Lalo Schifrin

Bruce Lee personally chose him to score Enter the Dragon (1973). Upon their lunch meeting, Lee told him that he worked out to the soundtrack from Mission: Impossible (1966).

[on his rejected score for The Exorcist (1973)] What happened is that the director, William Friedkin, hired me to write the music for the trailer, six minutes were recorded for the Warner's edition of the trailer. The people who saw the trailer reacted against the film, because the scenes were heavy and frightening, so most of them went to the toilet to vomit. The trailer was terrific, but the mix of those frightening scenes and my music, which was also a very difficult and heavy score, scared the audiences away. So, the Warner Brothers executives said Friedkin to tell me that I must write less dramatic and softer score. I could easily and perfectly do what they wanted because it was way too simple in relevance to what I have previously written, but Friedkin didn't tell me what they said. I'm sure he did it deliberately. In the past we had an incident, caused by other reasons, and I think he wanted vengeance. This is my theory. This is the first time I speak of this matter, my attorney recommended me not to talk about it, but I think this is a good time to reveal the truth. Finally, I wrote the music for the film in the same vein as that of the trailer. In fact, when I wrote the trailer I was in the studio with Friedkin and he congratulated me for it. So, I thought I was in the right way... but the truth was very different. [2005]