Okay, sitting here recovering my Mott the Hoople fixation from years bygone (and ignoring student papers), I throw out: What is the best use of a song in a non-musical film?
Some nominees:
Mott the Hoople, “All the Way From Memphis” — Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
the Ronettes, “Be My Baby” — Mean Streets
Peggy Lee, “Is That All There Is?” — After Hours
Donovan, “Atlantis” — Goodfellas (…sensing a pattern?)
Rolling Stones, “2000-year Man” — Bottle Rocket
the Stranglers, “Peaches” — Sexy Beast
Aimee Mann, “Wise Up” — Magnolia
Oh, I also saw a dandy little independent film called Assisted Living, apparently only available on Netflix. The director shot on-site in an eldercare facility in Louisville, employing many of the residents as “actors,” merging “fact and fiction” in his own brief description. I don’t care so much about that–but you may. What I found quite remarkable was its attention to aging, its cool-eyed compassion, and its wit. Plus, it was shot with a very nice, impressionistic edge…. kind of reminded me of David Gordon Green, but more interested in narrative. Recommended.
And, Howell–I really want to hear what you think of OldBoy. That film really sticks with me….
i think wes anderson is a genius at creating mood through music. “bottle rocket” is inconceivable to me without love’s “forever changes”–and my favorite bit with song in the movie is the part with “alone again or”. there’s also altman’s “mccabe and mrs. miller” and its use of leonard cohen. “east is east” has a great moment with archie panjabi dancing around in the back of the chipshop to the tune of a then megahit hindi movie song–i thought it encapsulated quite nicely the characters’ and the movie’s ambivalent/problematic relationship with their mixed-race/culture identity. there’s a similar moment when the family is in bradford watching an old hindi movie and the title song of “chaudhvin ka chand”–with an impossibly beautiful waheeda rehman on screen. (chris, don’t rent “chaudhvin ka chand”–it is is sentimental crap.)
Ahh, Mike. Why do you tempt us with tasty distractions such as this, your best-use-of-song game? I’ll suggest these until I have more time to play:
Leonard Cohen, “Stranger Song” (McCabe & Mrs. Miller)
The Doors, “The End” (Apocalypse Now)
Roy Orbison, “In Dreams” (Blue Velvet)
I’m a huge Nilsson fan, and I’ve found that most people only know of him from Jump In The Fire in Goodfellas during the coke-panic scene. That’s not even close to my favorite musical cue in that film, but I thought I’d throw it out there. Scorsese can be REALLY sharp in his music cues.
And though it smacks of “Closing Credits” music (meant for you to leave the theater in a good mood, rather than a song that really means something to the pace of the film), I do really like the use of The Faces’ Ooh La La in Rushmore.
…what else… The Eagles in The Big Lebowski?
Even better, Mark, is Dylan’s “The Man in Me” in The Big Lebowski. And an even better Nilsson song (though it’s by Fred Neil) is “Everybody’s Talkin'” in Midnight Cowboy. Or “Coconut” in “Reservoir Dogs.”
How about:
Magnolia: “Goodbye Stranger” by Supertramp
Pulp Fiction: “Comanche” by The Revels
The Breakfast Club: “Don’t You Forget About Me” by Simple Minds
Rushmore: “A Quick One” by the Who
And a sentimental fave: “Moon River” from Breakfast at Tiffany’s
“Sister Christian,” in Boogie Nights–particularly because Alfred Molina explicates for us as it plays.
A similar meta moment in Pulp F, where the titles jump radio stations from Dick Dale to Kool and the Gang.
And back to Wes Anderson–some (Jeff) really don’t like Life Aquatic, but it has any number of brilliant musical connections, from Bowie’s “Life on Mars” to the Stooges to Joan Baez (“Here’s to You”), not to mention the Portuguese ‘sailor’ who keeps bursting into Bowie covers….
