The man responsible for bringing the iconic Stargate theme (plus so many more) to life joins DialtheGate LIVE to share stories about the post-production process of making the hit film and take your questions!

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Timecodes
0:00 – Opening Credits
1:05 – Welcome and Episode Outline
03:22 – Guest Introduction
04:06 – The Stargate Theme
07:48 – Crossover Music From Film to Series
14:54 – Movie and Music Concept
16:01 – What film scores made you fall in love with this profession?
20:20 – Why were you selected for this movie?
26:24 – Arriving at the Main Theme
35:27 – When Daniel Dials the Stargate
38:55 – Ra, the Sun God
44:59 – The Film’s Success
50:36 – Opening Credits of the Film
55:45 – Interpreting the Story With Sound
59:27 – Independence Day
1:02:46 – Good Omens
1:06:00 – Which scores are you fond of?
1:11:47 – Have you listened to someone’s music and thought you could have done better?
1:12:59 – Was it a challenge to combine Egyptian, military and romance themes?
1:14:57 – How do you feel about the lack of TV themes? Can we have space operas without music?
1:18:25 – What is the best piece of advice another musician has given you?
1:21:08 – Thank you, David!
1:23:23 – Post-Interview Housekeeping
1:29:11 – End Credits

***

“Stargate” and all related materials are owned by MGM Studios and MGM Television.

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read
Welcome everyone to episode 82 of Dial the Gate. My name is David Read, thank you for joining us on your Sunday. Or if you’re time shifting and watching later, thank you for joining us. We have composer, the original feature film Stargate, David Arnold, joining us this episode. I do appreciate you tuning in. David is someone I’ve been a fan of as far back as…well, I saw Independence Day first. The creativity of this man is boundless, I have been wanting to have him on for a very long time and I am very pleased that he accepted. Before we get started with the show, if you like Stargate and you really want to see more content like this on YouTube, it would mean a great deal if you click the Like button. It makes a difference with YouTube’s algorithm and will definitely help the show grow its audience. Please also consider sharing this video with a Stargate friend and if you want to get notified about future episodes, click the Subscribe icon. Giving the bell icon a click will notify you the moment a new video drops and you’ll get my notifications of any last minute guest changes. This is key if you plan on watching live, these talents are working and things shift about all the time. Clips from this live stream will be released over the course of the next several days on the Gateworld.net YouTube channel. As with most of our live streams, David and I are going to talk first, while we’re doing that, I invite you over at youtube.com/dialthegate to submit your questions. But with this particular episode, we have a giveaway for those who have joined us live. My moderators are going to choose one question which is going to get sent, I believe it is a deluxe copy of the Stargate feature film score composed by David Arnold, to one listener/viewer in the YouTube audience who’s live right now. Anywhere in the world, I’ll send this copy anywhere, there was some question about that over at Gateworld. Since this is a live global audience, you’ve taken the time to log in from who knows where, so submit your questions to the moderators and one of you will be owning the CD before the end of today. Without further ado, I’m not going to make him wait any longer because he looks like he’s falling asleep over there in England. I’m sorry, David. How are you?

David Arnold
I’m very well, thank you very much for having me. This is the first time I think I’ve spoken about Stargate since since we did it.

David Read
Wow. I am so grateful to have you and I want to let everyone know you are on a satellite connection so there’s going to be a little bit of lag. But the important thing is we can hear you perfectly. It’s phenomenal to have you sir. Your score, that theme, above anything else is so central to the heart and soul of this franchise over 350 episodes.

David Arnold
It’s insane.

David Arnold
The thing is, I love theme tunes. I love them because if they’re done properly and they’re done well, the entire world of what you’re about to see is presented to you. You listen to it and somehow it’s like a giant shop window; it’s got all the things that you’re kind of interested in and intrigued by. It somehow encapsulates everything about what the show could be, should be and essentially finally is. Whenever I can, I always start with a theme. The films that I’ve done, the TV shows that I’ve done, they’ve all got big themes. You can play them and you know what they are. I love doing that but also I think it’s really important to identify it. There are lots of different themes and sub themes in Stargate but the fact that the central big one, the one that belongs to the movie, has succeeded in the TV show as well. I know it’s been sort of changed about a little bit and that’s fine because it’s a different medium and we’re telling a slightly different story. What was really interesting was that someone asked me to do…what was the Stargate show that came out after? Was it Atlantis?

David Read
It’s crazy.

David Read
Yes, it was the spin off.

David Arnold
It was Atlantis. I got a call about the music for Atlantis and I said, “I’d love to do a theme for it, write something new.”

David Read
They called you?

David Arnold
Yeah. I seem to remember, this is a while back. Or did I ask about it? Anyway, something that happened along the lines was that I would have to kind of demo for it with everyone else. I thought, “I’m not sure if I really want to do that with Stargate” so I sort of withdrew at that point. But the actual SG-1 show, obviously, was hugely successful. It’s joyous to still have your thumbprint on it a little bit. I know the guys that did the show, the music, did such a brilliant job. They kind of captured the spirit of the film, music, certainly the score, the little inclinations and the harmonic things. The approach felt like it had its presence in the score as well. It’s that’s always nice when, stylistically, you feel like this is strong enough to continue. A lot of times when you do a TV show they go “let’s take it somewhere else.” It does seem to have kind of inextricably linked itself to it, which as a composer is kind of like your greatest dream; that you do something which becomes the music for something which you love.

David Read
I am a huge music connoisseur but I don’t have the library of terminology where I can say “lead motif this” and “such and such.”

David Arnold
Yeah, you don’t need all that.

David Arnold
Yeah, and it’s something that you have zero control over. What was really interesting about Stargate from the outset was that no one knew what it was, no one knew what it was gonna be. I think expectations for it were actually quite low, it was an unknown quantity. It was a medium budget, it wasn’t a huge budget. Roland made the most of it. There was plenty of other brilliantly creative people adding to the kind of DNA of the look and the feel of the project. It went through a few changes; some different editors came on, they tried some different cuts, they shot different bits and pieces. I was on it for a long time and I think I was on it for a long time because I was naive. It was my first sort of major feature film and I just thought I had to be there and every time they made a change I would have to rewrite the score. I was writing some scenes 12, 13, 14 times.

David Read
In watching what Joel Goldsmith did for the series, it was so crystal clear the reverence that existed for the work that you created in the movie. The villain, Ra, in the feature film was transformed into the goa’uld for the TV series and every once in a while, setting the principal Stargate theme aside, we would hear just little reminders in the flow of the soundtrack who these villains were. Throughout the show, whenever the goa’uld were used, there was such a reverence paid towards the work that you had done in establishing those initial building blocks in the feature film. What was for all intents and purposes a popcorn, edge of your seat, thrill ride adventure for a feature film, transformed into a legacy that’s lasted 17 seasons on television and God knows what else next.

David Read
Oh my God.

