IF Magazine Interview with Ken Thorne

E-Notes: KEN THORNE FLIES HIGH AT LAST WITH 'SUPERMAN' 2 AND 3

The composer chats about putting music to the tights and the challenges that entailed

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER, Soundtrack Editor
Published 4/8/2008

Sure John Williams may have written one of the greatest scores of the last century with SUPERMAN: THE MOTION PICTURE. But just imagine being the composer who had to fit on the same cape for SUPERMAN 2 and 3. That no less heroic figure was Ken Thorne, a long time musical collaborator for director Richard Lester on such films as HELP, FINDERS KEEPERS and ROYAL FLASH. No slouch himself when it came to writing such other memorably adventurous scores as JUGGERNAUT and HANNIE CAULDER, Lester was given the almost unimaginable task of using John Williams’ pre-existing music to score SUPERMAN 2. And where Williams had brilliantly tailored his music to fit scenes it was actually written for, Ken Thorne would have the task of cutting up another composer’s musical cape to fit an entirely different move- one already shaken by the producers’ replacement of Richard Donner with Richard Lester. Read the rest of Schweiger's interview with Thorne here.

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