33. Composer Bruce Broughton on Spaceship Earth, Soarin’, and More

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Composer Bruce Broughton has written the music for many Disney attractions, especially at EPCOT. His theme park work includes Ellen’s Energy Adventure; the current version of Spaceship Earth; Honey, I Shrunk the Audience!; Cinemagique; and The Timekeeper. He also re-tooled Jerry Goldsmith’s iconic score for Soarin’ Over California during the recent change to Soarin’ Around the World. Broughton has also scored countless movies and TV series, including Silverado, The Rescuers Down Under, Tombstone, and Tiny Toon Adventures.

On the latest episode of The Tomorrow Society Podcast, I spoke with Broughton about his extensive career. His first theme park project was The Making of Me in the Wonders of Life pavilion. That unique show was the start of regular work for Broughton with Disney in the ‘90s and beyond. Even if you aren’t familiar, you’ve certainly heard Broughton’s stunning music in the parks and on the screen. His latest project was scoring the theme for The Orville, the new sci-fi comedy from Seth MacFarlane.

During this episode, Broughton and I discuss so many topics, including these examples:

• How far back does Broughton’s connection to Disney’s theme parks go?
• What was it like to create different scores for The Timekeeper at Disneyland Paris and Walt Disney World?
• How did Broughton solve the challenge of composing music for different time periods in the small space of Spaceship Earth?
• What are the added obstacles when composing music for Circle-Vision?
• How did Broughton pay tribute to Jerry Golsmith’s original score while creating new music for Soarin’ Around the World?

It was a thrill to speak with a composer that has been involved in some of my favorite theme park attractions. I feel like we barely scratched the surface of Broughton’s work in this episode. Even so, we still covered plenty of interesting material from his projects with Disney.

Show Notes

Learn more about Broughton’s work by visiting his official site at brucebroughton.com.

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Transcript: Bruce Broughton

Dan Heaton: Hey there. We have a very special episode of the podcast today. Composer Bruce Broughton is here to talk about his work on many Disney theme park attractions including Spaceship Earth, Ellen’s Energy Adventure, The Making of Me, and a lot more. You’re listening to The Tomorrow Society Podcast.

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Dan Heaton: Thanks so much for joining me here on Episode 33 of The Tomorrow Society Podcast. I’m your host, Dan Heaton. Today I’m looking back towards a time when Michael Eisner had taken over Disney and brought a slightly different sensibility to the attractions that were created under his reign starting up in the mid to late ‘80s and early ‘90s. We had attractions that either are connected directly to movie franchises but also felt cinematic even when that wasn’t the case. Disney has always had attractions that connected to their IP, but some of the attractions that came out of the ‘90s especially felt like they were big like movies. The music felt big; everything felt larger than life. That’s not a coincidence given who was in charge at the time.

I mean you look at an attraction like Ellen’s Energy Adventure, which despite being a ride and looking at energy also feels like a big movie story. Or something like The Time Keeper, which takes you to different time periods – the past and the future – but also has that you’re on a wild ride of a movie sensibility. Other attractions like The Making of Me, Honey I Shrunk the Audience, and Cinemagique in Paris all connected either directly or indirectly to that love of storytelling and movies and that big lighthearted feeling even when tackling mature subjects. I mention all the attractions because all of them had the same composer. Bruce Broughton did the score for each one of them and others like It’s Tough to Be a Bug and Soarin’ Around the World and Spaceship Earth.

His songs were essential in making these attractions work and his background from movies and doing so with scores for films like Silverado, Tombstone, The Rescuers Down Under, and a lot more connects to that approach that Eisner was taking with these attractions. During the ’80s and ’90s, if you want to have an attraction feel like a big movie, you hire a composer that has worked on a lot of big movies. It makes sense.

It was a real thrill to talk to Bruce about his experiences working with Disney at the theme parks and how you put together a score for a theme park attraction. I hope you enjoy it. It was a lot of fun to get to talk with him. And if you do like this podcast, it would be great if you listen on iTunes or another podcast service, if you could rate and review this podcast. It would help add a lot to keep expanding and allow me to get great guests like Bruce who have experience directly with Disney and its history. So let’s get to it. Here is my conversation with Bruce Broughton.

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Dan Heaton: Okay. Well I am thrilled to be speaking with Bruce Broughton, whose extensive work as a composer includes the Oscar-nominated score for Silverado, many films including The Rescuers Down Under and Young Indiana Jones, TV shows like JAG and Dallas, and the new show The Orville with Seth MacFarlane. He’s also scored many Disney attractions like the current version of Spaceship Earth, Ellen’s Energy Adventure, Honey I Shrunk the Audience, and The Time Keeper among others. Bruce, thanks so much for talking with me.

Bruce Broughton: Yes, my pleasure.

Dan Heaton: Great. So that introduction amazingly only really scratches the surface of your work. So going back to the beginning, I know you studied composition in college. How did you really get interested in scoring specifically for TV and movie projects?

Bruce Broughton: Well, I think everybody who studies music certainly every composer when they’re in the beginning to the end of their undergraduate, they either ask or they get asked the question: What do you do next year? And it comes down to two answers. It’s often, I think I’m going to go for my Masters or it could be when I’m thinking about teaching. I didn’t really want to do either. So, I decided when I graduated to try to find work, and I hadn’t had a composition degree.

