Some Quick Notes on Movie Music for Retro Spectrum Radio With Pauly C
“The 50's. What a beautiful time…. As everybody knows, the birth of rock ’n’ roll in the 50’s changed music so much, and it was such a thrill. And in the 50’s, where I was, there was an optimism in the air, a feeling of a bright and shiny future.”
It took awhile for rock ’n’ roll to really impact the scoring of motion pictures. By the mid-60’s, the scoring of movies was about to change.
THE GRADUATE
Mike Nichols won the Academy Award for directing The Graduate (1967), which was one of the most popular and influential movies of all time. Along with Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, it tops lists of the best movies not to win the Best Picture Oscar.
The Graduate — along with Warren Beatty’s Bonnie and Clyde — was hailed for heralding a new age of filmmaking, a mature type of filmmaking informed by and elucidating contemporary mores. (This, you’ll find, is a common theme of the cultural press and had been used before and would be used again.)
Nichols’ use of Simon & Garfunkle songs to show the mood and thoughts of Benjamin, his central character, wasn’t revolutionary in itself. Humphrey Bogart as Rick in Casablanca asking for and listening to “As Time Goes By” is typical of the way a song can deepen the mood in a scene.
What was new was how Nichols used Simon & Garfunkle’s pop songs. The songs were not just another layer of elements of craft — cinematography, acting, directing, etc. — but permeated the film, exposing the soul of not just Benjamin, the main character, but the soul of Nichols’ movie itself.
Robert Altman would use Leonard Cohen’s music, similarly, in his revisionist Western McCabe & Mrs Miller, a masterpiece. Shooting the movie, he has the Cohen songs in his head, and they influenced his direction — his realization — of the picture. When it came time to lay in a soundtrack, he realized the Cohen songs such as “Winter Lady” were perfect, so he used them.
At that time in his life, Mike Nichols was “obsessed” with Simon & Gafunkle’s folk-rock songs. They spoke to him, and he knew they could speak to America.
According to Paul Simon, Nichols intended for most of the music to be original, but songs they already had recorded worked well enough.
The Graduate opened with The Sound of Silence in a scene that later would be “homaged” by Tarantino. (see below) The Simon & Garfunkle songs expose the eternal emotion of Benjamin to the audience, and also allowed the movie director (who had established himself as the greatest American theater director since Elia Kazan — this was his second picture) to jettison exposition.
When Elaine, Mrs Robinson’s daughter, goes off to Berkeley, a montage scored to Scarborough Fair Canticle heightens the emotion, a sense of ennui
It wasn’t just that Nichols picked pop music as it was the music of Benjamin’s generation, he picked some of the best. Simon & Garfunkle were a kind of collaborator, though all the songs but ones had already been released on albums.
Mrs. Robinson — used to score a “chase scene” — was written on the spot. Benjamin’s sports car-bound quest for Elaine after she has rejected him — the lyrics don’t began until deep in the sequence when Ben hits the Oakland-Bay Bridge.
The version of Mrs Robinson in the film is different that the released song — It was the only song that was an original on the soundtrack. Recored AFTER the movie was finished, it went to #1.
The use of The Sound of Silence at the end of the movie (the third time the song appears on the soundtrack) suggests there’s no escape from the Middle Class Blues.
More than any other film, critics realized that the Simon & Garfunkle songs were an integral part of the picture, and played a major part in the success of getting the film’s message across.
The box office hit of the year 1967, The Graduate turned out to be one of the highest grossing films in history. At Academy Awards time, it was nominated for seven Oscars, winning but one: Mike Nichols, Best Director.
The injustice of the film being denied at Hollywood’s biggest Love In was not just the scandal of 1968 cinema, but was commented on for a generation.
Simon & Garfunkle were not nominated for an Oscar, either for original Score or adapted music, or for Best Song. Dave Grusin had scored instrumental music for The Graduate, and the song “Mrs. Robinson” is never heard in its entirety in the picture. The winner for Best Song was “Talk To The Animals” from Doctor Dolittle, a notorious flop.
BORN TO BE WILD
Two years after the first blows of the new revolution from inside the palace itself (Nichols and Warren Beatty were decidedly A-list and their product A movies), Easy Rider heralded a new revolution in movies (there are so many in retrospect, a real Hollywood PR man’s wet dream). This was the revolution of the proles, of the low-budget B-movie.
A “genre” pic — and biker pics were about the lowliest of the low, genre-wise — lacking Hollywood production values became a huge hit. It’s return on the dollar was immense, and the Hollywood studios plunged into churning out B-movies. None was as successful.
Along with its unique editing style, Easy Rider featured rock music — good rock music of its time. And used it well.
Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be Wild” is behind the opening credits of Easy Rider. It conveys the heart and soul of the two main characters, Captain America and Billy.
The use of “Rock Around the Clock” and the hits of the early rock n roll period is memorable in American Graffiti. — Happy Days used “Rock Around the Clock” too.
The theme song from “Every Which Way but Loose” is significant, as the movie was one of the most popular films released in 1978 (and Eastwood’s highest grossing film for a decade, until Unforgiven) — significant as it introduced Country Music in a mainstream movie that wasn’t itself focused on country music.
(Whether it’s really country music is besides the point. The movie was transgressive — the great pre-Reagan movie — as it focused in working class people, who did listen to country and its form of white blues rather than rock — tossing off a quickie in the cab of your Peterbilt with a truck stop woman or lamenting the b — who married you, gave you three kids and ran off with the air conditioner repairman and the household cash were songs that “limned” their experience.)
A year later, Apocalypse Now made great use of the Doors song “The End.” And Coppola positively killed it with The Ride of the Valykries sequence.
And Then There was Marty
Martin Scorsese, as a director, uses music — and sound (multilayered texture) better than anyone. Scorsese was one of the editors who cut together the footage of Woodstock, the motion picture. To say his use of music was innovative is an understatement.
In his first masterpiece, Mean Streets, we see the master working at the height of his considerable powers after his apprenticeship on Box Car Bertha (memorable only for the display for Barbara Hershey’s assets — there’s something about seeing David “Kung Fu” Carradine nekkid alongside Babs that takes something away from it though) and an earlier low budget movie with Harvey Keitel.
In the beginning, Keitel was his actor, but as our favorite Founding Father Jesus replaced John the Baptist (who wasn’t even American), there arose Robert DeNiro to displace Harvey in the gallery of gods…. In Mean Streets, DeNiro’s character Johnny Boy approaches Keitel’s character Charlie in the bar/hangout for these petty gangsters, to the Stones’ “Jumping Jack Flash”….. Johnny Boy is soon to reveal himself as a stone psycho…. Perfection.
In that scene, Scorsese first uses the technique he will use again… In slow motion, the camera “gazes” at a character “gazing” at another character offscreen, and cuts to the other character (also in slow mo)…. while a great rock or pop song plays the soundtrack. (Casino where Ace falls in love with Ginger the first time he meets her is another use of this technique.)
Scorsese paid a fortune for the rights to the music, probably spending more on the songs than the budget of the shooting itself…. The credit sequence of Mean Streets begins after Keitel’s Charlie gets into and cut to: Home movies (a technique later used in Raging Bull) of Charlie and his gangster pals, to the Ronette’s “Be My Little Baby”….
Also magnificent is the scene where Keitel’s character, Charley, is boozed up at the bar and then falls to the floor in one continuous shot…. To the mid-50s doo-wop song Rubber Biscuit.
Some other examples: the use of the outro of Derek and the Dominos’s Layla in Goodfellas.
“Love is Strange” in Casino, when Ace sees Ginger for the first time and falls in love (counterpointed with DeNiro’s facial expression and Sharon Stone’s panache, the scene is brilliant — a textbook example of how to use a pop song).
Just as amazing in Casino is the scene where DeNiro’s character Ace is going into the desert for a meet with one Pesci’s gangster character, where Ace fears for his life as that’s where Pesci executes people. In an aerial long shot, we see his car driving through the desert — and on the soundtrack Cream’s “Toad” (which shows off drummer Ginger Baker’s chops) is layered with “St. Matthew’s Passion.”
Other Memorable Uses of Pop Music
David Lynch made spectacular use of Roy Orbinson’s “In Dreams” in his masterpiece Blue Velvet. Lynch said that he loved the rock n roll music of the ’50s as it was optimistic. The title itself references a Bobby Vinton song. Of course, the music is counterpoint to the nightmare enveloping the characters.
Tim Burton’s use of “Tequila” in Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure is brilliant. His music director/composer Danny Elfman was pat of the band Oingo-Boingo.
Quentin Tarantino after Scorsese used pop music better than anyone. Two of the more outstanding sequences are the “Stuck in the Middle With You” scene from Reservoir Dogs, and the opening scene of Jackie Brown that uses a new version of “Across 110th Street” (itself the title song of a blaxploitation film released nearly 20 years earlier).
The use of “Tiny Dancer” in Almost Famous is memorable, far more memorable than any of the new songs written for the band based on the Alman Brothers.
EXTRAS
Paul Simon Deconstructs ‘Mrs. Robinson’ : The Dick Cavett Show
