Scoring, Post-Terrorism

It was just after Sept. 11 when L.A. composer Hans Zimmer sat down to score Ridley Scott’s new film, “Black Hawk Down,” an unrelenting account of the 15-hour battle between besieged U.S. troops and Somali fighters on the streets of Mogadishu in 1993. But the Oscar-winning composer tried to clear his mind of that horrible day as he wrote. “One of the things that was important was not to let Sept. 11 influence the way I was working,” he said. “I was trying to stay true to a certain moment in time.”

Long before the terrorist attacks, Zimmer had met with director Scott and editor Pietro Scalia to conceptualize the score for the film. They agreed the music should communicate that “America doesn’t realize how small the world is,” Zimmer said.

Ultimately, Zimmer’s score incorporated the haunting vocals of Senegalese performer Baaba Maal, accompanied by what he calls “ethnic instruments” to illustrate the Somali struggle and heavy rock guitar and techno music to represent the high-tech American Rangers.

Zimmer, whose first claim to fame was as a member of the Buggles, which recorded the 1979 hit song “Video Killed the Radio Star,” said he met with members of the elite Army Rangers and read up on the battle while scoring the film. “I had to have an element of respect for everybody in this music,” he said. “I very quickly realized that part of having respect is to be fairly out there and write dangerous music ... music that might provoke, that might put you in this tough spot emotionally in some way.”

Zimmer and his team of musicians, who had just completed “Hannibal” and “Pearl Harbor,” worked on a tight deadline after Revolution Studios moved up the film’s release date by three months. “All I know is that I was trying not to write film music,” Zimmer said. “And the greatest compliment I got was from a Ranger. He said, ‘Yeah, that sounds like the way it felt.’”

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In Rampart’s Shadow

Signs directing TV production crews to a sound stage near the LAPD Rampart Division’s West Temple Street station popped up this week. Turns out they were for the people working on “The Shield,” the FX network’s new show about corrupt cops that was renamed in August from its original “Rampart” after the Los Angeles Police Department complained about the title.

The show’s creator and executive producer, Shawn Ryan, said he didn’t choose the area because of its proximity to the real Rampart station. The show’s sound stage, at Sunset Boulevard and Hillhurst Avenue, is in the vicinity. As for exteriors, Ryan said he wanted to shoot in areas of Los Angeles that are unfamiliar to TV audiences, places where “all the store signs are in Spanish and the houses are a little more rundown. ...”

The show is set in the fictitious locale of the Farmington District, Ryan said, and is “only partially, loosely inspired by the Rampart scandal.”

An FX spokesman has said the show’s name was changed because people outside of Los Angeles are unfamiliar with the Rampart scandal. But, according to someone familiar with discussions between the network and police, after LAPD officials saw the pilot, they asked that all references to the department--including badges and police cars--be excised.

This isn’t the first time that Rampart has been immortalized on television. The police station’s exterior was used in the opening shot of the 1970s pro-police TV show “Adam-12.”

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Quote/Unquote

“I’m not a misogynist. I don’t have disrespect for females, you know? I love women, you know, and I find some of the greatest wisdom that’s passed on to me is from my female friends, you know?” That’s Russell Crowe speaking to Diane Sawyer after she asked him about his reputation as a heartbreaker, on tonight’s edition of ABC’s “PrimeTime Thursday.”