The urge to be a composer was not huge, but it was what my degree was. I had a musical background, and my family was musical and so it was actually kind of a natural course. I became a composer and I started writing music when I was a kid anyway. So, I obviously had an interest in it, and I decided that I really wanted to write music that would make people feel something.

So it didn’t take much sleuthing to figure out the movies was really a good way to do that. I thought the movies would provide me with the means to write the kind of music I wanted to write, which would be a blend of different styles of music. I liked the idea that movies were seen by people in dark rooms in groups, so I could get a lot of people at once. And definitely the music for a movie was an emotional quality that would have some contact with people. I had always as a composer wanted to and I still do a lot of to write music that was interesting to play for the musicians…that would engage the musicians and would always engage an audience as well.

Even today, I’m writing something that’s not a film. I’m still interested in engaging people, so it really wasn’t much of a leap to get to the idea of doing movies. I didn’t grow up as a movie fan when I was a kid. I don’t think I was even aware that music was in movies. I just went to see movies as something that was entertaining, which I’m thinking back was probably a good thing because I realize that most people when they go see a movie they’re not going to hear the music. They’re going to be entertained, you know? So, I put music into a film or into an attraction.

I’m here to help tell the story, and somebody can listen to the music. It’s great you know, but it’s not the reason they got there. Fortunately after all these years, that music does have a life. Even sitting here now chatting with you, there is a life that people do to get into it. I’m happy to have that happen.

Dan Heaton: I was amazed even going through your filmography of all the movies you did. As for me as a kid in the 80s like I remember The Boy Who Could Fly, which I watched on the Disney Channel or some even TV like the Amazing Stories. I know you’ve done a lot of projects that are kind of family films or are family TV shows. What drew you to that genre? Did your style of music really fit with those types of films or shows?

Bruce Broughton: Basically, I just did a lot of family films because that was what I was asked to do. The first big film I did was Silverado that got a lot of attention. Then Young Sherlock Holmes got a fair amount of attention. The one after that was The Boy Who Could Fly. After that, the films were whatever they were about. Shortly after that not too long afterwards was Homeward Bound. Rescuers Down Under came around I think because it was an adventure film and they wanted the guy that did Silverado. When I was a kid, I wanted to be an animator. So doing an animated movie for Disney was like a dream you know.

So I was happy to do that, but at the same time as I did Rescuers, I was working on the Tiny Toon Adventures shows over at Warner Brothers, which is a different kind of animation completely different style, and that’s for kids. And from the time, I just it just ended up doing a lot of family films and in my style is primarily lyrical. It’s sort of conducive to long melodies and themes in adventure films I’ve done. You know dark dramas and all that kind.

I guess people didn’t think of me for that. Would have been nice to have more of them, but I wasn’t unhappy doing the family things. I hear a lot more people come back after having grown up with my films than I think I probably otherwise would have. People who grow up with Homeward Bound or Rescuers Down Under or The Boy Who Could Fly. You know kids like to watch movies over and over and over and over again. They get a really good chance to hear the music and grow with it and have it be meaningful. So, you get that which is kind of nice.

Dan Heaton: Yeah. And even in a film like Silverado, which has that kind of rousing tune that especially with Westerns kind of had fallen off that I think people look at it that way too especially maybe people that were adults that loved Westerns as kids so I think you connected in that way. But I know you mentioned about being wanting to be an animator, which I think is interesting given how much you ended up doing with the theme parks. How interested were you in Walt Disney as a kid? Wanting to be an animator, I assume he was someone you looked at that was an influence on you.

Bruce Broughton: When I was 10, 11, 12, I read every book I could find on Disney. I remember going to see Fantasia when I was about 12 or 13 when it was being released. I remember seeing whatever animated film would come out. I remember watching the Mickey Mouse Club when I was a boy. I would watch cartoons just to see how they moved and how they were done. I got to know the names of the animators, and I knew very well how animated movies were put together. So when I was about 12, I wrote a letter to Walt Disney and asked him for all of the cels for one of his cartoons figuring that once they shot it they didn’t need anymore and he’d probably just gave it to me.

I sat around for several weeks waiting for this box of stuff to show up and not having any idea of how many tens of thousands of pictures there would have been had he actually done it. And when I got instead was I think a two-page maybe a three-page mimeographed note on how animated movies were made. I was very disappointed because I knew animated movies. But you know when Disneyland was open, which was 1955. I was there.

It opened on Sunday, and I was there on Wednesday. I remember my brother and I ran through the park. This also shows you this is a very different time. In 1955, I was 10 years old and my brother was 8 years old. And without our parents. Our parents dropped us off at the park with this new car and said that they would pick us up at you know 4:00 or 5:00 in the evening. So these two little boys completely unchaperoned at Disney were running through the park seeing all these great things which had just been unleashed on mankind. And even you could never do that anymore. You know you never let little kids grow up with themselves.

And then I also remember in one of those early trips to Disneyland that they sold the drawings for the movies, the actual cels. I remember I bought two of them. I bought one of Peter Pan and then bought one of either Chip or Dale. I can’t remember which one it is. I don’t know where they are now. I wish I had them because it be worth a lot of money. They were just cutting them up and selling them to visitors.

