Reeled In: Pre-existing Music in Narrative Film 9781138290099, 9781315266558

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
List of figures and tables
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Remit
Defining pre-existing music
Using pre-existing music
Manners of quotation
Plan of the book
Notes and references
1 Production contexts and considerations
Rights and licensing
(Re)selling pre-existing music
Production systems and attitudes
Pre-existing music and directorial control
Notes and references
2 Intention and interpretation
Recognizing audiences
Investigating film scores
Guiding interpretation
Intentional readings
Judging intention
Notes and references
3 Functions of musical reference
Time and place
Musical agents
Form and expectations
Unity and coherence
Notes and references
4 Post-existing music
Audience
Cultural influence and ownership
Challenging conceptions
Notes and references
Conclusion
Notes and references
Filmography
Index

Citation preview

Reeled In

How and why is pre-existing music used in films? What effects can its use have on films and their audiences? And what lasting impact can appropriation have on the music? Reeled In is a comprehensive exploration of these questions, considering the cinematic quotation of Beethoven symphonies, Beatles songs, and Herrmann scores alike in films ranging from the early sound era to the present day, and in every role from ‘main title theme’ to ‘music playing in bar’. Incorporating a discussion of such factors as copyright and commerce alongside examination of texts and their effects, this broad study is a significant contribution to the scholarship on music in screen media, demonstrating that pre-existing music possesses unique attributes that can affect both how filmmakers construct their works and how audiences receive them, to an extent regardless of the music’s style, genre, and so on. This book also situates the reception of music by film, and by audiences experiencing that music through film, as significant processes within present-­day culture, while more generally providing an illuminating case study of the kinds of borrowings, adaptations, and reinventions that characterize much of today’s art and entertainment. Jonathan Godsall is Teaching Fellow in Music at Royal Holloway, University of London. He has also taught music at the University of Cambridge, the University of Bristol, Oxford Brookes University, Keele University, Plymouth University, and City, University of London. He was awarded his PhD from the University of Bristol in 2014, and has published on screen-­music topics in journals and edited books, as well as presenting internationally. He is also a drummer and percussionist.

Ashgate Screen Music Series Editors: James Deaville, Carlton University, Canada Kathryn Kalinak, Rhode Island College, USA and Ben Winters, Open University, UK

The Ashgate Screen Music series publishes monographs and edited collections about music in film, television, video games and in new screening contexts such as the internet from any time and any location. All of these titles share the common dedication to advancing our understanding of how music interacts with moving images, supporting narrative, creating affect, suspending disbelief, and engrossing audiences. The series is not tied to a particular medium or genre, but can range from director-composer auteur studies (Hitchcock and Herrmann, Leone and Morricone, Burton and ­Elfman), through multi-author volumes on music in specific television programmes (Glee, Doctor Who, Lost), to collective explorations of topics that cut across genres and media (music on small screens, non-Western music in Western moving-image representations). As such, the Ashgate Screen Music Series is intended to make a valuable contribution to the literature about music and moving images. Re-Locating the Sounds of the Western Edited by Kendra Preston Leonard and Mariana Whitmer Recomposing the Past Representations of Early Music on Stage and Screen Edited by James Cook, Alexander Kolassa and Adam Whittaker Reeled In Pre-existing Music in Narrative Film Jonathan Godsall

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ music/series/ASM

Reeled In Pre-existing Music in Narrative Film

Jonathan Godsall

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Jonathan Godsall The right of Jonathan Godsall to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Godsall, Jonathan, author. Title: Reeled in : pre-existing music in narrative film / Jonathan Godsall. Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2019. | Series: Ashgate screen music | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018017287 | ISBN 9781138290099 (hardback) | ISBN 9781315266558 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Motion picture music—History and criticism. | Copyright—Music. Classification: LCC ML2075 .G63 2019 | DDC 781.5/42—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018017287 ISBN: 978-1-138-29009-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-26655-8 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by codeMantra

For my parents

Contents

List of figures and tables Acknowledgements

ix xi

Introduction Remit 2 Defining pre-existing music 4 Using pre-existing music 6 Manners of quotation 9 Plan of the book 12 Notes and references  13

1

1 Production contexts and considerations Rights and licensing 18 (Re)selling pre-existing music 27 Production systems and attitudes 31 Pre-existing music and directorial control 36 Notes and references  42

18

2 Intention and interpretation Recognizing audiences 53 Investigating film scores 59 Guiding interpretation 64 Intentional readings 70 Judging intention 76 Notes and references  82

52

viii Contents 3 Functions of musical reference Time and place 93 Musical agents 98 Form and expectations 105 Unity and coherence 115 Notes and references  122

92

4 Post-existing music Audience 133 Cultural influence and ownership 140 Challenging conceptions 145 Notes and references  153

131

Conclusion Notes and references  169

162

Filmography Index

171 179

Figures and tables

0.1 Ostinato from Kick-Ass cue ‘Man in the Mirror’, comp. Henry Jackman. © Copyright 2010 WB Music Corp. 7 0.2 Ostinato from Superman ‘Main Title March’, comp. John Williams. © Copyright 1978 Warner–Tamerlane Publishing Corp. 8 2.1 Melody heard in Medal of Honor: Underground cue ‘May 10th 1940’ (main title), comp. Michael Giacchino. © Copyright 2000 It’s In The Game Music 56 2.2 Medal of Honor: Underground melody fragment as heard in Ratatouille cue ‘Colette Shows Him Le Ropes’, comp. Michael Giacchino. Material from Medal of Honor: Underground © Copyright 2000 It’s In The Game Music. ‘Colette Shows Him Le Ropes’ © Copyright 2007 Pixar Talking Pictures and Walt Disney Music Company 56 3.1 Fragment of ‘Yoda’s Theme’ (from Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back) as heard in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial cue ‘The Magic of Halloween’, comp. John Williams. ‘Yoda’s Theme’ © Copyright 1980 Warner–Tamerlane Publishing Corp and Bantha Music. ‘The Magic of Halloween’ © Copyright 1982 USI B Music Publishing 103 3.2 Beethoven, Symphony No. 7, Allegretto, bars 99–102 108 3.3 Recomposition of Beethoven, Symphony No. 7, Allegretto, bars 99–, in The King’s Speech 108 3.4 Beethoven, Symphony No. 7, Allegretto, bars 275–8 108 3.5 Choreographing of cuts and action to Wagner, ‘Ride of the Valkyries’, bars 52–9, in Apocalypse Now 111 3.6 Grieg, ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’, bars 72–89, with cuts and additions as in Needful Things and Rat Race 113 3.7 Opening melodic motives of Strauss, Also sprach Zarathustra, Strauss II, The Blue Danube, and Khachaturian, ‘Gayane’s Adagio’. Also sprach Zarathustra © Copyright 1932 Peters Edition. ‘Gayane’s Adagio’ © Copyright G. Schirmer 117

x  Figures and tables 3.8 Recomposition of opening motif from Mozart, Marriage of Figaro overture, in Trading Places, comp. Elmer Bernstein. Material from Trading Places © Copyright 1983 Sony/ATV Harmony 119 4.1 Graph showing French singles chart performance of ‘A Real Hero’, perf. College feat. Electric Youth, 1 October–10 December 2011 134 4.2 Graph showing French singles chart performance of ‘A Real Hero’, 4 February–­­7 April 2012 135

Table 4.1 Performances of Strauss tone poems at Proms concerts, 1895–2017 142

Acknowledgements

This project started long ago in October 2010, when I began my doctoral research on pre-existing music in narrative film. Little did I know, at the time, that the completion of my PhD would not be an endpoint, but rather only a checkpoint leading to several more years of work refining and reshaping my ideas on the same topic. Below I offer some specific thanks to those who have helped me throughout this process. First, though, to everyone who has supported me in any way over this significant chunk of my life, and to all those who guided me in this direction beforehand: thank you. For funding my PhD I thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and for hosting it the Department of Music at the University of Bristol, where I also undertook undergraduate and master’s study. I cannot imagine a place I would rather have spent even one of the seven years I did at Bristol, or a community of staff and students of which I would rather have been part. A particular debt of gratitude goes to my PhD supervisor, Guido Heldt: a fantastic guide, always enthused by the possibilities of my project while so careful in questioning its conclusions. I hope that we can continue to collaborate in future. Likewise, my examiners, Justin Williams and Ben Winters, offered valuable feedback well beyond the bounds of my viva, and indeed well beyond the bounds of this specific project. A book is, of course, a different animal to a PhD thesis; more so than I initially appreciated. For encouraging me to see the fresh opportunities for my research presented by this book, in terms of both form and content, I thank Ben Winters again, along with James Deaville and Kathryn Kalinak, the editors of the Ashgate Screen Music Series, as well as my anonymous reviewers. Thank you, too, to Heidi Bishop, Annie Vaughan, and Anna Dolan at Routledge for their assistance, and to my copyeditor Martin Barr for his careful work. For reading various bits of this book at various stages of completion, I  owe thanks to Lindsay Carter, Miguel Mera, Tim Summers, and Justin Williams: you all saw things I could not. Alongside working on this material I have taught on screen music and other topics at the University of Bristol, City (University of London), Oxford Brookes University, Keele University, Plymouth University, the University of Cambridge, and Royal

xii Acknowledgements Holloway (University of London). Staff and students at those institutions deserve thanks for allowing me to test ideas out in class, and for consistently sending me back to my desk with fresh inspiration, knowingly or not. (Mike ­McInerney, my office mate at Plymouth, gets special thanks for a mishearing of this book’s title that made an excellent/awful pun for my final paragraph.) I am also grateful to the welcoming community of screen-music scholars I have met at conferences internationally over the past few years, for listening to my thoughts and for pointing me to new examples and in new directions in response. Finally, to my friends (particularly Tim, Steph, Ed, and Lindsay), my family, and especially for the past two years to Gabrielle: thank you for all of your love and support, for inspiring and encouraging my musical endeavours, and most of all for trusting that this book was worth writing. The early stages of an academic career are not easy, and I am incredibly fortunate to have been able to count on you.

Introduction

Pre-existing music – music appropriated by a film, rather than composed for it – is a significant feature of the soundscape of cinema. Commonly used in silent film accompaniment, it has also been utilized in sound films of all kinds and in all ways: in ‘chick flicks’ and teen comedies just as in films of the French New Wave, for example, and as both a main title theme and ­m inor background detail. Along the way, it has accounted for some of the most often-discussed musical moments in film history, whether that discussion has occurred in the academic literature or between friends over a drink. Think of the prominent appearances of Richard Strauss’s tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra (or its first 90 seconds, at least) in 2001: A Space Odyssey (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1968), or the use of the Stealers Wheel song ‘Stuck in the Middle with You’ to accompany a gruesome torture scene in Reservoir Dogs (dir. Quentin Tarantino, 1992). These moments fascinate us, I believe, chiefly because in them we hear music, rather than just or merely film music. That is, we hear music that belongs not solely or primarily to the filmic context in which we now encounter it, but rather to the world beyond the screen. This is music that is in our record collections, that we have heard on the radio, that we will hear again in the concert hall. In short, it is music with history, both public and personal, that is ‘reeled in’ to the cinema and forever changed because of it. When pre-existing music is inserted into a film, the film inserts itself into the music’s history, drawing (intentionally or not) on previous associations but also creating new ones, in a manner likely to initiate debate because it is our music, and we often care deeply about it. If these moments are already so often discussed, though, what is the purpose of this book? In part, it may serve as a comprehensive introduction to the topic, or aspects of it, for those yet to consider the fascination it holds for others, or encounter the wealth of scholarship devoted to such consideration, to which I make grateful reference throughout. This study also addresses a specific gap in such scholarship, however, namely that, while many moments of pre-existing music’s use have indeed been subject to close analysis of various kinds, the idea of those moments as examples of a film-music practice worthy of broader theoretical and critical exploration

2  Introduction has been largely absent. Zarathustra and ‘Stuck in the Middle’ were composed at different times, by different people, in different styles, and for different purposes. Accordingly, they mean different things to those who hear them, and have different effects in the different films that employ them (in different ways). All this I do not deny, but my central argument in this book is that the pre-existing status of the music unites such diverse examples; that pre-existing pieces work (and are worked with) in particular ways because of that status, over and above their more specific attributes and relationships to other elements of specific films. How and why is pre-existing music used in films? What effects can its use have for and on films and their audiences? And what lasting impact can appropriation have on the music? These are the primary questions tackled here. Before they can be answered, the premise and manner of my enquiry warrant further explanation in this introductory chapter.

Remit Within the area of narrative film outlined by my title, I examine only sound films in detail. The use of pre-existing music is central to silent-film musical practice, but silents present numerous unique problems for study, given particularly the ephemerality of live musical accompaniment, and so should be dealt with on their own terms. I also avoid discussion of musicals, which again have often drawn on pre-existing material (from Singin’ in the Rain (dir. Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, 1952) to Mamma Mia (dir. Phyllida Lloyd, 2008)) but similarly have their own distinct strategies for music that demand separate exploration. Nonetheless, my intention is that many of the points made here will be applicable to the use of pre-existing music in these and other types of film, as well as in other forms of screen media such as television and video games. An examination of the phenomenon as it appears in ‘conventional’ feature films – still the archetypal screen media form for both scholars and general audiences, I would argue, even though this status may be ever less secure – allows depth without excessive length, and additionally the drawing of conclusions most likely to be more generally relevant. ‘Conventional’ in this case also means that the films discussed are relatively mainstream, as that status is defined in relation to my own position as a British film viewer of (mainly) the twenty-first century. I hope that the films selected will be familiar or at least readily available to the reader. The book’s broad premise requires the support of an eclectic range of examples, though. Thus, among others discussed in Chapter 2, the use of ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’ in Die Hard: With a Vengeance (dir. John McTiernan, 1995) is compared to that of the Allegretto from ­Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony in The King’s Speech (dir. Tom Hooper, 2010). In ­Chapter 4, 2001 and Strauss meet The Sting (dir. George Roy Hill, 1973) and Scott Joplin, and Blue Velvet (dir. David Lynch, 1986) and Roy Orbison. A few examples crop up more than once, because they offer illuminating

Introduction  3 illustrations of more than one idea: The King’s Speech and 2001 also feature in Chapter 3, for instance. The overall intention, though, is that a large sample – with at least a handful of cases considered in each of the four main chapters – demonstrates that surface differences, such as in the style, genre, and historical origins of music and film, hide deeper similarities between cases of pre-existing music’s use. I do not seek, with my broad approach, to deny the validity or significance of other perspectives. Case studies – for instance, of the use of pre-existing music in a particular film, or of the use of a particular piece of pre-existing music across several films – have already offered many general as well as specific conclusions, and will no doubt continue to do so. Many such studies can be found in various journals and edited books. Changing Tunes: The Use of Pre-existing Music in Film (Powrie and Stilwell 2006a), the only entire book previously devoted to the topic, offers in its collected chapters a representative sample. Because of its nature as an edited collection, though, even Changing Tunes does not properly synthesize the findings of its focused analyses. This is my task here, drawing on the prior work of others as well as on my own close readings of relevant examples. The scholarly value of my remit should not be taken for granted, however. The editors of Changing Tunes might call it into question, given they celebrate in their introduction that their book ‘brings together all three types of pre-­existing music and their intersection with film: instrumental art music (­generically called “classical”), opera, and popular’ (Powrie and Stilwell 2006b, p. xiii; my emphasis). Overly optimistic claims to generic inclusivity aside, this remark suggests a belief that the kind of typology I explicitly wish to avoid is desirable or even necessary for an understanding of pre-existing m ­ usic’s use in film. While the evidence that it is not will arrive mainly in the later chapters of this book, some defence of my position is necessary here. Again, I am clear that the origins and attributes of individual pieces of music affect how they are understood when used in films that themselves differ in many crucial ways. Along with case studies, broader examinations aligned with generic and other categories – such as of popular music in film (e.g. Smith 1998), classical music in film (e.g. Duncan 2003), music in classical Hollywood films (e.g. Kalinak 1992), or music in Stanley Kubrick’s films (e.g. McQuiston 2013) – have done much to unpick those differences, and indeed often without stressing a distinction between original and pre-existing music. To stress that distinction and pass over others as I do here is simply to shift the angle of approach, so cutting across a bigger field (music in film) in a different way to find different questions and answers. By contrast, to study the use of generic ‘types’ of pre-existing music is to remain at least partly on the familiar routes, therefore blinding oneself to the full perspective offered elsewhere. A distinction between original and pre-existing music is not unproblematic, though. Eyebrows may already have been raised by remarks intimating towards that distinction above: that a use of pre-existing music is fascinating because it is a use of music with history, music with which we have a relationship,

4  Introduction music about which we care. This, of course, can all also be true of an original film score. We might hear such a score before we see the film for which it was composed, perhaps on the radio or via a soundtrack album, for example. I own the CD release of John Williams’s score to Empire of the Sun (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1987) and have listened to it many times, in fact, but must admit that as of this writing I have not yet seen the film. Through similar means we could also come to know a score better after seeing a film for the first time, but before a repeat viewing. Though Star Wars (dir. George Lucas, 1977) introduced me to its own Williams score, I now know that music so well from listening to and performing it in other contexts that I cannot help but see (and hear) the same film differently when I return to it. Equally, someone hearing Star Wars for the first time may already find the music somewhat familiar, given for one that it deliberately recalls the idiom of earlier Hollywood composers such as Max Steiner and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, who themselves looked ­backwards (albeit from less of a distance) in utilizing the late-Romantic vocabulary of Richard Strauss, Richard Wagner, Gustav Mahler, and others.1 And music actually appropriated by (rather than composed for) a film may be adapted in some way from its previous form, making it partly original and unfamiliar even to the listener who knows the material well. That a listener may not know the appropriated material at all, finally, can render a distinction between original and pre-existing music meaningless on a practical level. Below, I will set out detailed definitions of pre-existing music (a musical category) and its use (a filmmaking practice). These definitions are largely academic constructions, based on objective criteria but designed primarily to identify a clear object of study. While stated more precisely here than in prior scholarship, as a first step towards a more complete view of the topic, the definitions reflect common academic usage of the terms, as well as practical (filmmaking) and legal (copyright) perspectives on where the borders between pre-existing and other kinds of material lie. Nonetheless, they must be qualified with an acknowledgement that, when we consider how filmmakers and audiences understand music in the context of a film – as much of this book does – those borders often do not matter. This can be taken as a positive, however, because it means that studying uses of pre-existing music can shed light not only on the many instances in which the borders do matter, but also on the kinds of interaction mentioned above that those individuals have with other music in film, which have so far been underacknowledged in the literature.2 This point is also theorized below.

Defining pre-existing music What is pre-existing music, exactly? For one, as already implied, details of the music’s style, genre, composer, performer, and so on are irrelevant to defining it as pre-existing, which is a question only of the music’s relationship to the specific film in which it is used. The simplest explanation of this relationship is that pre-existing music is music that existed prior to its use in a film,

Introduction  5 but the short definition given at the top of this introduction – that it is music appropriated by a film, not composed for it – is clearer because it e­ xcludes more. Music composed for a film is often released for public consumption in advance of that film (not least for the purpose of generating publicity for the cinematic release), for example, but this ‘existence’ does not make it pre-existing music. Similarly, original music can take some precedence over other elements of a film during the course of that film’s production. Ennio ­Morricone composed and even recorded music for Once Upon a Time in America (dir. Sergio Leone, 1984) before filming started, for instance, reporting that Leone ‘shot the different sequences to some of this music’ (in Werba 2015 [1985]). But Morricone’s music did not therefore pre-exist Once Upon a Time in America; it was written for and used within that film, just in a different way than is and has been common. A ­ ppropriation – the act of making ­something one’s own – implies, crucially, that the something was previously not one’s own; that the music’s prior existence was also independent of the film and its production. The notion of independence will itself benefit from some clarification. It relates here to films and not filmmakers, first of all (with the latter broadly defined as decision makers within a film’s production process, including directors but also producers, editors, composers, music supervisors, and other figures, as well as companies and other collectives).3 When the famous ‘shark’ ostinato John Williams originally composed for Jaws (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1975) appeared in his score for another Spielberg film, the comedy 1941 (1979), for example, this was a use of pre-existing music.4 Certainly, that Williams and Spielberg are referencing themselves in 1941’s opening scene is part of the joke: the music leads us to expect a female swimmer will be attacked by a shark, only for a submarine to surface beneath her and leave her clinging to its periscope.5 (We might say that our expectation is subverted, to make a bad pun.) The ostinato had no direct connection to 1941 before its use in that scene, though; it existed independently of it, and is therefore pre-existing music in the context of that film. Jaws 2 (dir. Jeannot Szwarc, 1978), on the other hand, features the same ‘shark’ ostinato (in another score by Williams) but does not use pre-­existing music. The ostinato is not original here, true, and it was used for broadly the same reasons as it would be in 1941 the next year, namely that it already signified ‘shark’, and recalled Jaws. In this case, though, a key purpose of recalling Jaws was to identify Jaws 2 as a sequel, effectively joined to the first film as part of a single, larger entity to which the ostinato already belonged. The ostinato might be termed franchise music in this context: music that is repeated across franchise entries in order to serve a branding function, just as a theme is repeated within a single film for purposes of musical coherence.6 Within a franchise, therefore, to use pre-existing music is to use music that existed independently of the whole property (which may extend beyond films to television shows, video games, and other multimedia productions). The music’s precedence is still measured in relation

6  Introduction to each individual entry. The use of the Clash’s 1979 song ‘London Calling’ in the James Bond movie Die Another Day (dir. Lee Tamahori, 2002) is a use of pre-existing music, then, but that of Monty Norman’s ‘James Bond Theme’ is not, this theme having been written for the first of Eon Productions’ James Bond films (Dr. No (dir. Terence Young, 1962)), and featured in all since. The manners in which ‘London Calling’ and the ‘James Bond Theme’ existed (and continue to exist) in relation to Die Another Day are qualitatively different. It is possible, though, for pre-existing music to become franchise music. ­Nigel Westlake appropriated the Maestoso theme from Camille Saint-Saëns’s Symphony No. 3 for use as the main theme in his score for Babe (dir. Chris Noonan, 1995), and then kept that same theme in the sequel Babe: Pig in the City (dir. George Miller, 1998), for example. The theme is both pre-existing music and franchise music in the later film.7 I also exclude library music (also known as stock music, or production music) from my definition of pre-existing music. While library music is already well recognized as a distinct category, its exclusion here represents more of a personal judgement because, on the face of it, library music corresponds clearly to the definition of pre-existing music as music appropriated by, rather than composed for, a film. Library music does not, however, have the public existence – and therefore the history – that, for example, the ­Saint-Saëns Maestoso theme had prior to its use in Babe, and which I contend is crucial to pre-existing music’s particular effects in the cinema. Instead, once composed, it sits in a private repository (owned by a film studio, or a library music company) along with other ready-to-use cues available as a convenient resource to filmmakers. The first use of a library cue will therefore be its original use, as if it were composed for the film. Only if used in two or more separate productions could the same piece of library music be defined as pre-existing music, and then only in the later production(s), for having been made publicly available by the first. Again, the reader will note similarities between pre-existing music and music of these other types, such as in regard to how filmmakers might deal with that music as relatively fixed object to be imported into a film, or of how audiences can (but will not necessarily) respond to the music based on recognizing it.8 While much music has some of the characteristics of pre-­ existing music and its significance for filmmakers and audiences, however, pre-existing music as I define it here represents a unique category for study, even if certain conclusions of that study may reflect elsewhere. Further targets for that reflection will become apparent as I turn to consider precisely what the ‘use’ or ‘appropriation’ of pre-existing music entails.

