The soundtrack, which includes the new Waters track, will be released internationally in about two weeks. Conflicting reports place the soundtrack's release at either 12 October or 19 October. The song "Lost Boys Calling" was a collaboration between Roger Waters and film soundtrack composer Ennio Morricone. The collaborative song was produced by Patrick Leonard. "Lost Boys Calling" was the only track for the film which Waters was involved with.

Accompanying the new film opening, will be several releases of the soundtrack. In Germany, we have the following release:
"Die Legende Vom Ozeanpianisten"
Sony Classical SK 66767
1999, TT 57:41 min.
21 tracks:

1900's Theme (Ennio Morricone)
The Legend Of The Pianist (E.M.)
The Crisis (E.M.)
The Crave (Jelly Roll Morton)
A Goodbye To Friends (E.M.)
Study For Three Hands (Ennio Morricone & Amedeo Tommasi)
Playing Love (E.M.)
A Mozart Reincarnated (E.M.)
Child (E.M.)
1900's Madness #1 (Ennio Morricone & Amedeo Tommasi)
Danny's Blues (Amedeo Tommasi)
Second Crisis (E.M.)
Peacherine Rag (Scott Joplin)
Nocturne With No Moon (E.M.)
Before The End (E.M.)
Playing Love (E.M.)
I Can And Then (E.M.)
1900's Madness #2 (Ennio Morricone & Amedeo Tommasi)
Silent Goodbye (E.M.)
Ships And Snow (E.M.)
Lost Boys Calling (Roger Waters & Ennio Morricone)

This version lacks 8 tracks and has more than 20 minutes less music in comparison to last years release in Italy. But under the transparent tray of the CD, we find the "official" text of "Lost Boys Calling". It differs in the line "Mott" street (this is the name of the street, where 1900's adored girl lives):

Come hold me now
I am not gone
I would not leave you here alone
In this dead calm beneath the waves
I can still hear those lost boys calling

You could not speak
You were afraid
To take the risk of being left again
And so you tipped your hat and waved and then
You turned back up the gangway of that steel tomb again

And in Mott street in July
When I hear those seabirds cry
I hold the child
The child in the man
The child that we leave behind

And in Mott street in July
When I hear those seabirds cry
I hold the child
The child in the man
The child that we leave behind

The spotlight fades
The boys disband
The final notes lie mute upon the sand
And in the silence of the grave
I can still hear those lost boys calling

We left them there
When they were young
The men were gone until the west was won
And now there's nothing left but time to kill
You never took us fishing, dad, and now you never will

And in Mott street in July
When I hear those seabirds cry
I hold the child
The child in the man
The child that we leave behind

Lost Boys Calling
Lyrics by Roger Waters
Produced by Pat Leonard
Guitar: Edward Van Halen

There will also be the release of at least 3 promos: one from Italy (1-track-promo with Lost Boys Calling), one from UK (?) (2-track-promo including Lost Boys Calling) and one from the US (2-track-promo including Lost Boys Calling).

Yesterday, I had the chance to see the movie together with my friend Ingo Brode. I can only say: If you have a chance to see it - do it, you won't regret it! I'm only wondering, if I can ever see the full 3-hour version of it!

You can hear "Lost Boys Calling" during the credits at the end of the film, but it is somehow cut off sharp after the last word. In the credits, you can read (to the best of my memory):

The story of The Legend Of 1900

From Giuseppe Tornatore, director of the Academy Award-winning Cinema Paradiso, comes a remarkable fable about a boy raised on a steam ship who never once sets foot on the land. Tim Roth stars as "1900" who grows up during dozens of journeys across the sea, discovering that he can do absolutely anything he wants within the confines of the ship he calls home. Anything, that is, except be ordinary. On the very first day of the brand new century, a baby boy is found on the Virginian, a ship that ferries immigrants from Europe to the USA. Danny Boodman (Bill Nunn), a coal room worker, discovers the abandoned newborn in a lemon crate in the first-class cabin. Not wanting to give the child up, Danny raises him hidden in the great ship's belly. He christens the boy Danny Boodman T.D. Lemon 1900, but the boy becomes known simply as 1900. Knowing nothing of the world beyond the coal room and his porthole view of the sea, 1900 is devastated when his adopted father is fatally wounded in a terrible ship accident. His identity is revealed to the captain who threatens to expose him to the authorities. But 1900 saves himself when he wanders into first class and finds a shipboard piano discovering he is a prodigy who can naturally play glorious, soulful music.