Dan Heaton: That’s interesting because of the fact that you went to Disneyland so early which I’m jealous of myself being not being able to do that. I’ve only been there a few times. I live in the middle of the country. But yeah, it’s funny because I have an 8-year-old and I couldn’t imagine just driving her to even our local theme park and letting her run free. So, I think you had it better.

Bruce Broughton: I don’t think anybody in the right mind would do it now. But those days, it was very different. For me I mean it was like wonderland because Disney was really a hero. So years later, to be able to work in the movies and then actually get a chance to work on a Disney movie and an animated movie that’s usually a big deal. I think the producer was really surprised that I was so keen on it because a lot of composers don’t like working on animation.

I ran into Jerry Goldsmith one time at a parking lot and so we were chatting and he said. “So what are you working on?” I said, “Well, I’m working on this cartoon series over at Warner Brothers.” And I said I’m supervising composer; I’m hiring the composers. I’m the music department. He was frowning and says “well, you’re not writing them are you”. I said “Well, yeah I am”. I like that stuff and it was kind of below him, beneath them. He did some animation too. Not very well at Disney.

Dan Heaton: That’s a funny story because I think it’s changed a little bit. Given how popular animation is now. But even when the Rescuers Down Under, and it came out, it was a different situation. So based on that, I’m sure that probably had an impact in you getting to work actually scoring for theme park attractions. I want to make sure I ask you about the many of those you’ve done. How did you first get involved? I believe The Making of Me was your first project. How did that get started for you back in the late ’80s?

Bruce Broughton: You know I’m not really sure. It was shortly after I did The Boy Who Could Fly. Jeff Katzenberg who was over Disney at that time liked the movie The Boy Who Could Fly. I heard this from other people, and I think he told me one time something about it. So, when I first got called for The Making of Me and the temp track was basically The Boy Who Could Fly. The temp track you know is that music that they put into movies before the recording. It gets recorded but music in there to give them an idea of how it’s going to be playing the style of music and stuff. The director said to me, you know that Jeff really likes that score.

He really likes the work and he said, well he really likes it. So I looked and I said, you mean don’t change it very much. And he said yeah. So if you listen to The Making of Me, which is really cute. Particularly given the subject, which is how birth happens, is actually compared to The Boy Who Could Fly just stylistically. There are a lot of similarities. It’s not a copy, but the styles are very similar. The one thing that stood out for me on that one was that it had the first piece of animation that I ever did. It had a one-minute video.

And so I had to do an animation, and I had never done animation before and was thinking that I would never do animation again. I had this one minute to do it in the theme parks thing, and that became my premiere outing as an animation composer. That movie came, and nothing happened again. The theme parks I mean it was sort of a one off.

Then several years later I guess maybe five or six years later Jerry Goldsmith was close to do Time after Time which was called The Timekeeper. Timekeeper was done for France and Jerry was supposed to do it. So I called on it and I followed Jerry and a couple of things and he was always very good to me. I admired the guy enormously. He was my musical Walt Disney because I thought Jerry was just incredible. I still do. I had seen shows like this the Circle-Vision shows that of course the thought of doing one never really occurred to me. I had a great time. It just was great.

The thing that made it even better was that the guys who were producing it I continued to work with over the years. I’ve worked with these teams particularly the one producer Tom Fitzgerald. Tom and I worked together for years and years and years. The last thing we did was Soarin’ Over the World, which also was the Jerry Goldsmith thing, the original. So Tom and I became good friends and worked on these things many times, and I just found that the whole experience enjoyable.

I’ve often said that theme parks and animation are the two big jobs you can get. Everybody knows what you’re doing and the picture is pretty much stable, and there’s no funny business nobody going on being artistic. no ideas about how they’re going to change that is that going to change this. No let’s put this scene there. They don’t do that at all.

They know exactly what they are doing in the Disney case. They know how many people are in the room. You know how long it takes to get people from outside into the inside and from the inside to the outside. They know when the show starts when the show ends; they know what the pressure is going to be. I mean all that stuff is figured out.

They know that if they have like some challenges boarding people who are handicapped people and you have to stop, then you have to stop the trolley going. They know how to handle that the emergency system and actually doesn’t pick the music that you find you have to play music. They take a lot of this stuff into consideration. So, I find them really pushing us to do as well. I mean you never know when you’re getting with theme parks.

You never know whether you’re getting the movie or you’re getting a ride whether to do a cartoon or whether you’re pretending to be part of the audience or whether the audience is supposed to be listening to you as a live band or whatever it is.

You don’t know what the scene is. All you’re doing is you’re providing music that maybe millions of people are going to come look at and enjoy. You get to solve all these technical problems and be creative and have a tremendous team. It’s really a great team behind you. People who you stick around with for three years and become good friends. It’s a great association that I really enjoy.

Dan Heaton: Yeah. I think that’s a great answer, and you referenced about five attractions there that I want to ask you about. So that was a lot to cover, but I want to start with The Timekeeper, or with Time After Time because that’s an interesting case where I have been to Paris. But the one I saw was the one in the United States with Robin Williams and everything, but that’s a case where you actually I believe did two different soundtracks right based on the U.S. and first Paris. Can you talk a bit about how that went and how do you how do you do that putting that together.