David Arnold
Which is ridiculous. I didn’t know “Well, why don’t you just wait till you finish that bit and then I’ll do that bit?” But I didn’t know, so I was writing reams and reams and reams of music to fit the latest cut. That’s naivety, that’s inexperience. No one really knew what it was gonna be and it was only when it started doing well and chiming with the sci-fi fi aficionados; people who appreciated the kind of thing that it was. And the honesty that was involved in it; if there’s one thing you can say for Stargate is that it doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what it is. It has no pretensions to really, anything, other than being what it is. I love the honesty of it, Roland was always very excited and I think you can tell. Dean Devlin and Roland were very, very into the idea right from the early days and their enthusiasm is infectious. For me, being able to be offered the opportunity to do something in a film like that! I thought I would have to wait 20 years before I got a crack at something of that scale. In a way, sci-fi is a genre which allows you to do anything. Your responsibility to truth and reality is different because what we’re looking at isn’t truth and it’s not reality. But it has its own truth and its own story and you’ve got to be honest with it, you’ve got to engage with it in an honest way. I, for that reason, was devoted to try and be honest with it and feel in a way, musically, what Roland was doing visually. The fact that you had all these images, pyramids and the travel through the Stargate and Ra. Just the idea for a start, what if? Roland’s big things are “what ifs?” “What if we found something? What if we found something at the foot of a pyramid which was like a gateway to somewhere else?” That was his initial kind of pitch and it went from there. When you’re reading it and all these things are happening, you start off on Earth and then you’re in Egypt in 1928? Was it 1928 or 1918?

David Read
Yeah, started it off in 1928.

David Arnold
Yeah, 1928. I always remember because that date came up and that was the first scene after the opening title sequence. I love the fact that it started with an opening title sequence because then we can go, “here we are, this is what you’re about to experience.” Then you go to a time that no one has any experience of at all and then we’re back in the modern day and then the discovery of the Stargate and the unlocking of the Stargate and the character stuff. Then we’re through the Stargate and then we’re there and yo’re like “now what?” You have all these amazing, huge chapters of development and, stunning visual things. Musically, you can do anything for that. I remember when I got asked to do it, they flew me over to meet with Roland and Dean and Mario Kassar and Joel Michaels at Carolco on Sunset. I had no idea what I was meant to do. At this point all I has done was a low budget British film which Id done in my bedroom. All of a sudden I’m in the middle of this enormous Hollywood film with enormous Hollywood producers and movie stars in it. Not that young Americans didn’t have movie stars, they had Harvey Keitel. There were some people but we were in a caravan in London doing that. They built the entire interior of the pyramid in the Spruce Goose building and it was enormous. I’m turning up and going “Well, this must be normal. This must be normal, all this stuff” because I’d never done it before. I was just thinking, “this is a gift, this is a gift for music.” I said to Roland in the room, we were talking about it. I think they basically wanted to get an idea about what I thought of it. I said, “well, musically, the only thing I can really say which is understandable and in very simplistic terms, is that it’s like Lawrence of Arabia meets Star Wars musically. That’s what I would say I would attempt.”

David Read
Yes, absolutely.

David Arnold
There is a kind of exoticism to it. There is a sense of adventure, there is a sense of other worldliness, there’s a sense of derring-do, there is a sense of regret. There is an honest, simple love story, there is action. But the whole thing is thematically driven so you’re always anchored in a very musical world. It went from there really. They sent me home and then two weeks later I got asked to do it.

David Read
Wow. How long…? You know what, let’s park this for a minute. I want to go back further.

David Arnold
Okay.

David Read
What scores, what film scores, what compositions made you fall in love with this art form that made you say, “you know what, I want to do this for the rest of my life if god willing, I’m able?”

David Arnold
When I was seven or eight years old I was at the cinema, I think for the first time. I can’t remember. I saw You Only Live Twice, Disney’s Jungle Book and Oliver the musical, the Lionel Bart musical. Now, each of those films, completely different. Each of those films, absolutely and totally identifiable by the music alone. Each of those films, visually stunning, character design, voicing, the spirit of it, the emotional core, the sense of loss. The sense of adventure in You Only Live Twice, the heroic story of James Bond. The tragedy of Baloo dying in the fight with Shere Khan, but he’s not dead. Bill Sikes trying to beat Nancy to death and being hung. These kids being effectively socially abused.

David Read
Traumatized, yeah.

David Arnold
Really, really big things. All that stuff properly went in, it properly went in. In those days when you left the cinema you could buy the soundtrack album from the foyer of cinema.

David Read
News to me, wow.

David Arnold
It was vinyl and you would get a program as well. The studio would make a very lovely program and it was displayed as you went out of the cinema; the vinyl album, soundtrack album and a booklet. You’d buy them and we bought them. We bought You Only Live Twice, we bought The Jungle Book and we bought Oliver. I’ve still got them, I’ve still got the program for The Jungle Book. That went on the record player, a lot, and you replay the thing in your mind. I know it’s a cliche. I do it with my kids, I put on film music and I say “what do you think’s happening here?” and everyone gets excited. I was teaching my daughter how to ride a bike, first time without stabilizers. She didn’t want to do it, she was scared, so I cued up the flying music from E.T with my phone. I ran alongside her playing it at full power and all of a sudden off she went, because she’d seen the film. It has a real effect on people, it’s extraordinary. It had an effect on me and I wanted to be a part of the thing that made the noise that made me feel like that, it’s as simple as that. When I got into the band, school band, school orchestra; you’re making a noise, you’re shifting the air. You’re in a room with 50, 60, other people in a band with an orchestra, with an audience and the baton comes down and you start the piece and it goes bang. It fills you with everything that music does and then it projects it outwards and you get something back from it. It really is a bit like flying and I wanted to be a part of the thing that made me feel like that.

David Read
Wow.

David Arnold
I think everyone wants to be a rock star at some point. For a couple of years, yeah, of course you do. I learnt very early on that I would never get to say “thank you Wembley, good night” and became a bit more realistic about what I was good at and what I wasn’t good at.

David Read
Well, lucky for all of us, you followed through on what you knew you were supposed to do. What was it that made them seek you out for this film? I’m looking at some of the shorts that you did, The Young Americans, Play Dead, The Follower.

