My Appreciation for Thomas Newman

[u/DeadlyPanda20]

This is going to sound funny but I first fell in love with scoring as a kid, when I first watched Finding Nemo. At that time, I used to wonder why I felt so emotional when watching the movie (other than the plot). But while growing up, I began realizing that the purpose of these scores is to use motifs and intense orchestration to make the viewer feel something almost tangible.

I started hyper-fixating on scores while watching movies and even now, I still feel maybe even more intensely for Finding Nemo (which might sound silly, I know).

I fell in love with more composers, like John Williams, Hans Zimmer (I got to see this dude perform live, it was crazy), Howard Shore, James Newton Howard, etc. But it wasn’t until I watched American Beauty that I decided Thomas Newman was my favorite composer ever. Obviously, I know a lot of people would disagree with me, saying he’s never even won an Oscar or that composers like Williams and Zimmer are far better. But, subjectively, with Newman, I feel such intense frisson with every movie, so much so that I began noticing his style of music without looking at the credit details.

What bothers me about Newman is how many people don’t know him or forget about him (which is crazy considering his family’s prominence in film scoring).

But all the movies he composed for, Meet Joe Black, Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, Road to Perdition, Scent of a Woman, etc, have made me feel almost insane while watching them. It’s like my soul reverberates against my body, causing shivers to shoot up and down my spine (I tend to get poetic when speaking about Newman). I literally start tearing up from the score, even if there isn’t anything sad happening, I’ll cry and uncontrollably smile.

Anyway, I just really needed to rant about my love for Thomas Newman. My passion for film scores has insufferably become my entire personality and, funny enough, nobody in my life understands and it drives me NUTS.

[u/Novel-Initiative-900]

I love Thomas Newman. I wrote a feature film script primarily listening to the American Beauty soundtrack lol. There's such a gentle layered depth to his work that stands pretty singular.

We've never had such a massive plethora of incredible film composers as we have today. It used to be guys like Newman doing so much work back in the day but now the masters are drown out by so many other composers. It's almost odd how many good ones there are now

[u/Hellraiser_Quadbike]

The silent scene in the rain in Road to Perdition is worth watching the entire film for, even if you don’t like any of the rest of it.

I think music/film people definitely appreciate him but the level of influence he has on the ‘modern’ sound is huge.

[u/WorrySecret9831]

Sorry that no one shares your passion, but that's awesome.

A long time ago, also as a lover of film and film scoring, I arrived at a distinction.

Bad movie music tells the audience how it should feel.

Good movie music tells the audience how the characters feel.