Musings On The Music In The Coen Brothers’ Movies: Part III

Ethan Coen, T. Bone Burnett, and Joel Coen share a laugh in the recording studio during the sessions for INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS.

The Coen brothers’ newest film, INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS is one of their most musically minded movies so I’ve been taking a chronological look back at the songs and scores of the soundtracks throughout their fine filmography.

Part I covered BLOOD SIMPLE through FARGO: PART I: From the Dark Debut to the Snowblind Breakthrough (1984-1996).

Part II covered THE BIG LEBOWSKI through NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN: PART II: From a Movie Mix-tape Made By The Dude to a Muted De-Countrified Terrain With Some Soggy Mountain Boys Songs on the Side (1998-2007).

This update will carry us through BURN AFTER READING to their latest film which is now playing at an indie art house near you

Part III: From a Star Studded Spy-style Lark to a Dark Folksinging Farce (2008-2013)



The Coen brother’s follow-up to their Oscar-winning new fangled Western NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN was a lowbrow lark with a highbrow cast and production values: 2008’s BURN AFTER READING. George Clooney (returning for his third film with the brothers), Frances McDormond (her sixth), Brad Pitt, John Malkovich, Richard Jenkins, and Tilda Swinton find themselves caught up in a kooky Washington D.C.-set caper involving some not so intelligent members of the intelligence community.

Composer Carter Burwell, returning for his 12th film with the Coens, was called upon by Joel Coen to provide a score that’s “something big and bombastic, something important sounding but absolutely meaningless.” In a 2008 interview with Filmfocus.com, Burwell commented:

“I liked the idea that the composer is as deluded as the characters so that his soundtrack fits the movie the characters think they are in, rather than the actual film we are watching.”

The effect works wonders with the film’s dark thriller aesthetics right from the opening percussion-enhanced get-go in the Google Earth-esque credits opening (aptly named “Earth Zoom (In)” on the film’s issued soundtrack. (There's a “Earth Zoom (Out)” at the end too).

 
After the minimal music accompaniment in NO COUNTRY, BURN AFTER READING gave us a full wall-to-wall Burwell score that was singled out by many critics including Wendy Ide from The Times who wrote: “Carter Burwell’s brilliant score is the most paranoid piece of film music since Quincy Jones’s neurotic soundtrack for THE ANDERSON TAPES - it’s particularly well-judged as it brings a gravity to a collection of characters who we could otherwise dismiss as numbskulls and nincompoops.”



Burwell (again in Filmfocus.com) though had a different film in mind for inspiration: “What I was referencing was [the score for] SEVEN DAYS IN MAY, which is almost entirely percussion and has lots of snare drums and marching sounds. But the [percussion in the BURN AFTER READING] score wasn’t about the military but instead a sense of grandiosity.”

Despite good reviews and respectable box office, BURN AFTER READING has sort of faded away in the years since its release. Re-watching it for this piece I found that it holds up nicely. Sure, it can seem like a throwaway – i.e. the Coens taking a silly breather between bigger statements - but with the amusing actions of its A-list cast and Burwell’s satirically over serious score I think it’s definitely a keeper.

Burwell and the brothers, Coen, re-united the following year for A SERIOUS MAN, an even darker comedy that focused on the trials and tribulations of a Minnesotan physics professor (Michael Stuhlbarg) in the late ‘60s.

Autobiographical elements from the Coen brothers’ Jewish upbringing were obviously in the mix. The inclusion of three Jefferson Airplane songs on the soundtrack leads me to believe one of the brothers got stoned at their bar mitzvah just like Gobnik’s son (Aaron Wolff) does in one of the film’s best scenes.

Jefferson Airplane’s “Somebody To Love” appears, as I wrote in my original review of the film, as “a driving force throughout the movie.” Firstly, when the credits slowly start to hit the screen after the odd Yiddish-language opening scene, Burwell’s Stomp-style percussion segues into the 1967 Jefferson Airplane classic. Then we see Wolff listening to the song on his portable transistor radio earplug while sitting in his classroom. The song gets broadcast to the rest of the class when the kid’s instructor angrily yanks the earplug out while confiscating the radio.

Burwell discussed this with movingimagesource.us: “The idea was that during this transition from the shtetl to the Jefferson Airplane, you're traveling through the ear canal of this boy in Hebrew school. It’s a dark and mysterious tunnel, and when you finally get to the end it turns out that it’s the earpiece of his portable radio through which he's listening to Jefferson Airplane. That was the first piece of music I wrote for the film.”