Bruce Broughton: Actually that was kind of silly. Although I didn’t mind. The idea was that The Time Keeper was going to show up in France. So it played in France for a long time and it hasn’t been in the park for a few years. It’s still a really popular memory in a lot of Europeans. I get letters occasionally from people who say, oh where can I find the theme for The Timekeeper? I love that and blah blah. Which was really great.

It was a really cool show; when they put it into Florida, they changed it slightly. And I do mean slightly; they put a few phrases in English. They play a couple of extra scenes in ways you know for all intents and purposes basically the same show that they put into practice. But the feeling was that because now this is going to go into America they need to have an American score and a French score.

Well you know I’m an American guy. I wrote them both. So I wrote the French score, and I wrote the American score. What they also did in America it was a case I guess that does make sense when they put the Robin Williams intro with the robot, that put a completely different energy into it. It didn’t really affect the show as well.

I think the pre show was very different than what it was in France. So anyway it for whatever reason it was, I ended up having the same show but with two different scores running at the same time, which I think was so far as I know it is kind of a first. I don’t know any other circumstance where anybody would have to show two scores to the same show and I was happy to have it. I’ve always liked the show and I thought it was a lot of fun.

You have different musical themes for both of them. I tried to rethink the American version so that I could deliver as much as was asked for me. It’s why the first version was recorded in London. The American version was recorded in Hollywood, and I guess even there we were staying close to home.

Dan Heaton: That’s really interesting that they would they would go to that much effort in that case because most people are probably not going to notice a huge difference I guess. I mean people aren’t watching them side by side so it’s a lot of different guests.

Bruce Broughton: One thing in the French version we had an obligation, a contractual obligation, to include French music. On the building of the Eiffel Tower, we used the something of Auffenbach dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot. I think it’s like the CanCan or something like that. And then there’s a band playing in the distance. They’re playing a piece by a French composer. Every once in awhile, we’d use French music. I think that was what changed. I think that may have been changed in the American version. It’s been a few years since I’ve looked at it.

There were a few changes you know and they did have the contractual obligation to include some music of France so that the show that was showing in France actually had something to do with France aside from being the Eiffel Tower. A side part of that was a few years ago, I was in Vienna and I was visiting some friends there and I went to was Schonbrunn Castle. It was in a park and there was this large building, this kind of glass building, and my friends looked at and said, you know this is where they shot the scene for Time After Time with Jules Verne.

And I looked at it and I thought, oh my god this is the place that was supposed to be France was actually in Vienna. It was really kind of fun because now I’m seeing it contemporary. I mean it’s an old building; it’s a very old building. But it was all dressed up to look like France. It’s a movie; you never know where you really are and what you’re really looking at. It was really kind of fun to revisit it that way.

Dan Heaton: Yeah, that’s funny. And I wanted to ask you about one other thing you did. I went to Paris, and it was 10 years ago or so, to Disneyland Paris and one of our favorite things we saw there was Cinemagique which is still playing I believe with Martin Short and Julie Delpy. And it’s one of the as far as like a love letter to movies. It’s one of my favorite attractions that they’ve ever done. I mean it still holds up so well. I checked it out again today. How did you get involved with that? Do you think your movie background I assume probably helped out with that?

Bruce Broughton: I know I said earlier I was used to working with the team. I think I got selected for the ones…I got selected sometimes for the big shows that really told a big story. And this one was definitely that. Cinemagique is a really terrific film. My wife and I saw it six or seven years ago and which is a few years after I had done it. I was really impressed. I mean there was a big audience for it because it runs you know every 20-25 minutes. It was a-good sized audience and an appreciative audience. But it really plays well you know, it’s a really good movie.

It had some kind of cool things in it that I would probably have to point out as it was playing to show you what it was. They used clips from old movies. There was a clip from Pinocchio of Pinocchio under the sea where we used the original music from the film and then I had to marry it into my score. There was another scene where in Casablanca where the Max Steiner scores playing in back I think “As Time Goes by” or something is plain that the theme goes back and it’s married to the picture.

My score had to meet the movie, play that scene with the music that was in it, and continue on into the machine. There are a whole bunch of little things like that that you never pay attention to unless you’re really you know really looking for a true well-made film.

The conceit of having Martin Short in the audienceand then stepping into the film works really well too. What you take on one of these jobs you just never know. I sometimes say to these guys, okay, I have no idea what the show is. I have no idea how to solve this, but I know I’ll be seeing you know I’ll pick it up. So, I go home and I figure it out. They’re always fun to do.

Dan Heaton: Yeah. I can imagine that would be a really fun project to work on. Because I had forgotten how good it was, and having watched it again very recently. I mean it was on a YouTube video but still. For it to work that well on a YouTube video shows how powerful it is.

Bruce Broughton: [It’s a pretty good movie. I hope it will sit there for years. I mean after all they built a theater for it.

Dan Heaton: Yeah me too, and it’s too bad that. I know that it does have some French elements, but it’s too bad that isn’t something similar or something they could do and some of the other studios parks like in the US and such. But it does seem very good for France and very European in a way.

You mentioned Spaceship Earth and that that you know what you’re doing because you’ve done a lot of film projects whether it’s Circle Vision or 4D or things like that. But this is a ride that basically takes you through you know the history of it started out communications more innovation as you know. But doing that score I know you even mentioned about how they have to stop the project sometimes and such. How do you mix so many different historical times into a score that kind of flows well on an attraction like that?