1900 stays on the ship, entertaining the world, 2,000 people at a time. Three decades later, a down-and-out jazzman named Max (Pruitt Taylor Vince), who is about to sell his beloved trumpet, discovers in a dusty English music shop the only remaining recording of 1900 playing the piano. Max is haunted by the sound, not only by its beauty, but because he knew 1900 years ago. Thrust backwards into dizzying memories, Max begs the shop owner to tell him how he came upon the "impossible" record.

The shopkeeper tells Max that the recording was removed off a rusting ship scheduled for immediate demolition. This sets Max reeling. He is convinced that 1900, who was never willing to go ashore, still remains alive on board. Battling against time, Max rushes to the shipyard hoping to convince the demolition crew to halt their dynamiting. In a last ditch effort to save 1900's life and prove he exists, Max tells the story of how the recording that brought him to the shipyard came to be the fairy-tale of 1900's miraculous rise to fame and disappearance from existence.

Max explains that he first met 1900 when he came on board the Virginian in 1927 to play with the shipboard band. Max soon heard the rumors about an amazing piano player with lightning hands who had been born on the sea and never left her watery charms. But nothing could prepare him for actually meeting 1900 at once a genius and an innocent, a lost soul and an intensely passionate dreamer. Spinning a tapestry out of 1900's life, Max recounts the day 1900 accepted a piano duel with Jelly Roll Morton (Clarence Williams III), "the man who invented jazz," and entered a war of sizzle; he tells of 1900's extraordinary ability to reveal the stories of the passengers through his music; and he unfolds the tale of 1900's consuming love for a beautiful girl in third class (Melanie Thierry), whose presence inspires his sole piano recording. Finally, Max rivets his demolition audience with the story of the day 1900 tried to leave the ship, walked down the gangplank headed for Manhattan and the girl he longed for, only to be confronted by the overwhelming expansiveness of the city.

But now Max is out of time and the demolition crew makes their final preparations. In a final moment of love and friendship, Max enters the rusted-out hull of the Virginian to play 1900's most heartfelt recording one last time. His plan works. The recording draws 1900 from his hiding place and Max discovers the stunning truth that will keep 1900 in the realm of fairy tales and stories forever.

Giuseppe Tornatore has taken a dramatic monologue written by Alessanrdo Baricco (author of the critically-acclaimed bestseller Silk) and woven a breathtakingly romantic story of fictional heroes and real-life legends, of the sea and the human soul into a fable about a new century and its unanchored dreams. Rife with 1900's musical inventiveness and the spirit of Jazz, the film features a score by Academy Award nominee Ennio Morricone.

Tim Roth gives a tour de force performance at once innocent and bittersweet -- as the man named 1900, a mysterious piano player who is rumored to have lived the first half of the century entirely in the belly of an ocean liner. Charismatic yet capable of deep menace, Roth first established himself playing English street toughs and thugs in British films and TV movies. After debuting as a furious skinhead in the BBC production "Made in Britain," Roth played a series of "angry young man" roles, notably in Mike Leigh's Meantime (1983) and Stephen Frears' The Hit (1984) as a trigger-happy assistant hitman. Roth displayed his range with a tour-de-force performance as tortured artist Vincent Van Gogh in Robert Altman's study of fraternity Vincent & Theo (1990). That same year, he proved his comic mettle opposite Gary Oldman in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Tom Stoppard's take on Hamlet. Then, in the footsteps of his fellow countryman Oldman, Roth headed for the States where he began turning in convincing portraits of fringe Americans, beginning with the drama Jumpin at the Boneyard (1992).