Burwell also said of the film: “The script had specific musical references: Jefferson Airplane, F Troop, Sidor Belarsky. Belarsky was a Jewish opera singer who also made some Yiddish records, and there's one Yiddish song that [the Coens] just loved. These songs were in the script, and that was basically what I had to go on at first. Joel and Ethan had no suggestion about what the score should be. They just said, ‘Well, this is what you've got. You've got Jefferson Airplane and F Troop and Sidor Belarsky.’”’

A SERIOUS MAN’S soundtrack features 20 tracks - the aforementioned Jefferson Airplane song “Somebody To Love” along with the San Francisco band’s “Comin’ Back To Me” and “Today” join 17 tracks of Burwell’s scorings, mostly made up of spare harp, strings, and piano stylings.

While his son listens to Jefferson Airplane, Stuhlbarg’s put-upon professor puts Sidor Belarsky on the family parlophone in his downtime. Much of the film concerns Stuhlbarg trying to get in to see the rabbi emeritus, the famous Marshak in order to obtain some wisdom, but it’s his son Wolff who gets a sit-down with the senior rabbi (Alan Mandell) after the blitzed boy’s bar mitzvah. After some well measured silence, the rabbi slowly intones: “When the truth is found to be lies, and all the hope within you dies…” Yep, the opening couplet from “Somebody To Love.”



The rabbi then says “Then what? Grace Slick, Marty Balin, Paul Kantner, Jorma-something. These are the members of the Airplane!” The rabbi gives back the boy’s transistor radio and concludes: “Be a good boy.” Seems like the Coens are saying that the lyrics of a rock song hold just about as much meaning as any religious dogma does. Or something.

For TRUE GRIT, the Coen brothers’ 2010 adaptation of the novel not a remake of the 1969 John Wayne movie, Burwell explained to Variety that for the tale of a 14-year-old girl bent on avenging her father’s murder in the Old West: “I thought that hymns, or music that sounded like hymns, would remind you that what’s driving the whole story is a biblical sense of righteousness.”

“19th Century church music” was another way Burwell put it in the same interview, and that’s what’s all over TRUE GRIT especially in the 1888 hymn “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms,” which accounts for a fourth of the score. Iris Dement’s version of the song that accompanies the end credits isn’t available on the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack CD, but it’s available on the iTunes version of the release.

Other old timey hymns referenced in the orchestral score are “The Glory-Land Way” and “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” “Hold to God's Unchanging Hand,” and “Talk About Suffering.”

Of course, because the hymns are considered pre-composed music, the movie didn’t get any Oscar nomination action for its score but it did get nominated for just about everything else (Jeff Bridges’ great grizzled turn as Rooster Coogburn nagged him his first Best Actor Academy Award).

The film also features a vocal turn by Bridges on the 19th century folk song “Greer County Bachelor,” but don’t go expecting Bad Blake from CRAZY HEART here.

In his very favorable review of the soundtrack, Tom Jurek of Allmusic.com remarked: “Of the 14 collaborations between the Coens and Burwell, this is among the most unique and satisfying for its enfolding of historic music into modern composition.”

Burwell wouldn’t return for the filmmaking sibling’s next film, but for the Coen brothers’ other favorite musical collaborator, T. Bone Burnett, it was a project he was born to produce. 

Historic music is what the lead character of the Coen brothers’ 2013 film, INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS, says he pays his rent with: “If it’s never been new and it never gets old, it’s a folk song” he tells the audience at the Gaslight Café in 1961 Greenwich Village.

Trouble is, Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) has no home because he can’t afford to pay rent. Davis is loosely modeled on ‘60s folksinger Dave Von Ronk in his repertoire (Isaac’s Davis sings songs that Ronk covered like “Green, Green Rocky Road” and “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me”) his almost identical album cover, and, as Ilijah Wald writes on the Inside Llewyn Davis website “shares his background as a working class kid who split his life between playing guitar and shipping out in the Merchant Marine.”

Davis was once part of a folk singing duo, Timlin & Davis. Timlin’s vocal is provided by Marcus Mumford of Mumford & Sons on the soundtrack, but the character is not seen as he committed suicide before the events in the film. Justin Timberlake and Carey Mulligan portray a folk duo, Jim & Jean, based on the real life Jim and Jean (Jim Glover and Jean Ray) who were also one of the inspirations for Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara’s Mitch & Mickey characters in Christopher Guest’s A MIGHTY WIND.

