Boombox Serenade

Film-Music Moment of the Day: Shoshanna Prepares to Murder the Nazis

If the quantum physicists are right and time is like a giant piece of fabric with all events occurring at the same moment, then I'm fairly certain that Inglourious Basterds helped the Allies win the war. Quentin Tarantino has created revenge propaganda so clear-eyed and boldly executed that it ripped a hole in the time-space continuum and demoralized the Nazis in some kind of crazy backward tipping point. History says that Operation Barbarossa was when Axis luck began to change for the worse, but maybe it was actually when Shoshanna Dreyfus reached through the hole in space-time that Tarantino made and gleefully murdered several hundred high ranking Nazi officials by setting them on fire. 

The montage in which she prepares herself to do so is the real film-music takeaway from the movie, and of course Tarantino unblinkingly joined the ranks of the very few directors (like Robert Altman and Sofia Coppola) brave and talented enough to put contemporary music in their period pieces in an effective way. "You're actually shocked at how well the lyrics to 'Cat People' work to her story," he told the L.A. Times.

Personally, I wasn't so much "shocked" as I was simply saucer-eyed with delight because Tarantino knows exactly what to do with David Bowie's ominous and opulent voice, placing it at the very heart of his film like a jewel while lavishing some old-school camera work on his heroine.

See these eyes so green
I can stare for a thousand years
Colder than the moon
It's been so long
And I've been putting out fire
With gasoline

"It would've been easy to hire some artist to do the 'Ballad of Shoshanna,'" he explained, "and it could be telling her story in a very on-point, nail-on-the-head kind of way. I just don't like the idea of giving that much power to anybody on one of my movies," he continued. I would much rather work with a music editor than a music composer."

There's another great film-music moment in Basterds, and it's later when Shoshanna and Private Zoller gun one another down at point blank range to Nick Perito's instrumental version of "The Green Leaves of Summer," a track that sounds about as fresh as a fifty year old can of peaches in heavy syrup. It's a signature Tarantino move to set scenes of graphic violence to wildly inappropriate music, and the trick words again here. I actually giggled as one of the best film heroines I've seen in some time was savagely killed. The music cue is also a reference—no doubt—to the 1960 John Wayne film The Alamo, for which the unbelievably saccharine vocal version won an Oscar for Best Song, and as if we needed more proof that Basterds is a film about filmmaking, Tarantino borrowed the Bowie track too; it was an original written for the 1982 remake of Cat People.

So thanks Quentin, you wonderful nerd. Thanks for inserting flowery music at the most brutal moments. Thanks for the well-placed White Duke. Thanks for projecting the gorgeous ghost of Shoshanna onto smoke and letting her laugh while she barbecues a theater full of Nazis to a crisp. Thanks for ripping a hole in the space-time continuum and helping the Allies win the war. Thanks for blowing my mind, again, at least seven different times. I love that a real auteur has the number one grossing movie in the country right now, and I love, love, love your wicked ways.

Film Music Moment of the Day: Bill Compton Approaches the Vampire Queen

Well, Gary Calamar and Alan Ball have done it again. The "New World in My View" episode of True Blood contains a moment that has everyone talking, and it comes at the very end. By that point the town of Bon Temps is in real peril with Maryann's minions plunging ever deeper into violent Bacchanalian trance, and Bill has set out to seek help from unseen vampire queen. As he strides toward her villa, the irresistible and mysterious song "New World In My View" fades in (from which the episode gets its name). It's hugely portentous—a moment that not only makes way for a pivotal new character, but suggests an even larger turning of tides.

Like the vampires themselves, the song is both ancient and au courant. Warbly vocals are sung by an old time New Orleans preacher named Sister Gertrude Morgan (who recorded in the early 1970's) and in her swampy, bony voice you can hear the very origins of rock and roll. Behind it is an electronic arrangement by King Britt, a DJ from Philadelphia who in 2005 remixed Morgan's recordings and turned them into an album he called King Britt Presents: Sister Gertrude Morgan. His own contribution on this particular track is some sleek, aquatic sounding music--unlikely sonic couture for a restless bride of Christ.

I got the new world in my view
On my journey I pursue
I said I'm running, running for the city
I got the new world in my view

Morgan's utterances are more like sermons or incantations than songs, so they don't really follow a strict rhythm. They are not sampled, but allowed simply to co-exist with King Britt's gleaming swells of sound, and they're less integrated into the overall texture of the music than say Vera Hall's voice was on Moby's "Natural Blues." It shouldn't work at all really—this old Delta priestess wandering into a Tangerine Dream track to preach the gospel—but it does. Oh, it does. It builds and builds, revealing the larger architecture of Morgan's music—the method in her madness—adding urgency and power to her words. She is absolutely brimming with mission.

