We are taking a slightly different journey this week with MIWETS (Yeah, not a great acronym). I would not really say the films I am going to focus on are guilty pleasures but many film fans might turn their noses up at such crassly commercial projects. One film exploits a TV show comic book legacy and the other one comes from one of the most resented genres among movie fans, the romantic comedy. I think each film actually has some merits that could be discussed in a passionate way because I have seen some hate for these films online. Neither film is essential, seminal or serious in any way. The two movies have one thing in common that moved me to pair them like this. Each one is a version of a nearly extinct form of film making, the original film musical.

It is true that we occasionally get a musical in an animated movie, or that a stage musical is adapted for the big screen. Those are rare enough however that even Disney cannot be counted upon for regular versions of this form. In the 1980’s, music videos were basically inserted into movies to make them musicals, think “Flashdance” or “Footloose”. They worked well enough to bring in the music but audiences not used to actors breaking out in song would probably not go for a modern version of fifties style musicals. The safe bet has been to put stage musicals on the screen. The two films I am focusing on here try to varying degrees to use the format of “An American in Paris” or “A Star is Born”. They take an original story that includes music and then adapt it to movie form. Both use a backstage perspective, so the songs are connected to public performances, and not just singing as the characters walk down the street. It is for the music and particularly the songs that I have included them in this series.

The first film of today’s double feature is “Josie and the Pussycats” from 2001. Roger Ebert put it this way: “Josie and the Pussycats are not dumber than the Spice Girls, but they’re as dumb as the Spice Girls, which is dumb enough.” He gave the movie a half star. While I have always appreciated Ebert as a film critic, I have not always agreed with him and this is one of those times. At this point in his life I think he had finally disconnected from the audience relationship that had made his work with Gene Siskel so effective, and he simply spouted off on something he did not get. In his review he even gets picky about the term subliminal versus subaural, and he got that wrong also. Subliminal refers to consciousness which is the correct way in which it is used in the film, subaural is below the ear, and means nothing in this context.

The film is a cute girl-empowering satire on marketing. It is not about how a band is put together or even how it might become successful, it is about how that band might then be exploited to sell other stuff. Is the movie subtle? Hell no, it is obvious and goes for very big jokes, most of them visual. It is clear that the brands in the movie are being marketed in product placement as a way of mocking that placement. Lots of other films or Television shows would be viewed as cutting edge for the type of humor that is attempted here and for trying to reach the audience that the film is trying to appeal to.  I can accept that others may not like the humor or that the story is a bit obvious but I am defiant in my belief that the music in this film is worthy and that’s why I want people to see the movie.

I love a good title song, but a song that is part of the story and is integrated into the themes is the type of song I think makes a movie work as a musical experience.  “Josie and the Pussycats” has at least three great songs that make the story memorable.  Ebert wrote “The music is pretty bad. That’s surprising, since Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds is one of the producers, and knows his way around music. Maybe it’s supposed to sound like brainless pre-teen fodder, but it’s not good enough at being bad to be funny, and stops merely at the bad stage.” It’s silly to get into a debate with a dead man but come on, just saying it without explaining it is the worst appeal to authority there is. Ebert was not a music authority, and to be fair, neither am I but I’m willing to at least explain my position. To start let’s take “Pretend to be Nice”:

This song has a very appealing guitar lick, a fun chorus and a wicked hook that keeps pulling us in. Yes it is pop, but listen to the refrain “pretend to be nice” when sung by the lead in a mock low key sexy voice. There is real sarcasm there. It fits in as an example of the kind of song a girl band might be expected to play. It is smarter than any Spice Girls song and I think that undermined the belief that this movie was about bad music, it was about mocking bad music by taking it’s form and subverting it.

Example Number Two is “three small words”. This is an up tempo power pop song that gives the Pussycats the perfect opportunity to insert a performance based music video into the film. Look and listen:

Anyone who doesn’t appreciate that song just doesn’t understand that Heath Ledger is the new Matt Damon.

The ultimate example of the musical bliss of “Josie and the Pussycats” however is not provided by the title group. Instead the greatest example of musical subversion is done by the Boy Band that the Pussycats are being used to replace in the movie. I think Ebert must have missed the lyrics or have been totally unfamiliar with the Backstreet Boys or *NSYNC. “DuJour”, provides the moment of musical genius early on in the film and if you listen to the song you will know how to listen to the songs in the rest of the movie. Here is the final nail in the coffin of the naysayers for this film:

“just cuz i slip in back doors,

well, that doesn’t make me, hey!”