One of the film’s catchiest moments, to Davis’s chagrin, occurs when Jim and Jean join Stark Sands as clean cut military man/folk singer Tom Nelson onstage to sing the popular folk song “Five Hundred Miles,” written by Hedy West. There also seems to be some Peter, Paul and Mary action in this bit.

Stark Sands’ Nelson is loosely based on folk singer Tom Paxton (confirmed by Nelson singsing Paxton’s “The Last Thing on My Mind” at the Gaslight), Ramblin’ Jack Elliot is represented by Al Cody (played by Girls’ Adam Driver), and John Goodman’s Roland Turner is somewhat based on Doc Pomus, who wrote the hits “Save The Last Dance For Me” and “This Magic Moment” (and was profiled in the biodoc A.K.A. DOC POMUS). Then again, some are surmissing that Goodman's Turner is modeled on Dr. John.

One thing many critics have agreed on is that one of the musical highlights of the film is “Please Mr. Kennedy,” a purposely hokey protest song written by Timberlake’s character that Davis reluctantly plays guitar and sings back-up on because he needs the money. The song is based on a few similar songs from the early ‘60s such as “Please Mr. Kennedy Don't Send Me Off to Vietnam” so this is why, as amusing and well performed as it is by Isaac, Timberlake, and Driver, the song won’t be eligible for an Oscar nomination.

As for the movie capturing the moment before Bob Dylan broke big, Dylan's name is never uttered in INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS but Benjamin Davis, a dead-on Dylan lookalike, credited as “Young Bob” takes the stage at the Gaslight towards the end to sing (actually lip synch to) Dylan’s “Farewell.” 



The song, one of many unreleased Dylan gems from that era, is overheard while Davis gets beaten up in the alley – a signifier of a coming sea change for sure. Incidentally the soundtrack has a different version of the song than is used in the film - a studio outtake of “Farewell” appears on the record while Dylan's Whitmark Demo version appears in the film.



Also significant is that Dylan's “Farewell,” which he adapted from the British folk ballad “Leaving of Liverpool”is a similar song and sentiment to “Fare The Well (Dink's Song),” which appears twice on the soundtrack. These songs about leaving one life for another encapsulate the themes that seem to be hiding under the cold surface of the film.



INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS is a good example of how the music in the Coen brothers movies continues to be as memorable, or sometimes more memorable, as the imagery, acting, and thorny themes in their colossal canon. Here’s hoping that one day they’ll actually do an old school people-break-out-in-song Hollywood musical, and add that to the genres they’ve tackled.

Until then they’ve given us, as Stephen Root says in O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU, some “fine a-pickin’ and a-singin’” Fare thee well for now.

More later…

INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS: The Film Babble Blog Review

Opening today at a indie art house near you:



INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS

(Dirs. Ethan & Joen Coen, 2013)

   

We first meet the protagonist of the Coen brothers' 16th film performing at the Gaslight Cafe in the Greenwich Village of the early '60s. Bathed in white light, Oscar Isaacs' Llewyn Davis beautifully sings the traditional folk song “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me” on the same stage that artists such as Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Phil Ochs, Dave Van Ronk, and Bob Dylan cut their musical teeth.



The film sets out to capture the moment right before Dylan exploded on the scene; before the '60s really became the '60s and there were only faint whiffs of the revolution to come in the air.



Davis is caught in a shaky place in his crumbling career - his partner in a folk singing duo (Timlin and Davis) commited suicide, his solo album (also named “Inside Llewyn Davis”) isn't selling, and he has no fixed abode or even a winter coat. Davis also gets the news that he got his friend Jim's (Justin Timberlake) wife Jean (Carey Mulligan) pregnant so he has to come up with the money for an abortion.



Oh, and there's a cat he's saddled with because he accidentally let it loose from the last place he crashed.



Yep, it looks like Llewyn's life is getting dumped on in the same 'what does it all mean' manner that previous Coen character Minnesotan physics professor Larry Gobnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) had to contend with in their next to last film A SERIOUS MAN (2008).



At least Davis has his music to help get him through, but they seem to be less and less comfort. Especially as the music others are making seem to be catching on much more - in one scene a despondent Davis watches disgusted as a Gaslight audience starts singing along with Mulligan, Timberlake, and Stark Sands as a clean cut military man/folksinger on Hedy West's “500 Miles.”