Roth received one of his best-known film roles in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (1992). As Mr. Orange, an undercover cop involved in a botched bank heist, Roth starred with a formidable ensemble that included Lawrence Tierney, Harvey Keitel and Steve Buscemi. He re-teamed with Tarantino to play a Cockney robber in the acclaimed Pulp Fiction (1994).

Roth turned up in his first Hollywood project co-starring opposite Liam Neeson and Jessica Lange in Rob Roy (1995), garnering an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He then turned to the independent world, with James Gray's Russian mob story Little Odessa (1995), winning the honor of an IFP nomination for Best Actor. His intensity in the role brought comparisons with the young Robert DeNiro. Roth also won praise as the bellboy featured in each of the segments of Four Rooms (1995).

More recently he has appeared as an ex-con seeking redemption in No Way Home, as a singing ex-con in Woody Allen's Everybody Says I Love You, as a junkie in Gridlock'd and as a hoodlum in Hoodlum.

Pruitt Taylor Vince stars as Max, the down-and-out jazz musician who spins an incredible tale about a man still alive on a boat that is about to be destroyed with dynamite. Vince is a familiar face on the American screen, whose most recent credits range from the popular Dr. Doolittle with Eddie Murphy to Wim Wenders' The End of Violence. He made indelible impressions starring with Paul Newman in the small-town drama Nobody's Fool and as the critically admired lead in James Mangolds' bittersweet Heavy. Other credits include Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers and JFK, Ted Demme's Beautiful Girls, Steve Feder's The Cottonwood, David Lynch's Wild At Heart, Adrian Lyne's Jacob's Ladder, Alan Parker's Mississippi Burning and Angel Heart, Andrei Konchalovsky's Shy People and Homer and Eddie as well as Under The Hula Moon, City Slickers II, Fear, K-9 and Red Heat.

Vince will next be seen in Lawrence Kasdan's Mumford with Hope Davis, Love From Ground Zero and Neil LaBute's Nurse Betty opposite Renee Zellwegger and Morgan Freeman.

Clarence Williams III has a chance to bring history to life playing Jelly Roll Morton, the man who claimed he single-handedly invented jazz. Here, Jelly Roll Morton enters the realm of fable, challenging 1900 to a piano duel that becomes a war of sizzle.

Williams was born in Harlem into a family of jazz musicians but instead became an actor. He rose to international fame in the 60s as the ultra-hip undercover cop Linc in the influential television series "The Mod Squad." Since then, Williams has enjoyed a diverse career, most recently starring in Life with Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence and The General's Daughter with John Travolta. He will next be seen in John Frankenheimer's Reindeer Games with John Cusack. Among Williams' many film credits are the role of Prince's father in Purple Rain, the Harlem crime drama Sugar Hill, Hoodlum with Tim Roth, The Brave, Deadfall, Deep Cover, My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys, The Immortals, Half Baked, I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, 52 Pick-Up and Tough Guys Don't Dance.

On television he starred in the seminal David Lynch series "Twin Peaks," in the remake of "The Love Bug," in "The Return of The Mod Squad," as well as in such telefilms as "George Wallace," "The Legend of Earl Manigualt," "Encino Woman," "Against The Wall," "Father & Son: Dangerous Relations" and "The Last Innocent Man."

Luminous newcomer Melanie Thierry makes her feature film debut as the immigrant girl whose presence inspires 1900's greatest musical creation and haunts him forever.

Thierry, a young French model, has previously been seen on French television in "Pour Faire Plaisir a Maman," "Parisient Tete De Chien," "Docteur Sylvestre," "Confessions D'Adolescents" and "L'Amerloque."