I read recently that Alan Ball lets Gary Calamar do whatever he wants with the music on True Blood—absolute carte blanche—and if that's true, I'd love to know more about what their process is like...how they work together to come up with moments like this one because it's loaded. Well done fellas.

Film-Music Moment of the Day: Dance Dance Evolution (or) Take That, Achy Breaky Heart

 
Teenagers can always be counted upon to fill their world with music, so there are a bunch of great little film-music moments in Paul Saltzman's Prom Night in Mississippi, a documentary about the first racially integrated high school prom in Charleston, Mississippi—filmed in June 2008, just a handful of months before Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States. One that really caught my attention took place at the prom itself, where early in the night students are shown enthusiastically line dancing to "Cupid Shuffle" by Bryson Bernard (better known simply as Cupid). The track's hookiness is, of course, the main thing getting people out on the floor, but there's a cross-cultural draw too, and it's worth examining.

Line dancing has been hugely popular in country-western circles for going on 30 years now and its roots hearken back to some rather lily-white European folk traditions, so you have to consider what a bold move it was for a young R&B singer from Lafayette, Louisiana to use it as a concept for a crunky little bounce track. "My philosophy is, there's so much standard R&B going on, it's always a good idea to have a different vibe," said Bernard of his 2007 album Time for a Change, which he describes as a blend of several Deep South influences. "Cupid Shuffle" became a big hit and Internet sensation, with hundreds of people posting YouTube videos of themselves dancing to it. In fact, "Cupid Shuffle" helped to set the Guinness Record for the world's largest line dance in 2007 when 17,000 Atlantans danced to it at the Ebony Black Family Reunion Tour. A year later at the first ever integrated prom in a small Mississippi town, it effortlessly brought a group of black and white classmates out onto the dance floor together for the first time.

And it really was the first time. One of the recurring comments the students make is how odd it is for them to have spent so many years together in classrooms, but barely to have hung out socially—a fact they attribute almost entirely to their parents' attitudes versus their own. Such attitudes start to become more apparent when you realize there's only one interracial couple featured in this documentary, and they report they're the only one in town. When a small faction of parents decide to protest the integrated prom by throwing an alternative "whites only" prom for a few dozen of their begrudging sons and daughters, it really sinks in just how much racism has been allowed to shape this community—one where 70 percent of the high school students are black. (The "whites only" prom organizers take pains to hide their identities and prevent the event from being recorded, but second hand accounts make it clear the event was small and lackluster). 

A few weeks later at the big, lavish integrated prom (spearheaded and paid for by Morgan Freeman), the seniors seem extremely happy and excited to be there. As the hour grows late, no one drifts away to hotel rooms or parties. The vibe stays up, the dance floor stays packed, and at one point is filled to its edges with grinning students dancing to the bittersweet groove of "Graduation Song  (Friends Forever)" by Vitamin C, who sounds more like a fourth member TLC in this track than a blond pop chanteuse. A looping sample of the Pachelbel Canon glides wistfully behind her hip hop and neo-soul inflected singing..a nice little array of nuances sandwiched into one song. Somewhere else in the United States that night, Barack Obama may have been finishing up a stump speech in his preferred manner: by blasting the twangy country song by Brooks and Dunn, "Only in America."

Truly.

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For another outstanding documentary on modern segregation, check out Margaret Brown's The Order of Myths, about the two entirely separate Mardi Gras celebrations—one white, one black—that happen in Mobile, Alabama. 

Film-Music Moment of the Day: The Lone Man Ponders Nothingness

"Sometimes the reflection is far more present than the thing being reflected," says one of the Lone Man's contacts in Jim Jarmusch's The Limits of Control, and in fact one of the pleasures of this film is seeing Spain through the eyes of legendary cinematographer Christopher Doyle, who is taken, magpie-like, by every glass wall and glittering window in Madrid.

Another is contemplating the inscrutable Lone Man (played by Isaach De Bankolé), whose carefully controlled expression is a study in contrasts: handsome and ugly, modern and ancient, violent and pacific. His face is downright fascinating, in fact, the particular lines of it are like a conversation that never ends—sometimes willfully flat, other times all fullness and curving contours, but most often at some unfathomable point in between. 