Seeking new management in the form of F. Murray Abraham as Bud Grossman (based on Dylan manager Albert Grossman), Davis goes on a road trip with a spaced out beat poet (Garret Hedlund) and a surly jazz musician (John Goodman).



It's a gas to see Goodman back in a Coen brothers film after well over a decade (his last was O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? in 2000) amusingly berating Davis, his music, and cat (“Is that part of your act? Every time you play a C major he pukes a hairball?”) from the back seat.



The film takes some troubling turns which I won't spoil in this extended side trip, but nothing that I grew weary of like I'm hearing in some other critics' grumblings.



I'm incredibly biased both because I'm a big Coen brothers fan and can follow them down just about any tangent no matter how seemingly meaningless, and because I'm a huge fan of the era they're meticulously depicting here.



The Coens and cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel, who they previously worked with on their segment for the short film anthology PARIS JE T' AIME (2006), used the iconic album cover of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan as an aesthetic reference point. The slightly faded blue and yellowish tint adds to the film authenticity in the exterior show covered street scenes, while the interior atmospheric lighting in the Gaslight bits made me feel like I was there at that historic time and place.



Despite the dead-on look of the film, and the wealth of great songs and performances throughout, INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS may still be a tough sell to some folks because its title subject can be a bit of a dick who doesn't seem to be going anywhere. There is a definite humanity to him as he tries to do the right thing whether its dealing with the angry Mulligan's pregnancy or taking care of the cat, but neither approaches real redemption.



There's a lot to the fact that the film begins and ends with the same scene, but from different angles and a notably different addition to the soundtrack the second time around, involving Davis getting beaten up by a mysterious stranger in an alley behind the Gaslight.



INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS may not be one of their all-time greats, but it's still one of the best films of year because the Coen brothers keenly capture the times right before they really went a-changin' and their week in the life of a failing troubadour premise explains precisely why somebody would want to beat up a folksinger.
 

More later...

Musings On The Music In The Coen Brothers' Movies: Part II

 

As the Coen brothers’ latest, INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS, is opening in my area tomorrow, I thought I’d re-post a two part piece I had written wrote for moviezeal.com a while back that chronologically covered the scores and songs of their filmography up until 2007. In addition, I'll be posting a Part 3 which will cover their films’ music from 2008 onward.



Part I covered from BLOOD SIMPLE to FARGO, so now let’s take a look at THE BIG LEBOWSKI through NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN.



PART II: From a Movie Mix-tape Made By The Dude to a Muted De-Countrified Terrain With Some Soggy Mountain Boys Songs on the Side (1998-2007)



In late 1997, not long it felt after the buzz of the awards and accolades for FARGO died down, a trailer appeared that announced the Coen brother’s next film was going to be a loud colorful comedy about an aging hippie bowler caught in, yep, another kidnapping caper! I know I was not alone when watching the preview in thinking “bring it on!”

 

THE BIG LEBOWSKI blew me away when I first saw it on the big screen with the music being no small part of the experience. Especially since the movie is wall to wall music – from the first frame to the end credits over 30 songs are heard in either fragments or filling entire scenes.



The issued soundtrack is the first of the Coens’ recordings to consist of songs - not composed tracks - with only one Carter Burwell original - “Technopop (Wie Glauben)” - That’s because there is almost no Burwell in the film – a bit of suspenseful strains to heighten the tension in the ransom drop-off sequence is the only bit I can find.



With A-list producer T. Bone Burnett brought in as “musical archivist” it’s apparent that the songs are where it’s at in the world of The Dude. In an interview in Entertainment Weekly at the time of the film’s release Ethan Coen said: “We were trying to find signature songs for each of the characters so the only thing [the songs] share is that nothing is particularly contemporary sounding. They’re all from previous eras, consistent with the characters, who had attitudes shaped by the ’60s, ’70s, or earlier.”



The movie begins with Bob Nolan’s immortal “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” underneath the rambling narration of Sam Elliot as “The Stranger” – simple enough, huh? The soft scratchy strings of “Tumbleweeds” accompany The Stranger nearly every time he appears, luring us onward into the tall tale, introducing us to “The Dude” (Jeff Bridges) as he shops for half and half at the grocery store Ralph’s.



After a classic cold opening involving the Dude’s rug getting defiled, Bob Dylan’s uncharacteristically catchy “The Man In Me” hits the screen set to a bowling montage credits sequence. “Oh, what a wonderful feeling” Dylan sings as we see bowling shoes getting sprayed, pins getting knocked down, and bowlers in a choreographed line hitting their marks in sweet succession. This obscure 1970 song from Dylan’s New Morning LP defines The Dude in all his off the cuff ramshackle charm – maybe the only Dylan song ever to have repeated “la la la la la la” lines.



