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AKA:
Das Ding (West Germany) (reissue title)
Eine total, total verrückte Welt (West Germany)
Deu a Louca no Mundo (Brazil)
El mundo está loco, loco, loco (Spain)
It's a Mad World (USA) (working title)
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (USA) (promotional title)
One Damn Thing After Another (USA) (working title)
Questo pazzo, pazzo, pazzo mondo (Italy)
Something a Little Less Serious (USA) (working title)
Un monde fou, fou, fou, fou (France)
Limited edition of 2000 copies.
Presenting the world premiere release of the original Film Version of composer Ernest Gold's (ON THE BEACH, EXODUS, CROSS OF IRON) rousing orchestral score to the 1963 United Artists epic comedy classic IT'S A MAD MAD MAD WORLD, directed by Stanley Kramer and starring Spencer Tracy, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, Ethel Merman, Mickey Rooney and just about every other comic legend of the era. For the first time, Gold's original soundtrack cues from the film are presented here on disc one, along with the original soundtrack LP release on disc 2 (with the songs moved to the end to make for a better listening experience). Produced by Ford A. Thaxton and Ray Faiola, and digitally edited and mastered by Ray Faiola at Chelsea Rialto Studios, this special 2-CD Set also features in-depth liner notes by film music writer Jeff Bond. This is a limited edition of 2000 Units. And here's producer Ray Faiola to tell you more… !
Producing the Original Soundtrack
by Ray Faiola, Chelsea Rialto Studios
"As one of those die-hard fans of IAMMMMW (my 16mm IB/Scope print is one of my most prized possessions), it has long been a wish of mine to have a recording of the complete original soundtrack score. For some time it was believed that the dubbing stems survived, but this turned out not to be the case. So, we've taken an extreme step and used the limited range rear recording angles from the original six-track composite soundtrack. This presented us with both positive and negative aspects of the materials. The positive was that, for the most part, the tracks were music-only. Only one cue had a major sound effect that commandeered the tracks, necessitating a portion of re-modulating and replacing those few bars of music. The negative was that while many of the cues were overt and took primary occupation of the track space, many others were dubbed far beneath dialogue sequences. This resulted in several cues having a noise-to-signal ratio of nearly 70 per cent. In bringing the music level to acceptable volume, the radically increased noise had to be suppressed as best as possible. Thus, some cues are of significantly lesser fidelity than others. Also, the entire soundtrack had to be corrected for audio-dipping during dialogue portions that lasted from moments to many seconds. All-in-all, many hundreds of edits, adjustments, transitions, and, yes, even a few artistic choices had to be made. The rear channels were, in fact, a single "split" signal, similar to the early Re-Channeled-for-Stereo LP's had been. Rather than have two channels each with partial information, they have been recombined into two pure mono channels. Since all the "program" music (Overture, entr'acte, exit music) as well as the chorals from the main, intermission and end titles are in full stereo, the mono score channels have been separated by a third of a frame to give expansion and create graceful segues into the stereo chorals and program tracks. It should be noted that the harmonica solo at the beginning of "Exit Smiler Grogan" did not appear on the surround channels and is irrevocably combined with dialogue. Nor did the Shirelles' "31 Flavors" appear on the surrounds. Finally, none of the rear surround music from the so-called "restored" sequences were available and our soundtrack represents the general release print of the film. The resulting disc is certainly not an optimum recording of the soundtrack score. But, given that these are the materials that survived we have made our best effort create a complete symphonic presentation."
- LLL
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