Thanks to the San Francisco Film Society I recently had the pleasure of sitting at the feet of master sound designer Richard Beggs for an evening. He talked about his work with directors like Alfonso
Cuaron, Spike Jonze, and Sofia Coppola, and showed a few clips of some of his best known films. We sat rapt at the famous opening montage of Apocalypse Now and he explained how Francis Ford Coppola was fascinated with the role technology played in the Vietnam War and how this affected his own approach to the soundtrack, like his idea to use a Moog to create the sound of a helicopter blade and a house fly, instead of more natural or "believable" sources.
(Later I'd learn that Apocalypse Now was in fact the first film to grant the title of "Sound Designer" to anyone (Walter Murch in this case). It was the first time that much tangible creative authority was given over to the person in charge of the soundtrack. Beggs was a sound recordist on that film, the very first of his career—a fact he described as "sort of a distorting experience.")
One of the most affecting clips Beggs showed was from Barry Levinson's 1996 film, Sleepers, about a group of boys who endure sexual abuse at a state detention center in upstate New York. The clip depicted the moment when John Reilly (played by Ron Eldard) is hanging out at a bar some twenty years later and suddenly spots one of the guards who abused him (played by Kevin Bacon). At this point the action morphs into slow motion and sounds become heightened. Richard pointed out that you can hear the sound of a pull chain clinking against a lightbulb throughout this interlude—an acoustic detail taken from memories of the basement room where the guards would take the boys to rape them. It's the perfect example of Beggs' detailed, almost Freudian approach to sound design, one—he says—that is not meant to be perceived on a conscious level.
The music too grows louder in this pivotal moment, moving from an anonymous wash of bar rock to a more conspicuous presence. The song is a near-hit of the 1960's called "Witchi Tai To" by a short-lived group called Everything is Everything, fronted by jazz fusion pioneer Jim Pepper. Pepper was of Kaw and Creek heritage, and "Witchi Tai To" is a traditional peyote song—one typically performed during the ceremonial taking of peyote—and it has a mystical, meditative quality that is oddly perfect for this scene; its ceremonial sound casts a powerful spell, making it a heightened and strangely hallowed moment. When Reilly goes into the bathroom to collect himself Levinson and Beggs ratchet things up a notch further. As Reilly stares into the mirror, the music moves from heightened source to full soundtrack—a relentless loop laid over his entire consciousness—the repetition of its central chant like the memories that have been abruptly dragged to the fore.
It's a three step treatment of one song that reflects the subjective experience of the character without ever pandering to it. Instead of the tense strings we'd get from most score composers, we get a lilting, jazz inflected blessing.
Water spirit feelings
Springin' round my head
Makes me feel glad
That I'm not dead
Richard Beggs shared a wealth of other fascinating stuff that night, and I'll definitely be writing about it more over the coming weeks. In the meantime, give Sleepers another look now that more than ten years have gone by since it was made. And don't forget to listen for the lightbulb chain.
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