Giuseppe Tornatore, best known as the writer/director behind the Oscar-winning Cinema Paradiso, weaves another magical story about the power of the imagination with The Legend of 1900. Tornatore was born on May 27, 1956 in Bagheria, a small town outside Palermo in Sicily. At the age of sixteen, while still a student at the local liceo, he directed two stage works: Luigi Pirandello's "Bella Vita" and "L'Arte della Commedia" by Edoardo De Filippo. That same year he made a short film entitled Il Carretto (The Wagon) which brought him to the attention of RAI television, with which he began a close collaboration in 1979. Several TV films followed in rapid succession: "Portrait of a Thief," "Meeting with Francesco Rosi," "Sicilian Writers and Films: Giovanni Verga, Luigi Pirandello, Vitaliano Brancati, Leonardo Sciascia," and "Guttuso's Diary." In 1982, Tornatore won a prize for Best Documentary at the Salerno Film Festival for Ethnic Minorities in Sicily. Tornatore made his feature film debut's valiant struggle against the mob, starring Ben Gazzara and Laura del Sol. The film won that year's Nastro d'Argento (Silver Film Award) and the Italian Golden Globe for the Best Young Director. One person who perceived the bright promise behind Tornatore's first film was Franco Cristaldi - producer of some of Fellini's more memorable films. He encouraged Tornatore, inquiring about his other projects. Ultimately, this led to their collaboration on what was to be Tornatore's second (and breakthrough) feature, Cinema Paradiso, shot in Sicily and starring Philippe Noiret, Jacques Perrin, Salvatore Cascio and Enzo Cannavale.

It also marked the first time Ennio Morricone did the score for a Tornatore film - a collaboration which has continued to this day. The film went on to win the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Festival in 1989, the Golden Globe awarded by the foreign press in Hollywood in 1989, and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Picture in 1990. It also won a special prize at the Felix awards, the 1991 BAFTA prize, and went on to become an international success. Tornatore's third feature, Everybody's Fine, which the director defined as "a road movie-bittersweet comedy-thriller" starred Marcello Mastroianni, Michele Morgan and Salvatore Cascio. It won the OCIC Award at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival as well as a Silver Ribbon in Italy for the best original story. Starting in 1990, Tornatore became one of the founding members of the Philip Morris Cinema Project, dedicated to the restoration of classics of Italian cinema. Over the following years he participated in restoration work on such films as Luchino Visconti's La Terra Trema, De Sica's Shoeshine, Alberto Lattuada's Il Cappotto and Mauro Bolognini's Il Bell'Antonio. They also restored more than a dozen rare short films - all in danger of extinction - by such directorial greats as Antonioni, Comencini, Olmi, Petri, Pontecorvo, Dino Risi, Vancini, Visconti, Zurlini.

The following year, 1991, Tornatore was back behind the camera for the "Cane Blu" segment of the episodic film La Domenica Specialmente (Especially on Sunday). Also in 1991, he founded a production company in Rome (Sciarlo) with his older brother Francesco, producing several Italian features. During the academic year 1992-93, Tornatore gave a course in Aesthetics at the University of Palermo, taking time out to make a commemorative television program to mark the first anniversary of the killing of the anti-Mafia judge Giovanni Falcone. Tornatore came out with his fourth feature in 1994: Una Pura Formalita (A Pure Formality), starring Gerard Depardieu, Roman Polanski and Sergio Rubini. In 1995 Tornatore made L'Uomo delle Stelle (The Star Maker) starring Sergio Castellitto, Tiziana Lodato, Leopoldo Trieste and Nicola Di Pinto. At that year's Venice Film Festival it won the Special Jury Prize, and later was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Foreign Film. The film also won numerous Silver Ribbon awards that year in Italy: Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Photography and Best Production Design; as well as three Donatello awards. That same year, directing for his own company Sciarlo and for Istituto Luce, he made a film anthology entitled Lo Schermo a Tre Punte, a compilation of cinematic references to Sicily .It was warmly received in the "Finestra sulle Immagini" section of that year1s (52nd) Venice Film Festival. Last year, while engaged in the preparation of the script for The Legend of 1900, Tornatore was made a Commendatore of the Italian Republic (one of Italy's highest awards) for his contribution to cinema. Ennio Morricone reunites with Giuseppe Tornatore for The Legend of 1900, creating a jazz and ragtime-inspired soundtrack intended to capture the sounds and soul of a magical man and a new century. Morricone has scored nearly 400 motion pictures and has four times been nominated for an Academy Award: for Bugsy, The Untouchables, The Mission and Days of Heaven. He has received two British Academy Awards for The Untouchables and Cinema Paradiso. Most recently, he wrote the very contemporary score for Warren Beatty1s acclaimed satire Bulworth. He also collaborated with Beatty on Love Affair and the Oscar-winning Bugsy.