David Arnold
You wouldn’t have seen any of them, they were student movies. They weren’t broadcast, they were just done in a college. You put them on a credit because it looks like you’ve done more. I did them, I learned how to do the job by doing student movies but they weren’t broadcast so they wouldn’t have seen them. The Young Americans was the only one. The connection was that The Young Americans had a quite a lot of producers involved. The financing came from different places and part of the financing came from Canal+ in France. Mark, I think, I can’t remember his name. We didn’t see him much but he was involved. He was the one who was setting up with Carolco in Hollywood to make a Hollywood filmmaking arm of Canal+. He took The Young Americans when we finished it and asked Mario Kassar if he’d look at it, Mario was interested in seeing it because he was interested in new talent, god bless him. So Danny and I, the director, Danny Cannon, got on the plane with a copy of The Young Americans in our suitcase and we flew to Los Angeles and we hired a car and we drove to Mario Kassar’s house. We roll up to the entrance and there’s security guards and there’s Dobermans and you’re in the Hollywood Hills and it is like you’re in the movies. I’ve never been there before. You go in the front entrance and there are artifacts. There is Charlie Chaplin’s cane, there might have been the first Bible. I don’t know, but it was full of all that sort of stuff; stuff that’s impossible to buy. All of Jerry Goldsmith’s batons that he’d used for the movies that he’d done, I think the Rambo ones, First blood. All of those, I think, in a little crisscross shape set in a case on the wall. Yeah, the Chaplin stuff. He took the movie off us, and of course he’s got a cinema at his home, he goes off to see it. He puts us in a room to wait because we’re not going to watch it with him and in this room there are pinball machines all the way around the room, based on the films that he’s done and the cinema gross of what they took. So hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. He comes out and he really liked it, he really liked it. I think he especially liked Danny as a director, I think that’s why the Judge Dredd thing came about. We just had a quick word with Mario, we said goodbye, I flew home. Mark had spoken to Roland and Dean because Canal+ we’re producing Stargate with Carolco, I think it was their first big co-production. I got on all right with Mark and he liked the music and he played them a piece of music from that score called Christians Requiem. You can look it up if you want, it’s pretty grand, it’s big. I was a small film but it was a moment in the film where I could be quite cinematic. It was a funeral sequence and it was supposed to be quite turf and tearing and hugely dramatic so I go completely for it in this cue. It’s got choir in it and it’s big and it’s a big melody and it’s moving, hopefully. He played it to Roland and he liked it and he said, “Well, let’s talk to David.” They sent me the script over and then flew me over to meet with them, that’s how it came about. I didn’t have any money. I was doing work like digging up holes in roads and working in warehouses while I was doing student films. The Young Americans had a small budget, of course we spend all that on the players so there’s nothing left at the end of it for me. I’m going out and getting part time work in order to find out what I’m doing next and it turns out the thing that I’m doing next is Stargate.

David Read
What a crazy leap!

David Arnold
That’s not supposed to happen is it?

David Read
You missed the toil in the early phase.

David Arnold
I was in the office, the producers office, and on his desk were stacks of CDs of show reels of everyone that I’d ever heard of in film music. James Horner, James Newton Howard, the agents obviously going “we know you’re looking for a composer for Stargate.” They’re there in that room and I have this one cue and this one film but I got in and I spoke to them and I think my love for it was equal to theirs and my take on it was something that I thought they like. Obviously, I was a lot cheaper than the others.

David Read
To be brutally honest.

David Arnold
That did come up and justifiably so.

David Read
For that theme alone you couldn’t possibly have gotten the mileage out of it that…That main theme, how did you arrive at that? In hindsight, you mentioned Lawrence of Arabia and Star Wars, I can see where the DNA for that original theme really comes into play.

David Arnold
It’s because I was missing in sci-fi, I think, since the sort of mid 80s where the electronic things started happening quite a lot more. You had moments like Jerry’s score being replaced by Tangerine Dream in the Ridley Scott movie, the Tom Cruise film, Legend. I’ve heard both and I thought, “why are they replacing that? That’s amazing.” There was a lot of electronic stuff going on and I was missing, not the grandiosity, but the language of orchestral sci-fi recording, I just love the feel of all those people playing. I think when you’re dealing with things that are of another world and of science, the humanity that an orchestral performance brings is essential, for me. I’m not saying you can’t do it without it but for me, at the time, I was thinking, “god, I wish I could hear a great big balls-out orchestral sci-fi score, again, with a big theme.” Like you do on the sci-fi’s greatest hits albums, like the way that John Williams effortlessly did in the 70s. Everything was memorable, everything was a classic almost immediately. I love the lyricism of that and the humanity of it so I knew I wanted to do that kind of thing. That’s secondary, that’s kind of how you do it but what is “it” that you do? It’s very easy to put the cart before the horse and say, “I’m gonna do a score that sounds like this.” I’m thinking “well, this is all very well but what is it that we’re going to be playing? What’s the music gonna be? The music that we’re going to play in this style, what is it going to be?” I”d read the script. I was looking at a lot of Egyptian music, percussion wise, and there’s a guy called Hossam Ramzy who played with Led Zeppelin and Jimmy Page and Robert Plant as Page and Plant as well. He lived in England and he was a brilliant percussionist and he had an ensemble who would tour. I thought “Well, I’ll go and see him and have a look at the instruments that they use.” Obviously the Egyptian aspect of it was the same thing we did with language. How would have it developed if we literally went down and took everyone from this place and they never had any more earthly influence? How possibly could they have developed? I always felt like “I know the language did”. One of the first things I had to do actually, when they were on the set, when they were pulling the Stargate up at the base of the pyramid and you had all these slaves, effectively, pulling the rope and the thing comes up like that and it’s amazing. Roland, the night before, asked me if I would write a work song for these people to sing while they were doing the work. In terms of authenticity, “can we have something there which would add to the the general mele of being in Egypt in 1928 and what they would be doing as a sort of heave ho kind of thing?” I thought, “we’ll have to have some words, they’re gonna have to be saying something.” The guy who was the Egyptian language expert from, I think, one of the big universities in California, in L.A, was doing the translation for the cast. He would get the words, he would then develop a language which genuinely could have developed. You probably know this stuff.

David Read
Some of it, not all.

David Arnold
It’s very interesting. Subsequently, after he spent all this time and trouble doing it and he got the actors to say the lines phonetically, they change a line when they dub it and they go, “we could do with him saying, “quick, get out now” rather than “who’s that?” The guy’s saying this language but the subtitle is completely different so I felt a bit sorry for him in a couple of spots. But we sat down and we thought, “let’s do what sounds like a kind of new Egyptian work song.” I did this thing and I get out on the set the next morning. It’s in Yuma, Arizona, and it’s like a heat that I’ve never experienced before. We had belts with big two liter bottles of water in holsters, you were kinda like clean living Cowboys. You had these two liter bottles and you’d drink them all day and you’d never go to the bathroom once. It was extraordinarily hot.

David Read
Yep, welcome to my life.

David Arnold
They were digging up this thing and it was all like underground cables and there was a big winch out of shot with a wire on it that’s going to be painted out and all this stuff and the ropes around it. Roland gives me a bullhorn and I stand up in front of all the cast that are there and I start talking to them in English, The first AD goes “they’re Spanish, they don’t speak English.” I go “okay.” So now you’ve got this guy from England trying to teach Spanish speaking extras a fake Egyptian language. Of course you’ve got five minutes to do this because they’re gonna shoot the thing. It was quite complex this song, I thought, “there’s no way I’m going to be able to teach these people this thing. They’re never going to remember it and they’re never going to be able to act and try and remember and sing this song.”

David Arnold
No, this is something they really would have had to rehearsed.