The third, but not the least pleasure of Limits is watching all of the above while giant buckets of golden sound are poured lavishly on top of you like aromatic water at a Japanese bathhouse. This is the drone rock of bands like Boris, Sunn O))), and Earth, and the feedback afterglow of it is a kind of audio analogue to Christopher Doyles' reflections: more present than the notes that generated it. After all, this is a Jarmusch film, so its relationship to music is anything but casual. Violins and guitars appear as symbolic props throughout, like they were plucked out of a Juan Gris painting. One of the most memorable moments is when the Lone Man happens upon a rehearsal in a small nightclub where he watches some ardent Flamenco. One character says he believes that musical instruments retain every note that has ever been played on them and that these notes resonate within them forever like a kind of sonic karma. For an assassin like the Lone Man, the implications of such a statement are clear.

I once heard a Mark Rothko painting. I turned a corner at the San Francisco MoMA, and I heard a single, unified sound radiating from Rothko's No. 14 like a hundred monks humming the same note. One of the final scenes in The Limits of Control is like this. The Lone Man sits in front of a white-on-white Arte Povera piece; the luminous din of drone rock is all around him. The nothingness of the painting, the rising tide of sound...it all comes together in a moment of abstract resonance that vibrates clean off the screen. The end of the film, in fact, is full of such emptiness—blank walls, blank canvases, blank slips of paper. Does the Lone Man experience this abstraction as a relief from what he has done, or a consequence of it? Is this the freedom of the afterlife or the simple oblivion of death? With nothing left to control, the world seems drained of content or maybe it's just a break between acts, like the gap between songs on an album. "The best films are like dreams you're never really sure you had," says one of the Lone Man's contacts in an earlier exchange, and it's clear that Jarmusch isn't about to decipher this one for you. You have to use your imagination. 

If You Were Here: Ten Filmmakers Who May or May Not Be John Hughes' Rightful Heir

John Hughes wrote his own movies, created a dozen iconic film-music moments, and gave us a funny yet soulful depictions of teenagers complete with multifacted female protagonists. Is there anyone making films today who can carry this torch? The famously lucrative teen market means there's no shortage of comers. Let's review...