Using pre-existing music To say that a film uses pre-existing music is common. See, most obviously, the full title of Changing Tunes: The Use of Pre-existing Music in Film (­Powrie and Stilwell 2006a). Though most scholars discussing the practice in that

Introduction  7 book and elsewhere have understood it in the same way, the verb is actually quite ambiguous in this context. Once more, stating that a film appropriates such music reflects more precisely the common understanding, because it suggests a process of taking pre-existing material, rather than merely using it. The difference warrants further explanation. What else could a ‘use’ of pre-existing music be? Consider the following example from Kick-Ass (dir. Matthew Vaughn, 2010). As ordinary teenager Dave Lizewski tries on the new costume that will transform him into the film’s titular hero, an ostinato similar to the one underpinning Williams’s ‘Main Title March’ for Superman (dir. Richard Donner, 1978) is heard (see Figures 0.1 and 0.2). The parallels stretch to the music’s orchestration, in which strings and bassoons predominate in both cases. Does Kick-Ass use pre-existing music here? In a sense, it does. The ostinato in Kick-Ass imitates the one in Superman. As its composer Henry Jackman acknowledges (in Larson 2011), ‘Kick-Ass is staring at himself in the mirror pretending to be Superman and you’ve got a full-on orchestral cue that’s got a nod to Mr Williams.’ To be more specific, Jackman’s cue is a pastiche: ‘a kind of imitation that you are meant to know is an imitation’, in Richard Dyer’s definition (2007, p. 1). The allusion to Williams’s cue is not arbitrary. That piece of pre-existing music is ‘used’ not only as a model for Jackman’s imitation, but also as a target for the audience’s thoughts: we are meant to connect the characters of Kick-Ass and Superman, and to do so ironically, as Kick-Ass (Dave) has no superpowers.9 Thinking even more broadly, it is clear that Williams’s Superman score as a whole ‘uses’ pre-existing music in something like the same manner: the manner already noted above with regard to his Star Wars score and its stylistic debt to Steiner, Korngold, and others.10 In his own contribution to Changing Tunes, Phil Powrie spells my point out. Looking to the qualities of familiarity and clear connotation connected to a particular instrument’s sound, he proposes that ‘“accordion music”, whatever the forms it takes, is in essence a pre-existing music because of its cultural connotations’ (Powrie 2006, pp. 137–8; my emphasis): It is difficult to conceive of anything more marked as ‘French’ than the sound of the accordion. In films and advertisements, its reedy sound signifies not just a national identity, but something even more specific. It ­signifies a precise location – Paris – as well as the imaginary space which Paris evokes: romance with a whiff of the exotic, an exoticism which turns the banal and the everyday into the sophisticated and the exceptional.

Figure 0.1  O  stinato from Kick-Ass cue ‘Man in the Mirror’, comp. Henry Jackman.

8  Introduction

Figure 0.2  O  stinato from Superman ‘Main Title March’, comp. John Williams.

In its prior, independent existence, pre-existing music takes on various extramusical associations and meanings that we can recall when we hear it again in a film. This will not always be a filmmaker’s primary reason for employing pre-existing music, but it is such music’s most significant power, and an inescapable factor in every case. Clearly, though, we do not need to actually hear Williams’s Superman march in order to draw to mind its connotations in Kick-Ass, or a piece of genuine, pre-existing French accordion music to know that ‘Paris’ is being musically signified in, say, Howard Shore’s original but accordion-heavy score to Hugo (dir. Martin Scorsese, 2011). As far as defining the ‘use’ of pre-existing music is concerned, however, the inclusive logic suggested by Powrie only leads to the conclusion that any music (and therefore any film featuring music) uses pre-existing music. Even before we consider connotations, all music must recall antecedents just to be understood as music. The concept of intertextuality proposes that any individual text (a film or piece of music, for instance) is both created and received in relation to other texts; to the systems, codes, and traditions from which it is built; and to the social situations in which it exists. No text is an island, in other words. This definition of intertextuality, while my own, reflects Julia Kristeva’s (1980 [1969], p. 66) conception of the term she coined (building on the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin), in which each ‘literary word’ is seen to open out on both a vertical plane (where ‘the word in the text is oriented toward an anterior or synchronic literary corpus’) and horizontal plane (where ‘the word in the text belongs to both writing subject and addressee’).11 Jackman clearly had Williams consciously in mind, then, but his Kick-Ass cue is also a partly unconscious product of his own training, other compositional influences, and social and professional situations at the time it was written. The cue’s meaning for viewers (its addressees), watching the film both soon after its release and indefinitely into the future, is then subject to those viewers bringing their own musical knowledge, in their own specific viewing situations, to bear on their understandings. While the connection to Superman is intended and relatively overt, therefore, the web of texts and contexts pertaining to Jackman’s cue is potentially unlimited in its span. ‘The use of pre-existing music’, as it has commonly been and will continue to be understood, not least throughout the rest of this book, is a plainer practice. Even Jackman’s conscious ‘use’ of Superman in Kick-Ass – the most explicit of those considered in the few paragraphs above – is of a looser kind than I will explore directly. Indeed, aside from Powrie’s passing suggestion,

Introduction  9 all of the contributors to Changing Tunes discuss ‘uses’ of pre-existing music in which that music itself actually appears within a film. Hence, that is pre-existing music we hear in 2001, for example. While ‘appropriation’ corresponds more clearly to this phenomenon than ‘use’, for the purpose of theorizing the process I prefer the more formal literary term quotation. That is, a film quotes a pre-existing musical text, or part of one. 2001 quotes Strauss’s Zarathustra, for instance, in reproducing the opening of that piece on its soundtrack. 2001 is the quoting text; Zarathustra is the quoted text; 2001 contains quotations of Zarathustra. ‘Quotation’ reflects more accurately than ‘appropriation’ the fact that the music is not entirely absorbed by a film, but rather continues to exist independently alongside it. The frame of intertextuality is nonetheless a productive one within which to explore the topic at hand. By situating the use of pre-existing music as the most explicitly intertextual film-music practice, on the one hand, and on the other acknowledging that the creation and perception of all music in film are inevitably intertextual acts – and often very obviously and crucially so, as in cases noted above – it becomes clear that an understanding of pre-existing music’s use could be central to an understanding of a much broader field. Moreover, this is true in regard not only to the hows and whys of relationships between texts (Kristeva’s vertical plane of intertextuality), but also the whos (the horizontal plane): who quotes, who hears, and the factors that influence how they do these things. Put simply, the production and reception of films and their music do not occur in a vacuum, and examining pre-existing music’s specific place in narrative cinema will make this broader fact abundantly clear.

Manners of quotation My concern with filmmakers and audiences notwithstanding, quotation can be understood most fundamentally as an objective, material relationship between a film and a pre-existing piece of music. Questions of the music’s placement and function within the film are not relevant to this understanding: quotations can appear in any position relative to a film’s diegesis, for instance, and perform any function conceivable of music in film.12 Even a cursory survey of examples highlights that the objective, material relationship can itself vary, though; that there are different extents to and manners in which a film can quote pre-existing music, in other words. Reservoir Dogs and 2001 quote ‘Stuck in the Middle’ and Zarathustra only in part, for instance, whereas some other quotations are of whole pre-­existing pieces. Partial quotations can also be partial in different ways. First, Tarantino’s film uses most of ‘Stuck in the Middle’ (all but 37 of its 203 seconds),13 proportionally speaking, whereas 2001 quotes only a short part of Zarathustra (90 seconds of a 30-minute tone poem). Second, while those quotations excerpt only from the music’s linear progression (its horizontal structure, in other words), others may excerpt from the music’s constituent parts or layers (its vertical structure). Babe, for

10  Introduction example, takes the Maestoso melody from Saint-Saëns’s Symphony No. 3, but not all details of that melody’s original scoring. The melody is contextualized in new ways by Babe’s composer, Nigel Westlake. Overall, broadly and simply, quotation can clearly involve various degrees of adaptation. One technical distinction is worth particular emphasis here. The quotations of the Saint-Saëns melody heard in Westlake’s Babe score were all recorded especially for the film, along with the rest of that score. By contrast, Reservoir Dogs employs Stealers Wheel’s original recording of ‘Stuck in the Middle’, and 2001 similarly features the opening of Strauss’s tone poem through quoting an existing recording of that piece, by Herbert von Karajan and the Vienna Philharmonic. The difference is significant. Logistically, not least, the resources and processes involved in commissioning and making a new recording are completely different to those pertaining to the sourcing and editing of an existing one. Serge Lacasse’s (2000, pp. 38–9) concepts of allosonic and autosonic quotation, which he offers in relation to intramusical quotation, correspond to the two categories in question.14 Allosonic quotation is the quotation of abstract musical structure, which Lacasse illustrates with the example of a jazz musician quoting ‘a snatch from another tune’ during an improvised solo. Autosonic quotation, on the other hand, is the quotation of recorded sound, the appropriation of something ‘of a physical nature’, as in the practice of sampling a drum beat from a James Brown record into a new hip-hop track. Lacasse’s definitions map comfortably onto the use of pre-existing music in film. Babe quotes Saint-Saëns allosonically: the film shares abstract structure with the text it quotes, presenting new sonic realizations of pre-existing material. Reservoir Dogs and 2001 share sonic material with pre-existing texts, and so quote autosonically.15 Allosonic quotation offers more flexibility if a filmmaker wishes to adapt the music to their film’s needs, as was exploited for Babe. This does not mean that all allosonic quotations are heavily adapted in being copied from their sources, however, or that autosonic quotations cannot be reworked in ways beyond the simple linear editing apparent in Reservoir Dogs and 2001. As an example of the latter, take the mashup of autosonic quotations of two pre-existing pieces heard in the end credits of Shutter Island (dir. Martin Scorsese, 2010), conceived by the film’s music supervisor Robbie Robertson. Vocal phrases from Dinah Washington’s recording of ‘This Bitter Earth’ have here been separated vertically from most of their former accompaniment (bar certain countermelodies and occasional ghostly hints of the 1959 studio band), and superimposed onto ‘On the Nature of Daylight’, a Max Richter composition for string quintet heard in its entirety.16 All of Washington’s vocals from the original track are present, though with some new repetition and with phrases not in their former order. Those vocals are also extended over a track that, at over six minutes in duration, is more than twice the length of ‘This Bitter Earth’. Even more strikingly, the harmonic and rhythmic context provided by this new ‘accompaniment’ is completely different to that in which the vocals previously sat.17

Introduction  11 Many adaptations are at least more easily made when quoting allosonically, and some are still only possible when pre-existing music is to be newly recorded. While one can extract and reaccompany an element such as a melody line from a pre-existing recording, fully reorchestrating that line itself is impossible if quoting it autosonically, for example. In the case of Babe’s allosonic quotations of Saint-Saëns’s Maestoso melody, by contrast, the line is often reorchestrated (for celesta, for example, an instrument never heard in Saint-Saëns’s symphony) as well as being rescored in other ways. As the possibilities of what we can broadly term adaptive quotation are explored, though, questions arise over the location of the border between quotation and other intertextual practices. Autosonic quotations will always retain a material connection to their source, but allosonic adaptations can theoretically continue to the point that a quotation is transformed into something else entirely. A version of this process occurs in instances of imitation, where the goal is to copy but deform. At what point are we imitating rather than quoting, then? Does the Superman pastiche in Kick-Ass actually quote Williams’s score, for instance? Rhythmic figures are lifted from Superman directly, as more broadly are the tempo and meter, and aspects of orchestration. A legal view might contend that these specific elements are not distinct enough to be individually quotable as such, and more broadly I would be inclined to give overall priority to the impression created by their combination, which is one of imitation. This is really a matter of interpretation, though, and not a concrete rule. The details of other cases will also differ, of course. Nonetheless, intertextual practices such as quotation and imitation are perhaps best thought of as poles on a continuum rather than as distinct categories, their borders fluid rather than fixed. The vast majority of quotations of pre-existing music by films are easy to identify as such, even where adaptation has taken place. The point of many quotations is that they are recognizable to a film’s audience, after all, given the potential power of the music’s existing associations in creating meaning when recalled in combination with a new filmic context. Even where this is not the case, rare would be the instance in which a filmmaker wished to disguise entirely the origins of any pre-existing material; there would be little point in using it, if so. Moreover, authorship and ownership of music must legally be identified on production cue sheets (even where music is not in copyright), so that musicians are accurately compensated for their work, and quotations are also generally acknowledged and attributed in a film’s credits.18 Nevertheless, it is clear that there is considerable variation in the manners by which pre-existing music is sourced for and deployed in film. Despite clarifications to common references to ‘the use of pre-existing music’, the practice considered in this book thus remains a broad one even in a technical sense. Other indicators of this breadth include that the number of quotations in films using pre-existing music varies hugely, as does the proportion of a film’s total music for which they account, and how quotations interact

12  Introduction with other kinds of musical material. As these possibilities do not affect the theoretical basis established above for study of the practice, they will not be dwelt on here, but will be apparent in the varied examples considered throughout the book. Those examples, cited within the chapters outlined directly below, will also reveal other senses in which the use of pre-existing music in narrative film is of heretofore unexplored breadth and depth.

Plan of the book A comprehensive study of pre-existing music’s use in narrative film must address that phenomenon’s practical contexts. These are the concern of Chapter 1, which covers business and production realities that surround and shape filmmakers’ musical choices. These realities include copyright (and the need to license music covered by it), commercial considerations, technological capacities, and critical attitudes towards the practice of using pre-existing music. The question of who is (or can be) responsible for decisions regarding pre-existing music’s use is also addressed directly. Much of the discussion in this chapter involves examining particular historical circumstances and progressions, such as in how critical attitudes towards using pre-existing music have changed over time. Even so, I do not account for all variables in all eras and locations, but rather provide significant examples of these. In this chapter as elsewhere, I am not interested in writing a history as such, but identification of certain ‘real-world’ contexts will at least provide some balance to the less historically focused approach of the rest of the book. That the ideas in each chapter will inform understanding of topics discussed in subsequent chapters is the overall pattern. Readers will therefore get most out of this book by reading it cover to cover, but each chapter tackles a distinct set of issues and so may be productively accessed on an individual basis. Chapter 2 considers the potential for variation between a filmmaker’s intention and a perceiver’s interpretation, and indeed between the interpretations of different perceivers, in regard to uses of pre-existing music. How such uses are understood depends to a great extent on the intertextual knowledge and experience that an individual – whether filmmaker or audience member – has, and that they draw upon, in constructing their understanding. Intention and interpretation also interact, as filmmakers may attempt to account for interpretive variation when creating their films, and perceivers for the possible intentions of filmmakers when watching those films. Through a combination of textual analysis, examination of documentary evidence of filmmakers’ intentions, and study of audience member testimonies gathered via remote observation and interview, the chapter moves beyond the simplistic generalizations of much previous scholarship tackling these themes, to outline complex realities pertaining to a series of examples. Chapter 3 takes as its focus the connection between quotation and quoted text, and specifically the idea that the former inherently refers outwards,

Introduction  13 from its position within a film, to the latter as it exists in the world beyond the screen. Pre-existing music’s referentiality, as I term it, is key to how such music has been deployed by filmmakers and understood by audiences. The chapter demonstrates this by exploring the role of this process in various common functions and effects of pre-existing music, from the establishment of time, place, and character, to the creation of expectations for forthcoming events in the onscreen action. Broadly conceived, these functions and effects are common to music in film, and not just pre-existing music, but the referentiality of pre-existing music conditions the manners and situations in which they can be and have been performed. While distinct possibilities are thus attached to pre-existing music, and are of interest in their own right, attending to those possibilities also calls into question certain general theories of film music. Finally, Chapter 4 looks at ‘post-existing music’: the music we now listen to and understand in new ways following its cinematic appropriation. Films can introduce audiences to music with which they may be unfamiliar, but may affect how we interact with even the most familiar of pieces, for instance by suggesting particular imagery that we might subsequently bring to mind when listening. Here I discuss a range of examples in which films of different kinds have altered the reception of music of different kinds, and not only within the lives of particular individuals but on a broader, cultural level. These examples illustrate common ways in and means by which this alteration has occurred, and demonstrate that film must occupy a central place in any history of contemporary listening, whether its effects are judged in a positive or negative light.

Notes 1 Williams (in Byrd 2011 [1997], p. 416) says this of his Star Wars scores: ‘The films themselves showed us characters we hadn’t seen before and planets unimagined and so on, but the music was – this is actually George Lucas’s conception and a very good one – emotionally familiar. It was not music that might describe terra incognita but the opposite of that, music that would put us in touch with very familiar and remembered emotions, which for me as a musician translated into the use of a 19th century operatic idiom, if you like, Wagner and this sort of thing. These sorts of influences would put us in touch with remembered theatrical experiences as well – all western experiences to be sure.’ As well as the common style, Williams’s score features direct allusions to pre-existing works, such as to Korngold’s main title theme for Kings Row (dir. Sam Wood, 1942) in its own opening music (see Orosz 2015, pp. 313–14). 2 The vast majority of scholarship dealing with the effects of music in film assumes a first-viewing (and, with original music, first-hearing) scenario, for instance, often without acknowledging this limitation. This is even true of analyses in this book, and perhaps it is justified given that first viewing is what filmmakers must primarily plan for (at least in the mainstream), and that the majority of the audience for most films will see them only once. Nonetheless, repeat viewing is a significant practice of film consumption, particularly in relation to cult cinema, and while film scholarship has begun to explore its

14  Introduction implications (see Klinger 2006, pp. 135–90, for instance), more needs to be done by those studying film music. 3 ‘Filmmaker’ is useful as a catch-all term because in many cases we cannot be sure of to whom we should be referring (or even if it is a single person or more than one, in which case ‘filmmaker’ denotes a hypothetical figure of power). In this study particularly, I use it because of my desire to make broader points relating to many films, of which the individual production circumstances will inevitably differ. 4 Jaws, incidentally, presents one case in which at least one author has considered the implications of repeat viewings and other scenarios mentioned above for understandings of the music’s effect: ‘On a second or third viewing, Williams’s score, rather like a friend’s wicked joke, frightens us with a wink, bracketing its own clichéd characteristics. Given the immense popularity of the film and its music, it is even possible that first-time viewers may hear the motive with a measure of ironic distance’ (Biancorosso 2010, pp. 320–1). 5 In discussing specific film scenes in this book, I have chosen not to give time codes to assist the reader in finding the moments in question. The time codes I have access to are mostly from DVDs of films in PAL format. As PAL DVDs play films four per cent faster than they were intended (and than they appear on NTSC DVDs and in almost all high-definition Blu-Ray, download, and streaming formats, which eliminate frame rate disparities), PAL time codes would be unhelpful and possibly even confusing for readers in, say, the US. Likewise, ‘correct’ time codes might appear incorrect to many readers in Europe and elsewhere. I hope that my descriptions will therefore be enough to point readers in the right direction where necessary. On a related note, the ‘PAL speedup effect’ results in music sounding almost a semitone higher than it should – a phenomenon deserving of separate scholarly consideration, in regard to how this may change the music’s effect on audiences – but all examples here are notated or described at the correct, original pitch. 6 Without coining the term, James Buhler (2017, p. 5) offers an effective description of the branding function of franchise music when he discusses ‘its way of binding the world of the franchise together across not just various films but an increasingly diverse media landscape, including especially video games, websites, and amusement park rides. Music in fact has often been deployed as though it was a key franchise asset, along with characters and set and prop design, which induces the appearances of, our belief in, and commitment to the fictional world.’ 7 Remakes, reboots, spinoffs, and other such phenomena present potential complications in defining what constitutes a franchise, and deciding whether a reuse of music across any apparent borders is a use of pre-existing music. This can be done only on a case-by-case basis, with much resting on the historical and cultural contexts of the ‘old’ and ‘new’ films, the general differences (musical and otherwise) between them, and the intention of the later filmmakers in recycling the music. 8 Jeff Smith (1998, p. 117) argues in relation to the music of the James Bond ­franchise, for instance, that, ‘[t]o begin to approach the Bond scores, it is helpful to consider the musical patterns that develop across the series as well as those that develop within individual films. Not only would such an approach account for certain of the scores’ incongruities, it would also offer a more multileveled, nuanced understanding of the Bond music’s connotative power.’ 9 To be clear, while the Kick-Ass scene (and indeed the film) as a whole is somewhat parodic, the music itself is fairly ‘straight’ and so pastiche: it does not exaggerate elements of Williams’s theme for the purposes of comic critique, for instance. This helps it to work for listeners who do not make the specific connection to

Introduction  15

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12

13

14

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Superman: more generally in Kick-Ass, music that would be appropriate for a ‘­serious’ superhero is comically juxtaposed with shots of a teenager leaping around his bedroom in a silly costume. Dyer would probably describe Williams’s process in these scores as emulation. As he notes, ‘[a] work’s connection to its predecessors [is] evident in emulation, but this [is] not the point of it. Rather, you [imitate] your predecessors in order to try to achieve what they . . . achieved’ (2007, p. 36). As Graham Allen (2011, p. 57) reminds us, ‘[i]ntertextuality, as a concept, has a history of different articulations which reflect the distinct historical situations out of which it has emerged’. Thus, appropriately, ‘any application of it now will itself be an intertextual or transpositional event’. At this level, it is worth emphasizing that it is a film that quotes pre-existing music, and not a more particular entity such as a film’s score or soundtrack. To be more specific is to imply certain things about the music’s placement and function, and the personnel involved in its deployment (the score’s composer, for instance), which complicate the basic theory. ‘Stuck in the Middle’ plays from beginning to end in Reservoir Dogs, but fades out on the soundtrack midway through as the camera follows a character leaving the building in which the music’s source – a radio – is situated. As that character returns, we hear the song again, as if it had never stopped playing. The timings match up exactly as they should, in fact, but as the song is completely inaudible for a period, it is nonetheless technically true that Reservoir Dogs does not quote all of ‘Stuck in the Middle’. Lacasse’s terms are transpositions of Nelson Goodman’s distinction between autographic and allographic art. Goodman’s distinction relates to the manner in which art can be duplicated. Autographic works such as paintings cannot be authentically copied, but only forged. By contrast, allographic works – i­ ncluding, for Goodman, pieces of music, along with plays, works of architecture, and so on – can occur in many authentic versions, owing to the existence of a ‘score’ that identifies ‘the essential properties a performance must have to belong to the work’ (1976, p. 212). Technically, 2001 quotes Karajan’s recording, but because this is a recording of a (performance of a) composition that is both independent of and instantiated by its individual renditions (as per the norms of the Western art music tradition), it is not incorrect to state that the film quotes Strauss’s piece, as I have done above. Allosonic quotations can cite compositions more directly, but in any case, and because it would be tiresome here to unpick all of the possible relationships that performances may have with compositions across various traditions, it is important to remember that the allosonic–autosonic distinction is only a technical one. It has no necessary implications for the semantic intentions of filmmakers or reactions of audiences regarding uses of pre-existing music, for instance. In an article dealing with ‘posthumous duets’, Jason Stanyek and Benjamin ­Piekut offer two coinages that are useful in dealing with such autosonic examples: ‘Revertibility refers to a temporal process of undoing a work of recording in some way, whereby presumptive wholes can be disarticulated and taken back to a prior stage in a process of assemblage, upsetting straightforward, cumulative forms of co-labor . . . The related concept of recombinatoriality, on the other hand, describes the capacity toward articulating what are taken to be discrete, non-identical parts into new arrangements’ (2010, p. 7; emphases original). In the Shutter Island case, the ‘ghostly hints’ of the original backing suggest that Washington’s vocal (itself that of a ghost, in a sense with which Stanyek and Piekut deal, as Washington died in 1963) was not available to Robertson on a separate track (often known as a stem, in multitrack production terminology),

16  Introduction but rather had to be taken from the relatively unrevertible stereo mix of ‘This Bitter Earth’ in order to be recombined with the Richter piece. As the vocal is panned fully left in that mix, muting the right track would have eliminated some of the instrumental sound, with that remaining then filtered or clipped out as far as possible. The nature of the 1959 arrangement is that Washington’s lines often arrive relatively solo, but those that were originally accompanied by string countermelodies appear with that backing in the mashup. 17 For Elsie Walker (2015, p. 303), the mashup also has a striking dramatic effect in the context of the film, for one because ‘[t]he combination communicates the fantasy of a reconstituted body . . . a deeply and disturbingly ironic point in relation to the destruction of [main character] Andrew’s mind that is anticipated by the film’s end’. 18 Cases of plagiarism present the obvious exception to these rules and conventions. Plagiarism is a form of quotation in spite of its being entirely unacknowledged. Proven instances of plagiarism in film music are uncommon, but not unheard of. For one example, see the case of Tyler Bates’s score to 300 (dir. Zack ­Snyder, 2006), regarding which production company Warner Bros. (2007) released the following statement: ‘Warner Bros. Pictures acknowledges and ­regrets that a number of the music cues for the score of 300 were, without our knowledge or participation, derived from music composed by Academy Award winning ­composer Elliot Goldenthal for the motion picture Titus [dir. Julie ­Taymor, 1999]. Warner Bros. Pictures has great respect for Elliot, our longtime collaborator, and is pleased to have amicably resolved this matter.’