Morricone first became known in America with such classic Clint Eastwood/Sergio Leone Westerns as A Fistful of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. More recent credits include Roman Polanski's Frantic, Wolfgang Peterson's In the Line of Fire, Phil Joanou's State of Grace, Pedro Almodovar's Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, Giuseppe Tornatore's Everybody's Fine, Mike Nichols' Wolf and Roland Joffe's films City of Joy and Fat Man and Little Boy.

Morricone's additional film credits include La Cage aux Folles, A Time of Destiny, Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet, Once Upon A Time in America, Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900, Before the Revolution, La Luna, Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man, Fists in the Pocket, The Sicilian Clan, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, The Battle of Algiers and Exorcist II: The Heretic, Disclosure, Lolita (1997) and U-Turn.

Morricone was born in Rome and studied composition at the Academy of Santa Cecilia. His first film assignment, Il Federale, came in 1961. In March, 1994, the Society for the Preservation of Film Music presented him with their 11th Annual Career Achievement Award.

The Legend of 1900 traverses across time, starting on the first day of the brand new century and ending in the 1940s. Along the way, it encompasses many of the themes of this American century: the wave of immigrants seeking a new way of life in the USA, the birth of jazz and the rise of the lavish, exuberant Jazz Age, the beginnings of mass travel in the from of ocean liners, the rise of mass entertainment and musical celebrities and the foundation of Manhattan as the entry point for the world's dreamers into contemporary urban culture. To capture all of this, Tornatore, like the character 1900, barely left the sea. The only "land" sequences in The Legend of 1900 involve Max's journey to the dusty music shop where he first discovers that 1900 might still be alive and then his storytelling performance at the port where the Virginian is docked. All else takes place aboard the ship, which serves as a microcosm of the world at the time, teeming with hopeful immigrants from all over Europe in steerage and the stylishly cosmopolitan, rich "moderns" in first class, all powered by the sweat of a largely ethnic and minority crew and driven by the hot rhythm and spirit of the jazz band.

It is here that 1900 goes with the flow, sometimes being literally moved by the ocean to create waves of music and stories, resulting in stark and startling imagery. Says Tornatore of the film's visual style: "The mythic quality is always just beneath the surface. There is a certain refusal to surrender to the imposition of reality and realism. I think of it as a fable told in a realistic manner."

Tornatore scoured the world's ports Italy, England, Spain, Portugal, Romania, Bulgaria looking for the boat that would become the production's home. He found it where he never expected: in Odessa, Russia. The ship, christened the "Lessjzavodsk" (Wood Factory), was built in 1960 at shipyards in Danzig, Poland, originally intended to carry lumber. It was 154 meters long, 19.43 meters wide and weighed in at 16,900 tons. Retired for over ten years, it was docked in Odessa, motorless, where it served as a vessel for training sailors in the Ukrainian military. It was the layout of the ship that drew Tornatore's careful eye. He was excited by the ship's ample skylight, large deck space with both first class and third class decks, a navigation room accessible to the first class deck; a large hold that could be converted into the third class, 266-bed female dormitory; a connecting refrigerator compartment; an engine room, and it's numerous gangways, corridors, portholes and communication pipes. Short of building his own replica, it was as close to capturing the great era of ocean-going as Tornatore could get. Still, the boat required extensive modifications and retrofittings to transport it back in time to the first half of this century.