1. Kevin Smith (Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy) In the 90's Kevin Smith gave us a totally new take on the teenage wasteland and took on the complicated sexual politics of the day with nerdy verve. He also showed a passionate devotion to soundtrack (the music rights to Clerks cost more than the entire production budget), but he never quite had Hughes' gift for creating iconic moments with music. Smith's gifts lie more in his stylized dialogue, ultra-colorful characters, and witty riffs on the culture at large. By the way, if Hughes' influence on Smith was ever in doubt, note that the characters in Dogma directly reference Sixteen Candles by name, as well as The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Pretty in Pink, and Shermer, Illinois.
2. Danny Leiner (Director, Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, Dude, Where's My Car?). Leiner definitely has a certain Hughes'-like playfulness and goofy sense of fantasy and he also uses a lot of contemporary music in his soundtracks, but he tends to neglect the angstier side of young adulthood and doesn't write his own work as Hughes did. Still, it seems likely that Harold & Kumar in particular will long be remembered (and recited) by an entire generation. At South by Southwest Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg revealed that they wrote the film partly in response to the negative racial stereotype of Long Duk Dong in Sixteen Candles, which makes Harold's infatuation with it in the movie especially funny. 
3. Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite, Nacho Libre). Like Hughes, Hess writes his own work and infuses it with both deeply comic and soulful elements. He has a unique, recognizable style and the skillz to create iconic film-music moments, the most memorable being Napoleon Dynamite's dance to Jamiroquai's "Canned Heat."Hess has a strong visual aesthetic too—its full of poetically quirky portraits and tableaus—which make his films more big-screen worthy than the more conventional, character-driven comedies of Hughes. Hess' next project, Gentlemen Broncos, has a teenage protagonist. 
4. Wes Anderson (Rushmore, The Royal Tennenbaums) Anderson has apparently named Hughes as an influence (although I can't find a primary source on that) and there's no doubt that the man is a genius with music and bittersweet tones, but his aesthetic choices lean heavily toward a vintage fantasy feeling whereas Hughes preferred the traditional screwball comedy. Plus, Rushmore is the only evidence that Anderson is much interested in adolescence at all. His work, if anything, tends to preoccupy itself with the questions (and the melancholy) that arise after youth is really gone and characters realize they have become completely and irretrievably adult. 
5. Greg Mottola (Superbad, Adventureland), Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg (Writers, Superbad) A part of the circle that's helping to establish a millennial brat pack complete with adorable nerds and lovable losers, this trio—like Hughes—has a real gift for balancing comedy with heart and showing the truly painful, awkward details of growing up, as well as the things that sustain us through it. Mottola has also shown chops for creating memorable film-music moments. Like Wes Anderson, he steers clear of contemporary music, but where Anderson favors obscure artists and b-sides, Mottola seems to cherry pick from bygone decades, which seems a bit safe. We'd like to see him branch out past the ironic funk of Superbad and 80's nostalgia of Adventureland to embrace something as zeitgeist-y as his own films. 
6. Judd Apatow, Steve Carrell, Adam McCay, et al. (Knocked Up, Forgetting Sarah Marshall). Much more of a team player than Hughes, Apatow has nevertheless shown a Hughes-like ability to create work that is both critically and commercially successful, but Apatow has been more interested in grown-up stories than teenage ones for some time, and despite lengthy soundtracks, the truly memorable film-music moments are surprisingly few. Still, the real warmth and camraderie that Team Underdog has built can be felt in the films. Like Hughes' movies, they're flawed, but also deeply human. They also have a quality that I remember grown-ups reacting to in Hughes' films: the dialogue is explicit in a way that many adults really hate, but I do not. It's less gratuitous than typical movie profanity in that it seems to be there, in part, to show that characters are masking insecurity or immaturity or both. 
7. Jason Reitman (Director Juno) and Diablo Cody (Writer Juno). Cody and Reitman charted a wry and confident path through some of the more poignant terrain of adolescence, including teen pregnancy of course, but also a rarely explored nuance: dealing with adults who mistake you for one. Juno herself was every bit as sharp and funny as Hughes' Samantha Baker or Andie Walsh, and she was especially minty fresh for arriving on the scene during a veritable golden age of bromance. And whether you loved the music in Juno or found it too twee (especially for a film about a young woman who claimed to love The Stooges), you have to give Reitman and Music Supervisor Peter Afterman credit for crafting a soundtrack of relative unknowns and coming up with something that not only worked well with the subject matter, but resonated deeply with the audience. Soundtrack sales don't tend to be all that impressive these days, but Juno's went gold and was Rhino Records' first-ever Billboard top ten in their 30 year history.
8. Cameron Crowe (Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Say Anything). Crowe is only seven years younger than Hughes so he's a peer not an heir (the two even used some of the same actors including John Cusack). What's interesting, though, is that Hughes apparently named Fast Times at Ridgemont High as one of the films he felt portrayed teens in a callow way and one of the reasons he wrote Sixteen Candles, yet Crowe's Say Anything revealed him to be every bit as philosophical about youth and equally as gifted at creating iconic film-music moments. Say Anything was released in 1989, a few years after Hughes' peak Brat Pack years. Was this film influenced by Hughes' work?
9. Sofia Coppola (Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette). If Hughes was "the philosopher of adolescence," then Sofia Coppola is its auteur. Like Hughes, she has shown a thematic preoccupation with the teenage and young adult years, and fearlessly explores the aimlessness, distortions, and freedoms they bring. Her films are not comedies to be sure, but she does use contemporary songs in pivotal, deeply felt ways, taking them way beyond mere soundtrack territory. She has also given us memorable female protagonists, complete with literary scale imperfections.  
10. Richard Linklater (Slacker, Dazed and Confused). Like Cameron Crowe, Linklater is closer in age to Hughes than most of the directors on this list. He's long since strayed from teen-centric fare, but like Hughes his early films were so casually funny and so good at conveying the much looser sense of time that tends to govern pre-adult years that he definitely warrants a mention. Plus he has great taste in music, though he uses it in a much more vérité style than Hughes did.
11. A few others that occur to us: Zach Braff (Garden State), Harmony Korine (Kids), the Farrelley Brothers (Something About Mary), Amy Heckerling (Clueless), Marc Webb ((500) Days of Summer), Paul and Chris Weitz (American Pie, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist), plus the whole Mumblecore crew.

Of couse, there's no exact ringer for John Hughes on this list, nor should we expect there to be. In the 1990's Kevin Smith and Richard Linklater gave us as different a take on adolescence as Hughes and Crowe had in the 80's. Now it's Mottola, Rogan, Apatow, and Reitman/Cody who seem to occupy much of the same space Hughes did: a deep love of the underdog, an equally deep love of the teen/young adult market, a gift for blending comedy and drama in a soulful way, and a way of using music that enhances everything. Mottola is the most commercial of these, so you could argue he's the most like Hughes, but Jared Hess gets extra credit for writing and directing all his own work and creating one of the classics of the decade on a $400,000 budget.

