts for 37% of the total (the other 23% is additional music or source music not by the nominated composers).
The score percentage was just enough to qualify under Oscar rules, which demand a minimum of 35% of the total music in the film. Intriguingly, the “Emilia Perez” score also relies heavily on vocal sounds, many of them performed by Camille, half of the nominated songwriting and score-composing duo of Camille and Clément Ducol.
“It’s me as a choir, which I do a lot in my work,” she says. “Jacques (Audiard, the director) was a little worried that it would be too much me, because in France people know me and maybe they would recognize the voice. But I’ve been (immersed) in the story for many years and I knew what was at stake. It’s something you feel.” The breaths that are audible on the soundtrack are also hers; in addition, a Mexican choir is featured.
“It was probably the most challenging project of our lives,” adds Camille. “We needed to be patient, to be brave. We knew that we were doing something that doesn’t happen every day.”
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