Decoding John Ford

Every Thursday I've set aside an hour to listen to TCM's latest podcast in their "The Plot Thickens" series. Right now they're doing a 7-part series on John Ford...and it's terrific.

It's a fine primer on the man we've been highlighting in our "The History of John Ford" series.

 

Pixar: To Infinity and Beyond

I have something to post, but best to do that after recording a podcast for The Lamb on Sunday.

Instead, an entry for the Audio-Visual Department, something I do rarely these days (as they have to be really special...and, hopefully, have a long shelf-life on the internet. This salute to Pixar from Ash Arnold would appear to have both of those qualities:

"Wow"

Plimpton: Shootout at Rio Lobo

I've been doing very little of these "A-V Department" posts, because one of the things I wanted to do with this particular movie blog is to keep it "pure," just writing—and not filling it with, well, "filler," because I needed to put a post up and a YouTube video is handy.

But, this television special I remember from my youth, featuring Walter Mitty-ish writer George Plimpton doing hour long specials about his "tough jobs" kind of journalism which were the staple of his writings.

In this one, he does some acting—he actually would do more later in his career, usually playing foppish intellectual caricatures—in a bit part in a John Wayne western. 

Well, not just any "John Wayne western"—this one is being directed by Howard Hawks, the last movie he would make, in fact, Rio Lobo, which is sort of the third of his "variations of a theme on Rio Bravo." In fact, the story goes that when Hawks approached Wayne about it, Wayne asked "Do I get to play the drunk this time?"

I've got a couple posts about Hawks coming up, and I thought it might be nice for you to see the man in action.

The video may start out annoyingly for some as it still has the color bars and 1 k tone at the beginning of the video. The show actually starts about 26 seconds in.

A Funny Thing Happened...

Not too many people know that the Zucker Brothers spoof Airplane! was "inspired by" another film called Zero Hour! (1957), but not too many people have seen that earlier film, directed by Hall Bartlett, based on a teleplay by Arthur Hailey (who would eventually write the novel "Airport"). YouTuber Mason Wood has done a meticulous job of cutting in between the two movies to show just how much Airplane! fed off Zero Hour! and it is very fun to watch. 

Don't Make a Scene (Sing-Along Month Edition): Moulin Rouge!

The Story: Harmony (noun): 1.  agreement; accord; harmonious relations. 2. the simultaneous combination of tones, esp. when blended into chords pleasing to the ear; chordal structure, as distinguished from melody and rhythm.

One of the things missing in most modern movies these days (possibly because audiences might find it "corny") is "the sing-along," where a group of characters participate in a collective musical performance that shows they can work together as a group to a common purpose.  Corny?  Maybe.  But it's a great audio-visual short-hand for communicating a dramatic idea—the resolving of differences.  Just as an orchestra can combine rhythm, brass, and strings to a unified whole, so, too, can disparate personalities and talents come together to create a sum greater than the parts.  We see this work in music groups  all the time, and there's no more obvious example in the movies than the Beatles documentary Let It Be, where the four writer-musicians bicker and back-bite, but manage to put it all together in their final concert on the Apple Studio roof-top, a meshing performance that shows just how good they could be.

This month, in our "Don't Make a Scene" section, we'll present four sing-alongs from movies that display dramatically, through music, the putting-aside of differences in the creation of a unified effort—harmony.
And as music is the important element here, and really doesn't work one note at a time, we will temporarily dispense with the usual frame-by-frame breakdowns, and present the scenes in their full 24 frames per second vitality.

The past two weeks (with -Only Angels Have Wings and Rio Bravo), we looked at how the director Howard Hawks used group sing-alongs as a dramatic to show the mending of differences to get everyone "on the same page"—ebven if it is sheet music.

It doesn't happen so often anymore.  Audiences don't have the patience for it, or don't "buy" it, although Paul Bettany and Russell Crowe may perform string instruments together in Master and Commander, or it may show up, inevitably in musicals, like the Broadway adaptations or Disney.

Or Moulin Rouge!

