B Y - L A U R A - W E X L E R
n the pink stucco building that houses Warner Brother's Studio B, Murphy Brown is frozen, her hand raised in a wave, a witty look carved onto her face.
"Here we go, here we go," says Steve Dorff, 49, raising his hand to the four studio musicians seated behind the glass, and nodding to the man fiddling with the dials on the equipment beside him. Dorff lowers his hand and the clarinet begins. The saxophone, harp, and keyboard join in, and Dorff taps his knee and sways his hips.
On the TV screen at the front of the room, high above composer and musicians, Candice Bergen-as-Murphy unfreezes. She takes a few steps and stops to chat with a co-worker. Then Dorff sweeps his hand through the air. The musicians stop and Murphy freezes again.
"Okay, let's move on," says Dorff (ABJ '71). With the shuffle of sheet music, everyone proceeds to the next cue Dorff's written for the final episode of "Murphy Brown," which ended its 10-year run on CBS on May 18. The hour-long show contains only four minutes of music, but it will take Dorff, the four musicians, and various sound guys several hours to get it cued, played, and matched up with the appropriate scenes: Murphy on a bar stool, Murphy getting into an elevator, Murphy hearing some unexpected news.
No one--in this studio, at least--underestimates the importance of those four minutes. "Music is evident in every show on TV. It's there and I think theme songs really stick out," says Tom Bocci, vice president of music for Warner Brothers Television. "When you talk to people about TV, they won't remember the director or the producer. But they can remember the theme song."
A decade ago, Dorff was selected to score "Murphy Brown" because, as Bocci says, "Every cue that he creates underscores perfectly what the scene is saying. He has a signature, but he's not taking away from the picture."
If you've ever watched Murphy, you know the music is what Dorff calls "Motownish." He takes the sounds of Aretha, the Temps, and Smokey Robinson, and weaves in his own music, crafting the equivalent of musical sound bytes.
When the hour strikes, the musicians break for 15 minutes--union rules--and Dorff sidles over to pick at a plate of chips and salsa. "Having a TV show that runs 10 years is a once-in-a-lifetime career moment," says Dorff, a hint of melancholy edging his voice.
The good thing is, it's just one of Dorff's many once-in-a-lifetime moments.
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Dorff (far right) wrote the score for the 1980 movie "Any Which Way You Can," his second with Clint and Clyde (center). |
few days later, Dorff is sitting in his sunny guest house-cum-studio when the phone rings. It's the producer of Brian DePalma's new movie, wanting to know if Dorff will write a song for the score. Dorff is unfazed by the call--"It's always hurry up and wait," he says. "They wait until the last minute to call you, and then they need the song in 10 minutes." Which proves, for those who haven't seen his wall of autographed photos, awards, and certificates, that after 25 years in Hollywood, Dorff knows the business.
Dorff grew up with his ear tuned to musical themes. He loved "Leave it to Beaver" and "Father Knows Best," both of which, he says, had great music. When it came time to go to college, Dorff wasn't much interested in higher education. "The truth was," he says, "I just wanted to write songs."
But his parents insisted he go to school, and UGA's famous football team drew the New York City native south. He spent his four years in Athens rooting for the Dogs and playing piano in female dorms, where he wooed the coeds with his homemade melodies--Dorff is entirely self-taught. Midway through college, Dorff met Bill Lowry, a song publisher in Atlanta, who gave him work playing on demo tapes and writing songs.
After graduation, Dorff went to work full-time for Lowry. "I wrote a lot of country songs," he says. "Nobody sang them. I was making $150 a week and getting nowhere."
In 1974, with his wife and baby in tow, Dorff struck out for L.A., hoping to make a career writing pop songs. He got immediate work arranging and playing piano for $275 a week. Three years later, he got the mother of all big breaks when the production company he worked for got involved in Clint Eastwood's new movie, "Every Which Way But Loose."
"I was asked to try to come up with a song," says Dorff. "I did. I was asked to also score the movie. I said yes. I learned as I went, and that was my first affiliation with Clint. I ended up doing five movies for him."
"Every Which Way But Loose," sung by Eddie Rabbitt, became Dorff's first No. 1 song, garnering him two Grammy nominations and a Country Music Association Award. "All of a sudden, things kind of exploded," he says. "I was asked to do a pilot for 'Growing Pains'--which was a hit, and out of that came a second career. I had a bunch of shows at Warner Brothers, and then I got calls from Universal Studios. I did four seasons of 'Murder, She Wrote.'"
That explains why Angela Lansbury's mug is on Dorff's wall, a short hop from the autographed photo of Eastwood and one of Candice Bergen, which reads: To Steve--Nice notes. Ace tunes. From your fan--Candice Bergen (Motown singer).
Dorff says he moved easily from songwriting into movie and TV scoring because he can assimilate story content in 30-60 seconds, and not be too on-the-nose or too trite. "We were shown 'Growing Pains,' and we could have written a song called 'Growing Pains,'" he says.
Instead, he wrote a song called "As Long as We Got Each Other," which received an Emmy Nomination in 1986.
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Dorff (left) composed a duet for "Any Which Way You Can" which featured Ray Charles (right) and Clint Eastwood. |
| Highlights from the Steve Dorff File |
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Movie music: TV music: Hit songs: Written, arranged, or produced for: Awards: |
think people know me for my melodies. I write pretty melodies," says Dorff matter-of-factly. "Everyone from Whitney Houston to Willie Nelson has cut my songs. At the end of the day, that's what I'm most proud of."
Dorff is also proud of his versatility, especially since Hollywood likes its children to be known for one thing, and one thing only. "The truth is, there's not a lot of people who do what I do," he says. "I've got a broad canvas."
In 1991, UGA's Redcoat Band took selections from that broad canvas for a football half-time show comprised entirely of Dorff's compositions. A year ago, Dorff topped the album charts with the title song to Barbara Streisand's "Higher Ground." That brought the tally of his No. 1 hits to an even dozen. He writes 40 to 50 songs a year, 12 of which usually get recorded. A few times a year he flies to Nashville for writing jams, scheduling sessions with lyricists like dentist appointments. "Tens and twos," Dorff calls them.
Dorff's first musical, "Lunch," which has five story lines that take place during the same lunch hour in New York City, opened for its second season in California last summer. He and his partners are working on musical No. 2, "Say Good Night," which is the love story of George Burns and Gracie Allen. "My dream is to get a musical on Broadway," he says. "I'm trying to get back to the original American musical comedy where people can hum the songs when they leave the theater."
Beyond that, Dorff plans to just do more good things with music. He doesn't seem to have a choice in the matter.
"I always have music in my head. It's like a radio that never shuts off. It's kind of a burden," he says. "But it's been on for 49 years, and I don't guess it's going off soon."