So many of these are so good, for me especially ‘The End,†“Peaches,†“Everybody’s Talkin†and “Wise Up.†But when I think about a soundtrack really complementing a movie, going beyond one or two perfect matches, I think Tarantino. I don’t have a lot of perspective on Tarantino – I pretty much like everything he has done – but I have noticed that more and more, when I think of his movies, I associate them with the music; his soundtracks seem to capture the soul of his movies (even if that soul is diseased). Bobby Womack’s “Across 110th Street†in Jackie Brown, captured the yearning for a better life, but the recognition of roots, the surf guitar in “Pulp Fiction†cemented the manic pace of the movie, just as the cover of “Girl, you’ll be a woman soon†just “got†the Thurman/Travolta relationship.
By the time you get to Kill Bill, the soundtracks become almost sublime (OK, it’s late so this is a little overwrought). “Bang Bang, My Baby Shot Me Down†works at the beginning of volume I, but then it comes back to haunt you at the end of volume II when The Bride bursts in on Bill and is shot with a toy pistol by her daughter. Then “About Her,†where Malcolm MClaren samples Bessie Smith and the Zombies, captures a mood Tarantino normally skirts. “Flower of Carnage†and the other Meiko Kaji is just plain beautiful, “Woo Hoo,†“The Grand Duel,†the Ennio Morricone, and on and on.
I guess what I’m saying is that ultimately, the music is far more central to Tarantino’s success as a director than blood or smart aleck conversations about tipping (though I enjoy both gore and smart aleck dialogue, especially about tipping).
About Tarantino I concur, Chris. This one always gives me chills:
Bernard Herrman’s “Twisted Nerve” in Kill Bill, Vol. 1
Perfect. How often does whistling convey menace?
m?
then there’s wong kar-wai.
and, of course, “always look on the bright side of life” in “brian”.
about the only good thing in “jeepers creepers” was the use of the song.
a very, very subtle and clever use of song is in “eternal sunshine of the spotless mind”–the use of a melancholy hindi film song, playing somewhere in the scene’s background. the song is called “vaada na tod”, and is about not breaking the promises of love.
While thinking of this over the past few hours the one that really struck me was “Sister Christian” in Boogie Nights. Foiled by Reynolds again…
DAMN YOU REYNOLDS!
I’d have to say Elliott Smith’s “Needle in the hay” played during Richie’s attempted suicide in the Royal Tenenbaums makes the scene.
T-Rex’s “Cosmic Dancer” in Billy Elliot
“Time After Time” in Strictly Ballroom
“Moon River” in Almodovar’s Bad Education
Debby Reynolds’ “Tammy” in Terrence Davies’ The Long Day Closes
Brian Eno’s “By the River” in Y Tu Mama Tambien
Though I have to say “All the Way From Memphis” in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore is the best of the bunch.
Speaking of Eno, “Another Green World” in Trainspotting–and, also in Trainspotting, and before it became an advertisement mainstay, Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life.”
(graham, love the title of your blog)
how many of these movies make you change your relationship to the song you list? mostly these seem like instances of the song amplifying the intended thrust of the scene they’re played over. one of the exceptions, of course, is “jeepers creepers”.
You know, the Bowie in Portuguese thing didn’t really work for me in Aquatic Life. The idea got old too fast.
To me, the use of Sigur Ros’ already spine-tingling Svefn-G-Englar in the scene where the whole cast is cramped into a submarine makes it great to me
Mark. Shush.
Does this count? “Show Me the Way to Go Home” from Jaws.