We hear the song again later in the film as it’s on a tape in The Dude’s Walkman labeled: “A: Venice Beach League Playoffs 1987 B: BOB”. If you have the itch to actually hear the Dude sing “The Man In Me” – there is this YouTube clip of Jeff Bridges covering the song at a Lebowski Fest funnily enough.



The Dude also listens to CCR, usually when driving with bits of “Run Through The Jungle” and “Lookin’ Out My Back Door” rearing their swamp rock heads. He has the lone new song on the soundtrack by Elvis Costello (“My Mind Swings”) blaring in his headphones when he goes to the doctor – one of the odd musical pieces that doesn’t quite fit.



As for his musical background, The Dude worked as a roadie for Metallica (“bunch of assholes”) and hates the Eagles who he can’t abide playing on a cab stereo (“Peaceful Easy Feeling”). The Eagles are also interpreted by the Gypsy Kings in a standout scene that has a Spanish version of “Hotel California” assimilating itself as the theme song of minor character but pivotal rival bowler Jesus Quintella (John Turturro).



Musical motifs continue throughout – the millionaire Jeff Lebowski (David Huddleson) has Mozart’s “Requiem” on his hi-fi in an intense dark chamber scene. Daughter Maude Lebowski (Julianne Moore) has an eclectic collection of vinyl including the fictional Autobahn (which features Red Hot Chili Peppers’ basist Flea) – “their music is a sort of–ugh–techno-pop” she says. Another tuneful thematic treatment: pornographer Jackie Treehorn (Ben Gazzara) has Henry Mancini’s “Lucon” to suavely set his tone. Like a tuneful tumbleweed itself, Townes Van Zandt’s cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Dead Flowers” speaks volumes of all these folk as the film wraps up.



In their use of the many songs in THE BIG LEBOWSKI the Coens were coming too close to making a full throttle musical. Especially when you consider the central sequence, another dream-scene in which The Dude imagines a huge Bubsy Berkely-type musical number. Kenny Rogers and The First Edition’s “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)” serenades the Dude joining dancing girls in Roman garb with Maude Lebowski as their leader and a Saddam Hussein look-a-like. This rousing set piece incorporated from another era forecasted the Brother’s next phase.



On the horizon approaching fast was coming a plucky period piece in which the music mightily overshadowed the movie.

 



The soundtrack for O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? is the most successful soundtrack of all of their films – a #1 hit (certified 8 times platinum) on the Country and Soundtrack charts that inspired a concert tour (documented in Down From The Mountain) and earned a Grammy for Album of the Year (2000).



This time T. Bone Burnett was “Music Producer” with Burwell credited with “additional music” so again the songs take the center stage. Over 50 performers are listed as personnel on the soundtrack including Alison Kraus, The Stanley Brothers, Emmylou Harris, Tim O’Brien, Gillian Welch, the Fairfield Four, the Cox Family, and everybody else in the Americana roots genre available it looks like.



The film is a great screwball romp about escaped convicts (George Clooney, Tim Blake Nelson, John Turturro) making their way across Depression-period Mississippi. They befriend blues guitarist Tommy Johnson (Chris Thomas King) who claims to have sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads. Many folks have thought that this was based on Robert Johnson but there was a real Tommy Johnson who made the same claim.



Johnson's tunage, though, is supplied by Delta blues legend Skip James – King performs James’ “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues” in one scene. Johnson lends a hand when the wanted men form a makeshift band – The Soggy Bottom Boys. With Clooney lip-syching to Dan Tyminski’s vocal, they record a invigorated version of the standard “Man Of Constant Sorrow” that becomes a regional hit proving that life does a pretty fair impression of art every once in a while.



In a 2000 interview, when asked if he was a fan of country music by the British magazine Uncut, the normally elusive and ironic Joel Coen said he was but that “[the soundtrack is] not exactly country music. It’s American roots music – folk music, in a way – and there’s lots of different strands. In the movie there’s Delta blues, early mountain music, and gospel music. They’re all different but they all come from that time and that general area.”



