NEWS RELEASE

Contact: David West (west@alpha.nsula.edu )
News Bureau
Northwestern State University
Natchitoches, LA 71497
(318) 357-6466

5/24/2000

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NATCHITOCHES - Tony C. Smith, an associate professor of music at Northwestern State University, presented a paper at the recent National Conference of the Society for Popular Culture in New Orleans.

Smith's paper, "We Happy Few, We Band of Brothers: A Discussion of Film Images Inspired by the St. Crispin Speech from Shakespeare's 'Henry V,''' was also presented to students and faculty at NSU's annual Research Day earlier this year.

A Northwestern faculty member for the past 23 years, Smith joined the Society for Popular Culture, "because it represented an outlet for scholarly work I wanted to do in some rather unconventional areas, such as film studies, especially film music."

Last year, Smith gave a presentation at the group's national conference in San Diego on the film music of James Horner.

"I have always featured the plays of Shakespeare as an important part of my 'Exploring the Arts' presentations, including his history play, HENRY V. There are so many wonderful scenes from this play, but my favorite was always the 'St. Crispin's Speech,' in which young King Henry, leading an English army hopelessly outnumbered by the French, has to 'pump up the troops' to make victory possible.

"In talking about the speech and showing Kenneth Branagh's version of it to my classes, I began to make the connection between this speech and its influence on other films, such as the summer blockbuster of a few years ago, 'Independence Day.' For the paper, I added other movies that seemed inspired by this great moment in Shakespeare, such as Mel Gibson's 'Braveheart,' and the recent action comedy, 'Mystery Men.' The result was fun to write and present."

Smith was recently selected to be the Magale Endowed Professor for the 2000-2001 academic year. As the Magale Professor, Smith will study the work of film music composers. He will travel to Los Angeles to conduct research at UCLA, USC and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Museum along with other collections of film music information.

Smith will center his research on the works of Russian-American composer Dmitri Tiomkin (High Noon, The Alamo) as well as contemporary movie composer Jerry Goldsmith (The Omen, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Alien.)

This research will be shared with NSU's music students and faculty in a series of presentations during the coming year. Smith also hopes to present another paper at next year's Popular Culture conference in Philadelphia.

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