David Arnold
So I felt “you know, six months ago I was on a building site doing this kind of thing for real and we didn’t sing a song. The most of the thing we did was go, “heave” and then call people bastards for not doing it enough.” So I thought, “let’s just have them going ‘heave’.” That was much more authentic and I think that’s what ended up being in the movie. That was a morning where I thought “this is one of the most ridiculous situations I’ve ever been in my entire life.” All these people looking at me going “I don’t know what he’s saying.”

David Arnold
Raising the Stargate from the ground is one of the key moments in that entire film because it provides the clarity of how enormous this discovery is. It would have been interesting had you have to cut back and forth between them singing and then you composing and putting things around it.

David Arnold
Yeah. Also it’s like a moment of absolute wonder and I know Roland was very keen on it being like, “oh my god that’s amazing!” Not “oh my god, what is it?” It was a bit of the same with Godzilla as well. When you see Godzilla it’s not like, “oh my god, that’s terrifying,” it was like, “oh my god, that’s amazing.” That was what he wanted, that was a steer for Matthew; “it’s amazing, it’s not terrifying, it’s amazing.” So the Stargate thing was like, “oh, my god, what’s this?” Now, that’s quite a big moment musically, as an elevating thing. It’s a big thing and I wanted it to really go, “Whoa, what’s that?” But later, the other key moment is when they dial into it and when Daniel touches it for the first time. We hear the second part of that [discovery theme] where it’s like double wonder. I thought “well, it was wondrous when we saw it coming out of the ground but this is more than that. I can’t really get bigger than what I did earlier so let’s make it internal. Let’s make it Daniel’s ‘Oh, my god, what’s this’?”

David Read
Which was a moment that they came up with on set. It’s not in the script, they just go through the gate.

David Arnold
I was on the set for that. What it is, is just like a big black room, this big thing like a Stargate and a walkway up to it. Behind the Stargate there’s a light and someone’s doing that in front of it and poor James Spader is standing in front of it, basically looking at a craft service table and a light in front of it. and he’s going, “oh my god, this is amazing.” He just walked into it and grabs a red vine and off he goes and does it again. It’s the magic of filmmaking. Then I saw it and it was like, “wow!” That’s been stolen so many times, that idea, the look of it, the feel of it, the water, they did the thing with the spinning war. It was lovely being around it so much as well, that was a big moment. For me, the big musical moments were the opening title theme, seeing the Stargate for the first time, opening of it and going through for the first time. seeing Ra for the first time and then the big climactic battle stuff at the end when they’re winning. There’s a lot of stuff in between which I really liked as well.

David Read
The Mastidge drag sequence, you have to…

David Arnold
That’s a really short sequence, it’s only like a minute long but it’s become really popular. You notice but you’ve no idea why. But it’s like with the Mastidges, I was there. These poor horses, they had these incredibly huge things that they strapped on them. They had fans inside the costumes to keep them…I’m thinking “this is just another day, isn’t it?” We were next to the Queen Mary, J. Davidson, that’s a whole other story. Amazing! Kurt was lovely, James was lovely; I made a lot of friends on that film. It was such a wonderful experience but really, really, really hard work. I mean, unbelievably hard work. But there you go, if it was easy everyone would be doing it, right?

David Read
That’s certainly true. A big component of this film is obviously the villain. When we had Dean Devlin on earlier this year, I guess earlier in this season, last last year. I didn’t realize that he was never supposed to be Ra until post production where they were like, “okay, the performance, we need to take this up a notch. Let’s give him a flange and let’s make his eyes glow. Let’s make him Ra rather than…”

David Arnold
Well, he wasn’t an alien until like 10 minutes befor the film came out.

David Read
Right. A big portion of his theme is that choir. Tell us about bringing that together.

David Arnold
It is but I think there’s two things that work with that, with Ra. One is the portentousness of that chant; it kind of harks back to sort of pre-science. At the time when Ra was around, a lot of it was science. Egyptians were certainly at the forefront of a lot of it. For most people, they wondered, if there was a thunderstorm, whether God was annoyed with them. So there is that sort of organized religion choral thing of human beings, in a way, giving you a warning. That’s what I wanted it to feel like. It’s like, “he’s coming and you better be on your best behavior. In fact, you’d be best to get out of the way, or whatever it is, he’s coming.” So you had that, which is the grand aspect of it. When you look at the entrance, it’s so theatrical, it’s so grand that you can’t ignore the scale and the size of it. But for me, the real heart of it, the truth of it, was that horrible, mewling, greasy, vile, end theme.

David Arnold
Exactly. It sets you edge.

David Arnold
So sneaky and awful. Yeah, it’s horrible. That was the real danger. The rest of it is showmanship but it’s like, when he gets close to you you realize, “well, he’s not a physical threat in terms of his size, he’s not like a giant monster.” Sometimes you get these things now and it’s like massive horns or big eyes and CGI kind of creature. It’s a very slight, young man but he can do all this stuff. It’s what he represents and it’s what he represents that’s terrifying. What he represents is psychological really, more than anything. When they get through the movie, they’re moving towards the end and they realize he has to be a bit more than that. I suppose, maybe because of the genre, maybe they felt that the character, as itself, wasn’t landing in a way that was a big enough villain, maybe. Then his eyes glowed. He was doing these horrible things as well before but he just never revealed it. He was like imbibed with a power. The way that I felt about it was that young Ra spent his whole life being told what to do in his duty, by elders, by the people who would be striding alongside him and behind him and for the first time now, he’s got power. He is thinking of damaging people because he can.

David Read
Or at least with this ship, with this planet, these are his domain and he’s going to take full advantage of it.

David Arnold
Yeah, so it’s dictatorship. It’s North Korea in space.

David Read
The choices that you made in a couple of these sections, particularly with the violin, like you were saying, with those streaks. One of the more, how do I want to put it, on the edge of your seat, biting nails moment, is in the labyrinth under the pyramid when they’re being hunted. The men are being hunted by what would later become the Jaffa. Not really Jaffa, but the soldiers. Instead of going overblown you’re playing with the percussion and you’re just winding up the audience, I think it is probably one of my favorite scenes out of the movie because we’re all just starting to freak out, like any moment all these guys are going down. It’s just one after the other.

David Arnold
It was still pretty big, it wasn’t shy.

David Read
That’s true.

David Arnold
I’m also aware that this score and this film is operating at quite a high volume even when it’s quiet.

David Read
True. To the scale of everything else I mean then.

David Arnold
Yeah. I suppose relatively it was subdued but I also knew what was coming up. When you’ve got something which is a little more internal and tense, you can’t be going balls out because otherwise where do you go when you’ve got these other monstrous enormous things that start happening? When you have 6000 people running down a hill then you gotta have somewhere to go.

David Read
Musically.

David Arnold
So you have to save some of it. Yeah, exactly.

David Read
That’s fair. Did the success of the film surprise you? Did it blow you away? I know Dean was blown away.