A lot of people don't like this one (with that hysterical "hate, hate hate" kind of dislike), and it's semi-understandable: it's silly, and high-flung, operatic in tone with the lowliest of song-forms, the rock-song. It's edited much too fussily and extravagantly (with attention paid to rhythm more than continuity) and it borrows from so many plots ("La bohème," hello!) and eviscerates so many rock songs that purists of any stripe yank out hanks of hair at the glee with which Baz Luhrmann and company pay no respect in this giddy kaleidoscopic romp of a movie-musical.

Yeah..."whatever."  The artists got paid...and the result sure is fun.

What I'm looking at this week is the very complicated sequence that is known as the "Elephant Love Medley," which features Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman singing full-bore into each other's faces bits and pieces of songs from sources diverse as The Beatles (and Paul McCartney), Phil Collins, Elton John, David Bowie, Kiss, Dolly Parton, U2, Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes, and Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes.  It's the classic call-and-response of rock numbers where the romantic and the cynic parry back and forth, and the two only come together to sing a song unchanged and unexpurgated at Paul McCartney's "Silly Love Songs."  I remember rolling my eyes when that one came up, but its usage is fairly brilliant because it has both the romantic and cynical arguments built into it, then the two come to a meeting of hearts and minds (with a burst of heart-shaped CGI sparkle at the down-beat) to sing together in harmony.  It works, both in the foreground presentation and the background drama, and spectacularly well. 

Next week: The same thing, but quieter, sweeter and simpler.

Don't Make a Scene (Sing-Along Month Edition): — Only Angels Have Wings

The Story: Harmony (noun): 1.  agreement; accord; harmonious relations. 2. the simultaneous combination of tones, esp. when blended into chords pleasing to the ear; chordal structure, as distinguished from melody and rhythm.

One of the things missing in most modern movies these days (possibly because audiences might find it "corny") is "the sing-along," where a group of characters participate in a collective musical performance that shows they can work together as a group to a common purpose. Corny? Maybe.  But it's a great audio-visual short-hand for communicating a dramatic idea—the resolving of differences. Just as an orchestra can combine rhythm, brass, and strings to a unified whole, so, too, can disparate personalities and talents come together to create a sum greater than the parts. We see this work in music groups  all the time, and there's no more obvious example in the movies than the Beatles documentary Let It Be, where the four writer-musicians bicker and back-bite, but manage to put it all together in their final concert on the Apple Studio roof-top, a meshing performance that shows just how good they could be.

Over the next four weeks in our "Don't Make a Scene" section, we'll present four sing-alongs from movies that display dramatically, through music, the putting-aside of differences in the creation of a unified effort—harmony.
And as music is the important element here, and really doesn't work one note at a time, we will temporarily dispense with the usual frame-by-frame breakdowns, and present the scenes in their full 24 frames per second vitality.

Howard Hawks was the master of this musical sub-text (he was a master of sub-text, period).  He used music, not only for its intrinsic entertainment value, but also to infer dramatic points that moved the story along.

Take this scene from his terrific —Only Angels Have Wings.  In it, a group of pilots, charged with delivering mail and supplies by the only means possible—by air—battle the elements, all of them—Earth, Wind, Fire and Water—and the existential situation they have undertaken.  The work is dangerous and competitive, and, as in war, if they lose one of their colleagues, little time is spent mourning the dead.  The work goes on, and though the danger remains—those deaths emblematic of it—one doesn't falter, best to keep on going.  Death happens every day; there's no use slowing the living because of it.

Into this environment lands Bonnie Lee (Jean Arthur), who finds this attitude cruel, uncivilized and brutal.  To the pilots, it is what it is—survival.  And her sentimentality risks everything.  So, she's put through the gauntlet, and emerges a little beat-up, slapped around metaphorically (in a quid pro quo for the physical one delivered to group leader Jeff (Cary Grant).  And rather than state the obvious ("Yeah, you were right, I was wrong, I see the error of my ways and I'm sorry"), she inserts herself back into the group, and participates in a group-effort.  It's subtle, unpretentious, and it gets the story-telling heavy lifting done, even if audiences don't recognize it.  That the song is an up-beat version of "One of These Days" (the next line is "you're gonna miss me, Daddy") is just the slightly ironic-tasting cherry on top.

