Customer Reviews

Getaway: The Unused Score

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Peckinpah's 'The Getaway' suffered very little interference from the studio. Reputedly, when he saw the rough cut the film's star Steve McQueen demanded some alternate takes be used because they showed him in a better light. However, unlike other Peckinpah-helmed pictures such as 'Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid' and 'Major Dundee', 'The Getaway' escaped from the clutches of the studio relatively unscathed. However, the studio did demand one major change: Jerry Fielding had composed a score for the movie, but the studio decided to abandon it in favour of a new score which was composed by Quincy Jones.

Whilst Jones' music for the film is almost iconic of early-1970s action cinema, Fielding's original score for the film (represented on this CD) is very different and feels more like the kind of score that Peckinpah would have used, together with a reworking of 'Shall We Gather at the River', a song that crops up in several of Peckinpah's films (usually used by Peckinpah as an ironic homage to John Ford's idealistic representation of the community).

For me, Fielding's score surpasses Jones' work for the film, and I particularly enjoyed the music Fielding composed for the heist sequence, which is tense and somewhat similar to the music Fielding composed for Starbuck bank robbery in the opening scenes of 'The Wild Bunch'.

The CD also contains a short documentary about the scoring of the film.

So this isn't Quincy Jones' score for 'The Getaway', but it *is* a fascinating insight into the movie that could-have-been. If only Fielding's music could be re-integrated into the movie: I'd love to see how the score plays out alongside the finished edit of the film.

IS NOT THE ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK TO THE MOVIE.I WISH I COULD GET MY MONEY BACK!!