AN ACCLAIMED movie composer in his own right, Peter Bernstein’s CV includes scores for high profile films like Star Wars spin-offs The Ewok Adventure and Ewoks: The Battle for Endor and successful TV shows including 21 Jump Street and Stargate SG-1.
However, Peter (73) got his start in the scoring business by working alongside his Oscar-winning father, the late Elmer Bernstein. This New York-born musician initially pursued a career as concert hall composer before becoming one of the most important and acclaimed movie composers of the 20th century, winning an Academy Award for his work on 1967 comedy Thoroughly Modern Millie.
Able to turn his hand to just about any genre, from sweeping Westerns and thrillers to bawdy comedies and moving dramas, Elmer Bernstein’s scores elevated classics and cult favourites including The Man With The Golden Arm, The Magnificent Seven, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Escape, True Grit, Animal House, Airplane!, The Blues Brothers, An American Werewolf in London, Trading Places, Ghostbusters and My Left Foot. He even created the scored sections of Michael Jackson’s 1983 megahit single/video, Thriller.
Having forged a successful career as a rock bassist in the 1970s with his band The Cretones, Peter transitioned to the world of TV and movie music by working alongside his father as an orchestrator - creating the musical notation to be performed by players at recording sessions - and occasional musician, before striking out as a film composer in his own right at the dawn of the 1980s.
However, father and son reunited to work on 1984′s supernatural comedy Ghostbusters, directed by Ivan Reitman. The Bernsteins had previously worked on Reitman’s 1979 directorial debut, Meatballs, after meeting him when he produced the 1978 frat comedy Animal House, directed by Peter’s old school friend John Landis (Elmer took the teenaged pair to see The Beatles at Hollywood Bowl in 1965).
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“Ghostbusters was the last of the films he scored that I was deeply involved in with,” recalls Peter of how he assisted his father in creating the wonderful orchestral score which helped the supernatural chills and underlying human emotions of the Oscar-nominated comedy blockbuster to ‘land’ with audiences so effectively.
“It was just so much fun working with him. He was my father, after all, and after 10 years of working together, we trusted each other.
“Often, he wouldn’t see the stuff that I had orchestrated until he actually conducted it, so if you look at my original orchestrations for Ghostbusters there are all these notes saying things like ‘I added a bunch of stuff in bars X and Y, so you should check it out before we start recording’.”
Elmer Bernstein passed away in 2004, and since then Peter has been helping fans to celebrate and enjoy his father’s most iconic works by curating and conducting ‘greatest hits’-style live concerts, along with live-to-picture orchestral performances of The Great Escape and Ghostbusters.
He will bring the latter to London’s Royal Albert Hall on Saturday night to mark the film’s 40th anniversary, but while there’s no Irish performance this time around, Peter - who has also penned a biography of his father, Elmer Bernstein, Film Composer - will be on hand for a special 40th anniversary Ghostbusters screening and Q&A at Odeon Belfast next Wednesday evening as part of the Cinemagic Belfast festival.
“My father was a very good dramatist with a feel for not only supporting the action, but supporting deeper things within a film,” explains Peter of what made Elmer Bernstein one of the greatest film composers of all time.
My father was a very good dramatist with a feel for not only supporting the action, but supporting deeper things within a film
— Peter Bernstein
“He always looked for the core - what’s going on at the core of this, not what your immediate experience is.
“Even in Ghostbusters, which admittedly was a comedy, and part of that run of comedies in the 80s that he worked on which were so prevalent then, when you start to analyse the score, you’re aware of him treading such a fine line between comedy, horror, romance and the supernatural.
“It’s all in there, and it’s all has to work together as one score and with the movie. So it was a difficult job.”
Happily, by the time they came to work on Ghostbusters, both Bernsteins had already worked with Ivan Reitman several times, notably on his previous Bill Murray vehicles, Meatballs and Stripes.
“My father was prepared for Ivan to have a lot of ideas and suggestions, and Ivan was prepared for my father to get really angry when defending what he thought was the right thing to do,” chuckles Peter of the dynamic between his dad and the late Ghostbusters director, who died in 2022.
“He had very little tolerance for a director talking to him in musical terms - nothing could get him going faster than a director going, ‘I think you should try a diminished seventh chord here’, or something like that.
“But when it came to following Ivan’s suggestions, mostly he was very accommodating - especially if he found them to be intelligent.
“Because he’d worked with Ivan a lot, there was a lot of shorthand in the relationship, even between Ivan and myself.
“During the recordings, I’d be sitting next to Ivan in the recording booth and my father would be out front with the orchestra, so there was an awful lot of back and forth.”
For Ghostbusters fans, Elmer Bernstein’s jaunty instrumental Ghostbusters Theme is just as vital a part of the film as Ray Parker Jr’s titular smash-hit theme song, along with several other key cues including the romantic Dana’s Theme and the more horror-informed pieces which help drive the film’s spectacular SFX-laden climax.
“I think my favourite is the Zuul scene, when Bill Murray comes to Sigourney Weaver’s apartment and she’s possessed,” offers Peter on the sections of the Ghostbusters score he enjoys conducting the most.
“That’s preceded by an introduction to the second half of the film before the actual film starts after intermission. I think it’s the longest piece of music in the show, and all the various themes and parts of the score are in this five or six minute piece, so it’s another favourite.”
I think my favourite is the Zuul scene, when Bill Murray comes to Sigourney Weaver’s apartment and she’s possessed
— Peter Bernstein
Having already successfully re-invented himself twice-over after being pigeonholed first as a ‘jazz composer’ and then as a ‘Western composer’, by the end of the 1980s Elmer Bernstein was bored with comedies.
Thus, in 1989, he turned down the chance to work with Ivan Reitman again on Ghostbusters II in favour of working on a small independent drama: Elmer’s beautiful score for Dublin director Jim Sheridan’s Oscar-nominated debut My Left Foot duly proved to be yet another crucial career turning point.
“It was very frustrating for him getting out of comedies,” explains Peter.
“But that’s Hollywood: if you’re tremendously successful a number of times doing the same thing, that’s what you do. Thankfully, by then he was already Academy Award-winner who had proved he could do other things.
“So he simply started to refuse comedy assignments. God only knows what it cost him in money, but he just wouldn’t do them.
“Eventually, My Left Foot showed up - and its success changed his career again.”
Ghostbusters, with Peter Bernstein Q&A, Wednesday October 30, Odeon Belfast. Tickets and full Cinemagic Belfast festival programme information via Cinemagic.org.uk