Bruce Broughton: Well that’s one of the advantages of working in the movies. When you’re working in movies, you’re always working in different styles. For instance, with Silverado and The Boy Who Could Fly, if you took those movies and put them side by side, the music’s very different. If you took the music in Silverado and Tombstone, two westerns that I did the music for, those two are completely different but they’re both Westerns. You rely a lot upon the style of the picture.

Sometimes, we rely upon some research like particularly in Spaceship Earth where I had to research some of the music of the time like you know I’m not exactly up on everything we were doing during the Middle Ages or the Renaissance where the differences between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and then the classical era and then the modern era. Some of that stuff you just guess like the music for Rome or Phoenicia. I mean you just kind of take a stab at it and say well that sounds sort of like Rome and this sounds like Phoenicia.

One of the things that was interesting on that show I guess the reason I really talk about it was because I had been on the original ride years before and the thing that I found out was that the tram stops. It often stops. And I and my naiveté thought that it was a break down; you know that the tram just stopped. I didn’t realize that there was actually was a reason that it happened.

So when we got to do the updated version of Spaceship Earth, I said you know the thing I noticed was that the tram often stops and they say well that’s intentional because you know when you’re loading people you want to make sure for safety considerations that everybody can get on safely. And sometimes it’s better just to stop the tram until everybody is on securely rather than rush them on and have a leg dragging or something like that as you’re going up to the climb.

He said, however that does pose a problem for you in that he said we don’t know how you’re going to solve this. We have three or four rooms…the way Spaceship Earth works because I know you know a lot of your listeners know is that you go basically from room to room. You go from time zone to time zone and at the beginning of it you start in the Stone Age and then you go to..I’m not sure which is which but Phoenicia, Rome, and Egypt or something like that. There are basically little rooms of activity that follow each other and each era, each room, each society, each time zone has its own music. They’re right next to each other.

So they said occasionally when you’re out there, the tram might stop and you’ll be stuck between two rooms hearing two different music at the same time. We don’t know how you’re going to work on that. We don’t know how you’re going to fix that. I thought, well that’s pretty easy. I know how to do that because it’s the same problem that you have with somebody else has already figured out for me the same problem you have on it’s a small world.

I think people don’t realize on “it’s a small world” they’re taking this little boat around hearing that same tune over and over and over and over again. Every time they float by a certain doll singing the language the tune stays in sync with all the other ones. But the French are singing next to the Germans, the Germans are singing next to the Dutch, the Dutch are singing next to the Russians, and so on all the way through this whole thing and the whole thing is in sync.

I do that basically the same way I wrote, I think sometimes four pieces that could all be played on top of each other using basically the same chord structure, the same tempo, changing the music entirely. But after I had figured it out, I put it all on a computer and stacked them so I could have like four pieces actually playing at the same time and listen to them, and if anything stood out I would change it. But that way I have ensured that if anybody got stuck between two different time zones and they were hearing two different kinds of music, they wouldn’t be able to tell what was happening. It was kind of fun you know.

Dan Heaton: Yeah. Now I want to ride the attraction and get stuck so I can test out and hear this because you know I totally get what you mean because you often stop. But there are certain rooms that are rather large especially like the ones you mentioned. As you get into the Renaissance and then into the printing press. There could be some interesting combinations there. So, I want to ask you on a similar note, this update that you worked on the score for they did do a lot of different scenes. Not all of them.

When it’s closed I mean, when you’re doing the score it’s different than a movie where you’re watching the movie. Do you get to ride through like while they’re building these or after they’re built to kind of…how much do you get to actually experience the right to help with doing the score?

Bruce Broughton: No, you do ride it. You pretty much have to ride it. Music comes in pretty much at the end because, particularly on things like this. There are two shows that come to mind like through Spaceship Earth and Ellen’s Energy Adventure.

They both were rides, and you really have to ride it, you have to experience the fear or the shows however they are being projected or however they are being shown. You have to go through the dinosaur bit, you have to see the Renaissance, go to the Medieval you know whatever it is, all the stuff. So, you get a sense of how it all plays because there are some problems to solve that you can only solve by actually being there.

There was one problem, to be honest when I was on Spaceship Earth that I didn’t pay any attention to and didn’t notice it until I rode on the final ride. There’s one thing that I didn’t take any consideration of and that was the actual sound of the tram because the sound of the tram sometimes cues up the music.

If the music is kind of soft and in a certain range, the tram will eat it up. If I should ever do this again, I’m going to pay attention to that tram you know and be a little bit more careful but overall you know I’m very happy with the way this thing works. Particularly on Spaceship Earth, I’m kind of amused by knowing where all the music plays. There’s one song we go by the medieval university and you hear a male soprano singing something in Latin.

There’s a story too. He’s singing something in Latin, and then you go on to this little group playing Renaissance music and over on the right there’s somebody playing the violin and the lute. So there’s music over there on the right there’s music on the left, there’s music that you just passed. The Latin thing was kind of funny because it was supposed to be music for a medieval university. At medieval universities, Latin was a big subject. So, I decided I would do the piece in Latin and I decided to use just a solo voice accompanied by an organ or something simple.