David Arnold
I think everyone was pleasantly surprised. I really liked it and I really liked what I did for it. For me, that’s the only success that I can hope for because that’s the only thing I’ve got any control over. The only thing I can control is “am I doing something that I like with people that I like? Have I managed to do the job that I wanted to do?” I think the answer to all those was yes. I went home, I was exhausted, but happy with what we did. Dean had the disadvantage of not knowing what he was going to hear. This was a time before you had samples and everything, it was quite early days. I mocked up a few things for Dean to hear, like the main theme, the Ra march, the scene with Kurt Russell in his bedroom at the start of the movie before he gets visited with a picture of his son. Those things I think are important because if we don’t get those bits right you can be jumping up and down and making loads of noise as much as you like. But if the things that matter to the cast, to the character, you don’t represent them, then you’re lost and you’re basically ignoring a big part of why he does the things that he does. I think I played him those three things and that was about it. Roland, I don’t think heard much at all.

David Read
Wow, I expected them to be right by your side. This is surprising to hear.

David Arnold
There was a lot going on in post production. There’s the effects but there’s also the involvement, the relatively late involvement of, MGM in the distribution part of it. Then we’re getting into more test screening for MGM because before, I can’t remember whether they had a couple with Carolco, so the film was kind of made without a distributor. We were in post production without a distributor and then halfway through post production MGM came on board. Then of course they have got their input so that’s when things started to “let’s look at this again. We’re gonna look at this again. We think we might change this, that might go that way.” So from that point on everyone was at full pelt; we were on the running machine going at full speed so we didn’t fall over flat on our faces. I think they just didn’t think about the music as much, or maybe they just trusted me. I’ve got no idea. In those days you wouldn’t have that much played to you, you just wouldn’t. You’ve all seen the little film clip of John Williams playing E.T to Steven Spielberg, that probably would have been it until they got on the stage to record it. You’re like, “well, I’ve heard the themes, I like the themes, I know what it’s doing.” That’s where we were with Roland and Dean. But there’s a lot of music in that film and they hadn’t heard really any of it. We got to the studio and got the orchestra in and I was absolutely petrified, absolutely petrified. It was the biggest thing I’d ever done, obviously, a lot of expectation.

David Read
How many pieces were in the orchestra?

David Arnold
I think was at 85. Not huge huge but big.

David Read
Crapping my pants man. Oh man!

David Arnold
Yeah, I think I might have done. I was there realizing that I had no idea what it was really going to sound like either. Now you can do an awful lot with samples to sort of realize where you’re going to get to. Roland and Dean were just sitting there looking at each other going like, “if this isn’t any good, we’re sort of stuck, because there’s no time to do it again. Yeah, there’s no money to do it again. It would have been a three month job to do it again properly because it just would have been. So I thought “I’m just gonna start with the opening title.” They don’t have to worry about picture, they don’t have to worry about dialogue, they can sit there and think, “is this our movie?” They played it and obviously, the difference between hearing an orchestra perform it and having a kind of poor synthesizer mock up of it! All of a sudden it’s like, “okay [relief].” When that finished I think Dean might have been crying, I don’t know, but he was relieved. Everyone was relieved and from that point on it was just about getting best performances. But up to that point it was one of the most terrifying moments in my entire life I think. But bloody hell, it sounded amazing in that room, it sounded so amazing in that room. I told them to go into the room and listen to the orchestra playing it. It’s so huge and I thought “you’re never gonna hear it like this ever again when you do the dub and there’s explosions and everything.” But this opening title sequence, there was hardly any sound on it, it was just music, just music. It was like, “bang, there’s your movie.” They go, “thanks very much.” We’re off, we’re off to the races at that point.

David Read
So the opening titles that we hear in the theater, that was it? You made no alterations? That was the one?

David Arnold
I don’t think we did a alterations. I think we did another take or two. Usually when it’s the first thing you do the engineer is going “I haven’t got a level on the percussion, I haven’t got the level on the strings, can you play it again?” So you play it once, the engineer gets busy on changing mic positions. You go out and have a discussion with Nick, the conductor, about “can we have the woodwind a bit louder here, the violins at that point need to play more to the bridge.” All the notes that you make, you pass that information out and then you do it again. That was it, basically we recorded it and you move on. The whole thing was probably 10 minutes, 12 minutes.

David Read
I did a film in college, it’s one of the things I’m most proud of that I’ve ever done. I remember the rock in my stomach that was there when I had written the script and then the actors started bringing it to life and I brought it home into the editing bay and I assembled it. The rock turned into this cloud. It was so freeing, it was like everything that had come before, I was vindicated, I had made the right choices. It had to have been a very similar feeling.

David Arnold
I would sympathize with anyone doing something for the first time, creating. It happens every time. Whenever I do anything creative I’m absolutely terrified of whether or not anyone’s going to like it, because there’s a possibility that they won’t. In which case you’re either gonna get fired or you get another run out, where you might get a chance to look at it again. It’s a horrible experience and that’s why I don’t like doing it very much. I love being asked to do it and I love finishing it but the doing of it, especially that first thing!. You’ve got that horrible moment where you play the music and someone’s sitting there in your studio and there is this horrible silence. In your mind, you’re thinking “how is he going to break this terrible news to me that this is an absolute pile of shit and he hates it?” He’s thinking, “how do I tell this guy that this is an absolute pile of shit and I hate? Or, “am I gonna be nice or not?” Some people aren’t, some people say “that’s a massive pile of shit and I hate it.” Which is fine, I don’t mind, but get to it quickly. Don’t leave the gap. You’re kind of like teetering on the edge, going “just let me know will ya.”

David Read
Just go for the jugular. Don’t do slices.

David Arnold
I always say to a director, “however we speak and appear, to get to the point where I’m going to play a piece of music about your film, I’ve gone through a lot to get there. It is sort of personal, it comes from a very honest place and an open place. The first thing you tell me, say you love it. You can then spend the next 10 minutes explaining why it’s shit and you want me to change it all, but just say it you love it. Then I will not die.” Then I will just go “ah, but at least he liked it. He wants to change things. There’s stuff, he wants to change stuff, but he did like it.” That’s all you need; you need to know you’re kind of on the right track. “Even if you don’t like it, say you do and then say all the bits that you want me to change, which might be all of it.” But at least I’ll not have that silence, that deathly silence, like the sound of televised golf when they hit the ball for the first time and they follow this thing up in the air and there’s commentary and you can’t see anything. There’s a camera looking at sky and then you can’t see it when it lands. That air sound, that nothingness, that void. that’s what we don’t like.

David Read
Yeah, that’s true. It has always fascinated me how this process works because at the end of the day it’s what we take away from the film. What we take away from the film are our emotions. If it’s a piece of art…

David Arnold
Boy! You take a lot of prop [respect/appreciation] by the looks of things.

David Read
Well, yes. In general, the writer is approaching the project hoping to convey X, Y and Z emotion. The director is approaching it with hoping to convey X, Y and Z. Then the composer comes in and you are doing what it means for you but you are doing an interpretation of what it is that they want. They cannot tell you, “I want you to convey exactly this in exactly this manner.” It is your job to feel them out and when it works, it is amazing. It’s not always going to be perfect, sometimes it just has to be close enough. You can’t get inside their heads, you can’t do that. This is all feeling.