That just summarizes the whole music scene of the early 2000s. Maybe it isn’t something everyone should see, but it certainly isn’t something that everyone should reject. I may come back and defend the story, actors and whole film in another place, but for now the focus is on the music and it works the way it is supposed to in the film.

After a brief intermission, it is time to move on to the second film in this musical extravaganza.

“Music and Lyrics” from 2007, is a much more conventional film. It is a romantic comedy that features music and both embraces and mocks the taste of popular culture. It features two of the most appealing stars of the last twenty years, Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore, who between them have as many romcoms under their belts as anyone this side of Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. This movie was moderately successful at the box office and has almost certainly a bigger audience than the first movie and it also has some great music designed explicitly for the purpose of the story.

The setting of the love story here involves the accidental meeting of two people who have complementary artistic skills but conflicting social skills. No one will be surprised by the development of the love story, it has the usual cute meet, slow romance, complication and then satisfying resolution. So it is all formula, but it is a formula that works because of the extra ingredients that get ladled on top. To begin with, Grant plays a semi washed up pop star from the 1980s. If you can imagine Duran Duran and Wham having children, the result would probably be the fictional band “Pop”.  Here in the title sequence of” Music and Lyrics” is the video for their biggest imagined hit:

This is a pretty perfect spoof of 80s pop video. The little sideways booty snap would fit into almost any George Michael video of those times. The song is a lightweight confection that illustrates the weightlessness of music from that period. Even though it has no heft to it, there is still significance to it. People are moved by music and while we may not appreciate someone else’s taste in songs, to that person the song matters. That is shown in a couple of ways in this film. First through the hysterical behavior of middle aged women reliving their wild teen years at nostalgia performances by Grant’s character Alex Fletcher. Yet we also see that the music can be inspirational to the next generation when Cora Corman, a Britney Spears knock off hires Alex to pen a new tune for her because she was a fan of the video.

A short clip of her current music video tells us all we need to know about how deep she is:

The creative process is something that is hard to visualize on screen. Painters in films get montages of images swirling as they put their imagination on the canvas. Writers are usually depicted as reflecting on their “inner eye” and recalling the story they want to tell. In a romantic comedy about writing a pop song we get a nice sequence showing how a last minute demo track comes together as the two co-writers race against a deadline. Here is how it is envisioned in the film:

What you see is not a complete version of the song but the romantic comedy version of the creative process. It works at building character and also shows us how the two miss matched lovers are going to come together. I think it is a very effective sequence and it has the advantage of having something to do with the story. Later in the movie we will get a more complete version of the song that will help cement our happy ending and irritate all those who hate Romantic Comedies in the first place, but as a song, this piece of music works as it is intended.

There is one other link between these films. Many of the songs share a common composer; Adam Schlesinger. He is the genius behind the song that made “That Thing You Do” one of my “Perfect Films”. Probably best known for leading his band “Fountains of Wayne” onto the charts with “Stacy’s Mom”, Schlesinger has contributed to a number of songs in films and his work makes both of today’s movies something I want everyone to see. The songs are not simply pop music inserted into the closing credits, but they are integral parts of the movies that they come from. That seems like a better standard for a movie music award than how big the pop star is that wrote it.  If you can think of some songs from movies that drive the story, explain the characters or enliven the pace of the film, please share them. MIWETS is all about sharing the love.

Richard Kirkham is a lifelong movie enthusiast from Southern California. While embracing all genres of film making, he is especially moved to write about and share his memories of movies from his formative years, the glorious 1970s. His personal blog, featuring current film reviews as well as his Summers of the 1970s movie project, can be found at Kirkham A Movie A Day.

While this is a movie blog, I have on occasion posted on concert events that are related to movies in some way. Today’s post is just such an occasion. On Sunday I attended a performance by the L.A. Philharmonic of music featured in the films of Stanley Kubrick. The use of music in Kubrick films is a fascinating subject because unlike most film makers, after the midway point in his career, Kubrick largely abandoned the use of original orchestral music and integrated existing classical works into his films. Notoriously, for 2001 A Space Odyssey, the score composed by Alex North, a 15 time Academy Award nominee and a collaborator with Kubrick on the film “Spartacus” was not used. North had been shown about forty minutes of the movie on which to base his score. It was not until he watched the film in it’s premier that he realized not a note of his composition was in the film.

