As mentioned previously, Minkoff and Allers hired Zimmer specifically because of his work on The Power of One. If you listen to that score, you’ll hear the seeds of many musical ideas and flavors that lace The Lion King. Just listen to the panpipe and wordless choir from this melancholy cue from the 1992 drama:
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Songs were among the very first elements needed to make The Lion King, since they were performed by members of the voice cast and animated in sync. Rice was the conduit between the directors and the elusive Elton John, who would submit demos of just his voice and piano.
“‘Circle of Life’ he wrote two versions of,” said Minkoff. “The first version is not the one you know. It was just…very different. We were sort of stuck on the approach, because nobody but Tim was in touch with Elton. We barely saw him during the making of the movie. He was…wherever he was, because you never knew. Tim would write a lyric, give it to Elton, Elton would write a song and send a demo. And we’d get a cassette tape. The demos were quite different from what we ended up with in the movie.”
As a nine-year-old cub myself when I saw it the first time in the summer of 1994, The Lion King hit me in that sweet, magical spot of childhood where movies become enshrined as idols for a lifetime—sometimes regardless of their quality. But I would have plenty of backup arguing that The Lion King is a serious contender for Disney’s best animated film, despite my biases. Shakespearean drama and excruciating loss are acted out by memorable, endearing characters, couched in some of the studio’s most lavish animation since the days of Pinocchio.
The final layer elevating the film to greatness is its music: classic songs written by (arguably) the greatest pop songwriter of the 20th century, and a serious, dramatic score by a young and explosively talented Hans Zimmer. The sum total is a powerhouse of a “family movie” I don’t think has ever been rivaled.
This is Part II of an exclusive interview with George Fenton about his score for Shadowlands, celebrating the 20th anniversary of its American release this month. Read Part I here.
Fenton’s other major theme for Shadowlands is one for Lewis and Joy. “When [Attenborough] finished filming and started cutting,” the composer recalls, “he said, ‘Have you got the theme? Can I hear the theme?’ I said, ‘What are we talking about?’ He said, ‘The theme of the Golden Valley, where he takes her in the car.’ So I wrote that, and it really became the theme of the film.”
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This is the first in a series commemorating great film scores that celebrate their 20th, 25th, or 30th anniversaries this year, each featuring an exclusive interview with the composer.
Twenty years ago, on January 14th, 1994, Richard Attenborough’s Shadowlands opened in American theaters. William Nicholson adapted his own 1985 teleplay (which he also turned into a stage play) based on the true account of British author/professor C.S. Lewis’s autumnal and ill-fated romance with American poet Joy Gresham. Attenborough was not the first director attached to the film adaptation (Sydney Pollack had been developing it), but he brought an Englishman’s sensibility and familiarity with Oxford and its academics, personally chose Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger to play the leads (flawlessly), and retained his regular collaborator, composer George Fenton, to write the score.
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