MOVIE MUSIC UK

Composer, arranger and record producer Miles Goodman died in Santa Monica, California, ten years ago today, on August 16, 1996, after suffering a heart attack at his Brentwood home. He was 47.

During a career cut short at its peak, Goodman became particularly associated with comedy, scoring films including Teen Wolf, About Last Night…, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, What About Bob? and The Muppet Christmas Carol, while his work on Little Shop of Horrors earned him a Golden Globe nomination.

Elliot Miles Goodman was born in Los Angeles on August 27, 1948. He graduated from Antioch College in Ohio with a degree in English and initially planned to become a director, also studying Shakespeare in London. His cousin, Oscar-winning composer Johnny Mandel, encouraged him to pursue film music instead, and Goodman returned to Los Angeles to study composition and scoring privately with teachers including Albert Harris.

His early career included television and low-budget films, but Mandel also provided valuable practical experience. Goodman orchestrated portions of Being There (1979) and worked with his cousin on Sidney Lumet’s The Verdict (1982), absorbing the sophisticated jazz harmonies and understated dramatic approach that would remain evident in much of his own music. By the mid-1980s he was receiving increasingly prominent feature assignments, including the Michael J. Fox comedy Teen Wolf (1985) and Edward Zwick’s romantic comedy-drama About Last Night… (1986).

One of Goodman’s most important professional relationships was with director Frank Oz. Their first major collaboration was Little Shop of Horrors (1986), for which Goodman supplied the dramatic underscore and adapted material from Alan Menken’s stage score. His contribution received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Score. Goodman subsequently scored Oz’s Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988), What About Bob? (1991) and Housesitter (1992), developing a reputation for comedy music that could be witty without overwhelming the jokes.

Goodman’s versatility extended well beyond comedy. He scored Luis Valdez’s Ritchie Valens biopic La Bamba (1987), the Australian romantic drama The Delinquents (1989), Problem Child (1990) and Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (1993). One of his most enduring scores accompanied The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992), for which he provided the orchestral underscore around Paul Williams’s songs. The warm, richly melodic music gave the Dickens adaptation much of its emotional sincerity and remains among Goodman’s most widely heard work.

His final years remained exceptionally active. Films included Dunston Checks In and Larger Than Life, both released in 1996, while ‘Til There Was You, on which he collaborated with trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard, appeared posthumously in 1997. Goodman’s sudden death therefore ended a career that showed no signs of slowing.

Away from cinema, Goodman became an innovative jazz record producer, frequently collaborating with Brazilian guitarist Oscar Castro-Neves. Their projects included Toots Thielemans’s The Brasil Project, The Billie Holiday Songbook, and Color and Light: Jazz Sketches of Sondheim. The latter, featuring jazz interpretations of Stephen Sondheim’s music and a rare performance by Sondheim himself, reached number six on Billboard’s jazz chart and was named among the year’s best albums by Time.

Miles Goodman’s relatively short career produced an unusually varied body of work, but comedy remained his particular strength. From the youthful exuberance of Teen Wolf to the elegant mischief of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, the nervous humor of What About Bob? and the warmth of The Muppet Christmas Carol, his scores displayed an exceptional melodic instinct and an arranger’s sensitivity to character. His death before his 48th birthday deprived Hollywood of a composer who was still developing, but the best of his music reveals a sophisticated and distinctive craftsman whose reputation deserves to extend far beyond the comedies with which he was most closely associated.