The gospel must be stressed as much of the music in O BROTHER is spiritual. Prominent are such songs such as “Oh Death”, “Angel Band “, “Lonesome Valley”, and the beautiful rendition of the traditional “Down to the River to Pray” by Allison Kraus, who appears in the film. While Clooney has help from overdubs, Tim Blake Nelson takes lead vocal on “In The Jailhouse Now” – a reprieve from the heavy hymns dominating the proceedings.



Now that the Coens had taken on the stylings of an old school era and with the help of T. Bone Burnett put their stamp on an entire musical genre in the process it again looked like the right time to scale back. Minimalism, both movie and music-wise, was the order of the day on their next project.

Joel Coen told a reporter that their film the following year, THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE was “about a barber who doesn’t want to be a barber.” Shown in luxurious black and white (there are color versions of the film available in Europe and Japan), the film is another period piece taking place in 1949 Southern California. With Billy Bob Thornton as the barber we’re back to Burwell basics with no T. Bone track-picking involvement – which means spooky repeated piano figures and swelling string sections punctuating key plot points. 



Mind you these points are few – most of the movie plays with no music and often when music does appear, it lurks beneath the surface, a separate non-intertwining track. Apart from his tasteful cues Burwell conducts his muted orchestra through a few truncated Beethoven numbers – “Pathétique,” “Piano Sonata No. 25” and “Appassionata” respectively. 



Among Thornton’s hardships in this eccentric existential exercise is his longing to help Scarlett Johansen as a piano prodigy get recognized for her talent.



When told by a pretentious teacher (Adam Alexi-Malle) that she would make a good typist – “tap tap tap” – one can see Thornton’s tortured long face get longer and sense his heart sinking. The aforementioned classical pieces with smatterings of opera and big band bits are just blips on the radar of this soundtrack. Fittingly, THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE has a score that is barely there itself.

For the most conventional comedy they’ve made to date, 2003's INTOLERABLE CRUELTY has a soundtrack that, despite Burwell’s inspired contributions, is pretty indistinguishable from most rom-com platters. Tom Jones, Chuck Mangione, Edith Piaf, Simon & Garfunkel, (even a Melissa Manchester track!) all make for a bland background mix for a cozy cocktail party. Actually I’m sure that’s pretty much what they intended.

While I think the movie is better than its critical and commercial reception implies, I think the only really truly notable musical element is the credits sequence use of Elvis Presley’s “Suspicious Minds.” Summing up the theme of the entire escapade and providing the tone with some much needed punch, especially after the less than classic cold opening (maybe the worse first scene in the Coens’ canon), the King’s mature yet winking vocal on top of crudely animated cupid imagery works wonders for a few minutes at least. INTOLERABLE CRUELTY has few fans but I’ll go on record to say it’s not without its musical merits.

Back with T. Bone Burnett, the soundtrack for the Coens' 2004 comedy THE LADYKILLERS was a failed attempt to catch the O BROTHER lightning in a bottle a second time. Nevermind that the film is unnecessary on many fronts – as a remake, as a farcical retread, as an ensemble piece – it also just goes through the motions and never quite hits any stride. The spiritual old timey leanings here just call attention to the ground already trodden.



The soundtrack alone though is a nice listen, split between “Trouble” songs (“Trouble of this World,” “Trouble In, Trouble Out,” and “Troubled, Lord I’m Troubled” by the Nappy Roots and Bill Landford respectively) and the “Let Your Light Shine On Me” songs, there is an infectious unity, but these flourishes come off cynical and smarmy in the context of the flimsy on-screen shenanigans. Still, the Coens’ brand of cinematic silliness does redeem itself in some surprisingly sincere segments in THE LADYKILLERS, as few and far between as they are.



There are only 16 minutes of music in the Coen brothers Oscar winning Cormac McCarthy adaptation of NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. Burwell sans piano uses singing bowls and Buddhist metal bells to make his most minimalist score ever. The result is the first Coen movie to have no issued soundtrack. There are 2 Hispanic songs heard in the movie – “Puño de Tierra” and “Las Mañanitas” – but like the almost non-existent backing in THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE, movie-goers should be instantly forgiven for not remembering them.



In methods mostly circular – like the old timer said in RAISING ARIZONA – the Coens and collaborator Carter Burwell have tracked and back-tracked over styles and genres, fearlessly leaving marks on the movie and musical map for pop culture appraisers and explorers to chart for ages to come.



They again will have the chance to hit the mark coming this fall with their next film, BURN AFTER READING *. ‘Til then we’ll have their scenes and songs to soothe our cinematic souls. Any one of the tracks I talked about may be the “Same Old Song” like the Four Tops sang in BLOOD SIMPLE, but they sure have a different meaning since the Coen brothers came along.



