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		Sleepers
Sleepers The Film | The Music Audio | Video | Sheet Music References | Links Compositions: Films Previous: Nixon Next: Rosewood Chronological filmography Alphabetical filmography Television films Miscellanea		The Film Release date: October 18, 1996 Studios: Warner Bros. Running time: 147 minutes Director: Barry Levinson Cast: Kevin Bacon, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Jason Patric, Brad Pitt, Minnie Driver, Vittorio Gassman, Billy Crudup, Ron Eldard, Terry Kinney, Joe Perrino, Brad Renfro, Jonathan Tucker, Geoffrey Wigdor, Bruno Kirby, Frank Medrano, Aida Turturro Technical information: Panavision (2.35:1), DuArt color, Dolby Digital Barry Levinson both directed and penned the screenplay for this screen adaptation of Lorenzo Carcaterra's controversial best-seller. Controversial because the book, published as non-fiction, has since been the subject of many reports questioning its authenticity. The film chronicles the tale of four youths growing up in Hell's Kitchen during the 1960's — Shakes, Michael, John and Tommy (Perrino, Renfro, Wigdor and Tucker). To escape the domestic violence in their homes they form friendships with each other and look to two neighborhood father figures: Father Bobby (DeNiro), a priest who often ministers on the basketball court, and King Benny (Gassman), a local crime boss who offers the kids small jobs delivering bribes. But it is a prank gone horribly wrong that lands them in trouble with the law: after a stolen hot dog cart nearly kills an innocent bystander, they are each sentenced to a term of imprisonment at Wilkinson, a reformatory for boys. While there, they are repeatedly abused by a group of guards, led by a sadistic pedophile named Nokes (Bacon). Flash forward to 1981, when John and Tommy (Eldard and Crudup), now hardened criminals, encounter Nokes in a bar and publicly execute him. When they are apprehended and put on trial, Michael (Pitt), now an assistant DA, asks to prosecute them, hatching a secret plan to lose the case. He shares this scheme only with Shakes (Patric), who now works at a newspaper. With the assistance of King Benny, they find a washed-up defense lawyer (Hoffman) willing to follow orders, convince witnesses to disappear and track down the other Wilkinson guards, who receive various forms of street justice. They must also find an unimpeachable witness to say John and Tommy were somewhere else at the time of the murder, and try to convince Father Bobby to commit perjury. Many scenes in Sleepers owe something to Martin Scorcese's Goodfellas, although they are never quite as compelling. The incidents of abuse are more suggested than depicted, but still manage to be quite harrowing. But in the latter half of the film, the audience is never in complete sympathy with the defendants and thus the outcome is not as suspenseful as it should be. After all, even if we can accept that John and Tommy are justified in killing Nokes, they probably deserve to go to jail for one of their other crimes. And it does not help that they behave stupidly: if they had merely followed the unsuspecting Nokes out of the bar into a dark alley, instead of gunning him down in front of witnesses, they might easily have gotten away with their crime. That being said, Sleepers is a well-crafted film with several things to recommend it, chief among them Micahel Ballhaus' cinematography. Levinson keeps the film moving along nicely, despite its nearly two-and-a-half hour length. With so many marquee names in the cast, one might expect a great deal of scenery-chewing, but the performances are all relatively low-key, and almost uniformly excellent. Of special note are Gassman's finely-tuned portrait of King Benny, and Hoffman, who, depsite being cast in a thankless role, manages to have the audience hanging on his every word. Minnie Driver does what she can as the token female.
