The Maestro of Cinema Music has checked out of the Hotl Earth. He’s listening to the Music Of The Spheres from his Moon Base. Hobnobbing with Bernard Herrmann and Miklos Roza. The world has lost one of it’s greatest Cinematographic/Musical Treasures. A double blow to the sensitive beings on this spinning rock. Bless you Ennio for all the pleasure you gave people in the dark.
Serious Ennio, With Sergio Leone
I remember the insanity surrounding the release of The Exorcist. People waited in lines for hours to see any showing, midnight or 10 AM. I heard Warner Brothers had employees, who were heading home for the Holidays, hand carry prints to their local theaters. They were working round the clock to finish the film and make the Christmas Eve release. My pal Bud Smith edited the film, a magnificent job! My other friend, the late, great, Jack Nitzsche recorded special sound effects for the film, that add immensley to the experience. But here is a short documentary on the phenomenon of The Exorcist’s first release.
Here is a beautiful short film that is really a showcase for it’s amazing electronic score. The music and organized sound is by the great Eugeniusz Rudnik, a veteran of The Polish Radio Experimental Studio (PRES), check out The Saragossa Manuscript with music by Penderecki, another alumnus. This film is gorgeous, shot in 35mm color (It looks like Technicolor to me) in an old city that still had it’s Eighteenth Century charm. I can’t embed it here but I can post this link. So click the magic portal and be transported to another world.
This is a great short by the ultra-talented Roman Polanski. It really demonstrates what an amazing physical actor he is, Chaplinesque. Featuring music by the super genius Krzysztof Komeda.
Here’s a great little documentary about the soundtrack to Nic Roeg’s The Man Who Fell To Earth starring David Bowie in his greatest role. I always really liked this soundtrack, John Phillips came through big time.
Video Essay: The Man Who Fell to Earth from Film Comment on Vimeo.
Damn! I really wanted to write a fan letter to Fred Katz! What a genius! He just died at 94 years of age, he really crammed a lot into his stay here on planet Earth, Classical musician, Jazz musician, Composer, Ethnologist, child prodigy on two instruments, maybe the first guy to play Jazz Cello! I grew up digging his score to Corman/Griffith movies like Little Shop Of Horrors, a great score, quirky, idiosyncratic, unique just like the movie. There is really no other score like it that I can think of. Plus he played with the great Chico Hamilton, he even appeared with Chico’s band in the sublime Sweet Smell Of Success ( a reference to the marijuana that features so prominently in the plot) .
Then he switched gears and became a professor of Shamanism, Mysticism, Magick! I wish I had taken one of his courses, I wish I had met him and told him how great he was. Too lAte! But maybe up in Film Music Heaven Fred can hear my compliments, I hope so. Dear Fred You were a giant talent and enriched my existence through your music, Fare Thee Well.
Recently a new list of the 50 greatest films ever made was complied by experts. Usurping the past favorite Citizen Kane was a newly elected film, Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Two undeniably great motion pictures that have something in common, both of them were scored by Bernard Herrmann! Herrmann had worked with Welles in Radio back in NYC and went to Hollywood with his Mercurey Theater compatriots.
His first film score was Citizen Kane, his last was Taxi Driver, he died right after the Christmas Eve scoring session. The Taxi Driver score is one of the all time greats and it seemed Herrmann was heading into new uncharted waters with this score, if he had lived who knows what he would have come up with. The use of the harp and snare drum is so cool. I wonder if the snare was influenced by Gene Palma’s presence in the film, he is the Drummer Man, a fixture on midtown streets back in the 70’s, he’d call out the name of a jazz drummer “Louis Belson” and hit a representative lick.”Buddy Rich”, “Gene Krupa” one day his snare drum was stolen, he just played on a mailbox. NYC was full of characters back then.
But here listen to Herrmann’s theme from VERTIGO.
And here is the theme fromTAXI DRIVER.
This is a film I’ve heard about for many years and now finally it can be seen, thanks to Netflix streaming. Written by the great Terrence Malick a couple years before he directed his masterpiece Badlands, Deadhead Miles is a paean to the open road, a picaresque tale of two and eventually one traveler. That one traveler is played by Alan Arkin, a terrific performance and one of the weirdest Southern accents ever. Arkin is the driver of the big rig of destiny. Beautiful cinematography, 35mm, rich color,awe inspiring landscapes, 1971 locations make this movie a kind of low ball visual feast. And a cool country music score, by Tom T. Hall. A great supporting cast, including some real gems.
But the reason I knew about this movie is that a friend of mine worked on it. Bud Smith, great editor of such films as The Exorcist, Putney Swope, Cat People, Zoot Suit, Sorcerer, Personal Best and many other films, told me about his time on Deadhead Miles. Bud was hired to edit the film, he stayed in Los Angeles while the crew shot on location and sent the film back. Bud cut the film as it came in. At the end of the shoot the director took a few weeks off to recuperate from the rigors of a road movie. When he came into the editing room Bud was ready with his first cut of the movie. They screened it. The director said,” Can you take that all apart and put it back in dailies?” Bud said, ” You mean there’s nothing in there that you like?” ” Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.” “Well, I guess you got the wrong guy to work on your film.” And with that Bud left. Tony Bill , the producer, wisely duped Bud’s cut before having it disassembled and after a little while Mr. Bill fired the director. The new editor used Bud’s original cut for a lot of the film which then languished in obscurity until now. So check it out, a unique film.