References Allen, G. (2011) Intertextuality. 2nd edn. London: Routledge. Biancorosso, G. (2010) ‘The Shark in the Music’, Music Analysis, 29(1/3), pp. 306–33. Buhler, J. (2017) ‘Branding the Franchise’, in Meyer, S. C. (ed.) Music in Epic Film: Listening to Spectacle. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 3–26. Byrd, C. L. (2011 [1997]) ‘Interview with John Williams’, in Hubbert, J. (ed.) Celluloid Symphonies: Texts and Contexts in Film Music History. London: University of California Press, pp. 414–22. Duncan, D. (2003) Charms That Soothe: Classical Music and the Narrative Film. New York: Fordham University Press. Dyer, R. (2007) Pastiche. London: Routledge. Goodman, N. (1976) Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols. 2nd edn. Indianapolis: Hackett. Kalinak, K. (1992) Settling the Score: Music and the Classical Hollywood Film. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Klinger, B. (2006) Beyond the Multiplex: Cinema, New Technologies, and the Home. London: University of California Press. Kristeva, J. (1980 [1969]) ‘Word, Dialogue, and Novel’, in Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art. Edited by L. S. Roudiez. Translated from the original French by T. Gora, A. Jardine, and L. S. Roudiez. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, pp. 64–91. Lacasse, S. (2000) ‘Intertextuality and Hypertextuality in Recorded Popular Music’, in Talbot, M. (ed.) The Musical Work: Reality or Invention? Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, pp. 35–58.

Introduction  17 Larson, R. D. (2011) ‘The Film Music of Henry Jackman’, Randall Larson’s Soundtrax, 29 July. Available at: www.buysoundtrax.com/larsons_soundtrax_7_29_11.html (accessed 26 March 2018). Orosz, J. (2015) ‘John Williams: Paraphraser or Plagiarist?’, Journal of Musicological Research, 34(4), pp. 299–319. McQuiston, K. (2013) We’ll Meet Again: Musical Design in the Films of Stanley Kubrick. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Powrie, P. (2006) ‘The Fabulous Destiny of the Accordion in French Cinema’, in Powrie, P. and Stilwell, R. (eds) Changing Tunes: The Use of Pre-existing Music in Film. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 137–51. Powrie, P. and Stilwell, R. (eds) (2006a) Changing Tunes: The Use of Pre-existing Music in Film. Aldershot: Ashgate. Powrie, P. and Stilwell, R. (2006b) ‘Introduction’, in Powrie, P. and Stilwell, R. (eds) Changing Tunes: The Use of Pre-existing Music in Film. Aldershot: Ashgate. pp. xiii–xix. Smith, J. (1998) The Sounds of Commerce: Marketing Popular Film Music. New York: Columbia University Press. Stanyek, J. and Piekut, B. (2010) ‘Deadness: Technologies of the Intermundane’, TDR: The Drama Review, 54(1), pp. 14–38. Walker, E. (2015) Understanding Sound Tracks Through Film Theory. Oxford: ­Oxford University Press. Warner Bros. (2007) 300. Available at: wwws.warnerbros.co.uk/300 (accessed 26 March 2018). Werba, M. (2015 [1985]) ‘Ennio Morricone on Once Upon a Time in America’, Soundtrack, 8 April. Available at: www.runmovies.eu/ennio-morricone-on-­onceupon-a-time-in-america (accessed 26 March 2018).

1 Production contexts and considerations

[U]nfortunately the one [song] we don’t have in the film is the one the book starts out with: ‘Sympathy for the Devil’. The real connoisseurs of this book are going to say, ‘What? No Rolling Stones?’ But we couldn’t afford it.

Terry Gilliam (in Morgan n.d.) here comments on his 1998 film adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and the prohibitive cost that prevented the film’s use of the Rolling Stones’ ‘Sympathy for the Devil’. This brief remark offers an intriguing insight into one among many instances of ‘real-world’ considerations affecting a film’s use of pre-­ existing music. Behind any such use can lie not just a filmmaker’s artistic intent in selecting music and plotting its interactions with other elements of their film, but also a host of other factors that may shape those choices, many at least somewhat outside of their control.1 In the case of Fear and Loathing, the issue was financial, and specifically the cost of licensing a song under copyright. Other such factors include the perceived commercial appeal of the music, changing technologies, and critical attitudes towards the practice. These contextual issues are the concern of this chapter. The intention is not to provide a comprehensive history of production circumstances affecting uses of pre-existing music in narrative film, but rather to discuss a few examples (prominent and important ones, certainly) of issues that have coloured and directed such uses, and that must therefore be acknowledged if that practice is to be fully understood and appreciated.

Rights and licensing Using pre-existing music often means using another creator’s copyrighted work. Permission for this needs to be sought from the relevant parties; the music needs to be licensed (‘cleared’). Two types of licence are of key importance: 1 A synchronization licence gives a filmmaker the right to synchronize a musical composition – as it exists separately from any specific rendition – to

Production contexts and considerations  19 a visual element. It is obtained from the owner(s) of the publishing rights to that composition. 2 A master licence gives a filmmaker the right to use a specific audio recording together with a visual. It is obtained from the owner(s) of that recording’s master tape, hence the term. In many cases, both licences would be required. In others, only one would be needed. For some uses, neither licence would be necessary. A hypothetical example for illustration: in order to autosonically quote the Rolling Stones’ original 1968 recording of their own song ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ (from the album Beggars Banquet) in a film, a filmmaker today would require both synchronization and master licences, as both the composition and recording are protected by copyright. In this case, both copy­ rights are owned by the same organization – ABKCO Music & Records, Inc. – but must nonetheless be considered separate. If the filmmaker wished instead to use the 1994 cover version of ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ by Guns N’ Roses, originally recorded for the film Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (dir. Neil Jordan, 1994), they would be faced with a different situation. As this recording is also under copyright, both types of licence would still be required. However, while the synchronization licence would be the same as in the previous case, obtained from ABKCO, the master licence for this version would be obtained from Geffen Records, who own the copyright to the Guns N’ Roses recording. Another option would be to commission a brand-new recording of ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ especially for the film (to allosonically quote the song, in other words), in which case only the synchronization licence – the licence to use the composition itself – would be needed. Similarly, if a filmmaker wanted to use a recent commercial recording of a composition not itself protected by copyright – one in the public domain, such as a Beethoven symphony, for example – permission would only be required from the owner of that recording. And, if a new recording of that Beethoven symphony was produced, or if a filmmaker chose to use an existing public domain recording of the same piece, neither licence would be needed. Equally, though, the use of some pieces will actually necessitate multiple synchronization and/or master licences. Any samples from copyrighted works that would be heard in a film through autosonic use of a ‘host’ hip-hop track, for instance, would have to be individually cleared alongside that sampling work. A number of entries in the credits for N.W.A biopic Straight Outta Compton (dir. F. Gary Gray, 2015) thus read like this two-tiered example: ‘Express Yourself’ Written by Charles W. Wright Performed by N.W.A Courtesy of Priority Records / Ruthless Records Under license from Universal Music Enterprises

20  Production contexts and considerations Contains a sample of ‘Express Yourself’ Performed by Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band Courtesy of Warner Bros. Records Inc. By arrangement with Warner Music Group Film & TV Licensing Generally speaking, there are no exceptions to the need to license copy­ righted work. International copyright agreements, such as the Berne ­Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (1886, rev. 1979), have today been signed by most of the world’s states (176 as of March 2018), meaning that basic legal tenets are effectively universal, and that signatory states must recognize the copyright of works from outside of their own jurisdictions.2 As each country writes and enforces its own copyright laws, though, filmmakers in some locations might have recourse to certain principles in defence of copyright violation claims. In the United States, for instance, case law established in rulings over sampling in hip-hop music currently suggests that the de minimis principle might apply to allosonic quotations short enough to be considered trifling matters (de minimis non curat lex translating as ‘the law does not concern itself with trifles’), though not to autosonic quotations of any kind.3 Filmmakers quoting music for such purposes as parody or criticism could also be protected by the ‘fair use’ doctrine.4 However, these principles could indeed only be drawn upon as defences, leaving licensing as the only reliable option for filmmakers wishing to avoid legal action. Exceptional cases have arisen historically whereby filmmakers have exploited particular circumstances to their advantage. Twentieth Century Fox’s The Iron Curtain (dir. William A. Wellman, 1948), for instance, features music by Soviet composers Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev, Aram Khachaturian, and Nikolai Myaskovsky, all conducted by studio music director Alfred Newman. Though the film credited the composers, no permission was sought, nor remuneration given for the music’s use, because at that time neither the US nor the USSR were signatories of any international copyright convention, and so the music was considered to be in the public domain in the US. In this instance, the composers attempted to stop the distribution of the film by claiming that their moral rights – their rights to object to a use ‘which would be prejudicial to [their] honor or reputation’ (Berne Convention 1886, rev. 1979, art.6bis) – had been violated. Specifically, they argued that use of their music in a film of anti-Soviet subject matter ‘indicated their approval, endorsement and participation thereby casting upon them the false imputation of being disloyal to their country’. The Court of New York rejected the claim, however, because the common law system of the US did not (and still does not) recognize moral rights to the same extent as do civil law countries such as France, where distribution of the film was stopped by a later hearing on the same grounds (Bertrand 2011).5 Nonetheless, the basic copyright situation and licensing process described here will now be recognized worldwide (the US and Russia signed up to the

Production contexts and considerations  21 Berne Convention in 1989 and 1995 respectively, while other makeweight international agreements had also been signed by the two states in prior decades).6 For the purposes of a scholarly overview (and not a legally authoritative guide), they can also be assumed to have been broadly in place throughout sound-film history. Both the concept of copyright and the beginnings of its international standardization predate the coming of sound, and so exceptional cases such as that of The Iron Curtain are precisely that: exceptional. The continuing discussion of rights and licensing below will rely mostly on examples from modern US productions, simply because of the relative ease of finding such examples (though ‘relative’ is certainly a valid qualifier, as the commercially sensitive details of licensing agreements are not often made public). From the side of a film’s production, a music supervisor or someone with even broader responsibilities might handle the licensing process, though many productions credit one or more persons for roles such as ‘music legal services’ or ‘music clearance executive’.7 The process is, by all accounts, complex. Even identifying the relevant rights holders to contact might not be straightforward. Publishing and master rights are in some cases owned by the same person or organization, with a resultant single point of contact, as with the Rolling Stones’ original version of ‘Sympathy’. Many musical compositions do not even have a single publisher, though, but rather two or more co-publishers, all of whom would have to give their permission for the composition to be used in a film. Rights can be held by the composer(s) or performing artist(s) themselves, but when this is not the case, those creators might nonetheless also have a say in licensing decisions if this was agreed in their contract(s) with their publisher(s) and record label.8 The key factor to consider in regard to synchronization and master licences, however, is that they have economic value. This is partly why the circumstances of rights ownership vary from case to case, as parties in different circumstances have weighed up the immediate outlay or income of buying or selling copyrights against the potential for long-term benefit through rights exploitation. Economic value is the main reason for the complexity of the licensing process, because there are no set rates for licensing. It is also not simply the case that a hit song will be valued higher than an obscure B-side. The music’s cultural prominence will generally be one factor in the calculation of a fee, but, as music supervisor Brooke Wentz suggests, ‘the same song for one production could be free, and for another production $1,000,000’ (2007, p. 43). How is music valued? Licensors’ decisions over how much to charge for a licence – and over whether to grant one at all, which they are not obliged to do – are based on a number of concerns. Basic factors include the geographical territories, media formats, and length of time for which the filmmaker wishes to license the music. One complication to consider here is that any upfront fee can be supplemented or supplanted by remuneration due at a later date: in respect of territories, for instance, limited coverage could be

22  Production contexts and considerations agreed initially (‘domestic release only’, say), with extensions taken up in the future if necessary. A ‘step deal’ could also be negotiated at the outset, with payments then due once a film has, for example, passed certain box-office milestones. To feature copyrighted music on a soundtrack release, incidentally, requires separate licensing. There are further complications here, in that a record company rather than a film company will in most cases be responsible for compiling and distributing a film’s soundtrack release. The two companies would inevitably be working in partnership, though, and might even be part of the same umbrella organization (a situation considered further below). The licensing negotiations for the soundtrack release might thus take place alongside those for the film, effectively adding further variables into the same process. Licensing for an audio-only release is much the same as for an audiovisual one, albeit with important differences regarding publishing rights: the rights holder here is obliged to grant a mechanical licence, with royalties relating to units produced then payable by the licensee at a rate that is set (by statute in the US, for example) rather than negotiable. With licensing for film use specifically, the subject, content, or perceived quality of a film, as well as the identity and budget of the filmmaker, can more subjectively affect a rights holder’s judgement. Music supervisor Chris Douridas (in Rona 2012 [2000], p. 264) comments generally that ‘[a] great script can change a lot of people’s minds and help you tremendously in the negotiation process. If you’re working on a crappy film, nobody wants to be a part of it unless you pay full price.’ One specific example of fee flexibility comes from Zach Braff (in IGN Music 2007), who recalls the process of licensing songs by the likes of Coldplay, Nick Drake, and Simon & Garfunkel for his low-budget film Garden State (2004): The sort of money that was originally quoted could have funded a few small independent pictures . . . I’m just thankful that after I showed them the sequences in which their songs were used, the artists or their estates were generous enough to work within our budgets. Many rights holders would, in the end, rather make some money from their property than none at all. Filmmakers can also offer rights holders exposure of their property to new audiences, effectively meeting the perceived value of a licence nonmonetarily. With growing numbers of filmmakers incorporating pre-­existing music into their work over the past half century, rights holders have increasingly recognized the filmic avenue (and the avenues of other screen media) as a potentially lucrative adjunct to their traditional (and, increasingly, failing) business strategies, in promotional as well as direct financial terms. Indeed, while Jeff Smith (1998, p. 228) reported two decades ago that ‘the costs of using a particular recording over a film’s opening credits is now five to ten times higher than what it was five to ten years ago’ (that is, in the late 1980s and early 1990s), licensing fees have since dropped, generally

Production contexts and considerations  23 speaking. Publishers and record labels now seek placements for their music more actively, rather than waiting for filmmakers to approach them. As music supervisor Michael Perlmutter puts it, ‘[t]here is [now] a great desire to have songs used as opposed to being protective of them’ (in Bethune 2011). And fellow supervisor Ron Proulx’s comments (in Bethune 2010) illustrate that this desire cannot be tied solely to direct fee income: There is an endless supply of music now. It is so easy to find music it is ridiculous. So the fees have gone through the floor . . . People are much more aware, producers are much more aware of the whole music licensing thing. And people have been competing on a cost basis . . . We even get people trying to give us music for free. Bethany Klein and Leslie M. Meier (2017, p. 283) nonetheless note that ‘[licensing] revenues in aggregate have continued to grow’ over the past decade, illustrating the overall growth of the area. The intended use of the music in the film will, of course, have potential implications for both the licensing fee and the exposure of the music. A full, prominent placement over the opening credits is clearly not equivalent to a partial, barely audible clip emanating as source music from the window of a passing car, in relation to either factor. While the fee for that opening-­ credit placement (or similarly for additionally featuring the music in the film’s trailers, television advertising, and so on) will theoretically be higher, so the relative exposure offered by this will be higher than the car-radio (or film-only) placement, which could therefore offset the fee. Then again, some rights holders might feel that their music is already in the public ear and thus not in need of further exposure. Any notable adaptations of the music, such as a change of lyrics, must also be authorized. Clearly, licensing negotiations can be delicate balancing acts, characterized by music supervisor Joel C. High as ‘horse trading’ (in Loyola University Film and Music Industry Studies 2011). What are the implications of copyright and the licensing process for uses of pre-existing music in film? Simply put, filmmakers’ choices – both of whether and, if so, what pre-existing music is used – can be, and have been, shaped by it. Gilliam’s inability to afford ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas provides one example of this, from a time – the late 1990s – when licensing fees were at their peak, but the point applies to films produced in other eras, too. Martin Scorsese recalls a problem on Mean Streets (1973) strikingly similar to that experienced by Gilliam, noting that ‘[t]here was one Rolling Stones song I couldn’t get in – it was just too much money for it’ (in Scorsese and Robinson 2005).9 And George Lucas’s American Graffiti (1973), though featuring 45 songs in its final incarnation and thus hardly short of music, was originally intended to have nearly double that amount, a number for which Lucas’s budget would also not allow (Pollock 1999, pp. 108–9).

24  Production contexts and considerations In the dystopian future world of director Kurt Wimmer’s Equilibrium (2002), the controlling totalitarian regime believes human emotion to be responsible for all conflict. To neutralize it, they prescribe compulsory dosage of an emotion-suppressing drug, along with the prohibition of any ­material – music, for instance – that has the potential to trigger such emotion. For a scene in which the protagonist stumbles upon and plays a recording of B ­ eethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Wimmer (2008) had a particular Karajan/Berlin Philharmonic interpretation in mind: I carried it with me all through production. I even used it when shooting this scene. It wasn’t until the very end of pre-production that my Post-­ Production Supervisor and Associate Producer in no time came to me and said, ‘You’ve selected the most expensive [recording] of this music in the world. It would cost $75,000 to use the 90 seconds you want to use.’ Well, figuring we had $65,000 in the budget and we might be able to stretch it I said, ‘How much do we have?’ and she said, ‘$1,500’. Well, there was no way I was going to make that leap. So, I was forced to basically scratch around the bargain bins until I found another [recording] that sort-of worked, and I had to re-cut the scene, and lay that what I’m sorry to say is an inferior [recording] in. And, the scene . . . it works less good now. For I Am Sam (dir. Jessie Nelson, 2001), it was the complicated mechanics of the licensing process, combined with an unfortunate turn of events, that prompted a rethink. Nelson planned to soundtrack the film with Beatles recordings, but required permission from the three surviving band m ­ embers – Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr – and Yoko Ono, John Lennon’s widow. Licences are often not obtained until late in postproduction, after the details of the music’s proposed use have been finalized, and in this instance Harrison proved uncontactable with the film’s release date approaching, as he was suffering from lung cancer.10 The filmmakers therefore decided to commission artists including Rufus Wainwright and Sarah McLachlan to record covers of the same songs, as Sony/ATV M ­ usic ­Publishing alone could approve the synchronization licences.11 Though time constraints – or at least the incompatibility of the licensing process with such constraints – were ostensibly the problem here, the same issue could have arisen had Harrison been contacted and not given permission, or for reasons of cost. On that note, though, I Am Sam in fact provides a good example of fee flexibility, as Sony apparently charged ‘well under $1 million’ for licences that could cost several times that in other circumstances ­(Goldstein 2001). The Beatles feature in I Am Sam not only musically, but also through numerous other references: title character Sam names his daughter Lucy Diamond, for instance, recalling the song ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’. Nelson (in Goldstein 2001) admits that she was ‘naïve’ in writing the band into her script. Had she been more familiar in advance with the potential

Production contexts and considerations  25 licensing issues involved, the film might have materialized in a significantly different self-censored form – without the Beatles on soundtrack or in script – or not at all. It is easy to imagine other project ideas that are simply never contemplated because of these issues. Narrative film cannot be all that different from other fields in which concerns over music licensing have led to self-censorship. Documentary films, for instance, offer comparably extreme (or, at least, a comparably large number of extreme) cases of licensing obstacles, relating not only to music but also to elements such as archive newsreel footage. Problems can even stem from material that is not (or should not be) directly under the filmmakers’ control, such as music heard playing in the background of filmed real-world situations (see Aufderheide and Jaszi 2004). A survey (ibid., p. 20) thus reported that many documentarians took pride in pointing out their professionalism in never entertaining un-executable thoughts. They do not even attempt films that pose large rights hurdles, because they are familiar enough with the business to know that the consequences can include the inability to sell the product or get it seen.12 The subjective judgement of licensors can be an unpredictable barrier to the use of pre-existing music in film, but equally can enable appropriations that might be unaffordable under a set-rate scheme. The system can therefore be both a blessing and a curse. Moreover, ultimately, most filmmakers expect their own intellectual property to be protected by copyright, and so cannot hope for that of other artists to be treated differently. Indeed, in some cases those producing a film already own the rights to certain pre-­existing material, which can explain the use of such material – a cheap option, in short – in low-budget films particularly. Consider, for instance, the reuse of music composed by James Horner for Battle Beyond the Stars (dir. Jimmy T. Murakami, 1980) in other films similarly produced by Roger Corman, including Sorceress (dir. Jack Hill, 1982) and Space Raiders (dir. Howard R. Cohen, 1983).13 Horner would have written the Battle Beyond the Stars score under a ‘work-for-hire’ agreement, granting his employer ownership and thus free reuse of his compositions. ‘Work-for-hire’ is a common arrangement (at least in the US; many other countries do not recognize the concept) that puts freelance composers in a similar position to those who were fully employed by studios in Hollywood’s ‘Golden Age’, effectively transferring their authorial rights to their employer. Unsurprisingly, many low-budget productions in the studio era were also scored wholly or partly using cues from studio libraries. For example, Richard H. Bush (1989, p. 144) notes that the only new cue heard in Universal’s three original Flash Gordon serials – Flash Gordon (1936), Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars (1938), and Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940) – is the main title music, ‘all other music having been drawn from Universal’s extensive library of music that had been composed originally for use in their feature films and previous serials’.14

26  Production contexts and considerations Integration of the film and music industries can offer filmmakers working under the aegis of certain production companies relatively easy access not only to music previously composed for films, but also to music of various other kinds. Referring to cartoons of the studio era, Mervyn Cooke (2008, pp. 294–5) notes that the output of major studio Warner featured recent popular songs much more than that of independent Disney, largely because ‘Warners owned several music-publishing interests and could freely plunder their own catalogues of up-to-date tunes’. The present situation of corporate conglomeration, in which the music and film industries in the US and beyond are integrated more closely than at any time since the breakup of the classical studio system, provides similar possibilities. A filmmaker working for Sony Pictures Entertainment (a film company), for instance, is likely to have easier access to material controlled by Sony Music Entertainment (a record company) and Sony/ATV Music Publishing than one working outside of the Sony Corporation umbrella. The absence of legal and financial obstacles to the use of certain pre-­ existing pieces can still be understood to guide creativity down those particular avenues, though. With unlimited money and time, the makers of Space Raiders and the Flash Gordon serials would probably have chosen other music for their productions. Restrictions can also be imposed if films are seen as an opportunity to promote music. Cooke (ibid., p. 295) in fact notes that composers working on those Warner cartoons ‘for a time . . . were compelled (somewhat against their will) to use a Warner song in each of their assignments’. Even when working relatively independently, commercial realities can force filmmakers to strike deals that have similar creative consequences. Quentin Tarantino (in Romney and Wootton 1995, p. 135) recalls that the band Bedlam, signed to MCA, recorded a cover of Steppenwolf’s ‘Magic Carpet Ride’ for Reservoir Dogs (1992) on account of such a deal: We needed a record deal to pay for the rights to the songs to Reservoir Dogs . . . Kathy Nelson at MCA stepped up to the plate and said, ‘We’ll do it if you put in one of our artists, so we can have something to push.’ One final point of note here is that copyright is not the only potential legal consideration surrounding pre-existing music’s use. A recording, unlike a composition, cannot necessarily be freely reused even by its owners. The American Federation of Musicians (AFM), for instance, has campaigned to restrict uses of recordings in the cinema since the introduction of sound film – and the consequent loss of thousands of cinema-orchestra musician jobs – in the late 1920s. Their original protests led at best only to token gestures of solidarity from theatre owners (see Wierzbicki 2009, pp. 105–6), but continued interest in keeping musicians in regular work underpinned their thinking in more significant agreements subsequently struck with film studios. In 1938, for example, Hollywood studios agreed with the AFM to prohibit ‘dubbing’ soundtracks recorded for earlier films onto new productions

Production contexts and considerations  27 (Gorman 1983, p. 701). This prohibition was carried into a major 1944 contract between the AFM and the studios, renewed with the same clause into the 1950s (Leiter 1953, pp. 82–3; see also Anderson 2004, p. 242). Bush (1989, p. 149) notes the impact of the initial ban on one studio: beginning in 1939 all library music used by Universal was newly recorded. Previously an editor might pull any one of several hundred cues he felt appropriate. Now, to economize on an expensive turn in production, the film editors would decide what music cues were needed and requisition the music department to re-record them.15 In other words, autosonic quotation of earlier scores was prohibited (rendering studio libraries of recorded music effectively worthless), but allosonic quotation continued. The latter was, of course, much more burdensome in financial and organizational terms, but evidently still an economic option compared to commissioning newly composed music. More nuanced regulations operate today: the reuse of any recording made by Union musicians requires payment of fees, collected by the AFM and distributed to the musicians involved in the recording in question (see Kushnir 2005, pp. 87–8). These fees effectively compensate those musicians for the denial of a potential employment opportunity. Furthermore, if a recording was originally made for the soundtrack of another film, a reuse ‘unsynced’ from that earlier film’s other elements may currently be of a portion only up to two minutes in length. The AFM sued six major studios in 2015 for breaching these rules (American Federation of Musicians 2015). Using pre-existing music in a film is theoretically an easy task, something today that anyone with a computer, a digital file of their chosen track, and basic film-editing software could accomplish without trouble (and that many often do for videos uploaded to YouTube). In the practical world of commercial cinema, however, it can involve a minefield of legal and financial considerations. Traversing that minefield might, of course, be worthwhile even judged solely against the end result of the music’s functions and effects in a film. Full consideration of the realities of pre-existing music’s use involves looking at other potential benefits, however, as is the focus of this chapter’s next section.