Yeah if I hadn’t already used that Sigur Ros song in a production of Hamlet I directed (not to mention having worn out the cd), it would have had greater impact (and their new disc is fantastic but I digress). But that’s the challenge isn’t it? The ability to recontextualize (to reinvent) a popular song in a film is most effective with titles we know but have forgotten so that the marriage of sound with image generates a complex yet pleasantly surprising response (like the choir boy singing “Moon River” in Spanish to his lecherous priest in the Almodovar film or the even the way Terrence Davies’ frames Debbie Reynolds’ “Tammy” through a nostalgic yet queer lens in The Long Day Closes. Even the surprisingly unexpected arrival of the Eno tune in Y Tu Mama Tambien shifts the mood in such a wonderful way. I found Aquatic Life’s use of music a bit too precious and self-reflexive and PT Anderson and Tarantino have certainly backed themselves into a corner when it comes to the use of music–they keep trying to top themselves and that gets problematic. We are conditioned to expect outre song choices and so it becomes part of our conditioned expectations (and, therefore, clever but rarely surprising). I will, however, throw in a good word for Atom Egoyan’s use of “Everybody Knows” in Exotica though I think the use of Cohen’s “Hallelujah” should be banned from all visual media starting now.
Well… the best example of a re-imagined song has to be, for me, “Stuck in the Middle with You,” which forever now seems like a good song to torture by.
How about the christmas carol “Do You Hear What I Hear?”–I believe the Perry Como version–in the original Gremlins movie?
Or “You Belong to Me,” playing on a jukebox as Teri Garr first corners Griffin Dunne in After Hours…
On the other hand, “Bela Lugosi is Dead” seems to have been written for The Hunger‘s opening scene. And the many permutations of “Bad Moon Rising” for American Werewolf also seem ready-made for lycanthropic pleasures…
Oh–and hi Graham. Hope Germany’s treating you well….
As Mike pointed out initially, Scorsese is the master of this. The way he uses Bob Dylan and the Band’s “Like A Rolling Stone” to shape character in Life Lessons, and the unexpected use of opera in that same film (Puccini?) to soulful and poignant effect. Unlike Tarantino or Anderson (Wes or PT), Scorsese doesn’t seem to be working diligently to impress as much as he is suiting the song to the action and the action to the song (and his encyclopedic knowledge of music genres is very impressive).
jesus, not another fucking “friend of mike”…
How about a song from a musical used in a film that’s not a musical? In PUNCH DRUNK LOVE, Anderson uses Shelley Duvall singing Harry Nilsson’s “He Needs Me” from POPEYE.
“Hope Germany’s Treating You Well”–isn’t this song in Visconti’s “The Damned”?
The use of “He Needs Me” in Punch Drunk was about the only thing I liked in that film.
And you’re right Jeff – new Sigur Ros is really good. Much better than the last album. And I’d forgotten about Everybody Knows in Exotica. I guess Leonard Cohen can be a pretty easy go-to guy for these cases. I have a soft spot for Concrete Blonde singing the same Cohen song in Pump Up the Volume.
OT: Last night Dayna watched – and I quickly abandoned – Lemony Snickett. That was dreadful. To get the bad taste out of my mouth we rented Albert Brooks’ Real Life, which holds up almost 30 years – and 3000 reality shows later. No big music scenes in it, except for Brooks’ ode to Phoenix, and himself, accompanied by Merv Griffin’s bandleader. If anyone hasn’t seen it, it’s very funny, and I wish he would make more movies.
Oh wait, Nilsson’s “Jump In The Fire” is used in Real Life! That brings us back home.
A. Brooks has a new movie–ostensibly a documentary about Brooks trying to ‘bridge’ the East/West schism by seeking out comedy in the Islamic world. I haven’t heard much, but what I hear is good. It sounds almost too fantastic to believe.
Mike – LA Times has an article about Brooks today.
http://www.calendarlive.com/movies/cl-et-goldstein27sep27,0,4862505,print.story?coll=la-tot-promo
Something’s wrong when a studio balks at a comedy this inspired.
By Patrick Goldstein
Times Staff Writer
September 27, 2005
In the days after the calamitous 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, there was a brief flurry of soul-searching in Hollywood, focusing in part on how much of a role our movies played in stirring Muslim rage against America. As innumerable cultural historians have discovered, many devout Muslims are horrified by the sexual innuendo and crass materialism in Hollywood films and music videos, not to mention Vanity Fair, whose salacious cover spread this month of Paris Hilton pretty much says it all when it comes to celebrating even the tawdriest members of our celebrity culture.