So they didn’t have any idea…I mentioned it too and I said this is what I’m going to do anyway. They said, okay that sounds right. So now I had to go find a Latin text. It was kind of hard to find a text. I mean I don’t know really what to…where even to search. I found a I found a poem, I think it was a love poem. It wasn’t anything disgusting I mean it was just something like, “You know I think you’re cute, however they say that in Latin. So I showed them the Latin text and they looked and went uh, I don’t think. So I think you’d be safer just doing something like Hallelujah or something very churchey.

And I said well why is that. He said well because we have a lot of people go by this. A lot of people are going to be taking this ride, and there will be a few Latin scholars. And then somebody will write us the letter for sure. They figure out what the guy is singing and it’s not anything proper. We’ll get letters, and we’d rather not get the letters. So I think that you just have somebody singing Hallelujah or something pretty generic.

It also shows that basically the overall point of the theme parks is that millions of people listen to these things over and over. I had several friends who when they get a two week vacation here in Los Angeles when they get a two week vacation they fly to Florida and they spend their two weeks at the Disney parks. Or I have friends who if they get a weekend they’ll go drive out to Disneyland and spend the night at the hotel or two nights at the hotel and go to both the parks. There are a lot of people who just do the Disney experience over and over and over and over and over again.

So, I do believe them they get lots of letters about this piece or that piece or you know this thing that they did in the show or that thing they did in the show and all that kind of stuff. So they’re very careful to get it as perfect as they possibly can the first time, and I think they do a really great job. The other thing is every time I’ve been to Disneyland or of the parks, it always looks like it was just installed. It never has any sense that it’s been there for 10 years or 15 years or something like that. It’s quite a place.

Dan Heaton: It’s impressive. I go pretty often, but I know people that travel from all over the country that have annual passes that go three, four, or five more times a year. And, with the Internet now, if there’s something at Spaceship Earth, if it’s missing anything, people will just jump on it. So, I can imagine people at Disney having headaches about the TV’s not working or something that everybody calls out. But, it doesn’t happen that often.

I wanted to ask you about Ellen’s Energy Adventure because it closed recently. For something about energy to be open for 20 plus years is pretty amazing. But one thing that’s really different about that one is you know that’s a 45-minute attraction. So you’re almost getting to the point where you’re scoring not a feature film but something closer to that level. So what was that one like with working on a retool but also on something that long? It’s not a 10-minute or 15-minute attraction at all.

Bruce Broughton: That was really one of my favorite shows. I always enjoy that show. Every time I go to Epcot I go look at that show. The show just played really well and it was huge you know because the screen was huge and the room is huge. The people holds 600 people. It was timed to hold 600 people meaning that the doors were open long enough to get 600 people in and comfortably seated before they started to drop the lights. So, there was like a four- or five-minute overture that plays when people go into the room.

I think also when people leave it there’s another piece. I took the overture and I changed the title; I call it an Epcot overture and we use it as a concert piece. You can have an orchestra Disney read it as a symphonic piece and it’s going to use you know now and again for something like that because it’s really just it’s just a piece of music it doesn’t copy anything other than it promotes the beginning of the show. It was exciting and also one of the things I like about it was because it was about energy. It was very powerful. I mean visually it was very powerful but the music really had a big punch to it. It was a fun show; I liked that one a lot,.

Dan Heaton: It’s really interesting that one. It’s just that theme that you’ve done it’s not a surprise to me to hear that you know you were able to use it in kind of a different way because that’s one of those songs that you can hear walking around Epcot that could almost be anywhere in Epcot. It’s not so locked in to the energy adventure attraction itself. It’s one of those catchy tunes that just that really holds up well. That reminds me; I wanted to ask you too about your music in general because some of your songs are on the official album of Walt Disney World and you know obviously have been released over the years.

Your theme parks songs. But I know I’ve heard you mention that possibly putting together some sort of a release with a lot more music. Some of my listeners asked me about this coming in and that I should ask you. So, how is that coming along to really be excited about some sort of release of more of your theme park music?

Bruce Broughton: I wish I could tell you how it’s coming along. All I can tell you is that the album was finished that we’ve mastered. I think it’s all the pieces that I ever did in the theme parks. The things that from years ago…Mickey’s audition and short pieces and long pieces, and it’s just waiting for Disney to release it. I think they’re trying to figure out either how they’d like to let it out. So as far as I understand, it’s still in the works. But as far as my job on it, it’s been done as far as the record company. We’ve completed our end, and we’re just waiting for the thing to be released.

Dan Heaton: Hopefully that works out because I know there’s people that would really enjoy hearing the larger breadth of pieces beyond the few themes, and I did want to ask you about one more piece of music you did recently which you referenced earlier which is Soarin’ Around the World. Specifically, I know you mentioned Jerry Goldsmith and you know him obviously doing the iconic theme from Soarin’ over California. So what was it like to come in you know because now it’s around the world and you’re using some of his I mean not using his theme but working from it but developing something new. How was that process like kind of working from such a beloved theme and ride?

Bruce Broughton: Well, I actually did use his theme. I did a lot of arrangements of it, and there’s a fair amount of original music in it as well. As much as I could use what he did, I did because when we we did a lot of talking about this is that people are prepared to go hear it. They didn’t want to change it a lot and it wasn’t something that the people would come in and say we got a new show this year and it’s completely new music. There’s a lot of emotional attachment to the original and so I tried to be as close to the original as I could. You know where it was appropriate there are some things that really are not appropriate.