(Re)selling pre-existing music Since the 1960s, in particular, it has been recognized that music from a film can, as a separate product, both promote that film and sell in significant quantities itself (see Smith 1998, for the most thorough overview). The two processes are often linked in a feedback loop (success of the film leads to success of the music, and vice versa), and the music’s sales can also directly benefit record labels and publishers connected to the film’s production company, in integrated situations like those discussed above. While many of the

28  Production contexts and considerations most commercially lucrative musical tie-ins have involved original music – Celine Dion’s ‘My Heart Will Go On’ from Titanic (dir. James Cameron, 1997), for example, or the soundtrack album to Saturday Night Fever (dir. John Badham, 1977) – pre-existing music has also proved successful. Most obviously, certain new cover versions attached to films have sold in tremendous numbers, such as Whitney Houston’s of Dolly Parton’s song ‘I Will Always Love You’ for The Bodyguard (dir. Mick Jackson, 1992), and Wet Wet Wet’s of the Troggs’ ‘Love is All Around’ for Four Weddings and a Funeral (dir. Mike Newell, 1994). The latter fell just one week short of the record for most consecutive weeks at number 1 in the UK singles chart.16 The success of these examples is somewhat misleading, though, because the covers share a novelty factor and release strategy with newly composed songs. Commercially, such new covers are not representative of pre-­existing music more generally. While previously released recordings have been ‘singled out’ for success by the converging marketing forces of film and music less often, though, that is not to say they have not experienced it. The Righteous Brothers’ 1965 version (itself a cover) of ‘Unchained Melody’, for example, was rereleased as a single in the wake of its use in Ghost (dir. Jerry Zucker, 1990), and subsequently reached number 1 in the UK chart, where it stayed for four weeks. Though its rerelease on PolyGram labels (Verve and Polydor) was unconnected to Ghost’s production company ­Paramount, the song’s success no doubt helped also to promote the film through raising awareness of it (the ‘Why is this song in the charts?’ effect). Straightforward rereleases of single tracks have always been relatively rare, and are now practically needless in a world of downloads and streaming where ‘old’ tracks are available to consumers – and thus able to enter the charts – as easily and immediately as the latest material. Soundtrack albums comprised wholly or partly of previously released music, however, continue to be a mainstay. In August 2014, Guardians of the Galaxy: Awesome Mix Vol. 1, an album that simulates the mixtape treasured by character Peter Quill in Guardians of the Galaxy (dir. James Gunn, 2014), became the first soundtrack release comprising solely of previously released material to top the Billboard ‘200’ album chart (Caulfield 2014). The equivalent album (Awesome Mix Vol. 2) for the film’s sequel, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (dir. James Gunn, 2017), peaked at number 4 on the same chart a few years later.17 The appeal of these and similar albums could conceivably be independent of their films, because alongside their powerful cinematic branding they have a more straightforward appeal as compilations (in the case of Awesome Mix Vol. 1, for example, of popular songs from the 1960s and 1970s by the likes of David Bowie, 10cc, and the Jackson 5). Tellingly, just behind Awesome Mix Vol. 1 on the same week’s Billboard chart was Now 51, the latest in the Now That’s What I Call Music! series of recent-release compilations.18 The continued popularity of compilation albums builds on upward trends recognized over the past few decades (see Wikström and Burnett 2009), and

Production contexts and considerations  29 that also underpin the growing popularity of playlists on streaming services such as Spotify (see Savage 2016, for instance).19 For casual musical consumers, and particularly those today who might be overwhelmed by the instant availability of an essentially unlimited range of music, compilations offer ‘curated’ packages that are nonetheless built on variety; they narrow the search without requiring commitment to one style, artist, or traditional album. And again, any independent commercial success a soundtrack compilation has might lead to its listeners subsequently ‘discovering’ the film, as well as potentially bringing direct financial benefit to the filmmakers (notwithstanding royalties payable to those who continue to own the rights to pre-existing material). Awesome Mix Vol. 1 was released by Hollywood ­Records, a label operating under the same Walt Disney Company umbrella as Marvel Studios, makers of Guardians of the Galaxy, for example. Soundtrack releases of original music, or of newly performed pre-existing music (as in the case of I Am Sam’s soundtrack album), could still feature a variety of artists or styles, of course, so compilations of previously released material are not unique in having this kind of appeal. And, whether previously released music is actually rereleased or not, it is generally the case with both albums and singles of such music that the film promotes the music more than the music promotes the film. New sales and airplay of the music are primarily a reaction to its use in the film; previously released songs are not generally used as scout singles, rereleased in advance of the film, for instance. The music’s independent success therefore relies to a greater extent on the film’s success, and more specifically on how the film uses the music (as Chapter 4 considers in discussing the idea of films bringing pre-existing music to new audiences), though the paths of influence become more interwoven in the years and decades following a film’s cinematic release. It is still true that audiences might be more inclined to see a film if they know it features some of their favourite music, however. Comments posted online following the announcement of the pre-existing songs used in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 illustrate one specific attraction of such uses: ‘I ­really can’t wait to hear these songs in the context of the [film]’ ­(Chitwood 2017); ‘I can’t wait to see how the music is used in conjunction with the action on-screen’ (Russell 2017); ‘Can’t wait to see how they use [Cheap Trick’s] “Surrender” and [ELO’s] “Mr. Blue Sky” in particular’ (vengefulwill 2017). At least some in Vol. 2’s audience were drawn to the film in part to find out how familiar music would be recontextualized.20 Similarly, pre-existing music that is somehow musically reworked for use in a film can have a notably broad appeal, to two potentially distinct groups of fans: those of the original music, and those of the musician(s) responsible for the reworking. This is another factor behind the success of cover versions such as Whitney Houston’s of ‘I Will Always Love You’, but may apply to music not marketed so forcefully. It is also possible, though, that a person who dislikes certain pre-existing music would be put off from seeing a film promoted as employing it; filmmakers must weigh up the odds in these situations.

30  Production contexts and considerations Musician biopics, such as Amadeus (dir. Milos Forman, 1984) or the aforementioned Straight Outta Compton, will inevitably rely commercially to some extent on the prior popularity of their subjects’ music, though it is hard to distinguish this from the appeal of those subjects more broadly. The practice of titling a film after a pre-existing piece unconnected to the film’s storyline focuses more on the music alone: Pretty Woman (dir. Garry ­Marshall, 1990), named after the 1964 Roy Orbison song ‘Oh, Pretty Woman’, is the paradigmatic example. This is actually not the only film to be titled after one of Orbison’s songs: the very next year saw the release of Only the Lonely (dir. Chris Columbus, 1991), after 1960’s ‘Only the Lonely (Know the Way I Feel)’. A 1991 New York Times article quotes one senior film production executive as saying that, ‘[w]hen our guys do titles for movies, they give us a list of 50 or so titles, and usually at least 1 or 2 of these is a song’ (Rohter 1991). Also quoted is David Kirkpatrick, then president of Paramount, who believed that the practice creates a certain resonance, calling individual audience members back to a certain time . . . It puts them in a place that’s comfortable, so there is an immediate sort of interest or draw toward the movie in question. The Orbison songs mentioned are heard within their respective films, as well as in those films’ promotional campaigns. This might not be strictly necessary for the titling tactic to work as a draw, but satisfies the musical expectation created.21 There are yet other circumstances in which certain kinds of pre-existing music can be a particularly attractive option in commercial terms. Smith (1998, p. 173) points out that American Graffiti ‘rode the crest of a rising tide of nostalgia for fifties rock ‘n’ roll’ upon its release in 1973, for example. Of course, it is American Graffiti as a nostalgic (or doubly nostalgic, given that its characters are themselves reflecting on their 1950s youth from the perspective of 1962) whole that proved to be a winning formula. That the use of pre-existing music (specifically, genuine 1950s rock ‘n’ roll) was central to that formula, though, is evidenced perhaps most of all by the success of the film’s soundtrack album, which sold over 500,000 copies within five months of its release (ibid.). Certainly, then, pre-existing music can be an integral part of a profitable film release strategy. It arguably represents a relatively safe bet, too, as its commercial prospects can be judged to an extent in advance based on the music’s previous performance and prevailing cultural trends.22 And it is noteworthy that one attribute shared by all of the most commercially successful examples of music attached to film is built in to pre-existing cases. While the lyrics of ‘My Heart Will Go On’, for instance, were deliberately written to make no direct reference to the story of Titanic, the broader relevance of pre-existing compositions – their ability to work for audiences far beyond the confines of a specific film, both formally and semantically – is inherent.

Production contexts and considerations  31

Production systems and attitudes The industrial production system of Hollywood’s studio era privileged original scores. While not fully replacing the employment opportunities lost with the end of the silent era, studio music departments nonetheless provided reliable work for many musicians, and indeed not just performers but composers, conductors, orchestrators, copyists, and others too. For major studios like MGM in particular, this arrangement made sense given the quantity of films rolling off the production lines, all requiring music to be produced quickly and efficiently. With the talent and organization in place, producing and using original music meant avoiding potentially costly licensing fees, and gaining ownership of new material that could itself be exploited at a later date, to the studio’s own benefit (as discussed above). A shift from silent-era ‘wall-to-wall’ scoring towards intermittent use of music characterizes much Hollywood output of the early sound era. While this has often been attributed to ‘[d]isappointing recording fidelity’ (Cooke 2008, p. 56), James Buhler and Hannah Lewis (2016, p. 20) argue that it seems better explained by the kinds of films being made between 1930 and 1932 – more contemporary drama – and filmmakers’ uncertainty over how closely the musical practice of the sound film should follow that of the silent film. In essence, wall-to-wall music threatened to make sound film appear a little too much like silent film. With recording technology nonetheless improving, and an efficient musical production line already in place, however, film studios concurrently began to see a crucial role for nondiegetic ‘underscore’ in the ‘prestige’ film, to which their focus shifted partly in response to the 1930 Production Code (strictly enforced from 1934), and partly because of changing audience tastes ­(Hubbert 2011, pp. 171–2). Max Steiner, in scores such as for Symphony of Six Million (dir. Gregory La Cava, 1932) and King Kong (dir. Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933), paved the way, as Buhler and ­David ­Neumeyer (2014, p. 35) note: what Steiner did was to establish and confirm a central role for music in [producer David O.] Selznick’s notion of the ‘art film’ or prestige production. Primary to accomplishing this task was to cover a large part of the film with music, in a manner that evoked the deluxe theater orchestral performances of the 1920s but that also took account of the peculiar requirements of recorded sound. For Steiner, those peculiar requirements led to a practice characterized by close synchronization of nondiegetic music with diegetic images, actions, and dialogue (see ibid., pp. 32–8).

32  Production contexts and considerations Following Steiner’s model, music became more commonly used through long swathes of the Hollywood studios’ ‘A’ pictures. This music would be carefully tailored to the on-screen drama, and form a coherent whole through repetition of melodies and other musical material, something most readily achieved through handing authorship to a single composer (who would, nonetheless, generally work with orchestrators and others in the interests of expediency). The single-author model in turn aligned with the Romantic notion of the ‘genius composer’, to which studios appealed in hiring figures with concert-hall credentials such as Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Aaron Copland. And it brought with it that other Romantic notion of originality as a signifier of value, which became further embedded in the thinking of filmmakers and their audiences through the practice of attaching original scores to the ‘A’ pictures, while lower-budget ‘B’ productions often made do with pre-existing selections from the public domain or studio library. As the concept of intertextuality proposes, however, originality is not always what it seems. Korngold incorporated material from earlier compositions by both himself and others in his scores for ‘prestige’ films such as The Adventures of Robin Hood (dir. Michael Curtiz, William Keighley, 1938) (see Winters 2007, pp. 38–49). ‘La Marseillaise’, ‘Das Lied der Deutschen’, and ‘As Time Goes By’ all pre-existed Casablanca (dir. Michael Curtiz, 1942), and feature prominently in Max Steiner’s score for that film. MGM composer Herbert Stothart used classical extracts in many of his scores, and even remarked that [m]y own best successes are those in which Chopin, Tschaikowsky, and other composers can be recognized. The idea of a completely original score for a picture is a broad statement. I contend that the score which best expresses the mood of the picture is the important thing. The idea of an original score is something else again. None of us is a Mozart or a Tschaikowsky. (Stothart, quoted in Rosar 2003, p. 127) The broader musical style employed by Korngold, Steiner, Stothart, and countless other Hollywood studio composers was also ‘borrowed’ from nineteenth-century forebears. Where their film scores were legally or stylistically unoriginal, though, they tended to maintain a façade of originality through the new arrangement and presentation of pre-existing material and devices within a unified musical tapestry. This contrasted with simpler recyclings in ‘B’ films. And, of course, it is worth remembering that ‘A’ scores were often legally original in whole or large part. The influence of ideas and practices established in Hollywood during the first decades of the sound era – and specifically, those ideas and practices communicated through the better-remembered ‘A’ pictures – is one factor

Production contexts and considerations  33 behind the valuing of originality by filmmakers and audiences worldwide and to this day, even as production contexts have changed. This bias is apparent in statements such as Bernard Herrmann’s 1975 declaration that the use of pre-existing music in film is ‘stupid’ (in Brown 1994, p. 291).23 Many of the most often-quoted opinions along these lines are those, like ­Herrmann’s, of film composers, whose reservations are perhaps unsurprising given their vested interests in the prevalence of original scores. Ernest Gold (quoted in Larson 1985, pp. 351–2) at least put forward a more reasoned view in 1982, suggesting that pre-existing classical music ‘interferes. If you know the music, it draws more attention to itself than it should . . . [And i]f you don’t know the music, it doesn’t support the picture because it wasn’t written for the picture.’ The music’s genre arguably makes no difference to these points, the basic assumptions behind which are examined in later chapters of this book. More recently, the actress Kim Novak publicly objected to the use of a cue from Herrmann’s score for Vertigo (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1958, and starring Novak) in The Artist (dir. Michel Hazanavicius, 2011). Her full-page advert in Variety magazine, headlined with the ill-judged ‘I WANT TO R ­ EPORT A RAPE’, claimed in all caps that IT IS MORALLY WRONG FOR THE ARTISTRY OF OUR INDUSTRY TO USE AND ABUSE FAMOUS PIECES OF WORK TO GAIN ATTENTION AND APPLAUSE FOR OTHER THAN WHAT THEY WERE INTENDED. IT IS ESSENTIAL TO SAFEGUARD OUR SPECIAL BODIES OF WORK FOR POSTERITY, WITH THEIR ORIGINAL AND INDIVIDUAL IDENTITIES INTACT AND PROTECTED. (Novak 2012) While the manner of this diatribe is certainly unusual, and its focus on the ‘original and individual identities’ of pre-existing works seeks to claim a conservationist’s high ground, at its core this is simply another framing of the same old argument about new films needing new music. Witness the same bias in the words of Alex Ross (2012), who calls the Vertigo quotation a ‘lapse into unoriginality’ for which The Artist’s director Hazanavicius was ‘to blame’, and situates composer Ludovic Bource (whose original cue for the sequence was rejected in favour of Herrmann’s) as an innocent bystander with a ‘sad, all-too-familiar story’ to tell. Ross’s view is more balanced than Novak’s – he argues that Bource’s cue ‘surges handsomely and dovetails more clearly with the images’ than Herrmann’s – but nonetheless seems to be underpinned by the same problematic confusion of creativity with originality (or at least a certain kind of originality; that Bource’s cue was ‘obviously modelled on Vertigo’ does not merit further comment from Ross).24

34  Production contexts and considerations Perhaps the most prominent embodiment of the ‘creativity = originality’ conviction today is in the title of and criteria for the ‘Best Original Score’ category of the Academy Awards: To be eligible, the original score must be a substantial body of music that serves as original dramatic underscoring, and must be written specifically for the motion picture by the submitting composer. Scores diluted by the use of tracked themes or other pre-existing music, diminished in impact by the predominant use of songs, or assembled from the music of more than one composer shall not be eligible. (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences 2015) These criteria might be less troublesome if other categories recognizing alternative approaches to scoring a film existed, but the only other current music category is ‘Best Original Song’. The Academy has a long history of changing the quantity, titles, and rules of their music categories, and moreover of interpreting the same rules inconsistently, but the tricky concept of originality has been present in some form throughout (see Mera 2017). Save for a period of just over a decade around the 1970s when ‘Adaptation Scores’ were eligible in a second category (Marvin Hamlisch’s score for The Sting (dir. George Roy Hill), featuring arrangements of Scott Joplin rags, won an Oscar in 1973, for example), creative arrangements and deployments of pre-existing pieces have therefore generally gone unrecognized. Atticus Ross’s score for Brian Wilson biopic Love & Mercy (dir. Bill Pohlad, 2014), featuring intricate collages of excerpts from Beach Boys tracks that create the effect of being inside Wilson’s head, was ineligible for an Oscar, for instance, but notably won ‘Best Use of Music in a Film’ in the 2015 awards of the Boston Society of Film Critics.25 The use of pre-existing music in film thus appears even today to be viewed sceptically as regards its value as a creative practice. One can imagine such use being discouraged either explicitly (by instruction to individual filmmakers from their employers and funders) or implicitly (by the cultural weight of opinions and ideas like those noted above). Cooke (2008, p. 441) in fact claims that MGM executives wanted 2001: A Space Odyssey (dir.  ­Stanley Kubrick, 1968) to have an original score in light of the film’s huge budget and consequent status as a gamble for the company, for example. And though Paul A. Merkley interviewed figures involved in the film’s production who recalled no such pressure (2007, p. 21), the reception of 2001 and its uses of pre-existing music suggests that Kubrick’s film nonetheless subverted existing ideas about such music only suiting films of a low(er) cultural status (and indeed signifying that status). Matthias Konzett argues that ‘the use of classical music . . . supports Kubrick’s attempt to raise the sci-fi film from its B status to an A level film’ (2010, p. 104). Similarly, Irwin Bazelon believes that, in 2001 and A Clockwork Orange (1971), too, ‘Kubrick uses the framework of classical music to give his films the veneer of art’ (1975, p.  35).26 Musical style is central to these judgements, though: the ‘veneer of art’ can

Production contexts and considerations  35 only be provided by art music, or at least music considered artistic.27 Moreover, Bazelon’s choice of the word ‘veneer’ hints at a remaining criticism of Kubrick’s practice: is there any substance behind the style?28 For Julie Hubbert, the music’s genre in 2001 and A Clockwork Orange is less significant than the manner of its selection and combination. From these films onwards, Hubbert suggests, ‘serious or epic filmmaking was distinguished not with musical uniformity but with pastiche’ (2017, p. 141). Compilation practice, once a signifier of a film made cheaply, quickly, and perhaps by committee, could now signal an auteur in full control of their vision. Hubbert traces Kubrick’s influence on Rollerball (dir. Norman Jewison, 1975) specifically, that film carrying a classical compilation of Albinoni, Bach, Shostakovich, and Tchaikovsky that was conceived, planned, and even marketed with reference to 2001. Yet, as Kubrick used pre-existing material of other styles across other films (popular songs in Full Metal Jacket (1987), for example), he undoubtedly influenced other filmmakers to do the same. The likes of Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Oliver Stone, David Lynch, Quentin Tarantino, and Wes Anderson have regularly and prominently employed a variety of pre-existing music in their films, bringing the practice as a whole firmly into the Hollywood mainstream in recent decades. Hubbert (2014) elsewhere stresses the importance of technological change in the popular emergence and evolution of pre-existing music’s use since the 1960s. Specifically, she identifies a new compilation practice based on the use of pre-existing recordings (i.e. autosonic quotation), facilitated and encouraged by developments in studio technology (the editing possibilities tied to the emergence of multitrack tape, for instance) and music’s mobility (with tape again allowing consumers to select, mix, and edit music themselves via home recorders, for example). As this technology has moved on – with the arrival of digital music, iPods, and streaming – so have compilation scores, which Hubbert argues are now characterized more by ‘stylistic diversity and stark juxtapositions of popular and classical music’ than before (ibid., p. 308), reflecting filmmakers’ easier access to and manipulation of pre-existing material. While compilation scores from the late 1960s and 1970s tend to feature music of a single style (on the popular side, take Mean Streets, for example), scores such as for Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) or Tarantino’s Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) and Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004) are much more eclectic. Hubbert notes that economic problems and changing audience demographics also contributed to the US film industry adopting new strategies from the 1960s onwards. Films were scored with pop and rock music (both new and pre-existing) in response to the music industry’s success with the youth market, while a broader move towards accommodating a range of stylistic options reflected a need to appeal to a public now more fragmented in its musical tastes (ibid., p. 297). Models of film funding and production were also necessarily different to those that had come before. Large studio music departments with salaried composers and orchestras were no longer economically viable, and centralized power and oversight in musical and other

36  Production contexts and considerations regards gave way to increased freedom for directors. In the final section of this chapter, the extent to which directors such as those named above have actually wielded musical power as auteurs is examined in detail.

Pre-existing music and directorial control It is notable that listing directors renowned for frequent and memorable uses of pre-existing music – Kubrick, Scorsese, Tarantino, and so on – p ­ roduces a list of directors commonly considered auteurs: artists whose work is thought to represent their personal vision, as a result of their apparent control over all aspects of the production process. The same correspondence is present with figures from outside of the US – Jean Renoir, Jean-Luc Godard, ­Ingmar Bergman, Luchino Visconti, Andrei Tarkovsky, and others – whose striking uses of pre-existing music in some cases significantly predate those of their US counterparts. Carlo Cenciarelli (2013, p. 127) observes regarding Bergman, for instance, that [t]he director repeatedly turned to [J. S.] Bach, using his music both as source and underscore in eleven feature films spanning four decades. The music is a near-constant presence in Bergman’s most celebrated decade, from Wild Strawberries (1957) to Persona (1966), and features in many of his later films, motivating moments characterized by great intensity, fragility, and interpretative openness. As James Wierzbicki (2009, p. 199) notes, musical strategies from other cinematic traditions ‘percolated into the work of the defiantly independent filmmakers who had banded together to launch the New American Cinema’ in the 1960s, and from there into mainstream Hollywood. Liberated from the constraints of the studio system, US directors took inspiration from those who had earlier been able to work with more freedom. The potential appeal of pre-existing music for auteurs is obvious. In important regards, the use of pre-existing music affords nonmusician filmmakers more control over the music of their films than does the use of original music. Musician filmmakers – including, at the extreme, directors who have composed music for their own films, such as John Carpenter (e.g. Halloween (1978)) and Clint Eastwood (e.g. Mystic River (2003)) – are a minority. For others, commissioning an original score means relying to a great degree on the imagination and skill of a composer, whereas using pre-existing music can limit or eliminate that reliance. As Tarantino (in Romney and Wootton 1995, p. 127) puts it: I’m a little nervous about the idea of working with a composer because I don’t like giving up that much control. Like, what if he goes off and writes a score and I don’t like it? I don’t like using new music that much because I want to pick what I know.

