UPDATED: After a discussion with James Barcome (author of The Dolphin article mentioned below), we have a lot of additional details surrounding the speeches at Syracuse University and Le Moyne College as well as the differences between Thomas Newman’s quotations. Additionally, James was extremely kind to share the audio of his interview with Newman – so we now have official audio confirmation from Newman stating that he is in fact working on scoring The Good Dinosaur beginning in the summer of 2013. For additional details and to hear audio from both of Newman’s conversations, be sure to listen to Episode 009 of the Pixar Post Podcast.
Is Thomas Newman going to score Pixar’s upcoming film about dinosaurs? Although it has been recently reported (as noted in an article by The Dolphin) that Newman’s next project would be The Good Dinosaur, we’re still holding this as a rumor at this point because the claim has not been confirmed. Why?
One of our readers, Jordan (who also runs Pixar Pro), was in attendance during the “Thomas Newman: The Art of Film Scoring” event at Le Moyne College in New York on Tuesday, March 13 and could not confirm this claim. Additionally, Jordan recorded audio from Thomas’ discussion and upon our own review of the audio, we noticed several instances in which Newman was directly quoted by The Dolphin that did not align with Newman’s actual quotes.
That’s not to say that the claim is false – but it should also be noted that the article in The Dolphin does not directly quote Newman as stating that his next project is in fact The Good Dinosaur. The article simply states, “Newman’s next challenge will come in the form of his third collaboration with Pixar on 2014’s The Good Dinosaur”. We don’t know if that was speculation or if that information was presented offstage, but according to the audio as well as Jordan, Newman did not reveal this fact during his onstage speech. We have also sent an email to the author of the article and will update this with more information regarding his source for that information when we hear back.
With that news aside, we also wanted to include portions of Jordan’s experience (shown below in italics) from the event itself and discuss a few of the lighter moments when Jordan was able to meet Newman and was able to ask him a brief question.
[Side Note] We will be featuring audio clips from Newman’s speech relating to Finding Nemo and WALL-E on our next Podcast later in the week, so stay tuned.This past Tuesday I had attended a lecture held by the amazing Thomas Newman for just $15! He spoke at LeMoyne College in Syracuse, New York in quite a small venue called the Coyne Center of Performing Arts.
When I arrived 10 minutes before the lecture began at 7:30 PM EST, they announced that the tickets had been sold out – obviously, I was in shock. I went into a brief moment of despair… But I was not going to let that go on for long! It wasn’t long after the announcement I was able to talk one of the advisors at the ticket booth into getting me in! So I made my way into the auditorium and I stood for about 2 hours and still was able to love every second of it.
Afterwards we were able to thank him for coming. That was the highlight of my night. One particular question I had wanted curiously to know the answer to was as follows: “Now with a career spanned out over about 30 years, is there a particular film you have in mind that you could maybe say was the most enjoyable to score (maybe a Pixar film)?” I asked sorta sarcastically knowing he could never choose a favorite.
{Thomas Newman – Smiling} “I’ve been asked that a few times actually. My answer I usually give is no. Every film I have composed for has each had a different journey, but has brought me joy and more knowledge along with skill.”
In closing our short 5 minute discussion together, he joked that maybe someday if he ever wins an Academy Award, he will finally have a favorite score of his own.
How amazing for Jordan (who is attending school for film scoring) that he was able to attend this event and even ask Newman a brief question – that’s great.
For those that may not be familiar with Newman’s other work, he has scored Finding Nemo, WALL-E, The Shawshank Redemption, and most recently, Skyfall (among many, many other projects from the 1980’s on).
Finally, thank you as always to our great readers – first, Daniel P. who first tipped us off to the Thomas Newman news as well as Jordan for sharing his experience and audio clips with us.