Those things were like when you fly over the Taj Mahal that music doesn’t have much to do with the California show, and a few other things like that as well. Actually, it was it was a nice project for me for a bunch of reasons. One because it’s a spectacular show. I would say however anybody felt about a Disney theme park, if they were going to see one show that would be the show to go see. It’s a very grownup show. It’s an exciting show. I mean kids can enjoy it but it’s really a show that adults can really get involved in. It’s a beautiful show.

What you’re looking at is completely stunning. You know, scene after scene after scene after scene. It’s exhilarating when you feel like you’re up there flying because you can’t see the edges of the screen you feel like you’re actually looking at what you’re looking at. One of the nice things about the music is there’s no dialogue. There are a few sound effects, but nothing that really gets in the way of music. For a composer, it’s just great because you sit there with this monstrous screen and the music is coming at you.

You walk in this room, and wham! There’s the music and the same thing with Soarin’, the music just really hits you. I heard for years how much people love Jerry’s score to that. So the thought of even changing it was kind of dumb. I mean I wouldn’t have done it. So it’s a combination of…It’s definitely Jerry, but there’s definitely bits of me in it. And I think between the two shows, Soarin’ over California was a really good show. I think this is a better show because it’s bigger, the vistas are wider, so there’s more to see. I know they plan to bring back the California show from time to time and I would go see the California show again anytime. But of the two of them, this is the one that I think is really the killer.

Dan Heaton: Yeah. It would be tough for me because I love the California one so much I would love to have it where they showed like you mentioned they showed both because the around the world has that great especially the great opening with the mountains and everything that’s super powerful. Then there’s scenes that I love from the original. So it’s a tricky one. You mentioned recording with a big dome screen like that.

You’ve done a few like you’ve done a variety of you’ve done 4D with It’s Tough to Be a Bug, Honey I Shrunk the Audience, and then O Canada with the 360. In cases like the circle vision films for instance, how do you score for something when you have like that type of nine screens surrounding you. I mean does that present new challenges when you have all these different types of media like Circle Vision?

Bruce Broughton: Yeah it does. The way I see it literally is you know we do all this stuff on computers now. So, when I get the picture, it’s a picture that I put on my computer screen and I get the nine screens in front of me. I can see it as a circle, but I get all the information that is going to be on the screens in front of me in pieces and so I can see what’s going on here and there and all that kind of stuff.

But at the same time I’m aware that nobody in the theatre is looking at everything and seeing everything all at once. So, you have to treat it a little bit differently than you would treat a normal film where you can draw somebody’s attention to a piece of action. You basically play the entire scene and then you hope that people will come back and see it enough times that they will get more information visually and that the music you know will help do that. But you can’t point to music and say oh look at this! Look at this, isn’t that funny or that do a little slapstick bit or a little bit of Mickey Mousing. It just doesn’t work.

On those nine screen shows. They’re fun to do because they are you know really comprehensive. I mean they are encompassing. They take you all in and you pretty much forget that you’re just walking. You know you’re in the middle of a movie literally where you know they’re a challenge. I mean those are things you have to look at before you do them right.

Dan Heaton: It keeps it interesting like you mentioned where each project has their own hurdles there. And, I wanted to ask you about your new project, The Orville, which I know is not it’s not really the theme parks but I know it’s something that’s currently on TV. So I thought people might be interested with Seth McFarlane of course. And I had not caught up with it but I did watch the pilot last night and thought it was a lot of fun and I was just wondering how you connected with Seth and got involved with doing the theme for that show.

Bruce Broughton: Well I ended up doing the main theme and I did the pilot so you’ve seen what I’ve done on it. I met Seth over the phone. He called me out of the blue about two or three years ago and introduced himself. I knew who he was but I never met him and asked me if I consider doing an arrangement for him. He had a concert coming up at the Hollywood Bowl in the summer with John Williams and the L.A. Philharmonic. And he wanted to sing a song called Luck Be a Lady tonight from a Broadway show and the arrangement that they had.

John thought it was too hip for the band you know. So he said “Well you know would you do an arrangement for me” and I said “Yeah sure”. But in the back of my mind thinking I’ve never done anything like this before in my life. One of the things about my background is I really am classically trained. I used to be a pretty good pianist. And if you set down some music in front of me I could probably play it. I was a really good like that.

But if you asked me to play show tunes, I could play the tunes and I could play the chords but I had absolutely no pizazz. You would not want to hear me play in a rhythm section, and I really was awful at it. And for some reason I completely missed what a lot of composers do mostly when they’re young. I missed doing any jazz band, any stage band, any big arrangement. I just never did. So, this is like my premiere right with the L.A. Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl and John Williams. So we did that and it turned out well.

Seth is amazing; Seth learns really fast. He’s a really good musician, he’s got great ears, and he’s got a really good taste. He’s a great guy to work with. So then he called again I don’t know maybe a year later and he said you know I do these albums, I record these albums, and I’m going to record a few more. I have three albums to record. Would you do one of them with me?

So I said, yeah, again thinking I’ve never done that I’ve never done that. This is creepy but yeah of course I’ll do it. So, we did that. He recorded his three albums. We went to London, and he recorded with three different arrangers. One of them has just come out. Ours has yet to be mixed. One was a swing album. That’s the one that’s come out.