Production contexts and considerations  37 Fred Karlin and Rayburn Wright (2004, p. 5) argue that, ‘[h]istorically speaking, no aspect of the movie-making phase can cause more anxiety for the filmmakers’ than that period in which (as Tarantino puts it) the composer ‘goes off and writes a score’. Without a formal musical background, a filmmaker’s discussions with a composer can be limited by imprecise language, as various accounts attest (see ibid., p. 9, for instance), and though it is possible to reject a finished score and find another option, this is not ideal when deadlines need to be met.29 For modern filmmakers, Karlin and Wright suggest that some of this anxiety can be alleviated by electronic mockups of scores (see ibid., pp. 101–6). Mockups can be created relatively quickly and easily by composers, and offer a closer simulation of the final result than might, say, a live piano demonstration (assuming that a score is to be written for instruments other than solo piano). Long-term director–composer ­partnerships – such as those of Hitchcock and Herrmann, Federico Fellini and Nino Rota, or Tim Burton and Danny Elfman – can also allow trust and understanding to develop over time. A tool commonly used by filmmakers to proactively communicate their thoughts to composers, though, is a socalled ‘temp track’ of pre-existing music. While sometimes used only as a stopgap during the editing process and for preview screenings, a composer can also be asked to emulate the music a filmmaker has placed on a temp track, certainly in terms of its effect, and often in terms of its style and specific attributes too. As Alan Silvestri notes (in Burlingame 2012): For a non-musical filmmaker, a temp score brings something unknown into the known, and it allows the filmmaker to retain a level of control that they might not have if they were relying on the composer to bring that voice. Though modern temp tracks can exploit the ability to digitally edit and synchronize pre-existing recordings precisely to film, the underlying idea of proposing a model for a composer’s work is timeless. Even when not appearing in the final release of a film, then, pre-existing music can be used by filmmakers as a means of controlling the score to their film. Clearly, extending such music’s presence into the final release extends that control. There are, for one, cases of filmmakers retaining their temp track. The Vertigo excerpt used in The Artist is one example: Bource wrote a cue to replace this, but Hazanavicius preferred the Herrmann music used on the temp (Burlingame 2012). Another example is that of Samuel ­Barber’s Adagio for Strings in Platoon (1986), as director Oliver Stone (quoted in ­McQuinn 2009, p. 467) explains: Platoon is the case of the temp dub being there the moment the film was cut. In other words, we shot the film, bing bang boom, quickly . . . We cut the film, it cut quickly, and the music in a sense was there in the temp

38  Production contexts and considerations dub and it was right, and everybody was reacting to it in the previews and so we stayed with it all the way. Most of Georges Delerue’s original music for Platoon was therefore rejected.30 ‘Temp-track love’, as it has become known, is a fairly common explanation for the presence of pre-existing music in a film; what was intended to be temporary can easily become permanent. In other cases, pre-existing music was the chosen option all along. One advantage inherent to such music is its instant availability: it is already complete, in most cases before the film’s production process has even begun, and can therefore easily enter that process at any point. Scorsese has said that, ‘[w]hen working on a script or being involved with a project, the first thing that comes to mind is the music for the piece’ (in Kuperberg and Kuperberg 2005), with the result that scenes in his films often have specific music attached before filming begins. Parts of his films have even been designed and shot to music. For example, he recalls that: On Goodfellas [1990], on the first day of shooting, we did the scene with the pink Cadillac with the two dead bodies in it. I knew I was going to use the last section of ‘Layla’, by Derek and the Dominos, Eric Clapton. So we played that on set. (Scorsese in Schickel 2013, p. 351) It is also possible to do these things with original music, though, if it is composed earlier than is and has been common. Philip Glass wrote much of his music for Scorsese’s Kundun (1997) in response to the screenplay, for instance; Scorsese then ‘listened to [it] a great deal while I was making the film’ (in Christie and Thompson 2003, p. 221). This is more about differing approaches to constructing a film’s music track, then, even if these possibilities are built in to the use of pre-existing music. More significant is the basic idea that it is Scorsese himself – a nonmusician filmmaker – selecting and using ‘Layla’ and other pre-existing pieces. In theory, no other individual need be involved in this process, at least when music is quoted autosonically. And even when it is quoted allosonically, a filmmaker’s ability to hear and know the music in some form allows them to be closely involved in its choice and deployment. For Cape Fear (1991), Scorsese personally decided to reuse Herrmann’s score from the original Cape Fear (dir. J. Lee Thompson, 1962), and moreover ‘already had specific ideas about where he wanted to use the music’ before Elmer Bernstein began to adapt it (Bernstein in Bouzereau 2001).31 For Barry Lyndon (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1975), Leonard Rosenman and Jan Harlan reworked compositions by Handel and Schubert, but Kubrick oversaw the process from the choice of pieces through to their recording, as revealed by extensive notes largely in the director’s own hand ­(McQuiston 2013, pp. 87–92).

Production contexts and considerations  39 Given the direct control over musical selection and deployment that pre-existing music’s use can grant filmmakers, it is unsurprising to find them using music that corresponds to their established musical tastes. Scorsese has said of Mean Streets that ‘[t]hat was all of my favourite music in it, and those were my records, too’ (Scorsese and Robinson 2005), and similarly of Raging Bull (1980) that he drew ‘on my own collections of 78s’ (in ­Christie and Thompson 2003, p. 83), illustrating not only this point but also the aforementioned connection Hubbert draws between music technologies and compilation practice. Mean Streets and Raging Bull are both based to some extent on the director’s own experiences (ibid., p. 48 and p. 83), but it is notable that the same musical soundworld (a rock ‘n’ roll/doo-wop/­Motown/Phil ­Spector mélange) finds its way into later, non-­autobiographical ­Scorsese works. Some of these actually share more than just that overall soundworld: the Rolling Stones song ‘Gimme Shelter’, for instance, features in ­G oodfellas, Casino (1995), and The Departed (2006) (though not, ironically, in Shine a Light (2008), the Scorsese-directed Rolling Stones documentary/ concert film). Cameron Crowe suggests regarding the use of music by the Stones in Mean Streets that, ‘we know that was a choice that came from the heart, not from somebody at the last minute saying, “Let’s get a R ­ olling Stones song, Marty”’ (in Romney and Wootton 1995, p. 133). Crowe himself appears to have followed Scorsese’s example, similarly drawing on his own tastes in selecting music not only for Almost Famous (2000) – ‘an autobiographical movie set in 1973, featuring the music I’d loved and a host of vivid characters I’d met as a fifteen-year-old journalist [for Rolling Stone magazine]’ (Crowe 2000) – but also for other films he has directed not based on his life. Jerry Maguire (1996), for instance, features tracks by the Who, Fleetwood Mac, and Neil Young, all of whom are also represented on the Almost Famous soundtrack. In Magnolia (1999), as another example, Paul Thomas Anderson used both pre-existing and original material by Aimee Mann, a relatively lesser-­ known singer-songwriter of whom he is not only a fan but also a friend (see Reay 2004, pp. 56–73). Here and elsewhere a more specific desire to showcase music – to bring it to new audiences – might have contributed to the decision to use it. In some cases, there could even be a didactic motive, not far removed from the idea of certain kinds of pre-existing music bringing ‘prestige’ to a film (not least because the same kinds of ‘artistic’ music are likely to be involved, but also in that didacticism can be another means of presenting a film as culturally significant).32 A connection to the director’s musical preferences clearly positions a film’s music as part of an authorial signature, cementing the impression of auteur control. In certain cases, the use of pre-existing music more broadly has itself become such a signature. I have argued elsewhere that the musical style of Scorsese’s films is defined less by the Stones or rock ‘n’ roll (common but not universal) than it is by the almost uniform presence of music linked only by pre-existing status (also including, say, Raging Bull’s foregrounding

40  Production contexts and considerations of the ‘Intermezzo’ from Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana) (Godsall 2015). Tarantino presents another example. Ken Garner (2001) and Lisa Coulthard (2010) have identified common characteristics of much of the music in Tarantino’s films, including that it is repetitive and rhythmic. Given the music’s stylistic diversity both within individual films and between them, though, the more obvious bond is again that almost all of it is pre-existing.33 Hence, the use of a largely original Ennio Morricone score in The Hateful Eight (2015) was reported as ‘unusual’ (Macgregor 2016) and as a ‘departure’ (O’Connell 2016) for Tarantino, even though Morricone’s music was common to several of his earlier films via the use of pre-existing cues.34 Claudia Gorbman coins the term mélomanes to describe directors who ‘treat music not as something to farm out to the composer or even to the music supervisor, but rather as a key thematic element and a marker of authorial style’; Tarantino is the first figure she names explicitly (2007, p. 149). In at least some cases and to at least some extent, though, connecting pre-­ existing music’s use to the authority of a single figure is undoubtedly simplistic. Even taking Tarantino, the commercially driven inclusion of Bedlam’s cover of ‘Magic Carpet Ride’ in Reservoir Dogs has already been noted above, for example. Tarantino also worked with the Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA on the soundtracks to Kill Bill: Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, and credits the selection of Gheorghe Zamfir’s ‘The Lonely Shepherd’, one of the most prominent tracks used in Vol. 1, to his colleague’s chance encounter with it in a Thai restaurant (Hochman 2003). Similarly, the inclusion in The Hateful Eight of cues Morricone had originally written for The Thing (dir. John Carpenter, 1982) was suggested by Morricone himself (Tarantino in Thompson 2016). On Kubrick, another of her mélomanes, Gorbman writes elsewhere of ‘his idiosyncratic choices in music’, and suggests that his ‘strength as an auteur lay in his inspired handling of pre-existing music’, without qualification (2006, pp. 3–4; my emphases). But while Kubrick certainly oversaw the work of those adapting music for Barry Lyndon, as noted above, that is not to say that the creative input of Rosenman, Harlan, and others was not central to the impact of the final result. The same applies in cases of pre-­existing recordings being used in his films, too. Investigating the role of music editor Gordon Stainforth in the production of The Shining (1980), Jeremy Barham (2009, p. 145) ­ enderecki, Bartók finds that Kubrick ‘knew he wanted to use the music of P and Ligeti (particularly the first two)’, but that his greater concern ‘was the general mood and character of the repertoire rather than a determination to use specific pieces at chosen moments in the film’. Barham concludes that Kubrick’s authorial control over music was less close than that he held over other parts of the film’s production, even if he still had final say; Stainforth’s role was ‘to realise Kubrick’s broad artistic intentions on a detailed practical and creative level’. Regarding choice of music alone, even Also sprach Zarathustra’s use in 2001 cannot be attributed entirely to Kubrick’s creative agency. On the face of it, Zarathustra is here the title theme for a film that is the most prominent, defining statement of auteur mé(ga)lomania, given

Production contexts and considerations  41 Kubrick’s rejection of Alex North’s original music in favour of what were seemingly his own selections of pre-­existing material (see M ­ erkley 2007). But it was Harlan who suggested Richard Strauss’s composition, in response to Kubrick’s request for ‘a piece of music which is very majestic and very big in sound and beautiful, but which comes to an end’ (Harlan quoted in ibid., p. 8). For Kate McQuiston (2013, p. 2), therefore, Kubrick ‘was an auteur with many good helpers’, in musical and other regards. One figure of particular significance in recent filmmaking is the music supervisor. Acknowledging the creative work of supervisors, and the ways in which this may qualify notions of auteur power, is especially important because supervisors are often female, while directorial roles – like many others in the film industry, including that of composer – remain male dominated. Brooke Wentz (2007, p. 45) describes the role of supervisor as ‘a vast job that can include many different smaller jobs: music selection, clearance, budgeting, scheduling, composer delivery, and negotiation, to name a few’.35 On many projects, a supervisor’s duties will be largely or entirely administrative. In this regard, as James Wierzbicki, Nathan Platte, and Colin Roust (2012, pp. 258–9) note, supervision ‘has a long history’, beginning in the silent era when theatres ‘employed clerks to ensure that any material from the familiar classical and “light classical” repertoires was in fact in the public domain’, to avoid licensing fees. With the growing use of pre-existing music in film in recent decades, however, the creative role of the music supervisor has become better defined and acknowledged.36 A modern supervisor often has input regarding choice and use of music, of the kind offered by disparate figures in the examples described above, though it is true that both creative and administrative duties now associated with supervisors continue to be performed by others in certain cases.37 For The Wolf of Wall Street (dir. Martin Scorsese, 2013), as another example, supervisor Randall Poster (in Schillaci 2013) notes that both he and Robbie Robertson, the latter acting as ‘executive music producer’, worked to ‘gather material and present it to’ Scorsese. While supervisors and others can play a crucial role in even auteur directors’ uses of pre-existing music, though, Poster (in ibid.) acknowledges that Scorsese ‘really does select all the songs’, and that his and Robertson’s job on The Wolf of Wall Street was to ‘do the best we can to complete his [Scorsese’s] vision’. Similarly, it is not insignificant that Kubrick took the final decision to place Zarathustra in 2001, even if following Harlan’s suggestion. Certainly, the directors considered here have earned recognition of their musical signatures. Many choices and placements of pre-existing music have undoubtedly been solely their own, and elsewhere their having had ‘final say’ justifies referring to their uses of such music. The danger, perhaps, is that the prominence of pre-existing music as a signature device of well-known filmmakers such as Kubrick, Scorsese, and Tarantino leads to a connection being drawn between such music and the authority of a director even where it is less warranted. It does not help that roles potentially involving a say in the creative process, such as music supervisor, do not exist

42  Production contexts and considerations on every production, and have varying duties for those on which they do. General audiences are thus not nearly as conscious of these roles as they are of those of director or composer.38 More work must be done to render visible the creative roles of music supervisors and others, especially outside of auteur cinema where they may have even greater impact. It is clear, in any case, that using pre-existing music has for many years provided nonmusician filmmakers with opportunities to shape a film’s music track that would otherwise not exist, even where composers, editors, and supervisors are still involved. When studying these music tracks, it is simply wise to be aware of what can lie behind that directorial control, as with other factors surrounding the use of pre-existing music explored throughout this chapter. Issues of form and function – to which this book turns in its next chapters – are at the very least linked to those factors, and are in many instances guided by them.

Notes 1 Gilliam (in Morgan n.d.) actually goes on to remark that ‘using “Sympathy for the Devil” at the front [of the film] didn’t really do what I wanted it to do’, though the possibility remains that he would have used it elsewhere in Fear and Loathing were it not for the cost involved. 2 A list of contracting parties to the Berne Convention is available online: www. wipo.int/treaties/en/ShowResults.jsp?treaty_id=15 (accessed 26 March 2018). 3 Two cases established the de minimis case law, which would presumably apply to the use of pre-existing music in film. The court for Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films, 410 F.3d 792 (6th Cir. 2005) ruled that the de minimis principle cannot apply to sound recordings: an autosonic quotation of any length, in other words, must be licensed for use. By contrast, de minimis can be used in relation to instances of allosonic quotation, as demonstrated in Newton v. Diamond, 388 F.3d 1189 (9th Cir. 2004): the defendants had cleared the rights for use of a sound recording sample in their own work, but not for the underlying composition, and were subsequently sued by the composer for copyright infringement; the court rejected the claim. 4 For a summary of ‘fair use’ in copyright law, see United States Copyright Office (n.d.). 5 The French court also ruled that the use of the composers’ music without permission amounted to copyright infringement, in spite of the Soviet Union’s non-membership of any copyright convention (Bertrand 2011). 6 The Universal Copyright Convention (1952), a less stringent alternative to the Berne Convention, was signed by the US in 1955 and the USSR in 1973. 7 Music supervisor Chris Douridas (in Rona 2012 [2000], pp. 263–4) comments, ‘[i]f it’s a studio project, they’ll have an in-house department that handles those negotiations’, adding that ‘clearance specialists’ can be hired to undertake the process for independent films, leaving supervisors to ‘stick to the creative side of it’. The role of the music supervisor is considered in more detail later in this chapter. 8 Creators could also retrospectively claim that a use of their material violated their moral rights, or – in common law states such as the US – appeal to defamation law, which can offer similar protection. 9 Illustrating the general change in licensing fees between the 1970s and later decades is that High (in Loyola University Film and Music Industry Studies 2011),

Production contexts and considerations  43

10

11 12

13 14

15

16 17 18

19

20

in a career that began in the mid 1990s, claims to have paid ‘as much as half a million dollars for a song’, while the entire budget for Mean Streets was an estimated $500,000. That film’s soundtrack still includes songs by the likes of Eric Clapton, the Ronettes, the Miracles, and indeed two Rolling Stones tracks. I Am Sam is certainly an unusual case in terms of its makers’ apparent lack of preparedness, though. Douridas (in Rona 2012 [2000], p. 264) notes that his general practice as a supervisor is to ‘go to publishers to get a ballpark figure [for licensing fees] when you’re budgeting the film. If the script calls for certain songs, you have to allow for those or be prepared to make changes later on.’ Music supervisor Randall Poster (in Fox 2018) relates that Harrison’s illness also prevented the licensing of the Beatles’ original version of ‘Hey Jude’ for The Royal Tenenbaums (dir. Wes Anderson, 2001). A new cover was also recorded in this case, by Mutato Muzika Orchestra, an ensemble connected to the music production company of Mark Mothersbaugh, the composer of the film’s original score. The planned integration of Beatles songs into the film was such that some of the cover artists had to record to a click track matching the tempi of the original Beatles versions (Goldstein 2001). The world of hip-hop music offers a similar example. While commentators on hip-hop point to a ‘golden age of sampling’, situated roughly from the late 1980s to the early 1990s, in which artists could ‘run wild with the newly emerging sampling technologies before the record labels and lawyers started paying attention’ (McLeod and DiCola 2011, pp. 25–6), today self-censorship is prevalent. Hip-hop musicians must either avoid extensive sampling, or work outside of ‘the traditional commercial-recording model’ (ibid., p. 161). Space Raiders also reuses special-effects shots from Battle Beyond the Stars. See Smith (2017) for a detailed discussion of the music of studio-era Hollywood ‘B’ films. When original scores were commissioned for studio films, the possibility of their being reused in later productions also presented a means of spreading the financial risk involved in their initial creation. Bush (ibid., pp. 149–50) suggests that this resulted in newer productions displaying ‘a musically homogeneous sound that no longer exhibited the eclectic diversity of the earlier films’, but also that, ‘[a]lthough the music was initially re-recorded, it appears that subsequent re-recordings were often junked and tracked music used anyway!’ That the record is still held by Bryan Adams’s ‘(Everything I Do) I Do It for You’, the original song from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (dir. Kevin Reynolds, 1991), demonstrates the commercial power of film songs in the early 1990s. Both films also feature original scores by Tyler Bates, cues from which were released on separate soundtrack albums. While Awesome Mix Vol. 1 sold 109,000 copies in that week, and Now 51 94,000, the highest-charting album of new material – Godsmack’s 1000HP – sold 58,000 (Caulfield 2014). Awesome Mix Vol. 2 sold 87,000 copies in the week it peaked in 2017 (Caulfield 2017). Playlists may, in fact, provide competition for compilation albums, though Awesome Mix Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 sold well despite the ability of consumers to create playlists mirroring the track lists of those albums (which are not available to stream) almost exactly. The attraction of the familiar applies in a broader sense with original music, which can draw fans of its composer or performer to a film. Hence, for example, the considerable promotional efforts highlighting Daft Punk’s composition of the score to TRON: Legacy (dir. Joseph Kosinski, 2010): the announcement of the duo’s attachment to the project came nearly two years before the film’s release (Prince 2009). In such a case, the new music and the use of that music within the film may still be considered somewhat separate attractions, for some viewers.

44  Production contexts and considerations 21 Though most song (and film) titles cannot be copyrighted on grounds of being too short and insufficiently original, they may all be eligible for protection as trademarks. Should a filmmaker wish to use a copyright- or trademark-­ protected song title as the title for their film, this will require a specific licence. Even in cases of unprotected titles, however, were a filmmaker wanting to use the title of a song for which they were negotiating the synchronization and/or master rights, this would be another factor affecting the decision of the licensor(s) of those rights. 22 The lasting popularity of film formulae and franchises proves that such safe bets are hardly anathema to the film industry more generally. 23 Herrmann had seemingly forgotten his own self-recyclings, the most famous being the appearance of material from his 1936 Sinfonietta in the score for Psycho (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1960). 24 Neither Novak nor Ross note the possibility of a deliberate reference to Vertigo via the musical quotation here. An awareness of the cue’s origins can allow perceivers to compare the action in the Artist sequence with that scored by the same music in Hitchcock’s film. Specifically, reading The Artist’s sequence (which begins with the romantic leads separated) in light of Vertigo’s (which ends with the romantic leads reunited) can generate expectations for the former’s resolution (namely that The Artist’s romantic leads will also be reunited). Those expectations are thwarted, however, potentially adding tension to the cliffhanger intertitle that ends The Artist’s sequence. Perceivers familiar with the music and its use in Vertigo might have thought they could accurately predict the outcome of the sequence in The Artist, but are left as equally at a loss in forecasting the post-­ intertitle resolution as those unfamiliar with the quotation. In fact, they could have been forced to endure greater extremes of tension and emotion. While it is not clear that The Artist’s producers intended the music to function in this way, that it can be experienced as such nevertheless provides an interesting counterpoint to the negative opinions of critics. Ross (2012) argues that the deployment of Herrmann’s cue ‘creates a feeling of reenactment rather than of spontaneous action’, and Todd McCarthy (2011) similarly writes that the music ‘yanks you out of one film and places you in the mind-set of another’. These judgements fail to acknowledge the twist that allows precisely that effect to be seen as an inspired tactic. 25 Even more controversially, the Academy’s criteria have also led to the exclusion of contenders such as Antonio Sánchez’s drum-kit score for Birdman (dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2014), which is inarguably original in terms of both concept and execution. In that case, the exclusion was made on account of Birdman’s additional use of classical excerpts, even though these are primarily diegetic accompaniment for the play-within-the-film while Sánchez’s music is the film’s ‘score’ in a more obvious sense (see Mera 2017, pp. 46–7). Having been created in 2009, the Boston Society of Film Critics award for ‘Best Use of Music in a Film’ gave way to ‘Best Original Score’ in 2016 (see Boston Society of Film Critics n.d.). 26 Julie Hubbert (2017, p. 140) suggests that films such as 2001 and A Clockwork Orange, as well as Zardoz (dir. John Boorman, 1974) and Rollerball (dir. Norman Jewison, 1975), all with classical-music compilation soundtracks, ‘changed the landscape of New Hollywood film, asking that the music of the future no longer be a thematically and stylistically coherent orchestra score, but a specially curated pastiche of pre-existing music’. 27 Studio-era Hollywood’s appropriation of the nineteenth-century orchestral style indicates that comparable ideas have conditioned the writing of original music, too. A conviction of the greater quality of certain pre-existing classical music

Production contexts and considerations  45

28

29 30

31 32

33

34

over scores by contemporary film composers apparently justified Kubrick’s decisions, though, much as it had Stothart’s in earlier decades: ‘However good our best film composers may be, they are not a Beethoven, a Mozart or Brahms. Why use music which is less good when there is such a multitude of great orchestral music available from the past and from our own time?’ (Kubrick quoted in Ciment 1983, p. 177). This criticism is stated more generally and more explicitly by Hans Keller, who opines disparagingly that, ‘[s]imilarly as in literature a quotation serves to authorize a wrong statement, so a musical quotation may answer the quoter’s need for parental approbation; he feels by thus honouring, and identifying himself with, daddy’s holy words, he sanctifies his own’ (2006 [1949], p. 30). Keller’s idea is enlarged in Dwight Macdonald’s concept of ‘Midcult’ (middlebrow culture), which ‘pretends to respect the standards of High Culture while in fact it waters them down and vulgarizes them’ (1983, p. 37). In Macdonald’s formulation, pre-existing music can be the ‘cultural figleaf’ that covers films’ ‘Masscult’ properties. On rejected scores, see Cooke (2008, pp. 492–3). Some of Delerue’s cues that made it into Platoon present obvious cases of temptrack emulation. As Luke Howard (2007, p. 77, n. 32) puts it, these ‘are so close in style and instrumentation to the Adagio that they are almost indistinguishable from the Barber underscoring’. See Godsall (2011) on the two Cape Fear scores generally. Kathryn Kalinak (1992, p. 61) identifies a didactic motive among silent-film accompanists of the early twentieth century. She quotes the suggestion of one British organist, in a manual written for others, that the use of classical repertoire offers ‘unique opportunities for the education of the masses’, and also an American advice column that similarly proposes playing classical music for cinema audiences in order to ‘pave the way for the man in the street to come into an appreciation of good music’. In the studio era, the frequent quoter of classical works Stothart wrote that ‘the public today is benefiting by the greatest works of the greatest composers, woven into the drama of the screen and giving it new effectiveness, while the drama itself is creating a new sense of music appreciation’ (1938, p. 139, cited in Platte 2012, p. 127). Whether any more recent filmmakers have felt similarly is unclear, but certainly many films using pre-existing music have at least forced ‘the man in the street’ to hear what might be considered ‘good music’, as is considered in Chapter 4 of this book. As David Bordwell points out, an authorial signature encourages perceivers ‘to read each film as a chapter of an oeuvre’, but also ‘constitutes an economically exploitable trademark’ (1997, p. 211). Tarantino’s use of music accomplishes both, despite its eclecticism: the contents of Django Unchained’s (2012) soundtrack album were reported by several major outlets a month before the film’s release, with one article opening by stating that ‘Tarantino’s movies are often defined by their soundtracks’ (Bahr 2012). The Django Unchained soundtrack album was and is (at the time of writing) also marketed as a product in its own right through a specific website: www.unchainedsoundtrack.com partners www.unchainedmovie.com (both accessed 26 March 2018). In the sense that Tarantino relies, in The Hateful Eight, on the well-established voice of a famous composer whose music he had quoted in previous films, the director did not diverge totally from his strategy of ‘picking what he knows’. Moreover, he notes that ‘I got to do it sort of the way I’m used to doing it’, in the manner of Scorsese on Kundun: Morricone, Tarantino relates, ‘did the score from having read the script, not by scoring any specific scenes. It was all mood music. It was music he thought would be right for the film, that could fit in

46  Production contexts and considerations

35 36

37

38

different moments, but nothing specific. And he just gave me the score. It was up to me to lay it in’ (in Tapley 2015). For a detailed description of a music supervisor’s common duties, see Guild of Music Supervisors (n.d.a). Julie Hubbert (2017, p. 134) argues that André Previn acted as a music supervisor on Rollerball, even though he was credited only for conducting the film’s selections of pre-existing classical music. As Hubbert explains, at the time (1975), ‘there was no mechanism or existing terminology with which to define [Previn’s] work of auditioning and selecting material for the compilation’. Klein and Meier (2017, p. 281) note, however, that ‘[t]he title of music supervisor has long been applied flexibly, and this is even more so the case today. Music supervisors can be freelance or salaried employees. They can be based in media companies; sound design or dedicated music supervision companies; or advertising agencies. They can specialize in a particular type of screen media; a particular type of music; and original compositions, preexisting recordings, or both.’ Supervisor Douridas (in Rona 2012 [2000], pp. 263–4) offers an interesting personal perspective on the division of duties: ‘I’m happy to push it [the licensing process] off on whoever wants to take it. I think most supervisors prefer to stick to the creative side of it, because it’s your relationships with these artists and these record labels that help grease the wheels of your career. If you get too involved with the negotiations, it hinders your relationships with the musical creative people you want to work with in the future.’ The Guild of Music Supervisors was founded in 2010 in part to promote awareness of that role and its functions within the film and music industries (see Guild of Music Supervisors n.d.b).

References Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (2015) ‘112 Original Scores in 2015 Oscar Race’, Oscars.org, 16 December. Available at: www.oscars.org/news/112original-scores-2015-oscar-race (accessed 26 March 2018). American Federation of Musicians (2015) ‘Six Studios Sued for Reusing Soundtracks’, AFM.org, 27 May. Available at: www.afm.org/announcements/sixstudios-sued-for-reusing-soundtracks (accessed 16 January 2016). Anderson, T. (2004) ‘“Buried under the Fecundity of His Own Creations”: Reconsidering the Recording Bans of the American Federation of Musicians, 1942–1944 and 1948’, American Music, 22(2), pp. 231–69. Aufderheide, P. and Jaszi, P. (2004) ‘Untold Stories: Creative Consequences of the Rights Clearance Culture for Documentary Filmmakers’. Washington, DC: Center for Social Media. Bahr, L. (2012) ‘Tarantino’s Django Unchained Soundtrack Revealed’, Entertainment Weekly, 28 November. Available at: http://insidemovies.ew.com/2012/11/28/ tarantinos-django-unchained-soundtrack-revealed (accessed 26 March 2018). Barham, J. (2009) ‘Incorporating Monsters: Music as Context, Character and Construction in Kubrick’s The Shining’, in Hayward, P. (ed.) Terror Tracks: Music, Sound and Horror Cinema. London: Equinox, pp. 137–70. Bazelon, I. (1975) Knowing the Score: Notes on Film Music. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (1886, rev. 1979). Available at: www.wipo.int/wipolex/en/treaties/text.jsp?file_id=283698 (accessed 26 March 2018).

Production contexts and considerations  47 Bertrand, A. (2011) ‘Shostakovich and John Huston: The French Supreme Court on Copyright, Contracts and Moral Rights’, in Heath, C. and Sanders, A. K. (eds) Landmark Intellectual Property Cases and their Legacy. Alphen aan den Rijn: Kluwer Law International, pp. 1–12. Bethune, A. (2010) ‘Interview with Music Supervisor Ron Proulx’, PlayItLoudMusic’s Blog. Available at: http://playitloudmusic.wordpress.com/2010/06/13/ interview-­w ith-music-supervisor-ron-proulx (accessed 26 March 2018). Bethune, A. (2011) ‘Interview with Music Supervisor Extraordinaire, Michael Perlmutter’, PlayItLoudMusic’s Blog. Available at: http://playitloudmusic.wordpress.­ com/2011/02/11/interview-with-music-supervisor-extraordinaire-michael-­perlmutter (accessed 26 March 2018). Bordwell, D. (1997) Narration in the Fiction Film. London: Routledge. Boston Society of Film Critics (n.d.) ‘Past Award Winners’, Boston Society of Film Critics. Available at: www.bostonfilmcritics.org/content/past-award-winners (accessed 26 March 2018). Bouzereau, L. (2001), ‘The Making of Cape Fear’, Cape Fear, dir. M. Scorsese, 1991. DVD, Universal Studios. Brown, R. S. (1994) Overtones and Undertones: Reading Film Music. Berkeley: University of California Press. Buhler, J. and Lewis, H. (2016) ‘Evolving Practices for Film Music and Sound, 1925–1935’, in Cooke, M. and Ford, F. (eds) The Cambridge Companion to Film Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 7–28. Buhler, J. and Neumeyer, D. (2014) ‘Music and the Ontology of the Sound Film: The Classical Hollywood System’, in Neumeyer, D. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Film Music Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 17–43. Burlingame, J. (2012) ‘Artist Soundtrack Points up Temp Tiff’, Variety, 14 January. Available at: http://variety.com/2012/film/news/artist-soundtrack-points-uptemp-tiff-1118048621 (accessed 26 March 2018). Bush, R. H. (1989) ‘The Music of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers’, in McCarty, C. (ed.) Film Music 1. London: Garland, pp. 143–65. Caulfield, K. (2014) ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Soundtrack Hits No. 1 on Billboard 200’, Billboard, 13 August. Available at: www.billboard.com/articles/columns/ chart-beat/6214496/guardians-of-the-galaxy-soundtrack-no-1-billboard-200 (accessed 26 March 2018). Caulfield, K. (2017) ‘Logic Scores His First No. 1 on Billboard 200 Album Chart with “Everybody”’, Billboard, 15 May. Available at: www.billboard.com/­ articles/­c olumns/chart-beat/7793125/logic-everybody-album-billboard-200-no-1 ­(accessed 26 March 2018). Cenciarelli, C. (2013) ‘“What Never Was Has Ended”: Bach, Bergman, and the Beatles in Christopher Münch’s The Hours and Times’, Music & Letters, 94(1), pp. 119–37. Chitwood, A. (2017) ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 Soundtrack List Revealed’, Collider, 19 April. Available at: http://collider.com/guardians-of-the-galaxy-2soundtrack-list (accessed 26 March 2018). Christie, I. and Thompson, D. (eds) (2003) Scorsese on Scorsese. Rev. edn. London: Faber and Faber. Ciment, M. (1983) Kubrick. Translated from the French by G. Adair. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Cooke, M. (2008) A History of Film Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

48  Production contexts and considerations Coulthard, L. (2010) ‘The Attractions of Repetition: Tarantino’s Sonic Style’, in Wierzbicki, J. (ed.) Music, Sound and Filmmakers: Sonic Style in Cinema. Abingdon: Routledge. pp. 165–74. Crowe, C. (2000) ‘Almost Famous: Romancing the Stone’, Rolling Stone, 12 ­October. Available at: www.rollingstone.com/movies/features/romancing-the-stone-20001012 (accessed 26 March 2018). Fox, J. D. (2018) ‘The Story Behind Wes Anderson’s Most Memorable Music Moments’, Vulture, 22 March. Available at: www.vulture.com/2014/03/wes-andersons-music-­ supervisor-on-12-scenes.html (accessed 26 March 2018). Garner, K. (2001) ‘“Would You Like to Hear Some Music?” Music in-and-out-ofcontrol in the Films of Quentin Tarantino’, in Donnelly, K. J. (ed.) Film Music: Critical Approaches. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 188–205. Godsall, J. (2011) ‘Cape Fear: Remaking a Film Score’, The Soundtrack, 4(2), pp. 117–35. Godsall, J. (2015) ‘Präexistente Musik als Autorensignatur in den Filmen Martin Scorseses’, in Heldt, G., Krohn, T., Moormann, P. and Strank, W. (eds) Martin Scorsese: Die Musikalität der Bilder. Munich: edition text + kritik, pp. 11–27. Goldstein, P. (2001) ‘Beatle Tunes in Film? Got It Covered’, Los Angeles Times, 6  November. Available at: http://articles.latimes.com/2001/nov/06/entertainment/ ca-660 (accessed 26 March 2018). Gorbman, C. (2006) ‘Ears Wide Open: Kubrick’s Music’, in Powrie, P. and ­Stilwell, R. (eds) Changing Tunes: The Use of Pre-existing Music in Film. Aldershot: ­Ashgate, pp. 3–18. Gorbman, C. (2007) ‘Auteur Music’, in Goldmark, D., Kramer, L. and Leppert, R. (eds) Beyond the Soundtrack: Representing Music in Cinema. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 149–62. Gorman, R. A. (1983) ‘The Recording Musician and Union Power: A Case Study of the American Federation of Musicians’, SMU Law Review, 37(4), pp. 697–787. Guild of Music Supervisors (n.d.a) ‘The Role’, Guild of Music Supervisors. Available at: www.guildofmusicsupervisors.com/the-role (accessed 26 March 2018). Guild of Music Supervisors (n.d.b) ‘Our Mission’, Guild of Music Supervisors. Available at: www.guildofmusicsupervisors.com/mission (accessed 26 March 2018). Hochman, S. (2003) ‘The Soundtrack of Tarantino’s Mind’, Los Angeles Times, 31 August. Available at: http://articles.latimes.com/2003/aug/31/entertainment/ ca-popeye31 (accessed 26 March 2018). Howard, L. (2007) ‘The Popular Reception of Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings’, American Music, 25(1), pp. 50–80. Hubbert, J. (2011) Celluloid Symphonies: Texts and Contexts in Film Music History. London: University of California Press. Hubbert, J. (2014) ‘The Compilation Soundtrack from the 1960s to the Present’, in Neumeyer, D. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Film Music Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 291–318. Hubbert, J. (2017) ‘Records, Repertoire and Rollerball: Music and the Auteur Epic’, in Meyer, S. C. (ed.) Music in Epic Film: Listening to Spectacle. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 126–45. IGN Music (2004) ‘Garden State Soundtrack’, 26 July. Available at: http://uk.ign. com/articles/2004/07/26/garden-state-soundtrack (accessed 26 March 2018). Kalinak, K. (1992) Settling the Score: Music and the Classical Hollywood Film. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Production contexts and considerations  49 Karlin, F. and Wright, R (2004) On the Track: A Guide to Contemporary Film Scoring. 2nd edn. London: Routledge. Keller, H. (2006 [1949]) ‘The Question of Quotation’, in Film Music and Beyond: Writings on Music and the Screen, 1946–59. Edited by C. Wintle. London: Plumbago Books, pp. 30–2. Klein, B. and Meier, L. M. (2017) ‘In Sync? Music Supervisors, Music Placement Practices, and Industrial Change’, in Mera, M., Sadoff, R. and Winters, B. (eds) The Routledge Companion to Screen Music and Sound. London: Routledge, pp. 281–90. Konzett, M. (2010) ‘Sci-Fi Film and Sounds of the Future’, in Bartkowiak, M. J. (ed.) Sounds of the Future: Essays on Music in Science Fiction Film. London: Mc­ Farland, pp. 100–15. Kuperberg, C. and Kuperberg, R. (dirs) (2005) Martin Scorsese: l’émotion par la musique. TV, LGM Télévision. Kushnir, V. (2005) ‘Legal and Practical Aspects of Music Licensing for Motion Pictures’, JETLaw: Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law, 8(1), pp. 71–91. Larson, R. (1985) Musique Fantastique: A Survey of Music in the Fantastic Cinema. Metuchen: Scarecrow Press. Leiter, R. D. (1953) The Musicians and Petrillo. New York: Bookman Associates. Loyola University Film and Music Industry Studies (2011) Arts & Entertainment Industry Forum: Film Music Supervisor Joel C. High. YouTube video. Available at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkmsEza2_ew (accessed 26 March 2018). Macdonald, D. (1983) Against the American Grain. New York: Da Capo. Macgregor, J. (2016) ‘Tarantino’s soundtrack albums ranked from worst to best’, FasterLouder, 21 January. Available at: http://fasterlouder.junkee.com/rankingtarantinos-soundtrack-albums-from-worst-to-best/855833 (accessed 26 March 2018). McCarthy, T. (2011) ‘The Artist: Cannes Review’, Hollywood Reporter, 15 May. Available at: www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/artist-cannes-review-188493 (accessed 26 March 2018). McLeod, K. and DiCola, P. (2011) Creative License: The Law and Culture of Digital Sampling. London: Duke University Press. McQuinn, J. (2009) ‘Listening Again to Barber’s Adagio for Strings as Film Music’, American Music, 27(4), pp. 461–99. McQuiston, K. (2013) We’ll Meet Again: Musical Design in the Films of Stanley Kubrick. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mera, M. (2017) ‘Screen Music and the Question of Originality’, in Mera, M., Sadoff, R. and Winters, B. (eds) The Routledge Companion to Screen Music and Sound. London: Routledge, pp. 38–49. Merkley, P. A. (2007) ‘“Stanley Hates This But I Like It!”: North vs. Kubrick on the Music for 2001: A Space Odyssey’, Journal of Film Music, 2(1), pp. 1–34. Morgan, D. (n.d.) ‘A Savage Journey: The Making of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’, Wide Angle/Closeup. Available at: www.wideanglecloseup.com/loathing_ filming.html (accessed 26 March 2018). Novak, K. (2012) ‘From the Desk of Kim Novak’, Variety, 9 January, p. 9. O’Connell, R. (2016) ‘Here Is the Royale with Cheese of Quentin Tarantino Soundtrack Rankings’, Uproxx, 18 January. Available at: http://uproxx.com/ music/quentin-­tarantino-soundtracks-ranked (accessed 26 March 2018).

50  Production contexts and considerations Platte, N. (2012) ‘Conducting the Composer: David O. Selznick and the Hollywood Film Score’, in Wierzbicki, J. (ed.) Music, Sound and Filmmakers: Sonic Style in Cinema. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 122–37. Pollock, D. (1999) Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas. Upd. edn. New York: Da Capo Press. Prince, D. J. (2009) ‘Daft Punk Scores TR2N Soundtrack’, Billboard, 4 March. Available at: www.billboard.com/articles/news/269288/daft-punk-scores-tr2nsoundtrack (accessed 26 March 2018). Reay, P. (2004) Music in Film: Soundtracks and Synergy. London: Wallflower. Rohter, L. (1991) ‘In Movies, a Formula Is Born: Hitching One’s Star to a Song’, New York Times, 8 July. Available at: www.nytimes.com/1991/07/08/movies/in-moviesa-formula-is-born-hitching-one-s-star-to-a-song.html (accessed 26 March 2018). Romney, J. and Wootton, A. (eds) (1995) Celluloid Jukebox: Popular Music and the Movies Since the 50s. London: British Film Institute. Rona, J. (2012 [2000]) ‘Making Soundtracks, Part 2: More on the Differences between the Score and the Soundtrack’, in Wierzbicki, J., Platte, N. and Roust, C. (eds) The Routledge Film Music Sourcebook. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 262–4. Rosar, W. H. (2003) ‘Bernard Herrmann: The Beethoven of Film Music?’, Journal of Film Music, 1(2/3), pp. 121–50. Ross, A. (2012) ‘Bernard Herrmann’s Artistry’, New Yorker, 24 February. Available at: www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/bernard-herrmanns-artistry (accessed 26 March 2018). Russell, B. (2017) ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Awesome Mix Vol. 2 song list unveiled’, technobuffalo, 19 April. Available at: www.technobuffalo.com/2017/04/19/ guardians-­of-the-galaxy-awesome-mix-vol-2-song-list-unveiled (accessed 26 March 2018). Savage, M. (2016) ‘Playlists “more popular than albums”’, BBC News, 23 September. Available at: www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-37444038 (accessed 26 March 2018). Schickel, R. (2013) Conversations with Scorsese. Rev. and exp. edn. New York: Knopf. Schillaci, S. (2013) ‘Wolf of Wall Street Music Producer Explains How Kanye Ended up in the Trailer’, MTV News, 20 December. Available at: www.mtv.com/ news/1719523/wolf-of-wall-street-kanye-west-soundtrack (accessed 26 March 2018). Scorsese, M. and Robinson, A. (2005) ‘Commentary by Director Martin Scorsese and Actress Amy Robinson’, Mean Streets, dir. M. Scorsese, 1973. DVD, ‘Special Edition’, Universal. Smith, J. (1998) The Sounds of Commerce: Marketing Popular Film Music. New York: Columbia University Press. Smith, J. (2017) ‘The Fine Art of Repurposing: A Look at Scores for Hollywood B Films in the 1930s’, in Mera, M., Sadoff, R. and Winters, B. (eds) The Routledge Companion to Screen Music and Sound. London: Routledge, pp. 228–39. Tapley, K. (2015) ‘The Hateful Eight: How Ennio Morricone Wrote His First Western Score in 40 Years’, Variety, 11 December. Available at: http://variety.com/2015/ film/in-contention/hateful-eight-quentin-tarantino-ennio-morricone-western-­ score-1201659489 (accessed 26 March 2018). Thompson, A. (2016) ‘How Quentin Tarantino and Oscar Winner Ennio Morricone Came Together on The Hateful Eight Score’, IndieWire, 29 February. Available at: www.indiewire.com/2016/02/how-quentin-tarantino-and-oscar-winner-enniomorricone-came-together-on-the-hateful-eight-score-174858 (accessed 26 March 2018).

Production contexts and considerations  51 United States Copyright Office (n.d.) ‘More Information on Fair Use’. Available at: http://copyright.gov/fair-use/more-info.html (accessed 26 March 2018). Universal Copyright Convention (1952) available at: http://portal.unesco.org/en/ ev.php-URL_ID=15381&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html (accessed 26 March 2018). vengefulwill (2017) ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 Soundtrack Track List Announced’, Reddit, 19 April. Available at: www.reddit.com/r/Music/comments/ 66azpy/guardians_of_the_galaxy_vol_2_soundtrack_track/dghdtuv (accessed 26 March 2018). Wentz, B. (2007) Hey, That’s My Music!: Music Supervision, Licensing, and Content Acquisition. New York: Hal Leonard. Wierzbicki, J. (2009) Film Music: A History. Abingdon: Routledge. Wierzbicki, J., Platte, N. and Roust, C. (eds) (2012) The Routledge Film Music Sourcebook. Abingdon: Routledge. Wikström, P. and Burnett, R. (2009) ‘Same Songs, Different Wrapping: The Rise of the Compilation Album’, Popular Music and Society, 32(4), pp. 507–22. Wimmer, K. (2008) ‘Commentary with Director Kurt Wimmer’, Equilibrium, dir. K. Wimmer, 2002. BD, Momentum. Winters, B. (2007) Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s The Adventures of Robin Hood: A Film Score Guide. Plymouth: Scarecrow Press.

2 Intention and interpretation

A filmmaker’s quotation of a pre-existing piece is a deliberate act that can be examined as a form of poietic intertextuality, to borrow a term from ­Michael L. Klein’s study Intertextuality in Western Art Music (2005). Klein here draws on Jean-Jacques Nattiez’s semiological theory of the construction of musical meaning, in which Nattiez (1990 [1987], p. ix) argues that the musical work is not merely what we used to call the ‘text’ . . . Rather, the work is also constituted by the procedures that have engendered it (acts of composition), and the procedures to which it gives rise: acts of interpretation and perception. Nattiez thus distinguishes between three ‘dimensions’ of a musical work (or any ‘symbolic form’, such as a novel or film): the poietic, that of creation; the esthesic, that of reception; and the trace, ‘the material reality of the work’, its ‘immanent configurations’ (ibid., p. 15). The work and its meanings are not passed as messages from creator to ‘receiver’, but are in fact constructed by creative processes approaching the trace from both sides: ‘the poietic lurks under the surface of the immanent; the immanent is the spring-board for the esthesic’ (ibid., p. 29), but ‘[t]he esthesic process and the poietic process do not necessarily correspond’ (ibid., p. 17). Klein, then, separates the study of poietic intertextuality from the study of esthesic intertextuality. The former concerns ‘the texts available to a writer/composer in her historical period’ (2005, p. 140), which they might quote or use in other ways; the latter, ‘those texts that a reader brings to her reading, often without regard to the historical relationships between those texts’ (ibid., p. 138). Applied to uses of pre-existing music in film, this chapter explores whether and how the poietic and esthesic interact. Filmmakers know the musical texts that they quote, but do their audiences? And, if so, do filmmakers and audiences know those texts in the same ways? While intention and interpretation will not necessarily correspond in relation to any part of a film, uses of pre-existing music foreground specific intertextual knowledge and experience as key to the construction of meaning. Furthermore, awareness of this fact can influence the forms and contexts in which filmmakers deploy musical quotations, and how audiences react to them.

Intention and interpretation  53 Analysis of the poietic and trace dimensions of films and their musical scores has been the primary work of much film musicology to date. ‘The audience’, by contrast, has often been a problematic concept, understudied and inadequately understood. In considering meaning arising from uses of pre-existing music in film in particular, case studies have tended to rely on the scholar’s own inevitably subjective interpretation, and on readings that draw solely on public facts about the music heard (relating both to musical structure and to extramusical concerns, for example the performer’s ­biography). This work excludes the infinite subjectivities of audience members, and the multifarious ways in which any one perceiver might understand a piece of music and its use in a film, relating not only to musical and extramusical facts, but also to personal histories and encounters with that piece. Lauren Anderson (2016, p. 26) labels this ‘a kind of “public” versus “private” distinction’, or ‘“intellectual” and “emotional” relations to music’.1 Scholars such as Jeff Smith (1998) and Anahid Kassabian (2001) have differentiated between interpretations of uses of pre-existing music based on ‘knowing’ or ‘not knowing’ the piece, but, as Anderson (2016, p. 39) argues, an effective framework of audiences’ relations to film music needs, at least, to be able to account for taste, incorporate a broader conception of ‘knowledge’ and ‘ways of knowing’, and accommodate the range of vernacular categorisations and classifications, senses of identity and memories that audiences create and draw on in making meaning when watching and listening to films. Anderson’s arguments build on her own direct observations of audiences (Anderson 2011 and 2012). As she persuasively asserts, ‘if we are making claims about film music audiences, then audience research provides the most convincing evidence to support those claims’ (2016, p. 29). In addition to textual analysis and examination of evidence of filmmakers’ intentions, then, this chapter looks to the testimony of real audience members on their responses to uses of pre-existing music, as given particularly in online blogs and forum posts. While these sources inevitably limit coverage to modern audiences and to the responses of certain self-selecting types of perceiver, this testimony nonetheless illustrates more broadly how and why interpretations of uses of pre-existing music can vary based on an individual’s background and knowledge.