Judging from the films in the multiplexes this summer, the soul-searching in show business lasted about as long as Britney Spears’ first marriage. According to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center, an overwhelming majority of respondents in Middle Eastern countries were opposed to the spread of American ideas and customs. I seriously doubt that sitting through a double-bill of “The Dukes of Hazzard” and “Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo” will improve the polling numbers.
But the real problem with Hollywood isn’t simply its glorification of sex, money and lame old TV shows. It’s that our Ivy League-educated studio elite often don’t know the difference between crass and class. How’s this for an example: Sony Pictures, the studio that made “European Gigolo,” has refused to release “Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World,” an inspired new film by Albert Brooks about a comedian — Brooks, playing himself — who is recruited by the U.S. government to go to India and Pakistan to find out what makes Muslims laugh.
The movie makes fun of comedians’ neurotic neediness and State Department ineffectuality, but seems to steer clear of anything that would insult Muslims. Still, in a June 30 letter to Brooks, Sony chairman Michael Lynton said that he wouldn’t release the film unless Brooks changed the title. Lynton wrote: “I do believe that recent incidents have dramatically changed the landscape that we live in and that this, among other things, warrants changing the title of the film.” Sony insiders say Lynton was alarmed by the violent reaction in the Muslim world to Newsweek’s May 9 story, since retracted, about a Koran being flushed down the toilet by interrogators at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay.
Brooks’ movie, financed by producer Steve Bing, has now found a new home at Warner Independent Pictures, which plans to release it early next year. Warner Indy chief Mark Gill says he had no problems with the title. “How often do you get a laugh simply from the title of a movie?” Gill told me. “We saw the movie, and it was clear that Albert makes fun of himself and America, not anybody else.”
Lynton won’t discuss the issue publicly, but perhaps he is worried that merely having “Muslim” in a film title could cause the kind of outrage that led to the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, whose film, “Submission,” showed naked women with verses of the Koran projected on their bodies. I’d be worried if I’d made “Submission” too. But Brooks’ film is a comedy, not a political screed, closer in spirit to Randy Newman than Salman Rushdie. I only wish I could get Lynton to explain why Sony was squeamish about Brooks’ film and not “European Gigolo,” which makes fun of a female Chernobyl victim who has a penis instead of a nose.
Brooks, in his first interview about the film, confirmed that Lynton expressed concern about Muslim outrage over the alleged Koran incident. “When we spoke, he told me, ‘The Newsweek thing has changed the world.’ And I said, ‘Wasn’t it 9/11 that changed the world?’ But Michael said he just didn’t want to take a chance.”
Best known for such films as “Real Life” and “Lost in America,” Brooks says he was inspired to make “Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World” in the wake of 9/11. “For so long afterward, whenever I heard anyone talk about Muslims, it was in association with terrorism,” he explained after screening the film for me at his Bel-Air office. “But I thought, what could I do in a teeny way — and believe me, it’s a teeny way — to defuse this? There had to be some way to separate the 1.5 billion people who don’t want to kill us from the 100,000 or so who do. I thought if I could get five Muslims and six Hindus and maybe 3 Jews to laugh for 90 minutes, then I’ve accomplished something.”
In the film, Brooks is recruited for his mission by a government official, played by former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson, also portraying himself. The comic heads for India, where he has a variety of misadventures, including a disastrous stand-up comedy concert and a botched meeting with Al Jazeera, which Brooks assumes is interested in his search for comedy when, in fact, the network wants to audition him for a sitcom. “At your age,” says the Al Jazeera executive, as coolly pragmatic as any Hollywood agent, “you should think about television.”
As with most Brooks films, the movie, which was filmed in India late last year, makes fun of showbiz self-absorption. But it also toys with other cultural stereotypes, from young Pakistani terrorists who turn out to be comedy connoisseurs to Brooks’ hapless State Department minders, who are so disorganized that they can’t even rent a decent office in New Delhi.