* This was written in 4/08. 



Coming soon: Part III: From a Star Studded Spy-style Lark to a Dark Folksinging Farce (2008-2013)


More later...

Musings On The Music In The Coen Brothers' Movies: Part I

In anticipation of the Coen brothers’ 16th feature film INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS (opening wide Friday), I am revisiting a 2 part article I wrote for moviezeal.com in 2008 concerning the music in their movies, and I’ll be posting a third part update covering their films’ soundtracks in the years that have followed.

INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS, about a fictional early '60s folksinger, may be one of their most musically minded movies, but as you can read here music has always been a major factor in their work.

PART I: From the Dark Debut to the Snowblind Breakthrough (1984-1996)



Even the most casual Coen brothers fan has to know how pivotal and perversely precise their soundtracks have to be to match their meticulously crafted movies. To this credit – Carter Burwell, composer on all of their films, has consistently provided scores that are purposely powerful or seethingly subtle (or both) in the fashion of the old time masters like Bernard Herrmann (the Mercury Theater radio shows, CITIZEN KANE, all of Hitchcock’s films, etc.) yet with his own unique and knowingly contemporary edge.

Scores aside, the Coens have utilized many famous and obscure songs from all genres in a Scorsesean manor - jukebox or sing-along tunes with familiar voices and beats that set tones, imply back-stories, and get us toe-tappingly into their tall tales. So let’s look back and listen up to the music in the entire Coen’s canon starting with their cheap but brilliant 1984 debut.

The beginning of the Coen Brothers’ filmography is also the beginning of Carter Burwell’s filmography. A New York born Harvard graduate, Burwell brought his classical piano expertise into the tension building circular spine-tingling key cues in BLOOD SIMPLE.

Discovered in a club playing in a band he joined in college by the Coens’ sound mixer Lee Orloff, Burwell’s sensibilities fit into the brother’s world right off the bat. Echoing many of their actors and collaborators, Burwell commented: “They let me do what I wanted to do. I didn’t get a lot of specific instructions from them.” Because of this, Burwell's piano and ambient synthesizer sounds haunt every dark corner of BLOOD SIMPLE.

Meanwhile the central barroom location has the sound system blaring such standards as the Four Tops “It’s The Same Old Song” (which also plays over the end credits), “Louie Louie” performed by Toots and the Mayals, and Patsy Cline’s “Sweet Dreams” which lighten up the proceedings a bit. The mixture of sinister keyboard stylings with hand-plucked seemingly ironically placed songs had Burwell and the brothers off and running…but in a different direction than anybody could’ve ever predicted.

The Country-fried whistling and yodeling backing the opening sequence of RAISING ARIZONA (1987) declare immediately that we are in different territory – a fast paced screwball comedy terrain, that is, populated by mostly outlaw oddballs who all speak in an eccentric elevated manner of elocution. So to speak, it only seems natural that these folks caught up in a kooky kidnapping caper would be musically accompanied by wizened back porch banjo with said whistlers and wailers. There are also scene washing organ strains and a prominently featured Pete Seeger sample (he’s the yodeler) from “Goofing Off Suite”, originally recorded in 1955. With nothing on the soundtrack even remotely resembling “incidental,” Burwell again proved he was on the same twisted plain as his bosses, but next time out they were going to up the ante.

For the Coens’ third film, MILLER’S CROSSING (1990), the brothers and Burwell decided that it had to have an orchestral score. There was just one problem – Burwell knew nothing about orchestral music. He said to an interviewer at the time that this didn’t faze them and that “I would learn orchestral film music and do it.” By doing so Burwell incorporated the Irish 16th century “Limerick’s Lamentation” into the main theme and the result is stultifying. Jazzy big-band numbers of the 1920’s era like Jelly Roll Morton’s “King Porter Stomp” help illuminate the illusion of the Daschel Hammet derived ambiance.

None of these flourishes though quite beat the incredible scene in which mob boss Leo (Albert Finney) annihilates approaching assassins with a Tommy gun (a Thompson submachine gun) to Frank Patterson’s “Danny Boy”- one of the best and most affecting uses of a pre-existing track in the entire Coens’ canon. Burwell’s focused grasp of orchestral music foreshadows the sweeping build-ups that he would spectacularly develop down one such icy Mid-Western road years later, but I won’t get ahead of myself. The side paths down a wretched writer’s block and the jump over the Hudsucker hurl also predict even later minimalist uses of music.