The one that we did had songs from the movies or from Broadway. Some songs would be familiar, some songs would not be familiar. And the third one I think are ballads anyway. So, in one week he recorded 45 songs. I mean that’s wow. But he doesn’t have a lot of time; you know he doesn’t waste time.

So, when I say he recorded 45 songs but I mean most he literally recorded 45 songs. When he came in completely prepared with the lyrics and with the routine. I mean he knew the whole thing that he wanted to have done and does it. Then, he called me up and said “Would you consider doing a TV show” and I said “Well like what”. So, he told me about The Orville, and the hook was aside from working with him on a show like this, the hook was you don’t have to do any mockups.

All you do is just go home, write your music come in and record with an orchestra. And that’s it. And I said, yeah great that’s it. It’s just like you used to do it. And I said “Yeah, great that’s the way I want to do it”. That means I didn’t have to put anything into a synthesizer. I didn’t have to do what they call a mockup, which is a synthesized version of the score that is going to be recorded, which never sounds quite the same. I just wrote the music. And like you said didn’t used a 75-piece orchestra to record that thing and on the show now they’re still using to be worked through. They’re using like 74, 75 people.

That’s not only unusual it’s unheard of because he likes the big orchestra. You can see his other shows like Family Guy and all that. They’re done with big orchestras, and he gets composers who are really good. I mean all the guys who he works with are really good. He’s kind of a music geek in that I’m saying that kindly because he can call up scores and episodes on his phone. I mean I watched him do it. He’ll be talking to something and say, well it’s like this and he spends a minute going through his phone and then pretty soon here you’re listening to episode something or something. This was the year that you just play up the track. So, he’s on it all the time. He’s really unusual but he’s a great guy to work with.

Dan Heaton: I think I underestimated how musically talented he is. Recently my daughters listened to the soundtrack to Sing where he’s doing Frank Sinatra. Yeah it’s incredible. And I know he was recently nominated for a Grammy for one of his albums, so I think that’s you know I doubt that I realize just how talented he is so that’s really important here.

Bruce Broughton: I was watching when I was I don’t know why I was watching but I was on YouTube and the sidebar came up. You know how they show you all the videos that they think you’re gonna be interested in. It said Family Guy Shipoopi. Shipoopi is a song from The Music Man. It’s a song that Buddy Hackett sings. It’s a silly song.

So, I clicked on this thing and here’s Peter the main character singing in a football stadium. Five, six-minute rendition maybe longer of the song from The Music Man. Shipoopi in his voice without the voice of course of Seth. And the band’s playing. They got a choir going, the whole thing, and I found out afterwards he told me that the arrangements they actually got from The Music Man, and they bought the arrangements from The Music Man. And they recorded them, and they did this on this half-hour TV show.

Well who would do that? Then, I found him on another YouTube singing another thing from The Music Man, “Trouble in River City”, at a concert in London with the John Wilson Orchestra and he stands up there and he does the whole thing. The guy is not to be under thought. You know he’s pretty talented. Pretty amazing.

Dan Heaton: That’s exciting. I need to look a lot more of that because I feel like I barely scratched the surface of what he can do. I could probably ask you about dig into every attraction much more, but I’ll save that for another time I guess. But I did want to ask you one more thing just about theme parks in general. Do you have interest in doing another attraction? Is that something that you still would like to do or is it more if they ask you?

Bruce Broughton: Yeah, if they asked me, sure I’d love to do it. I’m not sitting around looking for things to do. But I do like the theme parks things. So, I say I always thought the theme parks and animation were terrific jobs. I like the theme parks because I like the shows themselves. They’re always really interesting, they’re always creatively challenging, and it’s just a great group of people working on. I did one non-Disney theme parks thing a year or so ago for what they call Ferrari Land over by Barcelona, Spain. It’s very similar to the Soarin’ project. Again ,I mean there were a lot of the people who work on that were former Disney people.

One of the guys that actually worked on Soarin’ and you’ll find that they have spent so many months and in cases years working on these shows that they really do take you in and they embrace you as part of the family. So yeah I mean why would I turn that down and then have you know 30 million people come and listen to your music. It’s not a bad thing.

Dan Heaton: No. I can’t imagine that that’s a terrible thing especially at a place like Disney World, and I’m gonna have to look into…I’m familiar with Ferrari Land but obviously I wasn’t familiar with that attraction so I’m going have to look into that too that that’s not exciting. I don’t think I’ll be making the short jaunt over there anytime soon, but I’ll be looking for more on that.

Well Bruce, this has been great. Thank you so much for your time. It’s been really fun, and I’m so glad to have you on the show.

Bruce Broughton: Thank you. It was a pleasure to be on it.

Dan Heaton: It was really great to talk to Bruce about his career. If you’d like to hear more about what he’s doing, you can go to Bruce Broughton dot com. If you’d like to learn more about what I’m doing, you can go to Tomorrow Society dot com where you can sign up for any e-mail list on the right column of the main page which will notify you about any new blogs or podcast immediately when they’re being published. If you’d like to follow me on Twitter, you can go to tomorrowsoc, or on Facebook or Instagram at Tomorrow Society.

And if you want to contact me you can email me at Dan at Tomorrow Society dot com. The music for this podcast is composed by Adam Hucke and performed by the Sophisticated Babies. Thank you so much for listening. I’ll be back talking to you again very soon.