For Brooks, the film’s title was an essential ingredient. “Even if you didn’t see the movie, you’d see two words you’d never seen put together before — comedy and Muslim. Comedy is friendly — it’s the least offensive word in our language.”
After the Newsweek/Koran incident, Lynton told Bing he wanted a title change. “I was so upset I was throwing up at 3 a.m.,” Brooks recalls. “It felt wrong — it defeated the whole idea of why I went to India in the first place.” Bing took the film to Warner, where he’d put up half the money for “The Polar Express” and has a long-standing relationship with studio chief Alan Horn. After Horn watched Brooks’ film and gave his blessing, Warner Independent picked it up.
So why is one studio willing to embrace the film while another studio runs and hides? In fairness to Sony, it has every right to reject any movie it wants. Lynton may have his own personal reasons for being gun-shy. Disney refused to let Miramax release “Fahrenheit 9/11” last year, largely because Michael Eisner didn’t want to deal with the potential political fallout from its attack on the Bush administration. None of the major Hollywood studios would release Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ” either, fearing a barrage of criticism.
The truth is that we live in an era when the political agendas of most media conglomerates are shaped by their core businesses, which often have little to do with Hollywood. Rupert Murdoch famously refused to publish a book critical of the Chinese government at a time when he needed Chinese access for his satellite TV network. In the 1990s, Time Warner mortally wounded its music division by selling off Interscope Records and getting out of the rap business, largely because it feared that gangsta-rap controversies would harm its relations with Congress, whose largesse it needed for its more lucrative cable TV business.
When we spoke, Brooks eyed a Sony Trinitron TV set in the corner of his office. “Sony makes televisions — and everything comes after that,” he says. “Time Warner is an entertainment company. They don’t make TVs. My impression was that if I got in the way of Sony selling one more TV set somewhere, I was out of there.”
Brooks, like me, is alarmed that Sony and other studios seem so unconcerned about the dumb, sexist image of America their comedies project to the the world. “We export films that are full of sleazy [penis] jokes and toilet humor — that’s why we’ve earned the affectionate nickname of the Great Satan,” he says. “What’s seemingly benign, by our standards, is doing more damage to us around the world than anything I could ever do.” Soon Brooks is on a comic roll, wondering “if we actually find advanced life on another planet whether they’ll be as obsessed with their own genitals as we are.”
Comedy is not just a laughing matter. For years, great American artists, from Mark Twain to Richard Pryor to Jon Stewart, have used humor to expose our foibles and help us grapple with our differences. Even today, the popular Egyptian comic actor, Adel Imam, is starring in “The Embassy Is in the Building,” a movie that uses comedy to pursue a serious premise — that making peace with Israel is a viable political option. The movie is a hit in Egypt. And the fact that a comedian can raise an issue that’s too hot for Egypt’s political leadership to touch shows just how much influence laughter can wield. It lets us see the world — and our fears — in a fresh light.
Brooks’ movie may not have the box-office potential of an Adam Sandler comedy, but at least it has something to say about our world, which is why Sony’s refusal to release it is so dispiriting. If Sony is this timid about a well-intentioned comedy, imagine how timid it will be when something really volatile comes along.
“If You Leave Me Now” by Chicago in Three Kings works really well.
In today’s ‘Guardian’ readers pick songs transformed by movies:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5340575-117421,00.html
The top ten are:
1 The End The Doors
2 Rhapsody in Blue George Gershwin
3 Just Dropped In (to See What Condition My Condition Was In) Kenny Rogers
4 Stuck in the Middle With You Stealers Wheel
5 In Dreams Roy Orbison
6 More Than This Bill Murray
7 Canned Heat Jamiroquai
8 Tiny Dancer Elton John
9 Where Is My Mind? The Pixies
10 We’ll Meet Again Vera Lynn
Bringing in the Sheaves (Night of the Hunter)
Layla (Goodfellas)
Be My Baby (Mean Streets)
Shall we Gather at the River (The Wild Bunch)
various Leonard Cohen (McCabe and Mrs. Miller)