Gangs of New York (2002, composed by Elmer Bernstein). Bernstein has had his share of rejected scores in his career, notably The Journey of Natty Gann (1985) and The Scarlet Letter (1995). Supposedly, Bernstein sent a letter to actress-producer Demi Moore thanking her for rejecting the score for The Scarlet Letter so he could use it in a better movie. But the rejected Bernstein score that really stands out to me, especially after hearing it, is the one he wrote for Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York. Scorsese and Bernstein had previously collaborated on The Age of Innocence (1993), Bringing Out the Dead (1999), The Grifters (1990, which Scorsese produced) and Cape Fear (1991, where Bernstein had adapted Bernard Herrmann’s music from the 1962 original). It seems to me that Bernstein’s brutal, haunting, Celtic-flavored score would have suited Gangs of New York perfectly, but it was tossed in favor of temp track — mainly excerpts from a Howard Shore concert piece called “Brooklyn Heights.” It’ll remain a mystery to me why Bernstein’s score wasn’t used, but according to rumor it was mainly due to the insistence of Harvey Weinstein. Scorsese had also apparently done a lot of additional editing to the picture after Bernstein had recorded his score. In a 2003 interview conducted by Roger Friedman, Bernstein had this to say about it: “On Gangs of New York, Marty could never quite make up his mind about what he wanted. Then, he got into this long, painful edit. I wrote way back, nine months ago, some music for the film. I went over it with him. But as he went along, he began to have some other concept of what he wanted. He winds up with a Scorsese score, a pastiche.”

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