There are several auteurs in this bunch, and some of their names have even achieved the adjective-like status that John Hughes' did, yet it is, admittedly, the less arty Mottola/Apatow crew that have much more in common with him in their ability to create a consistently successful and distinct brand of comedy, as well as in their preference for re-casting the same favorites over and over (which begs the question: is Michael Cera the Molly Ringwald of his generation?). In fact, the auteur factor almost works against the grain here. Some films are important because they promises to stand the test of time, and some, because they commit so deeply to the time in which they are made. A critical mass of teenagers have imprinted on Reitman/Cody, Mottola, Rogan, and Apatow's work like so many baby geese; they will remember it fondly and always, just as many of us are now remembering Hughes. As we speak, these directors are influencing the next generation of filmmakers, who will in turn bring to life their own version of the American Teen. All of which is to say danke schoen John Hughes, for influencing multiple generations of new talent and ensuring that we'll never really have to say goodbye to you.

On Not Forgetting About Him: Recounting John Hughes' Most Memorable Film-Music Moments

Music tends to be pivotal in most coming-of-age stories, but one need only see such recent weak sauce as Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist to realize what a particular gift Mister John Hughes had with it. He even titled his films after songs: "Sixteen Candles" (by The Crests), "Pretty in Pink" (by The Psychedelic Furs, a song that directly inspired Hughes to write the film), "Some Kind of Wonderful" (by Grand Funk Railroad). He wasn't afraid to use music by relative unknowns in his films and in a 1999 interview said, "I just used what I was listening to at the time, bands I liked." Hughes was also one of the first directors to acknowledge the growing popularity of rap among white teenagers in the 1989 film Uncle Buck.

It was definitely during the halcyon Brat Pack years, however, in which Hughes created his most memorable film-music moments. From Ferris' parade-float-lip-sync to "Danke Schoen" and "Twist and Shout" to a tortured Samantha watching Jake Ryan dance with another girl to Spandau Ballet's "True" in Sixteen Candles, Hughes wrote music into the very fabric of his scripts and was never afraid to let it take over a scene. He also wasn't above using it for the occasional cheesy laugh like breaking into the Twilight Zone theme when Samantha's grandparents move into her room, or throwing in a dash of Peter Gunn for a panning shot of the nerds at the school dance.

Boombox Serenade took a quick FaceBook poll: "What's your Favorite John Hughes film-music moment?" and here's what we got: 

• "I think it ends up being Duckie doing the most amazing Otis Redding 'Try A Little Tenderness' tribute [in Pretty in Pink]. He is everything anyone should love in a man: silly, passionate, nerdy. He really sells it and it perfectly communicates how much he loves Andie with his entire soul."
• "In Ferris Bueller's Day Off, it's the scene where Sloan and Ferris are saying goodbye to each other after getting back home from their adventures, right before Ferris looks at his watch and says "I have to go!" They kiss, and he hauls ass home.  Sloan says to herself 'He's going to marry me.' It's all done to the song the 'Edge Of Forever' by The Dream Academy. Perfect."
• "'Oh Yeah' by Yello is perfect for the first time Ferris & Cameron pick up the Ferrari."
• "The scene when 'If You Were Here' by the Thompson Twins begins playing just as Sam sees Jake waiting for her in the church parking lot at the end of Sixteen Candles gets to me every time."
• "I've got to go with the 'If You Were Here' scene in Sixteen Candles too. When Samantha Baker Davis Jr. walks out of the church and Jake gives her that, 'yeah you' head tilt thing next to the Porsche. Brilliant."
• "The Dream Academy's cover of 'Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want' in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, when Cameron is staring at the Seurat painting. His eyes are so haunting. It's like he's dissolving in front of you."
• "The scene in She's Having A Baby where she's just about to have her baby and Kate Bush's 'Woman's Work' comes on. Tear jerker!"
• "I think the song is called 'We Are Not Alone' by Karla DeVito and its really awful, but it's from the dancing scene in The Breakfast Club. It's when Ally Sheedy falls down, face-first on the floor at the end. I love it, I can't help it."
• "Ferris running like crazy to get home before his parents do to General Public's 'Taking the Day Off.'"
• "Well of course of course OMD's 'If You Leave' at the end of Pretty in Pink is one of the all-time highlights of brat pack cinema."
• "Through all the movies and the music, it is hard to get away from the power of the Simple Minds ["Don't You Forget About Me"] in Breakfast Club, but if I had to pick, I would go with Lick the Tin's cover of 'Can't Help Falling in Love with You' from Some Kind of Wonderful."
• "Planes, Trains and Automobiles: John Candy doing Ray Charles' 'Mess Around.' Best air sax on film."