Personal quote Not many composers can say that they captured each heart of film music fans with one soundtrack, for a film that was a flop in all its categories (still for god knows why). Still, Debney has realized the impossible and with Cutthroat Island he has scored one of the best scores of the century. What keeps him from hitting more attention is the lack of equally strong and interesting movie projects. This talented composer didn't have much to say and his assignments are from medium to even embarrassingly ridiculous. Its only a question of time and patience, and Debney will surely get his other opportunity. But we just had to wait until the moment he scored a blockbuster of sheer size. Sadly completely controversial, Debney nonetheless scored massive with The Passion of the Christ and is one of the best selling soundtracks of all time. While controversial, the movie scored enormously big with the crowd and for Debney he received his first Oscar nomination for it, but unfortunately he didn't win. Time will tell when he will receive more then that too. Biography John Debney was born in Burbank on August 18th, 1956. Debney received his Bachelors Degree from Cal-Arts and started working as an orchestrator. Later he began scoring small television projects. The scores he produced weren't successes and for movies such as The further Adventures of Tennessee Buck and Jetsons: The Movie this isn't a big surprise. But good work will come to those who wait and Disney helped a hand in this too. Hocus Pocus, White Fang 2: Myth of the White Wolf and the recent Inspector Gadget are at least better known projects that Debney has scored for Disney. Also known are his television credits including The Young Riders, SeaQuest DSV and The Cape. But the biggest project became Cutthroat Island, the movie that flopped and the score that became the biggest success of all, John Debney became the star film music fans were waiting for all the time. Other works are Sudden Death, I Know what you Did last Summer, The Relic, End of Days and The Emperor's New Groove. Debney receives less attention and the large part of his releases are promo's, mostly produced by himself. He also received an Emmy for his work on The Cape. Cats & Dogs, The Princess Diaries, Snow Dogs, The Tuxedo aren't the releases where his capabilities lie but he intermingles them nonetheless with better orchestral to pack movies like Dragonfly and The Scorpion King. Elf and Bruce Almighty were comedy based but good efforts, additional music for Looney Tunes an escape from seriousness but The Passion of the Christ was his big break after all this time. The score is tremendous and catapulted Debney finally to the heights of film music standards. With comedic realms as Princess Diaries 2, Christmas at the Kranks, Welcome to Mooseport he remains one of the busiest composers of this century and his talent is conquering each side of the film music genre as we speak. The phenomenal growth of projects only grew in 2004 and 2005, with comedy as The Pacifier, drama with Dreamer and collaborated efforts Sin City and Duma, Zathura and Chicken Little. In 2006 and 2007 the craziness just continues, with another whopping list of items, including The Ant Bully, Barnyard, Ewan Almighty and the Sin City sequels. And don't forget the video game Lair which promises to be really good. He didn't pick his first Oscar home the day he received his first nomination for The Passion of the Christ, which was still the best and strongest pick of them all!
(overall impression) August, 1998 I feel that if the film had been more of a success, the score would have gotten much more attention. I'm proud of the work and feel that it holds up nicely compared to other scores in this genre. (on Cutthroat Island failing at the box office)
Links to Personal Webpages:
Highlight
of his career: |
The Works ллллл лллл Class
of '61 / White Fang 2: Myth of the White Wolf лллл ллл Remember the Titans "Rejected" ллл |