And for that, she gets the highest compliment that can be bestowed in a Hawks film.  She is newly greeted...as "a professional."

Action!

John Barry

John Barry Pendergrast, OBE, died Sunday January 30, 2011 at the age of 77. The film composer, who scored over 60 films, won, collectively, five Academy awards for Best Original Score and Best Original Song, making him the most awarded Oscar Briton.  I first became aware of him from his work on the James Bond series of films, whose title songs could be counted on to be played on the radio with every new Bond movie released in the 1960's.  But, there was more to Barry than Bond, much more, although his music left an indelible mark on that series (and that subsequent composer David Arnold utilized in his Bond scores).  One of these days, Arnold might write one as good as Barry wrote from the beginning (that's not a criticism; Barry was that good and that quick a study).

In 1971, in conjunction with the release of Diamonds Are Forever, the United Artists Records unit released a double album of ten years worth of Barry music, culled from the soundtracks.  I snatched it up as a bargain and played it constantly, probably driving my family nuts, with what Barry called his "million-dollar Mickey Mouse music."  But, that one album was a kind of gateway drug to the world of Barry's lush melodies and sultry orchestrations in melancholy minor keys.

It wasn't enough to have the compilation release, I had to know what else he wrote for the Bonds, and then, I snatched up his other releases (as rare as soundtrack releases were in the 1960's, Barry could get recordings made—his Goldfinger soundtrack had, the industry noticed, knocked The Beatles' A Hard Day's Night soundtrack from the #1 position of the album charts).  I've been collecting John Barry soundtracks ever since, in whatever style he chose to dabble in, Kentonesqe jazz or Gregorian chant.

As he got older, especially after re-orchestrating his music for symphony orchestra for a concert, his sound became less eclectic in orchestration, favoring strings and simple melodies with sophisticated counter-melodies that sometimes equaled the signature tune. The tempo slowed down a bit. His pedigree in films would vary wildly, veering between scoring "Love Among the Ruins" with Katherine Hepburn and Laurence Olivier, and Star Crash with Caroline Munro and Marjoe Gortner. And he could be persuaded to do a Bond if the timing was right. He was an A-list composer, always. And if Barry couldn't be had, Barry sound-alikes were sought...like Michael Giacchino's affectionate tribute to the Barry (and Mancini) style in The Incredibles.

But, there was only one John Barry. You could tell when there was a Bond film scored by somebody else. No matter how good they were, there was always something a little "off." Part of the veneer of the series was gone when Barry wasn't doing the music...it was too "on the nose," or not sophisticated enough...Barry's scores seemed timeless; the other guys were faddish.

But, it is Barry's music that is important. Here are some selections (where I could, wedded to the original films sections), all very different in style, from across his career, starting with the lush string arrangements he preferred later in life.

And, of course, there's Bond, combining exoticism, excitement, and a sly humor—"million dollar Mickey Mouse music:"

This is my favorite piece of music he composed—for the Nicholas Roeg film Walkabout:

John Barry 1933-2011. Bravo.

Eyes of Hitchcock

Seems so obvious, but here's a "Supercut" of Hitchcock's obsession with eyes.

The Loudest Silence is When the Laughter...Stops

I hate...hate with a great PASSION...writing obituaries. It's tempting sometimes. It's especially tempting when an actor or director who's given you great joy dies. 
I wept when John Wayne died—so much so I had to pull over my car as I was driving when the announcement came over the news. 
When Stanley Kubrick died, I thought "He can't die! That's impossible! He's Stanley Kubrick!"

But they all die and the works they've left behind live on, the best and most descriptive of tombstones, letting us know that they lived...and should be noticed.

Now, Robin Williams committed suicide.  There will be the inevitable voices saying that it was the coward's way out.  They will judge and they will condemn.  That usually pisses me off when somebody says that.  But, not with Williams.  If I got pissed off, I'd miss the laughter.  And one should always embrace the joy, no matter the circumstances.

And that's how you beat depression.

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VIDEO ESSAY: Robin Williams 1951 - 2014 from Nelson Carvajal on Vimeo.