 

By BARTON FINK’s opening credit shot, Burwell has got the orchestral deal down without compromising the spare spooky piano tinkling one bit. As another of the Coens’ misunderstood outings, involving a neurotic pretentious playwright (John Turturro) on the brink of either a literary masterpiece or a literal breakdown.



1991's BARTON FINK has at first what appears to be a by-the-book score full of appropriate bombast alternating with below the surface tones and measures fitting to each character and plot manipulation. A closer listen reveals a sound effect-ridden backing track with typewriter noises intertwined with odd piano tunings and an affecting everything-including-the-kitchen-sink cacophony. 



The title character is hopelessly attuned to every little distraction so the score and soundtrack is right there with him. On the song front “Old Black Joe” is drunkenly sung by John Mahoney and Barton dances his ass off after finishing his script, celebrating at a U.S.O. big band dance deal. Otherwise the overlaying doom is pretty obvious in every measure of Burwell’s symphonic sympathy.

Unfairly dissed at the time of its release in 1994, THE HUDSUCKER PROXY has gained many supporters over the years but still, in my opinion, has much more re-appraising to go through. One aspect of the Coens’ return to screwball comedy that barely anybody mentions is its score. That’s a shame, because it’s grand and majestic with a compelling compassion for the characters even at their most pathetic.

Reportedly loosely based on the “Adagio” and “Phrygia” movements of the ballet Spartacus by Aram Khachaturian, the music swells with proper punctuation throughout Tim Robbins’ crazy climb up the corporate ladder. A few perfect-for-period Duke Ellington numbers make the cut too but the icing on the Coens’ cake musically is the cameo by Peter Gallagher as fictitious crooner Vic Tenneta who briefly steals one nightclub scene with his rendition of “Memories Are Made Of This.”
 

Don’t call it a comeback, but FARGO undoubtedly not only reclaimed their acclaim, lifting the Coen Brothers from cult-only status, while making them a household name. Burwell’s glorious moving fanfare was no small part of the film’s success. In a review of the soundtrack, Jonathan Broxton of Movie Music U.K. wrote “Cleverly, the main theme is based in part on an old Norwegian folk tune (many of Minnesota and Dakota’s inhabitants are of Scandinavian descent, hence the unusual surnames in the film).”

As the film begins, a plaintive mandolin makes out the movement’s melody over the bogus disclaimer “THIS IS A TRUE STORY…” As the screen dissolves into a completely blank white shot of a snow covered landscape the tempo rises with a violin floating the main theme over the black credits (and a lone bird in the distance flying through the flurry) aided by what sounds like a xylophone. As a vehicle emerges over a hill in the center of the frame, defining the horizon, the percussion pounds in and the entire orchestra comes alive. A stark but stirring and excellent beginning in a career filled with excellent beginnings.

As the vehicle’s owner Jerry Lundegard (William H. Macy) walks into a dive bar, Merle Haggard’s “Big City” is playing on a jukebox. It fades as he meets with shady types played by Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare to plan yet another Coen Bros. Kidnapping caper.

Except for some automobile dealership muzak, thrash metal on Buscemi and Stormare’s car radio, and the theme from The Tonight Show blaring from a hotel room TV, there are long stretches with no music at all, so when Burwell’s crew comes in they really sting.

Stinging as in fierce piercings of strings in the scene in which the kidnappers break into the Lundegard’s house and abduct Jean (Kristin Rudrüd). The main theme, used sparingly, haunts the bleak moments of the protagonists as time and tension collide. Fittingly enough, the music mostly leaves Frances McDormand’s Oscar-winning Marge Gunderson character alone almost as if out of respect.

Standing apart from the score and other background sounds is the odd cameo by José Feliciano singing his 1983 minor hit “Let’s Find Each Other Tonight” which Buscemi (apparently on a date-night break from the caper) had enough class to take his hired whore…sorry, escort…to see at the Celebrity Room at the Carlton Hotel. On the quality of the room Buscemi says to his date: “Depends on the artist – José Feliciano, you got no complaints.” No complaints at all on that touch, the intensely impactful soundtrack, and the rest of one of the finest Coen Brothers’ films.

Coming soon: Part II: From a Movie Mix-tape Made By The Dude to a Muted De-Countrified Terrain With Some Soggy Mountain Boys Songs on the Side (1998-2007)



More later...