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 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...

Get Me A Cat That Can Act!: 10 Great Movie Cats (Live Action)

If you’ve seen any of the trailers, TV spots, or
posters for the Coen brothers’ newest film INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS (opening wide this Friday) you know that it prominently features an orange
tabby cat.

As I live in a home full of cats (both our own and fosters as my wife and I volunteer for the Raleigh cat
rescue Alley Cats & Angels), I thought it would be fun to kick
off the new year with a good ole top 10 list, or a piece of “listicle linkbait” as some cynical critics call it, this time spotlighting other
felines that stole their respective movies.



Of course, some of these cat characters were played
by more than one cat but as the Village Voice’s Stephanie Zacharek wrote in her
review of INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS, “Technically, we’re talking about several cats, but let's look the other way for the sake of movie magic.” Also, as this post’s heading indicates, I’m excluding cartoon or CGI-ed cats. So don’t go looking for Garfield or the Cheshire Cat here. No cats who have overdubbed human voices either - so sorry, Sassy from HOMEWARD BOUND.

So here are 10 Great Movie Cats (Live Action):

1. Jonesy in ALIEN (and ALIENS)

As many critics have called Ridley Scott's classic sci-fi thriller ALIEN a “haunted house in space” premise, it made sense that a cat would be one of the crew members aboard the commercial vessel Nostromo so that there could be some fake-out scares of the “oh, it's just the cat” variety. Jones, nicknamed Jonesy, was officially there to rid the ship of rodents, but he became one of the most memorable of the film's characters. This is especially because he and Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) were the only survivors of the Nostromo's deadly alien encounters, and he even made an appearance in the sequel. For those who can't get enough of Jonesy, there's this fan fiction in the form of a free e-book: “Alien, From The Point Of View Of Jones The Cat” by Anne Billson. 



2. Tonto in HARRY AND TONTO

When I first saw the trailer for INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS, I was reminded of Paul Mazursky’s 1974 drama HARRY & TONTO, which also featured an orange tabby being carried around New York and across country (although he was often walked on a leash as well).



Art Carney’s Oscar winning role as Harry Coombes, a retired schoolteacher who goes on a cross country trip after his apartment building is demolished, is greatly enhanced by his loyalty to his cat. Interestingly, Carney was far from a cat lover before this film, but after working on the film he told an interviewer that they both got along great, and that “when it was over I wanted to buy Tonto. His trainer wouldn’t allow it.” 



3. Blowfeld’s cat in the James Bond series

007’s arch enemy, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, portrayed by Donald Pleasance, Telly Savalas, and Charles Gray during the classic Sean Connery era of Bond, was always seen stroking a white fluffy Turkish Angora in his lap. We are never told the name of the cat beloved by the head of the global criminal organization SPECTRE, but reportedly a couple of cats named Soloman and Tiddes were used in the three films YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (1967), ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE (1969, the lone George Lazenby entry), and DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER (1971).

Only once did Blofeld and his cat appear (neither played by any previous participant) in the Roger Moore era, in the pre-credits sequence of 1981’s FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, but the evil genius was never called Blofeld because of legal reasons. These same legal reasons amounted to a competing Bond movie, 1983’s NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN, in which Max von Sydow’s Blofeld stroked yet another fluffy Turkish Angora. 

Showing how much of an impression the cat made on pop culture, a parody of Blofeld’s pet was included in the Mike Myers AUSTIN POWERS films (themselves parodies of the Bond series and the entire ‘60s spy genre): a hairless Sphynx named Mr. Bigglesworth, the beloved cat of Blofeld lookalike (and satiric equivalent) Dr. Evil.




4. Don Vito Corleone’s cat in THE GODFATHER 

In his commentary on the DVD and Blu ray of the 1972 gangster classic, director/producer/writer Francis Ford Coppola explains how Marlon Brando's iconic character came to have a furry friend on his lap: “It's interesting - the cat in Marlon's hand was not planned for. I just saw the cat kind of running around the studio, and I just took it and just put it right in his hands without a word. I said ‘here Marlon,’and he, uh, of course, he loves children and animals and he immediately took to the cat. And the cat took to him and it became part of the scene - not at all planned, just a random idea. 



5. “Cat” in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S

  

The unimaginatively named Cat is yet another orange tabby that stole the show as Holly Golightly's (Aubrey Hepburn) cat in the 1961 classic. 



6. The Black Cat in THE BLACK CAT 

It's about time a black cat made the list, and who better than the creepy cat title character in the 1934 Universal horror classic THE BLACK CAT? As this was way before the internets, not much is known about the cat, who seemed to be suggested by the Edgar Allan Poe short story of the same name. There were a bunch of remakes (even back then they were remaking the Hell out of horror flicks), but let's just stick with the first and best one.


7. This little kitten in LA DOLCE VITA

One stand out scene in Federico Fellini's 1961 classic had Anita Ekberg playing with a tiny kitten that she found walking the streets of Rome. One could say she reduces the kitty to a fashion accessory but it's a cute scene nonetheless.



8. Mr. Jinx in MEET THE PARENTS

On the audio commentary for the hit 2000 comedy, Ben Stiller asked man of few words Robert De Niro what he thought of his toilet using cat co-star, who was played by two five year-old Himalayans. De Niro: “I like cats. Cats is good.” Well put, Bob.


9. Phillip Marlowe's cat in THE LONG GOODBYE

Yep, another orange tabby. Elliot Gould isn't able to hold on to his cat in the 1973 detective thriller (of sorts) for long as director Robert Altman put it on the “Rip Van Marlowe” featurette on the film's DVD: “The cat was around as long as it got fed. But he didn't get fed - that's the end of the cat.” The cat exits the apartment's window, and the film, when Elliot's Marlowe tries to pull one over on him by putting the label of his favorite food on a can of a generic brand.

10. A cat extra in DAY FOR NIGHT

The heading of this post comes from this scene in François Truffaut's 1973 Oscar winner DAY FOR NIGHT, in which a crew member on the film-within-a-film can't get a cat extra to hit its mark and orders: “Get me a cat that can act!”

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