The great R&B music maven has passed on. Johnny Otis was a colossal influence on American music from the 40’s till now. He discovered many great talents and influenced, inspired many others. Like James The Godfather Of Soul” Brown who got his seminal funk guitar player, Jimmy Nolan, from Johnny’s band. Frank Zappa recalled going to Johnny’s Rock n’Roll shows at El Monte’s Legion Stadium. I always thought Zappa’s signature mustache was a nod to Johnny’s facial fuzz.
Johnny with Don and Dewey, that’s Don SugarCane Harris on the left
When FZ was makingPeaches in Regalia he asked Johnny to get him Sugar Cane Harris to play on the album. Johnny did, although FZ had to pay SugarCane’s bail, and Johnny’s son Shuggie played on it as well. Zappa returned the favor by getting Johnny a contract with Kent records for his great Cold Shot album.
Johnny with his son , incipient guitar genius Shuggie
Johnny was a white kid who grew up in a black neighborhood and basically lived as a black man. Black people assumed he was black, even my mailman, an ex-jazz drummer, told me that when he was a kid The Johnnie Otis TV show was the first time he saw black musicians on TV. Johnnie had a hit with Harlem Nocturne with his big band, then Willie and The Hand Jive with his Rock/ R&B outfit, and he would have been rich if he had gotten his fair share of Hound Dog, the original version of which he produced for Big Mama Thornton, but Leiber and Stoller ripped him off on a technicality. Farewell Great Johnny O, we all here on Earth will miss you but we’re all better off for your having been here.
Well I went to Disney Hall to see the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari accompanied by Clark Wilson on the mighty Disney Hall Organ. What a disappointment! Some moron left the lights on in the concert hall, this is a movie, they are supposed to be screened in the dark, if you don’t understand that fundamental rule of showmanship DO NOT screen films in your facility. Also although Mr. Wilson is a very good performer, the music was WAY TOO LOW! By that I mean it wasn’t Loud Enough! Here is an instrument the size of a giant Sequoia and played at less than the volume of a single trumpet. What a waste! I wanted to hear and feel the thundering bass of that magnificent instrument, some clown homogenized the hell out of what should have been an enjoyable evening. Also the tickets were WAY TOO EXPENSIVE! On top of which they charged an $8.50 fee per ticket for ordering online, then $9 to park. The audience was 99% white, Occupy Wall Street should occupy this concert Hall. Frank Gehery, this was a travesty of what your amazing space and instrument should be used for. One last note, Mr. Wilson gave a speech before the screening on the history of live music accompanying silent films and how some of the more famous organists wound up in Hollywood composing music for studio pictures. He mentioned Carl Stalling, who worked at Warner Bros. writing music for their cartoons. But Carl Stalling did not write Powerhouse as Mr. Wilson stated, it was written by Raymond Scott, composer and synthesizer inventor.
The late, great Raymond Scott
Another rare discovery on Netflix streaming, the 1974 Grand Prize Winner of the Cannes Film Festival, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Arabian Nights or Il fiore delle mille e una notte. I saw this film on it’s initial release back in 1975 in NYC and this is the first time I’ve watched it since then, I started watching it around midnight last night and couldn’t turn it off, I was so caught up in it’s mystic spell of storytelling, just like the caliph who can’t bring himself to kill Scherezade because he wants to hear how her story turns out.
It took a lot of courage for Pasolini to travel to these exotic locals (Yemen, Ethiopia, etc.) for one he was homosexual and in some of these places at that time that was punishable by death. He got the creme de la creme of Italian film artisans to work on the film, costumes-Danilo Donati, Set Design- Dante Ferretti, Editing- Nino Baragli, Music Ennio Morricone, Camera-Giuseppe Ruzzolini.
Pasolini and his intrepid crew penetrated hermetic societies, filming in locations that had never been seen by Western audiences, these places are like something out of a dream, it imbues the film with a sense of poetry and magic, bringing the intertwined tales of the Arabian Nights to life in a primal, savage, beautiful way. It is interesting to compare it with Korda’s Thief Of Bagdad,they both spring from the same source and have similar scenes, the prince transformed to an animal, discovering a princess in her garden, taking on a beggar’s clothing, but Arabian Nights tells the tales in a more authentic way, truer to the original. Pasolini was fascinated with the early roots of the novel, picaresque tales of travelers, collections of anecdotes that gave rise to the novels form. The Decameron and The Canterbury Tales come to mind, storytelling at it’s most basic interpreted by a 20th Century poet. A beautiful work of Art by a great artist. Check it out.
Here is another Netflix find,The Libertine. An Italian sex film from 1968, directed by Pasquale Festa Campanile (writer of such classics as Rocco and His Brothers and The Leopard) starring the lovely Cathrine Spaak and Jean-Louis Trintignant, it features a wonderful jazzy score by Armando Trovaioli. The sets are super groovy 60’s Italian style modernity. Frank Wolf appears as a dentist and Phillippe LeRoy as a tennis instructor, both of these actors were in a lot of Italian films from that period. Wolf’s most noteworthy role is in Once Upon A Time in the West as the doomed patriarch. LeRoy is featured in Fernando DiLeo’s Milano Calibro 9 as a killer out for revenge. Check it out for some super cool 60’s fun.