Fortunately, authentic vintage equipment and other interiors were found inside Odessa's extraordinary Maritime Museum. "It was absolutely period stuff, much of it from the first decade of this century and therefore perfect for our story," recalls set decorator Bruno Cesari. "All we had to do was change the language on the control boards from Russian to English and polish the brass like mad."

Production designer Francesco Frigeri had the challenge of having to constantly re-outfit the ship as the story winds back and forth through chronological times. Says Frigeri: "We had to have different designs because every period of time in the story is so incredibly different. It was a time of great invention and all the technological developments in navigation have to be faithfully reflected in the vessel's various incarnations."

In addition to the ship in Odessa, the production team created their own massive exterior set for all of the port scenes in Boston, New York, Liverpool and Southampton. This was done outside Rome in an ex-municipal slaughterhouse turned into a makeshift soundstage. Here one-third of The Virginian was recreated, fully 58 meters long, and as tall as a six-story apartment building. And it wasn't merely the facade of the ship; up to 300 passengers and crew would have to appear on each of the ship's three decks, so it had to be practicable as well. Francesco Frigeri outfitted the set with smokestacks, lifeboats, wind-funnels, and portholes... then, in the background, the port of New York itself, done in a slightly surreal, fairy-tale style that captured the dizzying nature of the industrial city through 1900's eyes.

The massive undertaking was one for which Frigeri fought passionately. "I could not imagine anyone being up to this job," admits Tornatore. "When I asked Frigeri if he was available to do the film, he said: 'If you put your faith in me, I'll give you everything, but if you're not sure of me, it's better that I turn it down.' Now it's hard to imagine anyone else doing such an extraordinary job."

With the ship ready to become the cinematic home of 1900, the cast and crew flew to Odessa. In addition to the main cast, there was the additional logistical challenge of rounding up over 5,000 of Tornatore's "presences" the telling faces of the ship's thousands of passengers over the years, ranging from swank flappers and cigar-chomping fat-cats to threadbare children on their way to a new country.

The highly international nature of the cast and crew necessitated an arduous search for qualified interpreters - no small matter in a not-all-that-large port city on the Black Sea. "We found a few right away through the local university," recalls production manager Walter Massi. "Then we suddenly ran out. Sometimes the candidates would be faking it to get the job, and would memorize just enough Italian or English to 'pass'. But if I suddenly changed the subject and asked them something totally unrelated to the film, they'd blow it."

There 2 different versions of the song Lost Boys Calling! The first (and you can call it "original") version is from the 1998 CD "La Leggenda Del Pianista Sull'Oceano" from Italy and the second version is from the 1999 releases of "The Legend Of 1900".

So what are the differences? First of all, there are slightly different words in the refrain. We have this refrain three times in the song. The first one is the same in both versions. The second and third one are a little different in 2nd and 3rd line. Here is the refrain:

And in Mott street in July

(Original version:) When she hears those seabirds cry
(New version:) When I hear those seabirds cry

(Original version:) She holds the child
(New version:) I hold the child

The child in the man

The child that we leave behind

Through some parts of the 1999 version, you can clearly hear an echo of Waters' singing. The "old" version misses these effects. Also, the drums have an earlier start in the 1999 version and the guitar solos by Edward Van Halen are new and mixed well to the fore. In my opinion, this doesn't improve the song, as these new solos, especially at the end of the song, are drowning the interesting drum beats. As Van Halen's name isn't mentioned on the 1998 soundtrack CD, I suppose, he didn't handle these guitar parts then. In 1999, Roger's and Edward's names are written explicit on the cover of all releases.

A few words about promo releases:

- 1 track Promo-Pic-CD from Italy 1998 (Sony Classical SAMPCS 6298 1): Lost Boys Calling
- 2 track Promo-CD "The Legend Of 1900" from Europe (UK?) 1999 in a cardboard sleeve: Lost Boys Calling + 1900's Theme
- 2 track Promo-CD "The Legend Of 1900" from USA (Sony Classical SSK 5792): Lost Boys Calling + 1900's Theme