David Arnold
Also, there’s a very, very important aspect of this to consider. I’m not scoring the movie that they’ve got in their head, I’m scoring the movie that they’ve made. Their hopes and their dreams and wishes of what it was has to now be instilled in what it is. What I do is I write to the film that I’ve been shown and I’m responding to that. You have to deal with the “can we skew it a little bit more like this because that’s how I envisioned it and we’re not quite there?” That’s all fine but I can’t be scoring a film that’s in someone’s head and not on the screen. That’s one of the first things that I’ll say, is that. “Your film doesn’t do what you’re asking me to do.” I don’t want to look like we’re trying to sledge hammer ideas into things that aren’t there. If a score starts telling you how to feelm the audience is gonna go “No, no, no.” They see through it immediately. It’s like someone pushing you or grabbing your hand and going “look over there!” There a ways of doing these things. Most of the time, I have to say, in my experience, there’s been a really wonderful correlation between the director’s vision and the film that he’s made. I’ve been lucky in that regard but there have been moments where that hasn’t happened and everyone’s just got to be realistic about it.

David Read
That’s one of the things that I hate about…I love the horror genre but so often in these films the music is telling you how you’re supposed to feel. Like you said, it’s pushing you, it’s shoving you into these corners where it’s trying to scare you to death with these loud bursts of sound instead of reaching your hand out and saying, “come with me, let’s go this way, let see what I have to show you.”

David Arnold
It’s a bit like scenes in films where children are in danger; it’s a very easy way to get people riled up in a way. To have the kind of silent, silent, silent, silent, bang! is a great way of getting people shocked. I don’t find it scary, I don’t find it any more scary than someone dropping a dustbin outside my back door. You just think “what the fuck is that?” It’s not scary necessarily, it’s just a visceral thing that happens. But anyway, we’re off topic.

David Read
Then, this all leads to only the next film which just happens to be one of the biggest blockbusters ever in the history of cinema, Independence Day!

David Arnold
Yeah, I thought “well this is normal, it must be mustn’t it? This must be normal; people just come from nowhere and you get two films like that in a row.” Yeah, it turned out it wasn’t. That was an interesting lesson to learn.

David Read
How’s that? Tell us that journey.

David Arnold
I’ve never been there, I’ve never been to Hollywood. I knew about films and everything but I didn’t know. Then you realize that there are people who work as composers assistants, who do all sorts of things. I thought if “I’m lucky I get an advert, I might get a commercial or two. That might lead to some low budget TV work, that might lead to some better quality TV work, that might lead to some very low budget British movie that might lead to a slightly higher budget movie. In 15 years I might get a film like Stargate.” That’s what I was expecting; that’s what logically happens. I realize it’s a story that, it happened in the way that it happened and it doesn’t happen very often. When you speak to other people, it doesn’t. I think when things are right, they’re right. They say, “was it luck?” Yeah. Luck will get you in the door but it won’t keep you in the room.

David Read
That’s certainly true. Dean had said nothing had come together so fast and moved so smoothly as Independence Day had. Jurassic Park and Independence Day are really the reasons that I became a film fan and that’s largely attributed to you. There is a moment in that movie, and I have to be a fanboy for a moment here, “Mommy sleeping?” After the first lady dies. That piece of music that just fades out and then July 4th. I’m getting goosebumps just thinking about it. It is so good man.

David Arnold
I’m just looking at the truth of what’s in front of me. In a way it’s a bit like comedy scoring emotional moments, isn’t it? You have got to know when to stop, you have got to know where the beats are, you have got to know where the rhythm of that is. You lead to that point and you let Bill’s performance happen and you let that devastating sentence be delivered. Then you’re taking everyone’s hands and we’re walking away from it. We have to turn our back on it knowing that it’s happened and we have to lead them somewhere else because that’s what we have to do. It’s only a 15 second thing, 10 second thing, but it’s all important. If you get those bits wrong then the big bits won’t be convincing anyone.

David Read
To jump ahead, I was so surprised when I’m watching Good Omens and I see that you did the music. I remember the trailers for it coming out and was like, “Well, this looks interesting.” I’ve heard about the book. It’s like something out of absolute insanity, the music sounds like it could have been written by someone in an asylum, just someone just completely looney tunes. That had to have been just a crazy experience.

David Arnold
This is no offense to anyone else but I think it probably was the most fun I’ve ever had, actual fun. That was because Neil Gaiman and Doug Mackinnon, who directed every episode, basically said, “you can sort of do anything you want, the weirder the better, the more out there the better; the oddest things you can think of.” And it was, that thing is chock a block full of very strange things.

David Read
Just look at the title, it’s crazy.

David Arnold
Well, that’s the most coherent. I got so many other sort of weird instruments. Some of it was like folk music, some of it was heavy metal, some of it was like church music, some of it was sort of cinematic, some of it was electronic. But it all had to feel like it belonged in this world and the world that they created was so out there that everything worked. It was so strong, that everything worked for it, no matter how weird you went. Like the scene where he goes into the phone, he hides in the phone system. I did that with a line of old cassettes with different bits of tones on it and trigger them all at different times. The whole thing sounds like a kind of wind up weird old 50s toy, it’s really weird. Thinking about it now I don’t even know why I did it. But it sits there and it’s like, “this is nothing like the music that was 10 minutes before.” It sounds like it sounds and I never go back to it and you don’t mind. At its heart the theme is strong enough to have our tentpole moments and you always return to the central core of it. Everything else that’s hanging off can be insane as long as we go “it’s still hear.” I’m very glad you liked it, I loved doing it.

David Read
It’s so radical and anyone who’s out there, if you want something fun to watch and interesting, chock full of British humor, Good Omens is a great mini series for you. It was not the direction that I was expecting but it’s great stuff. David, any other of your scores that you really recommend that we go out and listen to that you’re particularly proud of?

David Arnold
Oh god! I think I liked Stepford Wives because it was a survival thing in a way. It was one of those things that was a bit of a redo at the last minute as well and ended up being, I think, quite exciting. I really liked the spirit of it. Meaningfulness, I think, a lesser known film, Amazing Grace, about slavery, about the British politician who was key in ending the British interest in the slave trade. I love that because it was about something serious. I don’t often get asked to do things that are serious or have real actual meaning rather than metaphorical. It is about something real that happened, it still has implications. I really like that. I like Paul, the movie with Simon Pegg. I really liked that, I really liked that. Hot Fuzz I thought I really liked as well, crazy. I tend to like the ones that are funny because they’re easier to work on. You’re watching them and they’re always funny no matter how many times you watch it. Zoolander is always funny. I saw Quantum of Solace the other night, it was on TV, again, it’s on a lot. I hadn’t seen it for donkey’s years and I watched it and I really liked some of the things that were happening in that as well. I’m sort of far enough away now from some of the older things to not hate them as much as I did.

