Publicity
Cutting Edge Composer
By Jean Oppenheimer (as printed in The Hollywood Reporter in January 1999)
John Ottman juggles the complexities of composing and editing.
Writers who direct and actors who produce are a dime a dozen, but composers who edit? John Ottman, who both scored and edited "Apt Pupil" -- and "The Usual Suspects" before that -- stands out even in industry accustomed to hyphenates.
"I wouldn't recommended for the weak at heart," laughs Ottman, who revealed an aptitude for both music and super-8 filmmaking while still in elementary school. At USC Film School he edited and wrote the score for "Summer Rain," a classmate's problem-plagued thesis project, which went on to win the Student Academy Award. It was also at USC that Ottman met aspiring director Bryan Singer, who hired Ottman to edit and score his first feature, "Public Access," which took the Grand Jury Prize at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival.
"When I am editing a film, I am an editor completely and not really thinking about the music at all, declares Ottman, who considers editing the most important job on a movie yet still thinks of himself first and foremost as a composer. His composing credits include "The Cable Guy," "Snow White" and the upcoming "Cruel Intentions." He believes his musical instincts have a definite impact on his editing. "(They) influence me in terms of knowing how to create peaks and valleys and how to tell a story a little more eloquently, because I'm thinking musically."
"Apt Pupil" proved a tough film to score. "Normally when you have two characters in a room, and those characters are an old man and a boy, it's called 'film death,'" Ottman remarks drolly. "The challenge was to keep things interesting in a very limited geographical setting."
The opening-title sequence proved especially significant. "It is very important for this kind of film to have a sequence like that, because it sets up all of the themes you're going to subliminally be hearing throughout the movie, which then helps carry the dialog-intensive scenes."