Sleepers The Film | The Music Audio | Video | Sheet Music References | Links		The Music Music: John Williams Music editor: Ken Wannberg Recording engineer: Shawn Murphy Assistant engineer: Susan McLean Music recorded at: Sony Pictures Scoring Stage Music mixed at: Todd-AO Scoring Stage Orchestrations: John Neufeld Music preparation: JoAnn Kane Music Service Orchestra contractor: Sandy DeCrescent French horn solos: James Thatcher Flute solos: Janet Feguson A trademark of most John Williams scores is a wealth of melodic material. Sleepers deviates from this approach, containing only one full-fledged melody heard throughout the score. This principal theme is introduced over the main titles, opening with a horn soliloquy and then taken up by solo flute with the horn answering in counterpoint. In its harmonic language and the choice of instrumentation, this melody recalls some of Williams' bluesy writing for The River. But in that earlier score, there was relief and resolution — here there is none, until the final scene of the film. The bleakness of the melody and the choice of instrumentation serve to underline the loneliness of the central characters; the use of solo horn echoes previous Williams cues which evoke a sense of isolation, e.g. "Among the Clouds" from Always. The melody reoccurs throughout the film with various other combinations of instruments (sometimes pairs of woodwinds or synthesizer) but is never allowed any warm harmonic accompaniment until the final scene; it is not substantially developed until the end title (heard on the CD as the second track, "Hell's Kitchen"), where the audience is finally given a cathartic release from the somber and unchanging mood that has permeated the film. After the first statement of the main theme, an electric bass (or synthesizer?) enters with a statement of the second major element, a descending four note motto (Ab-G-F-C), almost Herrmannesque in its simplicity and sense of foreboding. The use of electric bass also echoes The River, and seems aimed at adding to the unsettling mood, hitting the listener in the pit of the stomach. This motive recurs throughout the score in a number of guises, sometimes quietly, at other times in a declamatory statement by unison horns (e.g. in "The Football Game" and "Revenge"). Also playing an important part is a rhythmic ostinato that turns over on itself, adding to the uneasiness and playing an important role in the quasi-Minimalist segments of the score; there is a related figure that also occurs with some frequency. The "extra" eighth note in these figures is the musical equivalent of one's heart skipping a beat and serves to crank up the tension. These sections of the score are somewhat reminiscent of similar music for Williams' recent collaborations with Oliver Stone, namely JFK and Nixon, where the musical score blends with the sound design to draw the viewer into the nightmarish frenzy the film attempts to create. As in Williams' previous scores which make extensive use of synthesizers, the electronics are not used merely as a substitute for acoustic instruments, but as a way to expand the acoustic palette. Sampled sounds are used both to create new musical tones and for eerie sonic effect, in much the same way Williams used Baschet sculptures in Images. There is also extensive use of percussion, both contemporary drum sets and drum machines, as well as percussive sounds Williams used in Nixon (which he described as "explosions") designed to be felt more than heard. For a scene in the neighborhood church, Williams provides a mystical setting of traditional Latin texts. Echoes of this music are heard in a later flashback scene where the Wilkinson guards force Shakes to recite the Rosary while subjecting him to humiliating torture. (These cues are linked together on the soundtrack recording for the track "Saying the Rosary".) As in Goodfellas, a number popular songs from the '60's are heard to evoke a sense of time and place. Although they are not as effectively utilized, they do blend seamlessly with Williams' score and the sound design of the film. Variety commented that "John Williams contributes another solid score, and there's the usual clutch of popular songs on the soundtrack to boost CD sales."
Philips 454 988-2		Audio A soundtrack album (Philips 454 988-2 — purchase) featuring John Williams' score was released on October 15, 1996. It contains a generous selection of music heard in the film. Shorter cues are edited together and reordered to form a more complete listening experience. The end title is heard as the second track — fifty minutes is a long time to wait for development of the principal thematic material — and the music from the final scene of the film closes out the CD. Another CD containing period songs heard in the film was announced on the Motown label, but did not materialize.
		Video Sleepers is available on DVD (Warner Bros. 14482 — purchase).
Sleepers The Film | The Music Audio | Video | Sheet Music References | Links		Sheet Music No sheet music from this film has ever been published. References Sleepers, Lorenzo Carcaterra New York: Ballantine, 1995. 404pp. "Revenge Is Sweet In Sleepers," David Stratton Variety, August 29 1996 "Artificiality Vanquishes an Authenticity Issue," Janet Maslin New York Times, October 18, 1996
Sleepers The Film | The Music Audio | Video | Sheet Music References | Links		Links Internet Movie Database entry for Sleepers Official Web site for Sleepers
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