Recognizing audiences The initial point at which film audiences engage with a use of pre-existing music might seem to present a simple binary distinction: between those who recognize the quotation and those who do not, and therefore between those who can draw on their knowledge and experience of the quoted piece in interpreting its use in the film (which is not to speak yet of possible variation

54  Intention and interpretation in said knowledge, experience, and interpretation), and those who will understand the music in less specific ways (which will also vary: as Anderson (2012, p. 220) puts it, ‘whether or not a person “knows” a particular song, he or she can still draw on a wide range of “knowledges” about music in making sense of it’, such as to do with musical genres). There are shades of grey even at this first point, though: what of the perceiver who recognizes the quotation, but cannot recall from where they know it? Different kinds of experience are possible in this case: the distraction of trying to ‘name that tune’, for instance, together or not with an awareness that one might be missing a significant reference planted by a filmmaker.2 For others, as I will discuss here, the process of recognition will also vary, most notably in that it will not necessarily relate solely or directly to familiarity with the music heard. Recognition of pre-existing music can be influenced by textual factors: attributes of the music and its use in a film, as constructed by a filmmaker. Some quotations might be considered more recognizable than others in that they comprise a larger proportion of the quoted piece, or include distinct motifs from it (a pop song’s instrumental ‘hook’, for instance). Recognition can also be affected by the volume at which a quotation sounds relative to other elements of a film’s soundtrack, a higher volume allowing audience members to hear the quotation more clearly. A film’s credits, meanwhile, can signal pre-existing music’s presence explicitly, though in practice the clarity of credits varies. Uses of pre-existing music are in most cases not acknowledged until the end credits, in a format that is hard to read as it flashes by on-screen and that is disconnected from the actual occurrences of the pieces listed (except where end-credit music is itself pre-existing). Opening-credit acknowledgements can be clearer, though some might only confuse matters through their more obvious placement: compare Brief Encounter (dir. ­David Lean, 1945), in which the use of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 is acknowledged as the piece’s first bars are heard, with Trading Places (dir. John Landis, 1983), in which the corresponding credit reads ‘Music by Elmer Bernstein’ even as Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro overture plays as the film’s title theme.3 Other textual signals of pre-existing music’s presence can emerge more incidentally within a film, but these are inevitably less precise. A stylistic or sonic difference between elements of a film’s music track can arise because one or more of those elements is a quotation, for instance, and therefore act to signal the possible presence of a quotation to the audience. Such differences do not necessarily indicate music of different origins, though, not least because (film) music often sounds pre-existing even when it is not: Trading Places, for instance, features a Bernstein pastiche of an Elgar Pomp & ­Circumstance march (to score the first appearance of the pompous, super-rich Duke brothers) as well as imitations of music by other composers, these faux-pre-existing elements sitting alongside actual quotations such as that of the Figaro overture in the title sequence. Musical difference might

Intention and interpretation  55 at least encourage audiences to listen more closely, however, and thus play some role in a process of recognizing an actual quotation, much as a credit acknowledgement can quicken that process or clear up uncertainty. From the audience’s perspective, familiarity with the quoted music is certainly important to recognition. By familiarity, I mean not just that a perceiver has heard the music before, but that they have some memory of this; that they have some kind of relationship with the music. The greater the degree of familiarity (the more significant the memory and relationship, relative to others the perceiver has formed), the more easily the music will be recognized and identified, generally speaking. Familiarity will interact with textual factors such as those discussed above, however, meaning that the same perceiver could find the same music harder to recognize in one film than another. This potential difference might also result from varying attentions and expectations brought to those films by the perceiver. Martin Barker argues that film scholars must give attention to ‘the historically and culturally situated audience . . . whose responses are functions of their life situations and engagements’ (2012, p. 189; emphasis original). Barker stresses that ‘the time, place, cultural and other circumstances of viewing play key formative roles in helping to shape even the most personal of responses’ (ibid., p. 190), all of those circumstances being variable both between and within individuals’ lives: clearly, for the modern Western viewer, watching a film alone in a quiet cinema could encourage very different responses to viewing one on a phone on a noisy train, or on a television with a group of talkative friends, not least in regard to whether and how pre-existing music is heard and recognized.4 Barker notes that viewers’ own assessments of the type of film, sequence, or scene they are watching will also play a role in their forming what he terms ‘“strategies of viewing” – that is, ways of preparing for the film, leading to modes of participation in it, resulting in attention to key aspects and kinds of evaluation of it’ (ibid., p. 195). An intriguing example of how certain strategies of viewing can play out in relation to the recognition of pre-existing music is provided by the Pixar animation Ratatouille (dir. Brad Bird, Jan Pinkava, 2007). In a scene midway through the film, chef Colette, introducing new recruit Linguini to the other cooks in a Parisian restaurant kitchen, observes regarding one that ‘Larousse ran gun for the resistance’, following which there is some backand-forth dialogue about which resistance this was. As this all occurs, composer Michael Giacchino allosonically quotes a theme from the main-title music of his score to the video game Medal of Honor: Underground (dev. DreamWorks Interactive, 2000), in which the player character is a member of the French Resistance during the Second World War (see Figures 2.1 and 2.2). Such self-quotations are something of a habit for Giacchino: references to themes he wrote for the original Medal of Honor (dev. DreamWorks Interactive, 1999) appeared in the television series Lost (2004–10) and in his score for the earlier Pixar film The Incredibles (dir. Brad Bird, 2004). Giacchino (2014) explains:

56  Intention and interpretation

Figure 2.1  Melody heard in Medal of Honor: Underground cue ‘May 10th 1940’ (main title), comp. Michael Giacchino.

Figure 2.2  Medal of Honor: Underground melody fragment as heard in Ratatouille cue ‘Colette Shows Him Le Ropes’, comp. Michael Giacchino.

There have been moments where I’ve quoted past themes in certain things – for example on Lost, there were a few moments when they had a submarine scene, and in Medal of Honor they had a submarine scene, and in the Lost scenes I quoted the submarine scene from Medal of Honor, which was an old video game that I scored. And I did that one, definitely, for the fans, to see if anyone would notice. And they did.5 While Giacchino’s self-quotations in Lost and The Incredibles bear comparison with that in Ratatouille in many regards, it is the latter on which I will focus here. In its new context, I argue, the Underground melody is somewhat hidden. For one, the excerpt is short and paraphrased slightly from its original form, appearing in quadruple rather than triple meter, and arranged with a new accompaniment. It is also mixed underneath dialogue, and so difficult to hear clearly. Furthermore, bar the mention of a resistance movement in that dialogue, which itself does not overtly suggest the presence of a quotation (though it can certainly clarify its intent), the Underground theme is not signalled by any other element of the film: it is woven seamlessly into its surrounding musical context, at an otherwise unexceptional moment within the film sequence. Recognition of the Underground theme therefore relies not just on familiarity, but also on close attention to Ratatouille’s music track.6

Intention and interpretation  57 In watching Ratatouille, then, we need to be somehow ready to hear the Underground quotation. At the very least, our strategy of viewing needs to involve close attention to the music, perhaps because of a general interest in film music and how it works. An ideal strategy of viewing for this purpose, though, would involve paying attention to ­G iacchino’s music specifically because of knowledge of his penchant for self-­quotation. Shortly after Ratatouille’s cinema release, user Mugtwaine posted on the forum of the John Williams Fan Network (JWFAN) website to describe the appearance of the Underground quotation, mentioning the similar case of the submarine theme in Lost, and adding a remark that suggests precisely the above strategy in action: ‘It’s fun to listen to G ­ iacchino scores,  ­b ecause he seems to have a great musical sense of humor and sneaks in these “jokes” wherever he gets a chance’ (Mugtwaine 2007). In an email exchange conducted in 2017, Mugtwaine confirmed their ‘strong interest in film scores’ and consequent general strategy of viewing: ‘during movies, I’m always attuned to what the music is doing’. Asked whether this is true to a greater degree with certain composers or types of film than others, Mugtwaine acknowledged that, ‘[i]f a particular movie’s score was written by one of my favorite composers, I’ll probably look forward to the movie and its score a bit more’, and also expanded on what might have cued recognition of the Underground theme in R ­ atatouille specifically: I don’t think I was specifically expecting or listening for any musical Easter eggs during Ratatouille. I knew of [the Lost case]. So I guess I knew [Giacchino] was capable of such a thing. I also knew that he tends to use a lot of silly puns in the track names on his score albums, so I figured he must fancy himself a bit of a joker. I think those facts, combined with the word (and concept) ‘resistance’ and the Paris setting all combined to prime my ears to hear the reference to the French Resistance theme.7 Mugtwaine is one individual, but it is possible to extrapolate from their experience and identify a type of individual more likely than others to recognize ‘hidden’ quotations such as that of the Underground theme in ­Ratatouille. The JWFAN forum is an example of what Henry Jenkins – in his work on fan cultures and participation – terms a knowledge community: a group formed ‘around mutual intellectual interests’ in which ‘members work together to forge new knowledge often in realms where no traditional expertise exists’ (2006, p. 20). In this case, the mutual intellectual interest is in the scores of John Williams, and in scores and scoring for screen media more generally. These topics have certainly been relatively underserved by ‘­traditional expertise’, whether in academic or more mainstream outlets.8 The latter, more general interest in screen music is shared by members of other online knowledge communities, such as the Film Score Monthly forum,

58  Intention and interpretation and indeed by other individuals who do not identify themselves so explicitly (as not all regular visitors to the main JWFAN and Film Score Monthly websites will be members of the forums, for instance). Clearly, there are degrees of enthusiasm, but all of the individuals described here will nonetheless be referred to collectively below as score enthusiasts. Score enthusiasts are not necessarily musicians or specialists in any other sense, but their interests give them a base of specialized knowledge about screen-media scores and scoring, and a connected interpretive bias towards the musical aspects of screen-media texts. The interpretive bias of score enthusiasts is best understood through acknowledging that such individuals collectively form an interpretive ­community, defined by reader-response theorist Stanley Fish (1980, p. 14) as a group ‘made up of those who share interpretive strategies for not reading but for writing texts, for constituting their properties’. Fish’s point is that the ‘interpretive strategies’ (strategies of viewing, in Barker’s terms) of different ­communities ‘exist prior to the act of reading and therefore determine the shape of what is read’ (ibid.; emphasis original), a notion that connects with Nattiez’s of the perceiver having a creative role in the construction of a text’s meaning. This suggests that, in films such as Ratatouille, the music can appear more prominent to a score enthusiast than to an individual with no particular interest in or knowledge of screen scores, as if it was actually mixed louder in the production process. In our 2017 email exchange, Mugtwaine stated that this is true of their experience: ‘I’ll hear [music] pretty prominently, even with overlapping dialog. I think it’s kind of like picking out a single conversation in a crowded room.’ Those specifically aware of ­Giacchino’s practice of self-quotation may form their own interpretive community in relation to films that he scores, listening even more closely, with the music therefore becoming even more prominent, the quotation even more audible. In Rick Altman’s words, ‘[t]he interpretive community may . . . be defined in part as a context in which the text is to be interpreted; the ­interpretive community names the intertexts that will control the interpretation of a given text’ (1989, p. 4; emphases original). While Underground is the sole intertext brought directly by Giacchino’s poietic process to this moment in Ratatouille, it is not the only intertext relevant to esthesic recognition of the quotation. Knowledge of Giacchino’s strategies within Lost and The ­Incredibles affects how a perceiver might experience the later film. Underground remains the critical intertext for hearing the quotation in Ratatouille, though. By email, Mugtwaine noted that their familiarity with Underground’s music actually came in a roundabout way, via the reuse of its cues in a later game: Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (dev. 2015, Inc., 2002). Alongside playing this game, Mugtwaine ‘realized that the soundtrack . . . existed as normal audio tracks on the game disc’, and: Since I was so into scores, and this Giacchino guy who I’d never heard of had come up with some pretty solid stuff, I listened to it pretty heavily

Intention and interpretation  59 for a while. I actually found it made for good background music for some books I was reading at the time. So [the Underground theme] was pretty well ingrained in my mind by the time I saw Ratatouille. Mugtwaine clarified that, at some point, they had realized certain Allied Assault cues originated in Underground when searching online for information on how to label mp3s ripped from the game disc. This circuitous process aside, however, their interest in listening to Allied Assault’s music by itself is typical of score enthusiasts, for whom a score’s appearance within its screen context is often not the sole or even primary concern. A score enthusiast’s focus – their strategy of viewing (or consuming, to be more inclusive) – can include the score as a separate entity, and in many cases centres on it: ­paratextual score releases are the subject of review on enthusiast-run websites such as Filmtracks, with articles concentrating on the ‘album listening experience’ and generally containing little to no consideration of a score’s functions and effects in its screen context.9 Indeed, another JWFAN contributor commented in response to Mugtwaine’s identification of the Underground quotation in Ratatouille, ‘I haven’t played any MOH [Medal of Honor] games for PSX/PS2 [PlayStation/PlayStation 2] but I know the scores very well’ (Luke Skywalker 2007). Importantly, the statements of Mugtwaine and this other JWFAN poster hint that soundtrack releases can offer an opportunity to listen to music more closely and more often than is possible or desirable through screen texts themselves. Close familiarity with the Underground music, allowing easier recognition of it in Ratatouille, can arguably come most easily to those who access it separately. The simplest method of doing this is via the game’s official soundtrack release (OST), which is available on CD and in other formats, now including streaming services such as Spotify. Score enthusiasts will account for a significant proportion of the soundtrack’s consumers, whether they have come to hear the Underground score as collectors who bought the OST on its release, as fans of Giacchino’s recent blockbuster film scores (for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (dir. Gareth Edwards, 2016), for instance) who have now gone back to hear his earlier work, or for any other reason. Again, score enthusiasts are therefore relatively likely – c­ ompared to the general population – to be able to recognize the Underground quotation in Ratatouille.

Investigating film scores Close familiarity with Underground’s music is also apparent in the experience of another individual who posted online their observation of the Underground quotation in Ratatouille (Night_Trekker 2008a). In this case, the forum (NeoGAF) to which they posted was not devoted to scores, but rather to video games; Night_Trekker’s post appeared in the ‘off topic’ section, on a thread discussing Ratatouille. A 2017 email exchange confirmed that

60  Intention and interpretation Night_Trekker does not identify as a score enthusiast, but that their familiarity with the Underground theme came as a result both of playing the game (‘I’m sure I played through Underground several times’) and of downloading the OST, meaning that they ‘had definitely heard the score, both in the game and outside of it, many times’. Much like a score enthusiast, too, Night_ Trekker’s strategy of consumption for Underground as a whole (­including the score as a separate entity) related to their broader background and interests. In their words: I’m a writer and a lover of storytelling in various forms, especially of creative and innovative uses of different mediums. Sometimes when the experience of a great game (or a film or a television show) leaves an impression on me, I get mildly obsessed with whatever it is and start to research and… I guess the word is ‘dissect’ it. The audience for Underground’s score will thus include fans of the game and others whose consumption, like Night_Trekker’s, is a somewhat isolated incident not connected to a particular interest in soundtrack listening. Night_Trekker’s general viewing practices also do not necessarily focus on a film’s music as a score enthusiast’s might, but in combination with their Underground familiarity will nonetheless have been conducive to apprehending the quotation in Ratatouille. As they noted by email: When I watch a film I try to surrender myself to the full experience of the presentation. I don’t focus on any particular element (the visual component aside) more than the others. But I do pay very close attention to the film itself. This mode of viewing comes from the same background as Night_Trekker’s tendency to ‘research’ and ‘dissect’ texts that particularly impress them, something also observable in the activities of score enthusiasts. If it accompanies watching a film, the simple activity of listening to the film’s score on its own can be thought of as an investigation into how the film works, and how it has been constructed, though for score enthusiasts this alone may seem an unremarkable pursuit. For some JWFAN users, such investigation begins with the examination of OST track lists and timings for clues about scores (and films) before the music has been publicly released. Regarding the Ratatouille OST track list, for instance, one poster commented in advance of the releases of both OST and film, ‘[t]hat’s a long tracklist for a Giacchino score. Lots of shorter cues then… That possibly suggests more Mickey Mousing than what we’re used to from him, though I’m only speculating here’ (Docteur Qui 2007a). It is possible, in fact, that Ratatouille’s OST could assist certain individuals’ recognition of the Underground quotation. While still not highlighted to any great degree in a solely musical context, the quotation is much more

Intention and interpretation  61 audible on the track ‘Colette Shows Him Le Ropes’ than it is in the film. This was not a factor for Mugtwaine, who stated by email that they heard the quotation ‘on the first viewing without any advance warning, even though listening back now I realize it’s a bit more subtle of a reference than I even remembered’.10 As quoted above, Mugtwaine actually suggests that the filmic context of the quotation – ‘the word (and concept) “resistance” and the Paris setting’ – assisted their recognition of it. This was evidently also the case for another JWFAN poster who identified the reference on another thread, remarking that ‘[i]t took seeing the movie to notice’ the quotation (QuestionMarkMan 2007a), despite having written four days previously that they had ‘[j]ust got [the soundtrack] and I’m really enjoying it’ (QuestionMarkMan 2007b). That this poster went on to specify the location of the quotation on the Ratatouille soundtrack release rather than in the film (QuestionMarkMan 2007a) nonetheless confirms the centrality of this paratextual artefact to a score enthusiast’s experience of a film. That they had heard Ratatouille’s music previously, allowing them to focus subsequently on how it worked in conjunction with other elements of the film, should also not be dismissed as a factor facilitating recognition of the quotation. Both for this reason and for the remaining possibility that other perceivers might have recognized the Underground quotation firstly on Ratatouille’s soundtrack release, we should acknowledge again the potential significance of listening to a score alone – and, more than that, investigating it – within a perceiver’s broader strategy of viewing for a film as a whole. Active participation in an online knowledge community such as JWFAN indicates investment in that community’s goals, and I contend that investment and investigation are often linked; that invested perceivers are likely to be investigative perceivers. Barker’s audience studies (2012, p. 191; emphases original) have revealed investment to be ‘crucial within audiences’ responses’ to films: Put simply, the different ways that audiences care about their media and cultural engagements, and how they matter to them, play radical roles in what they notice and attend to in them, their strategies for making sense of, assessing, critiquing, storing and cataloguing them as ‘memories’ (additions to self). One particular reason that engagement with a film and its score might matter to a member of a relevant knowledge community is because, as Jenkins (2006, p. 20) notes, ‘the pursuit of and assessment of knowledge is at once communal and adversarial’ in such groups. In a knowledge community, one can observe the workings of ‘collective intelligence’, a concept originated by Pierre Lévy that is defined by Jenkins (ibid., p. 4) as the notion that ‘[n]one of us can know everything; each of us knows something; and we can put the pieces together if we pool our resources and combine our skills’. Individual knowledge is still valued, though; cachet is attached to being the first to

62  Intention and interpretation contribute knowledge on a topic, and to consistently offering useful input in discussions. The JWFAN thread following Mugtwaine’s initial Ratatouille post includes a debate among several posters regarding who is the forum’s ‘go-to Giacchino man’ (QuestionMarkMan 2007c), which demonstrates this value system in action, as does that forum’s ‘reputation’ system, whereby readers can ‘like’ posts and see members ranked on a leaderboard according to ‘likes’ gained (JWFAN n.d.). Contributions are rewarded, and therefore matter. While for score enthusiasts wider investigation of a film will tend to revolve around its score as a separate entity, there are numerous other paratextual and extratextual sources of information available to anyone undertaking such investigation: making-of documentaries, press interviews with ­fi lmmakers, reviews by critics, information sheets (including soundtrack listings) such as on the Internet Movie Database, and so on. This is especially but not exclusively true for modern films, and for modern viewers who can access much of this material freely and immediately online (including OSTs, via services such as YouTube and Spotify). Indeed, the consumption of this material prompts the production of more such material for both future and past films, in an action–reaction feedback loop. Modern viewers also have the ability to watch films on various home-media devices, meaning that films can more easily be seen repeatedly and in non-linear ways (particular scenes of interest being accessible separately, for instance).11 Moreover, paratextual and extratextual sources can now be accessed not only before and after viewing the film, but also during that viewing. Simultaneous media use – in which film viewing on one screen is accompanied by other activity on a smartphone or tablet,12 say – is ever more common, and with reference to the recognition of pre-existing music specifically is evolving to incorporate somewhat automated services such as the Shazam music-recognition application, which can identify music playing within a film by its ‘acoustic fingerprint’ (assuming that dialogue and other sounds do not impede the application’s ability to ‘hear’ the music). Perhaps in acknowledgement of the rise of such viewing practices, Amazon’s online video-streaming service includes an ‘X-Ray’ option that can display information about music (and other elements of a film) on the same screen as the film itself in real time, lessening the perceiver’s effort yet further. A film may thus change shape in response to investigative consumption, not only in terms of being uniquely interpreted and reworked within a perceiver’s mind (powerful though such imaginative processes may be), but also materially, its external boundaries visibly blurring with those of other texts and contexts, and its internal forms shifting according to the control of the investigator. To investigate a film is, in a sense, to understand it as interactive. Investigative consumption is more widespread today than ever. ­Laurent ­Jullier and Jean-Marc Leveratto point to a new kind of cinephilia – ‘­cinephilia 2.0’ – that has arisen in recent decades not least due to viewers’ ‘systematic use of the Internet, both as communication tool and public space’

Intention and interpretation  63 (2012, p. 144). Cinephilia 2.0 is a more widespread and democratic cinephilia than that associated particularly with intellectual elites of mid-­twentiethcentury Paris. The internet has granted more open access to film information and criticism, as well as to films themselves, and given ‘ordinary’ individuals the opportunity to promote their own knowledge and opinions via blogs and forums: Jullier and Leveratto note that ‘[u]sing search engines with a selection of keywords is the main activity of “­cinephiles 2.0”’ (ibid., p. 149), but argue also for ‘an unprecedented evolution of film discussion as a means of comparing opinions, exchanging information, and sharing knowledge’ (ibid., p. 147). This discussion has been facilitated largely by film-­related knowledge communities such as JWFAN, but also takes place in ‘off topic’ contexts such as on NeoGAF. As Jenkins (2006, p. 26) puts it, ‘for a growing number of people, the water cooler has gone digital’. Merely being present on a forum constitutes a kind of investigative state in which one is likely to learn about certain topics. Indeed, as soon as observations of the Underground quotation were posted on JWFAN and NeoGAF, those posts became extratextual signals to the quotation’s presence in Ratatouille – ­intertexts able to control perception of that film – for other forum members. In replying to Mugtwaine, one JWFAN member confirmed that their subsequent viewing of the film would be affected: ‘I’m really looking forward to both the score and film but neither will come to Australia till next month . . . I’m a big fan of the Underground theme so I can’t wait to spot the reference’ (Docteur Qui 2007b). This process of knowledge sharing highlights one way in which communal interpretation actually happens, and is not merely a convenient theoretical ideal. The JWFAN and NeoGAF forums are additionally visible to non-­members, meaning that any knowledge posted by an individual is immediately not just collective but also public. A whole-web keyword search regarding ‘musical references’ in films was, in fact, what led me – an investigative perceiver with my own specific interests – to Mugtwaine’s post, and therefore to awareness of the Underground quotation in Ratatouille. Ideas of familiarity, attention, and recognition, and the connections between them, are complicated here. Mugtwaine’s identification of the Underground quotation resulted from close familiarity with the music and a musically attentive mode of viewing connected to their background as a score enthusiast, while Night_Trekker’s relied upon comparable factors relating to different, individual circumstances. I had seen Ratatouille prior to reading Mugtwaine’s post, but could not have spotted the Underground quotation primarily because I was not familiar with Giacchino’s Underground music. Having read Mugtwaine’s precise description of the theme’s appearance in Ratatouille, however, neither my own familiarity nor the extent to which I would have otherwise paid attention to Ratatouille’s score remained relevant factors. Aside from a desire to hear the quotation with my own ears, there was no need for me even to watch Ratatouille again in order to know of the quotation’s existence, to inform others of it, and to be amused by Giacchino’s ‘joke’. Building on this

64  Intention and interpretation observation, one broad possibility is that recognition of pre-existing music will become ever more universal, as modern practices of knowledge sharing and information access develop. Jullier and Leveratto wrote even several years ago of ‘a democratization of decoding’, meaning that ‘the concept of the “happy few” has largely disappeared’ (2012, p. 149). Additionally, they suggest that our individual abilities to read films are also developing, given ‘[t]he improvement of our cinema skills brought about by virtual film discussions’ in recent decades (ibid., p. 143). We learn not only about films themselves through these discussions, but also how we can act as film viewers, and articulate our points to others. And it is not just the aforementioned competition within knowledge communities that encourages such ‘improvement’: the visibility of such discussions encourages others to invest in films, and be ‘cinephiles 2.0’ themselves. There are caveats here, however. For one, if access to relevant information and development of ‘cinema skills’ are connected so tightly to the internet, then new barriers to recognition of pre-existing music have appeared even as others have disappeared. Internet access is not universal, and even where it is widespread there is variation in internet skills.13 Even the use of semi-­ automated services like Shazam and X-Ray requires specific equipment and knowledge that may exclude many film viewers. While an individual’s mental familiarity with and ability to recognize pre-existing music may be less important now than ever, filmmakers thus still risk accusations of elitism and factionalism when using such music for its prior associations. Films will continue to be viewed in a variety of ways, by individuals with different backgrounds, interests, and attentions, and uses of pre-existing music will therefore continue to be recognized by some while eluding others, much as has historically been the case. When it comes to more complex matters of interpretation, the potential for variation among perceivers multiplies, as case studies later in this chapter prove. Prior to that, the chapter turns to take a closer look at how filmmakers can account for this variation.