Before the concert we attended a Upbeat Live talk by Bernardo Rondeau, one of the music curators for the soon to be opened Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. With his slides and historical citations, he led us through the evolution of Kubrick as a consumer of classical music and described some of the ways that he filmed to the music instead of trying to make the music fit the film. Famously, the waltz of the shuttle and the space station that opens the modern section of the picture uses the music of Johann Strauss to suggest a dance between celestial objects. It was a marriage of sight and sound that almost everyone agrees is a perfect fit.

The opening of the concert commenced with the tonal and ominous Atmospheres by Ligeti. This modern composer had been told that his music was used in the film in brief background sections but when he attended a screening, he took a stop watch and kept notes on how much of his music was used. That was one of the intriguing slides in the Upbeat Live Talk.

It is when the Richard Strauss “Also sprach Zarathustra” notes begin, over the MGM logo from that year, that the concert starts for real. Those notes and the combined visage of the moon, the earth and the Sun lining up produces the emotional power of these choices.

My hair literally stood on end. The impact of the live orchestra plating those notes in sync with the image on the screen was breathtaking and electric.

On the Lambcast we recorded on Sunday, I’d mentioned that I was going to this event and one of the guests made a joke that it would be funny if a chorus came out and hummed or grunted the music from the monolith. That sound is actually a Ligeti Requiem, and guys it was performed by the Los Angeles Master Chorale, during the film clip of the monolith on the moon. It was eerie as hell and simultaneously beautiful.

One thing I had not mentioned to my companions on the podcast was that the concert was to be hosted by actor Malcolm McDowell. The actor shared a number of insights and amusing anecdotes during the show. He added a special aura to the day which made the event feel so much more movie related.

The Bartok and Pendereki music from “The Shining” was suitably ominous and the sequence where Nicholson is coming through the doors with an ax, actually do have some score under them. The best use of the music however, was in the blood flood from the elevator and the chase through the outdoor hedge maze. Watching those clips with the music immediately made me want to go home and watch the whole movie again, with the volume extra high.

After the intermission. McDowell returned to share with us the fact that for the most part, the score for Kubrick’s visual masterpiece “Barry Lyndon” was era appropriate. Handel, Schubert, Bach and Vivaldi all were played prominently throughout the picture. The harpsichord music was presented to us using an actual harpsichord and a variety of stringed instruments. It was an elegant sequence in the concert and it was one of the longer interludes of the day.

Our conductor for the afternoon was Jessica Cottis, an Australian/British citizen who is well known in the UK for her work with the Scottish BBC Orchestra. It may be old fashioned of me to note that she is one of only two or three female conductors I have seen in symphony venue like the LA Phil at Walt Disney Concert Hall, but she was engaging and authoritative with the orchestra.

“Eyes Wide Shut” was Kubricks last film and he makes use of one more Gregor Legeti piece as well as a selection from Shostakovitch. There were a couple of nude clips included in the film selection and the family next to us were apparently a little surprised that their nine year old son and eleven year old daughter were getting a sneak peek. There were warning signs as we entered the venue that the material in the films contained nudity and mature themes. So the kids were freaked out a bit by “The Shining” clips and Mom was embarrassed by the “Eyes Wide Shut” moments, but the best was yet to come.

Malcolm McDowell told several stories about the making of “Clockwork Orange”, including the fact that Alex’ getup in the film was mostly his own cricket regalia worn with the protective codpiece on the outside. He also related a story about encountering Gene Kelly at a Hollywood Party a couple of years after the movie was released and Kelly, upon recognizing him, walked in the opposite direction. McDowell said he had assumed Kelly was angry about the way “Singin’ in the Rain” was used in the movie, as the expression of joy for the antithesis of Kelly’s use of the song and performance. He then said that he had met Kelly’s widow nearly forty years later at an Academy function and she said that Gene had no anger with him, he was pissed that he did not get paid for the use of the song by Stanley.

“Clockwork” features Rossini, Purcell, and of course Ludwig Van Beethoven. The Rossini music is used during the break in where Alex murders the woman at the health spa. He uses a piece of art that is a giant phallus balanced by some equally large testicles. The two kids roared out loud when they saw him pick this sculpture up. The climax of the film involves Alex having sex with a woman to the strains of Ode to Joy. It is an amazing juxtaposition of tune and image and one I’m sure will haunt the family seated next to us for years to come.