Gibson gets emotional recalling friendship with Braveheart music composer, Horner

Gibson gets emotional recalling friendship with Braveheart music composer, Horner

Mel Gibson choked up as he recalled his late friend, composer James Horner who created the haunting score for ‘Braveheart’.

The Hollywood star was reacting after the Irish Philharmonic Orchestra accompanied by Ratoath star, Leah Barniville, thrilled over 400 people in the Big Top in Trim on Saturday with a rip-roaring medley of iconic

movie themes and scores including the evocative Braveheart pieces.

“Don't you just love orchestras? Thank you so much, you've been asked to do a lot today, you gotta jump from Spielberg to Morriconne and you've done well, so God Bless you.

“I'm looking at a picture of Jimmy, James Horner up there on screen and he's sadly not with us any more. He died doing what he loved to do, he loved to get into an aeroplane and one day, he just didn't come back, but he did love to fly and he did some very haunting scores including Braveheart.”

Horner, who wrote the Oscar-winning score for Titanic, died in 2015 when the small plane he was flying crashed in California. He was 61.

“The music in Braveheart was really all about James and he was inspired by Celtic music, he was really in love with it and loved to explore and in the Braveheart score you can hear other bits and pieces of music and old tunes that he borrowed from. He didn't emulate then completely but he drew from a rich source of music and poetry that are part of this country and Scotland as well.

“This film meant a lot to make here, my mother was born here in Longford and so I was raised on this kind of music myself so it is a real treat for me to explore that culture and James was, God Bless him... he was fantastic. He scored three movies for me, (Braveheart, The Man Without a Face and Apocalypto) so I got close to him so I get emotional thinking about him.”

Gibson recalled the recording of the music for the 1995 blockbuster at the famous Abbey Road Studios in England and unwittingly hurling abuse at some rock royalty.

“I remember we were recording and we had the ESO (English Session Orchestra) in there in full swing and I was pretty happy with it but I wanted to hear it played back against picture. But there was all this noise going on in there and I turned around and said 'Hey, can you shut the f**k up back there!' And then I looked up and it was the three surviving Beatles and of course they didn't shut up, they owned the place. So they ganged up around me and I felt like the guest star at the Muppet Show, but they were very nice guys and they took me around where they made all that great music so it was a real tour of education for me.”