Word: bernstein
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Change has certainly worked for Bernstein, 80, who has been at the top of his profession for a half-century, with 200 film and TV credits and 13 Academy Award nominations. (He won an Oscar for adapting 1967's Thoroughly Modern Millie.) "Composers, like actors and directors, get typed," observes director John Landis. "But not if you're as versatile as Elmer. When he did The Man with the Golden Arm in 1955, he was Mr. Jazz. Then he did The Great Escape in 1963 and became Mr. Action Adventure." Landis enabled Bernstein to become Mr. Comedy, drafting...
...routines for composer Elmer Bernstein, thank you. "I rarely do anything at the same time each day," he says, "simply because anything you do routinely cannot possibly be fresh. I think having a life with change in it keeps you young...
...latest challenge for this musical chameleon was providing the romantic music for the just-released Far from Heaven, writer-director Todd Haynes' elegantly crafted homage to '50s melodramas. Bernstein's lush, lyrical score, observes Haynes, is "like a character" in the film, helping express "things that aren't said." Bernstein calls Far from Heaven a gift. "At my age," he says, "to find out that a director in his early 40s was interested in working with me was very exciting...
Contact with younger people, Bernstein believes, is another key to staying youthful. He has taught film scoring at the University of Southern California, and his many proteges include two of his four children: son Peter, 51, is also a composer, and daughter Emilie, 34, has been orchestrating her father's scores for nearly a decade. Bernstein often returns the favor by showing up at clubs when Emilie performs with her alternative rock band, Eve's Garden...
Frequent travel also expands Bernstein's world. Three years ago, the New York City native bought a retreat in Woodstock, N.Y., where he has spent summers since 1930 and where the Woodstock Film Festival has named a music award after him. He and his wife Eve have another home in Warwick, England, near where she was raised. In California he divides his time between a house in Santa Monica and a property in Santa Barbara that includes a main house on top of a hill and his studio out of sight down the slope. Each day he walks...