HARVEY SCHMIDT

Bad Company

Harvey Schmidt: BAD COMPANY followed a more standard procedure in film scoring. The picture was completely edited by the time I first saw it, and then Stanley Jaffe, Robert Benton, and I agreed upon those sections that would require music. Again, it was a very spare film, with a small cast, moving across the empty western landscapes of Civil War period America in a series of picaresque adventures, all with Robert Benton’s special cinematic vision and Gordon Willis’ superb photography. Very little music was required, but needed to be instantly supportive and accessible, yet, with a slight astringent sense of removal. In several instances, it had to descriptively punch up key action moments. I also wanted some subliminal feel of period authenticity, but voiced in my own way. The purity of the opening theme (Wandering Child), and the raunchier impurity of the second theme (Bad Company), are used in variations throughout most of the film, culminating in a corruptive merging of fragments of both in the Gunfight section.