David Read
I guess there is some benefit to the passing of time then.

David Arnold
I’m not that guy anymore so therefore it feels like I’m judging someone else. At the time, I was thinking “oh god, I could have done that so much better. Why did I do that? Why did I do that?” It’s the curse of most people that I know. The imposter syndrome is still a thing; people think that they’re not really actually very good and that they’re sort of getting away with it. I don’t know that many people, creatively, who don’t feel that. If you’re watching it again you’re just thinking, “I remember how much I had to go through to get that moment done and I still don’t know if it was the right thing.” No one notices, these things go past and you don’t notice. It’s like an actor when they’re watching stuff, they’re looking at their performance and going “why did I do that? Why didn’t I do that?” No one notices. says. You have to be viciously self critical because otherwise, I suppose you just hand in anything.

David Read
I look at it kind of like when I’m writing a document and I’m trying to find that perfect word. Stephen King always says, “use the word that comes to mind.” You can go to a thesaurus and find another word, there will always be another word, but is it going to be the best one? With your films and the projects that you’ve worked on, what you felt first is probably the truest. You can go and create something else if the director, the writer, wants you to but is it going to be the same?

David Arnold
That can be true but I think I’m more of a more person that, I will hate it before you do. I will look at it like it’s awful. I will find the problems with it, I will see what’s wrong with it. I will attend to all those things so when you come as a director to look at it, you’re not going to see those faults and those things that are wrong. I’ll have dealt with that. Also, as a composer, you have to know the reason why you’re doing what you’re doing. You have to know the reason why you’re making the sound you’re making, using the instruments, why the chords are the way they are, why the melodies are why they are, why the texture and the tone is the way that it is. Someone’s going to want to know why and you need to be able to tell them the purpose of your decision making because they’re not going to understand necessarily. I will do that because I’ll have taken it apart and I’d have gone through how to get it to where it is and like, “okay, this is it.” If they don’t like it, I don’t mind as much. If they understand why I made those decisions and they go, “okay, yeah, I get it, but I don’t agree.” That’s fine, I’m happy to do it again. If they’re asking me to write more music, that’s what I do. So I’m writing more music, not a problem. But I don’t want anyone to say “I don’t know why I like it” or “I don’t know why it doesn’t work” because I can tell you why I think it is right. There’s a lot of psychology involved in it.

David Read
Yeah, cuz it’s feelings. You’re feeling something else.

David Arnold
I’m losing my voice. I don’t talk this much usually. It’s unusual to speak for any amount of time.

David Read
I hope you’re good on time because I still have fan questions. Are we okay?

David Arnold
We better get into it because it’s twenty past. Okay. let’s have a few.

David Read
Let me move on to that. I do apologize, I’ve gotten carried away. Theresa Mc – Have you ever listened to another famous theme, like Star Wars or others, and thought “I could have written something better?”

David Arnold
What? Like Star Wars? What sort of egotist would you have to be to think you could have done better than that? No, never, because the music belongs to the film that they were written for. I would never because that feels like work. If ever I watch a movie and I see a theme, or I hear a theme, I can not like it but there’s no way I would ever think “I could have done better.” I don’t know if I ever would and it’s like, maybe you’d like to think you could. But certainly, if you’re talking about moments of greatness, then never, I’d never think that. Some things that just disappear or go by the wayside, they’re usually like that because possibly the films that they’re attached to are a bit like that as well; they just don’t demand the same level, possibly.

David Read
Got it.

David Arnold
But no, I would certainly never think that of a giant like John Williams.

David Read
Hitch wants to know – the Egyptian variations, the military motifs, the love themes, the patriotic sounds and the sci-fi elements make Stargate a rich score. Was it a challenge to combine and intersect them?

David Arnold
Every time you score a movie it’s a challenge of so many different things. Stargate was a movie that had many levels and textures and colors and tones. As long as I kept the DNA of it the same, then it would support all these different approaches. The core thematic material can be played on anything and it will work. That’s true of any theme that is working as a piece of music, you can arrange it in lots of different ways. You’re not surprised when you see a big military thing happening on the screen to hear the music reflect that militaristic aspect. You’re not surprised when you see people dressed in Egyptian clothing, speaking in a foreign language, to hear music which evokes that kind of thing. So if the picture is there supporting it, that’s the only reason the music’s there doing what it’s doing. It would be weird if I decided to do all that stuff and we weren’t seeing it or we weren’t there. But even then, sometimes there’s a case for doing that; where you actually do ignore the actual on the nose details of what’s on the screen and you go for something different. With Stargate it was pretty much on the screen was what I went with. There wasn’t that much else going on other than what you’re seeing, do you know what I mean?

David Read
That’s fair. Yeah.

David Arnold
I don’t think there are any hidden messages.

David Read
That’s certainly true. Like you said, it doesn’t try to be anything that it’s not. William Arends – what do you feel about the current lack of TV theme songs and symphonic overtures? Can we have space operas without music? A lot of these shows now, they’ve shortened their openings to like 10 seconds.

David Arnold
I find it really distressing. If these people ever went to a film music or a TV music concert, of the music that they are putting on their shows, they’d be in and out in five minutes.

David Read
This is true.

David Arnold
Composers want to do something which is identifiable and I think a lot of them are brilliant things. But what it is, it’s an audio ident. It’s not a theme tune and it’s not a title sequence, it’s an audio ident. It’s like an advert. Interestingly, psychologically, it parks itself in the part of the brain which is to do with recognition of something else. It doesn’t land as music, it lands as an identifier for something else which is why [whistles] doesn’t make you think of a song, it doesn’t make you think of music, it makes you think of McDonald’s. There’s a psychological reason for that happening. I know everyone’s terrified of people losing attention for watching a 30 second opening title sequence yet you have got Good Omens which is got a 42 second opening title sequence and was Amazon’s biggest show.

David Read
Yep, exactly.

David Arnold
I think it was their biggest original show. It does all that stuff and it’s the sort of stuff that people sort of come back to and want more of. It’s a big part of the storytelling toolkit that we’ve got. It feels like it’s sort of a) a lack of courage and b) a lack of creative thinking, to think that “we don’t have an opening title sequence because we’re worried that our audience are too stupid to stick with it.” I mean, for all I know that might be true, but how depressing is that?

David Read
Now with this audience, let me tell you. You’ve got over 100 people listening to you right now who are hanging on every word.

David Arnold
Stargate is a show as well which celebrates the idea of your title sequence. I grew up listening to them. I’m more worried about in 20 years time when people are going to be making shows and writing music for shows where their inspiration is [sings two notes].

David Read
Yeah, and that’s it.

David Arnold
It’s a fairly low bar in that regard but I realize that people have reasons for doing it. I would fight against it if I was involved. All the TV stuff that I’ve done is at least partially orchestral and it’s a big tune, everything. That’s the only way I would do it.

David Read
Last question for you sir and then I’m gonna let you go.

David Arnold
Thank you very much.

David Read
Thank you.

David Arnold
Not in a sarcastic way. Thank you, really, thank you for having me.

David Read
This has been tremendous David, completely. R Radev – what is the best piece of advice another musician has ever given you? You could lie and we’d never know.

David Arnold
There’s all those sort of weird homilies, like kind of down home, kind of makes you think, kind of chin strokey, feel good shit. I don’t think I’ve ever really had anything like that. The best bit is John Barry. Two things, I never talked to him about music. We used to talk about lots of things but I never used to talk to him about music. I asked him once about Bond songs and I said “when you’re starting with these, where do you start?” He said, “David, just make sure it’s about cock.” Now that’s not the best piece of advice I ever got. It’s notable and it’s memorable and when you look at those songs again you realize that it’s true. The other piece of advice that, again, is a huge truism, especially for John, he said, “play the theme, play the theme, play the theme.” When you look at John Barry movies, every chance you get the theme is there. Which is why when you go to a music evening of John Barry theme tunes, you know every single one. Because for two hours you’ve had the most glorious thematic material played at you, constantly. No one minds, no one’s complaining and no one’s going “can it be different?” It’s like, “I want to hear that again and again and again” and he does. He kind of keeps giving it to you and all of a sudden you are full of this music and you’re full of the movie, the emotional core of the movie. Play the theme, play the theme, play the theme, that’s my favorite bit of advice.

David Read
David, this has been fantastic. I’d love to plant a seed in your head.

David Arnold
Steady on.

David Read
We are six months in now and I’m going to start doing commentaries of the movies and of the shows and I would love to have you back just to sit and listen through the film to all of your pieces. This would be something that will be pre-recorded and I’d love to have you back for that; to have you discuss and articulate everything as the show moves.

David Arnold
That’d be slightly, possibly torturous, but I’ll give it a go.

David Read
Just think about it, sir.

David Arnold
I will think about it.

David Read
Again, thank you for this wonderful opportunity. I’m gonna go ahead and wrap up the show and you do your thing.

David Arnold
You’re very welcome. If anyone wants questions that we didn’t get to tonight, if you want to stick them on Twitter and point them in my direction I’ll see if I can get to them over the next few days. If they have, they might not have. You might have had the three and that was it. Everyone’s going “I don’t want to ask this guy.”

David Read
I felt a little bad not checking in with you because I did pass a few up. You are @DavidGArnold, correct?

David Arnold
Yep. DavidGArnold, that’s me, on Twitter.

David Read
Thank you, sir. Thank you so much for your time and I look forward to speaking with you again.

David Arnold
Thank you very much. I haven’t talked about Stargate, I think since I’ve done it, if I’m being perfectly honest. To be able to go back and reconsider all those things. There are so many stories, some of which I really can’t say in public. So many amazing things; it was a real baptism of fire and it has a very huge part of my heart. I think my enthusiasm for it is in the music and it’s still there and I haven’t changed my mind about it. I love it.

David Read
Correct, and we love you for it. Thank you David for your time.

David Arnold
Thank you very much.

David Read
You be well.

David Arnold
Thank you very much. See you soon hopefully.

David Read
Absolutely. David Arnold, composer for Stargate the movie. I have always been a sucker for music. There are plenty of people who watch and they’re like “music? I didn’t hear any music.” I’m like, “okay then, you have no soul.” All right, our winner, chosen by the moderators for the deluxe soundtrack, is Hitch, who asked the question about combining the disparate elements of music into one cohesive soundtrack. The expanded edition movie soundtrack is yours Hitch. Please email me at [email protected] and we will get that over to you. Anyone out there listening, if you are not Hitch, do not email about the soundtrack because I know who you are. I have ways of finding out on YouTube so it all tracks back. This was terrific. We’ve got a few questions submitted for me so I want to go over them real quick. Michael B – in the first episode where they meet Daniel and Captain Carter discovers the dialing device, she makes a MacGyver reference. I’ve seen a different version where she doesn’t make that reference, I am curious which version was first and who thought of making the MacGyver reference in the first place. So the reference appears in the original cut for Children of the Gods going back to Showtime, the final cut has had it extracted. I’m assuming that it was Jonathan Glassner’s idea, I may be completely wrong. One way or another, Brad thought that it was distracting or some other thing, 14, 15 years later, so he had it removed so that there’s two different versions of that out there. Theresa – do you have enemy ship models in your collection? Goa’uld mothership, Wraith, Ori? There’s the Ha’tak right there, we got Atlantis, we got Destiny. I’m looking to acquire other pieces. I am wanting a full scale replicator, I’ve seen them on Etsy and a couple of other places. Some of them are half scale, I really want the replicator that’s seen in Nemesis in the box. There’s two different kinds, you have the long spider leg ones that were really introduced in Nemesis and then by around season five, in Enemies, they had the smaller ones as well. That’s the one that you see in Menace, in the box, and I would love to put that replicator back there. The long spider leg ones, it wouldn’t fit on the shelf. I want to add a replicator, I want to add, I can’t think of it right now. Oh, an O’Neill class Asgard ship as well. I want to get an Asgard ship back there but I haven’t come across them yet. Hopefully I’ll be getting a ZPM back there at some point, courtesy of a certain props website, but we’ll see what’s happening for that. [Kicks 394] – are you planning to purchase any SGA custom Funkos if you can find them? If I can find them, I would not mind owning a set of the core team at the very least. I’ve seen some really really cool ones out there, these custom fan pieces are just extraordinary. I know that Suanne Braun has one of Hathor and it is just so cool. I think that was Daniel Jackson, not the character but the artist, he’s on the web as well, making a lot of these things, they’re just extremely cool. Zombiedude25 – to the mods, I’ve been watching these amazing interviews for a while, you need to tell David to check out the game Pulsar. He will love it, much thanks. I will do that. I’m a big Elite Dangerous game player. If there’s anyone out there who flies, I fly on Thursday nights if you want to join a wing, we can do that too. That’s a terrific game but I will check out Pulsar as well. That’s all that we’ve got for this episode. Dial the Gate is brought to you each and every week for free and we do appreciate you watching but if you want to support the show further, buy yourself some of our themed swag. We’re now offering T-shirts, tank tops, sweatshirts and hoodies for all ages in a variety of sizes and colors at Red Bubble. Checkout is fast and easy and you can even use your Amazon or PayPal account, just visit DialtheGate.redbubble.com and thank you for your support. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, do me a favor and click the Like button; it makes a difference with the algorithm. Share this with a Stargate friend and if you want to see more content like this, subscribe. If you hit the bell icon you’ll get notified of new videos as soon as they drop. Makeup maestro, Todd Masters, is going to be joining us at the top of the hour in 26 minutes. We’re going to have a conversation about prosthetics and about the alien creatures that have been designed for Stargate. He’s going to be a fascinating discussion. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate, I really appreciate you tuning in. We’ll see you on the other side.