Guiding interpretation Films are made with an audience – or rather, audiences – in mind. Filmmakers, particularly in the mainstream, know that commercial success relies on wide appeal, but also that creating a one-size-fits-all product is an impossibility, given differences in audience background and behaviour. More readily, a single film can target different audiences in different ways. For example, M. Keith Booker (2010, p. 49) notes that: especially in recent years, children’s movies have come to be complex cultural artifacts that are consciously designed to be consumed on at least two different levels. While these films might be constructed first and foremost to attract and entertain children, they are also (mercifully)

Intention and interpretation  65 designed to offer a certain amount of entertainment to the adults who spend so much time watching the movies with kids. Booker observes that ‘this double-coding is . . . crucial to the success of all the Pixar films’. In Ratatouille, one such film, Giacchino’s quotation of the Underground theme is a clear example of Pixar’s ‘cultural allusions and sly jokes that young children are almost certain not to understand but that make the films more pleasurable for adults’ (Booker 2010, p. 50). Of course, as discussed above, the appearance of the Underground theme in Ratatouille will not be noticed by many adults, either. Giacchino (2014) himself notes that he includes such self-quotations specifically ‘for the fans’, which here could mean fans of Underground or fans of his music (or both). The general point still applies, though: while filmmakers such as Giacchino cannot possibly account for all individual differences in knowledge and perception, they can and do take aim at particular interpretive communities, whether broad (‘adults’) or narrow (‘fans of x’). Giacchino’s fans also understand his self-quotations to be aimed at them. One poster on the Intrada Soundtrack Forum refers to the aforementioned use in Lost of the Medal of Honor submarine theme as ‘a special wink from Michael at his fans’ (Anakin McFly 2008), a notion subsequently echoed by other users in the same thread (Yavar Moradi 2008; Erik Woods 2008). Night_Trekker, too, referred in our 2017 email exchange to the Ratatouille case as ‘a sly wink by the composer to those few in the audience who knew his earlier, ignoble work’.14 The composer and his listeners are thus engaged in a kind of game. This reading is further encouraged by Mugtwaine’s (2007) remark about Giacchino’s scores being ‘fun to listen to’, and by the idea that knowledge-community members might feel an element of competition in attempting to spot and disclose the references.15 The attentive and perhaps investigative mode of consumption required to uncover those references points specifically towards an understanding of Giacchino’s self-­ quotations as ‘Easter eggs’ (a term used by Mugtwaine in one 2017 email to me, as quoted above). The Oxford English Dictionary (OED Online 2018) notes that this concept originated in computing contexts, and defines it as ‘[a]n unexpected or undocumented message or feature hidden in a piece of software, intended as a joke or bonus. Also: a feature of this kind in film, music, and other forms of information or entertainment.’ Despite being effectively hidden, the Underground theme, as pre-existing music, offers the potential for recognition that allows it to function as ‘a message or feature’ (or a message and feature) in Ratatouille.16 Recognition of the quotation will bring it to the forefront of a perceiver’s attention, rendering it a prominent (or ‘audible’, in terms familiar to film-music scholarship) feature of the film sequence, while the connection to Underground provides the intended message.17 Night_Trekker remarked in their NeoGAF post (2008a) that they ‘nearly jumped out of my seat’ upon hearing the theme, and by email

66  Intention and interpretation expanded on this and the remarkably detailed meaning they attributed to the quotation: I remember getting goosebumps . . . It was, as silly as this might be, an emotional moment, something I felt bodily . . . Everything there in a few notes: the audacious heroism of the French Resistance, the loss of many [of the cook Larousse’s] comrades’ lives as it failed, the terror and horrors he must have survived to live to that moment when you see him. Giacchino’s Easter egg quotations are present for the few and not the many; to recognize them is to uncover ‘a joke or bonus’, but nothing more. Apprehension of the Underground reference is certainly not critical to understanding Ratatouille’s plot, or even to finding sense and humour at the specific moment at which it occurs, for dialogue alone can reveal the incongruity of a former resistance fighter working in a restaurant kitchen ­alongside a ­ inguini to the number of other misfits. Musically, as Colette introduces L kitchen’s other cooks in quick succession, Giacchino scores each with music of distinct character: Lalo’s introduction features an accordion melody, ­ ompidou’s a Horst’s a continuation of that melody on Spanish guitar, and P descending phrase voiced by muted brass and piano. When attention subsequently turns to Larousse, the resistance fighter, the change to French horn and strings, and to new melodic material (the Underground theme), works in the context of what has come before, giving Larousse a unique musical identity just like his colleagues. Giacchino included the quotation ‘for the fans’, but ensured that others could appreciate his music and its role in the film for different reasons. The vast majority of Ratatouille’s audience will be unaware that they have missed anything. A different example provides a revealing comparison. The final act of Wayne’s World 2 (dir. Stephen Surjik, 1993) features another use of pre-­existing music intended to refer to a different screen-media text: The ­G raduate (dir. Mike Nichols, 1967). Here, though, the music is part of a palimpsestic parody of the earlier film’s climactic scenes. I understand the relationship between the two films with reference to Linda Hutcheon’s (1985, p. 18) ­definition of parody broadly as ‘repetition with critical distance’. Jeroen Vandaele (2002, p. 234) explains this formulation through his observation that parodies have ‘a dual structure of following-and-breaking the rules’, wherein ‘the “following of rules” is a way of locating cognitive schemes, a necessary cognitive foregrounding of specific schemes to be transgressed’. Wayne’s World 2 repeats many elements of The Graduate almost exactly, for the purpose of establishing in the viewer’s mind the ‘cognitive scheme’ based on their recollection of that film: a set of expectations based upon its style and events. Some of those expectations are then broken by the parodists, with the perceived incongruity and connected feeling of superiority provoked by being one of those to ‘get’ the joke potentially leading to an amused viewer response.18 Given that Wayne’s World 2 is a comedy, and that

Intention and interpretation  67 its Graduate parody takes place over five minutes at the climax of the film (resolving a key plot thread in the process), perception of the similarities and differences between the sequences, including in their musical elements, was certainly key to the filmmakers’ intentions, and is arguably so for a viewer’s enjoyment and understanding of the film. This is therefore a very different case from Ratatouille’s Easter egg.19 In both The Graduate and Wayne’s World 2, the lead character (Benjamin in the former; Wayne in the latter) drives to a church to stop the woman he loves wedding another man. As well as copying the broad sequence of events, Surjik’s film faithfully recreates Nichols’s mise en scène, using the same settings (roads, church), car (a red Alfa Romeo Spider), and c­ amera angles. It also lifts dialogue and specific actions from The Graduate: ­Benjamin and Wayne both utter ‘Oh Jesus, God, no’ as they see the wedding in progress, for instance, and bang on the window separating them from the service while shouting the bride’s name. And, of course, we hear Simon & ­Garfunkel’s song ‘Mrs. Robinson’ in both films. Wayne’s World 2 thus quotes visual and material components of The Graduate, as well as music, with the intention that the audience will recognize the sequence, and not just the song. Recognizing the song can obviously contribute to the process of recognizing the sequence, however. Generally speaking, ‘Mrs. Robinson’ is well known – the single topped the Billboard ‘Hot 100’ in June 1968 – and probably more familiar to many than the other elements of the Graduate sequence in which it appears, as critic Mike D’Angelo (2014) speculates in recalling judging it ‘the only reference that might register for non-cinephiles’ when he saw Wayne’s World 2 in 1993.20 The song thus has a key role to play. Musically, there are a number of differences between the Wayne’s World 2 and Graduate sequences, not all of which seem intended to provoke laughter, or likely to do so. For example, while both films accompany their protagonists’ drives to the church with ‘Mrs. Robinson’, the parody opens with the version of the song that appeared on Simon & Garfunkel’s LP Bookends and as a single in 1968, the year after The Graduate’s release. The song was still a work in progress by the time it was recorded for The Graduate, meaning that lyrically it consisted only of a single chorus, and instrumentally a simple acoustic-guitar accompaniment, compared with the four choruses, three verses, and full-band arrangement of the Bookends version. Wayne’s World 2 uses part of the Bookends version’s introduction, featuring ‘dee dee dee’ and ‘doo doo doo’ vocalizations on the verse melody. The use of this version – the better-known version of the song, and moreover the inherently more recognizable one with its distinct band sound – might principally have been a concession to the predicted familiarities of Wayne’s World 2’s audience, giving them a better chance of recognizing the song and then, hopefully, the sequence. I do not find this substitution humorous, and have not found it mentioned in any online or print discussions of the parody, suggesting that it has largely gone unnoticed on a conscious level. A more conspicuous disparity occurs when Wayne and his beloved escape the church, the parody

68  Intention and interpretation here using one chorus from the 1991 cover of ‘Mrs. Robinson’ by alternative rock group The Lemonheads, whereas Benjamin and Elaine’s flight features no music whatsoever. Again, this is not an obviously funny use of music; I suggest that it primarily serves a transitional function at the end of the sequence, drawing us out of The Graduate’s 1967 and back to 1993 with its contemporary musical style.21 Importantly, though, it also still alludes to the song’s use in The Graduate, most notably here with a sung chorus naming the character Mrs Robinson. While ‘breaking the rules’ of The Graduate, then, both the Lemonheads’ cover and the Bookends version of the song point also or more to the parody’s similarities with its model. For perception of the filmmakers’ intended nod to The Graduate, though, the problem with relying on ‘Mrs. Robinson’, and particularly on the ‘wrong’ versions of the song, is that the music’s independent success will have given it a ‘life of its own’ in the minds of many audience members (much more so than the Underground theme, by comparison). True, some recent cultural uses of ‘Mrs. Robinson’ in its various guises lead, in the end, back to The Graduate. Rumour Has It… (dir. Rob Reiner, 2005), a pseudo-­ sequel to Nichols’s film, uses the Bookends version, while American Pie (dir. Paul Weitz, Chris Weitz, 1999) and American Pie 2 (dir. J. B. Rogers, 2001) use the Graduate original and Lemonheads cover respectively to form an associative theme for an older woman–younger man relationship alluding simplistically to that between Benjamin and Mrs Robinson. For 1993’s viewer, however, these guiding references did not exist, while the lyrics of the song also do not point clearly to The Graduate’s narrative, notwithstanding the titular connection to one of its main characters (see Godsall 2014, pp. 135–6). The combination of mutually reinforcing elements within the Wayne’s World 2 parody might therefore have been particularly crucial for D’Angelo’s fellow cinemagoers. Perceivers are guided towards understanding ‘Mrs. Robinson’ as part of a reference to The Graduate by the car and the wedding, for instance, just as ‘Mrs. Robinson’ helps them understand the car and the wedding as part of the same. Similar happens in Ratatouille, as the dialogue mention of a resistance movement clarifies the purpose and intentional nature of the musical Underground quotation, evidently helping some to recognize it. In Wayne’s World 2 this is taken to an extreme, though, with numerous quoted elements playing more equal roles in directing audiences to The Graduate. The elements signal each other, as well as simply offering more points of recognition for the perceiver. Once established, expectations can be broken. The Wayne’s World 2 sequence’s incongruities include Wayne’s initial mistaken arrival at the wrong church to disrupt the wrong wedding, and also one specifically musical gag, in which the Bookends ‘Mrs. Robinson’ is momentarily replaced by static as Wayne drives through a tunnel, implying that it is source music emanating from his car’s radio. Both of these jokes are somewhat effective when understood on their own. The latter, specifically, is a ‘diegetic reveal’ gag in the same vein as that in Bananas (dir. Woody Allen, 1971) wherein the

Intention and interpretation  69 sound of a harp is revealed to signify not a character’s descent into a dream, but rather the presence of a harpist practising in a closet, to give just one of numerous examples constructed using original music (see Biancorosso 2009; Heldt 2013, pp. 89–92). But the reveal in Wayne’s World 2 plays on the audience’s experience not only of the convention of ‘background music’ audible only to the audience, but also of a specific use of music in an earlier film, for the music is fully nondiegetic at the equivalent point in The Graduate. The moment’s incongruity can therefore be greater for those who understand it on both levels, while perception of the film-specific level could also cue heightened feelings of superiority.22 Similar is true of the ‘wrong church’ gag, the setup of which benefits from our memory of the location: visually, Wayne enters the right church (the one from The Graduate), making his error all the more surprising. (It is subsequently explained by the existence of an identical but previously unnoticed church on the opposite side of the street.) That these jokes can work on other levels hints that recognition of The Graduate is not strictly necessary for enjoyment of the Wayne’s World 2 parody, however. There are further possibilities in this regard. D’Angelo (2014) observed that ‘[p]eople were laughing all around me’ in the cinema, though many were ‘teenage guys’ unlikely to have known Nichols’s film, and understands this not by crediting particular jokes but by arguing more generally that ‘[m]ockery dates, but non sequiturs are timeless’. That Wayne, rushing to the wedding, is able to jump into a conveniently parked vintage Italian sports car in Aurora, Illinois, before in the next scene driving past a sign for Santa Barbara, California (in reality more than 1,700 miles away) makes no sense in relation to the rules of our world; these are what ­Vandaele terms ‘absolute incongruities’ (2002, p. 238) that draw attention to the film’s status as fiction, and that in the affirming context of a comedy are likely to be considered humorous (as opposed to, say, disappointing). The repeated use of ‘Mrs. Robinson’ is similarly incongruous within a film that has no character of that name (the lack of a signified being a ‘linguistic incongruity’ (ibid., pp. 228–30)), as arguably is the Bookends version’s 1960s folk-rock style, which stands alone even though Wayne’s World 2’s compilation soundtrack varies eclectically from Tchaikovsky to the Ventures (the Lemonheads’ punkish cover being more congruent with the era and spirit of the film as a whole); we might call this a stylistic incongruity. And, while these incongruities could simply be amusing in themselves, they can also point to the sequence’s parodic status, encouraging discovery of the original through research of the kind discussed earlier in this chapter (though more likely, in 1993, to have involved asking a friend in person than using an internet search engine).23 Finally, it is also true that many viewers will expect comedies like Wayne’s World 2 to contain parodies of other texts, and judge it as their own failure – rather than that of the filmmakers – if they do not understand all of them. Filmmakers must in general expect audiences to do some interpretive work for themselves.

70  Intention and interpretation This case nonetheless provides further evidence of filmmakers constructing their films – and using pre-existing music – with their audiences in mind. Whereas Giacchino did not expect many to recognize his Underground quotation, the makers of Wayne’s World 2 banked more (if still perhaps not everything) on their reference to The Graduate, and therefore constructed it differently, again using pre-existing music but here alongside other quoted elements guiding the audience towards the intended reading of parody. In Ratatouille the perceiver is responsible for discovering the reference, relying not just on their familiarity with the referenced text but also on their mode of engagement with the referencing one. In Wayne’s World 2, by comparison, the filmmakers do at least more work for the audience, so that the parody succeeds as widely as possible.

Intentional readings As films are created with audiences in mind, so interpretation is often guided by what an audience believes a filmmaker could have intended. H. Porter Abbott (2008, p. 86) calls this ‘intentional reading’, noting that reading intentionally is a very widespread activity, whether it calls itself intentional or not. We tend not to see a film as put together accidentally, or by chance, but by intention. And we do this even when chance may have played a key role in the film’s construction. Intent is often unknown or unknowable, though, because a perceiver’s preparation for watching a film may not include apprehension of paratextual and extratextual materials detailing the filmmaker’s intent, and because in many cases that detail simply does not exist, especially in the public domain. Intent can also be less clear from the text itself than it is in both the Ratatouille and Wayne’s World 2 examples discussed above. Though those cases are dissimilar in terms of the intended and likely proportion of viewers who will recognize the musical quotations, for those who do recognize those quotations and know their original sources (Underground and The Graduate), both are situated within filmic contexts that offer little room for interpretations of their meaning other than the intended ones (that is, as references to those original sources). Divergent readings are always possible, of course – Barker (2012, p. 190) contends that ‘there is not and cannot ever be a single film . . . for which radically antagonistic responses cannot be found’ – but are relatively unlikely in cases like these. This is not least because we tend to read intentionally even when unsure of the actual, historical intent behind a film (whether we admit our uncertainty or not), and because even an uncertain reading can be informed by norms of the film’s historical, cultural, and production contexts, leading viewers down common interpretive paths. A more ambiguous case concerns the allosonic instrumental incorporation of the American Civil War song ‘When Johnny Comes Marching

Intention and interpretation  71 Home’ into Michael Kamen’s score for Die Hard: With a Vengeance (dir. John McTiernan, 1995). The tune accompanies scenes in which the film’s antagonists (East German terrorists) conduct an elaborate gold heist. The intent behind this use of pre-existing music is somewhat unclear, but seems to have revolved around a desire on McTiernan’s part to make reference to Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1964), in which the same piece is used as an associative theme for the B-52 crew who are en route to drop a nuclear bomb. This intent is suggested paratextually in the director’s commentary present on some home-media editions of With a Vengeance, in which McTiernan (2006) points out that the piece ‘plays all the way through Dr. Strangelove’, and also by the liner notes to an ‘expanded’ release of the film’s soundtrack (Bond 2012, p. 15), in which the film’s editor John Wright is quoted referring to his work incorporating ‘When Johnny’, presumably on the film’s temp track prior to Kamen’s involvement: When I was cutting the thing John [McTiernan] told me he wanted to use ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’ and I went through quite a few versions of it and they weren’t working [. . .] John suggested I take it right out of Dr. Strangelove and I did and that worked well. Intentional reference to Dr. Strangelove would, furthermore, mirror the strategy McTiernan implemented with Kamen for the first Die Hard (1988), also using pre-existing music. In the earlier film, lead terrorist Hans G ­ ruber has as his theme the ‘Ode to Joy’ from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and another – Theo – is associated with the song ‘Singin’ in the Rain’. Both the ‘Ode to Joy’ and ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ point to another Kubrick film in which they are prominently featured: A Clockwork Orange (1971). McTiernan’s idea there, as Kamen relates (in Shivers 1995, p. 13), was that his first group of terrorists ‘were the lineal descendants of the bad guys in Clockwork Orange, and they always listened to Ludwig Van’.24 Uncertainty remains over the intent behind ‘When Johnny’ in With a Vengeance, however, because neither McTiernan nor Kamen have elaborated further publicly on the reasons for using the piece, and its appearances in the film itself also do not suggest any clear meaningful objective.25 Are the film’s terrorists ‘lineal descendants’ of any character(s) in Dr. Strangelove? Not obviously so: Simon, the lead villain in With a Vengeance, is actually Hans Gruber’s brother, leading us back to Clockwork. Might ‘When Johnny’ point to the key role that bombs play in With a Vengeance’s plot (as a distraction enabling the gold heist), much as in Dr. Strangelove’s? Perhaps, but we cannot be sure. Even those viewers aware of McTiernan’s verbal references to Dr. Strangelove, or his strategy in the original Die Hard, are thus left to their own devices in interpreting the significance of the musical quotation any further. Those many who

72  Intention and interpretation are unaware of those signals, meanwhile, are given no clues to intent beyond the music itself (and here only one pre-existing tune, versus two mutually reinforcing quotations in the original Die Hard). That music is ambiguous in other ways, too: Dr. Strangelove is not the original source of ‘When Johnny’, and the fame of Kubrick’s use of the tune will not, for many perceivers, override that of countless other uses elsewhere. To my own ears, for example, the same melody will always bring to mind the lyrics of ‘The Animals Went in Two by Two’, a song I remember singing at school. The melody in fact plays host to numerous sets of lyrics, including those of the nineteenth-century Irish anti-­ war song ‘Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye’, another children’s song, ‘The Ants Go Marching One by One’, and vulgar rugby song ‘I Met a Whore in the Park’, any of which might be cued for a perceiver by Kamen’s exclusively instrumental adaptations (though the military connotations of those adaptations, which are generally in march style and often feature snare drum and brass instruments, certainly suggest some sets more than others). The musical connection between With a Vengeance and Dr. Strangelove has been spotted and reported elsewhere, as for instance by David Crow (2013), writing for Den of Geek, and the blogger yourturnHeather (2011). Both compare the use of ‘When Johnny’ to McTiernan’s Clockwork reference in Die Hard, Crow (2013) asserting that the similar musical strategy of the sequel indicates ‘McTiernan’s obsessive need to homage Kubrick’. That Crow names the tune as ‘The Ants Go Marching’ suggests he is unaware of With a Vengeance paratexts including the aforementioned commentary and soundtrack release, in which it is unambiguously titled ‘When Johnny’ (as it is in the film’s credits, too).26 Instead, it seems he arrived at his conclusion simply through hearing a musical connection to Dr. Strangelove, supported by prior or subsequent perception of the (more widely discussed) nods to Clockwork Orange in Die Hard; the two films’ Kubrick references have the potential to signal each other. A musical comparison of Die Hard and With a Vengeance has evidently not always resulted in recognition of Kubrick’s influence, though: other online writers similarly liken the two films’ strategies of foregrounding a pre-existing piece, but do not mention either Clockwork or Strangelove (Floyd n.d.; Tangonan 2013; Anderson 2015). This is also the case in a discussion on a Stack Exchange ‘question and answer’ website, in which one user asks others specifically whether there is ‘any significance’ to the appearances of ‘When Johnny’ in With a Vengeance (stevvve 2013). Though one respondent, Oliver_C (2013), notes the franchise ‘tradition’ of picking an ‘old’ piece of music to serve as a theme, none of six potential answers to the question refers to a Kubrick film. That discussion also confirms something important, however, namely that real audience members have noticed the quotation’s ambiguous presence, and have been interested in deciphering its intended meaning. ‘Ambiguity’ is a term used by Mike Cormack (2006) to describe the interpretive openness to which uses of pre-existing music give rise. Cormack in fact writes of pre-existing classical music specifically, but his points can

Intention and interpretation  73 be applied to music of any genre. He also understates his case regarding the reasons for such ambiguity, arguing that it occurs in part because of ‘­differing degrees of [audience] knowledge of the original context, and differing ways in which that knowledge might be applied’ (ibid., p. 30; my emphasis). As seen in the case of ‘When Johnny’, even perceivers who recognize a piece might not know it only from its ‘original’ context (if such a context can be objectively identified). Nonetheless, ‘ambiguity’ is a useful summary of pre-existing music’s particular effects within processes of meaning creation, and the Stack Exchange discussion cited above provides evidence to support another of the reasons Cormack gives for it: that an ‘awareness that the music was not originally written for a specific film scene puts a distance between the music and any straightforward interpretation of it in the manner of conventional film scores’ (ibid.). In this case, that ‘When Johnny’ was recognized as pre-existing music cued at least some viewers into believing that there must be a ‘significance’ to its uses in With a Vengeance. The lack of an obvious ‘answer’ (as in Ratatouille or Wayne’s World 2) then increased the potential for divergent responses. Roland Barthes (1986 [1970], p. 29; emphasis original) described a particular reading process: Has it never happened, as you were reading a book, that you kept stopping as you read, not because you weren’t interested, but because you were: because of a flow of ideas, stimuli, associations? In a word, haven’t you ever happened to read while looking up from your book? This same process can occur when watching a film, and I argue that it can be prompted specifically and commonly by pre-existing music. We might not physically look away from the screen during this process, but can nonetheless mentally step back from the film’s frame into our own thoughts. Barthes wrote that such reading is ‘at once insolent in that it interrupts the text, and smitten in that it keeps returning to it and feeding on it’ (ibid.). Interruption – distraction – is part and parcel of the process, in other words, whether or not we are able to use the ‘pause’ button (the filmic equivalent of the bookmark) or engage in simultaneous media use to augment and assist our internal ‘flow of ideas, stimuli, associations’ (though the latter carries especial possibility of further, less relevant distraction, such as that of the email inbox). ­Distraction is balanced by the potential for enrichment, however, and an acknowledgement that attention to the action on-screen might not always be the most important thing, in regard to furthering our understanding of a film. While, following Nattiez, I consider the esthesic process always to be a creative one, I also understand texts to promote and demand such creativity to different extents. Barthes (1990 [1970], p. 4) argued that the reader should be made ‘no longer a consumer, but a producer of the text’.27 Uses of pre-­ existing music – some more than others, certainly – can trigger this positioning, whether filmmakers intend them to or not.28

74  Intention and interpretation The lyrical ambiguity of ‘When Johnny’ is worth further consideration. Instrumental uses of pre-existing songs are commonly deliberate attempts to invoke the lyrics of those songs for the film’s audience. The potential of this device has been recognized since the silent era: the 1920 manual Musical Accompaniment of Moving Pictures, for instance, asserts that, for the accompaniment of cartoons and slapstick comedies in particular: The player should have at his command the choruses of such well-known topical songs as ‘I cannot make my eyes behave’, ‘Every little movement has a meaning all its own’ . . . etc. The association of such tunes with their particular text phrase will always insure a quick response in the audience, if the tunes are applied to the proper situation. (Lang and West 1920, p. 37, n. 1) More recently, the intent has often been similarly comic. Claudia Gorbman (2006, pp. 15–17) identifies several examples in Eyes Wide Shut (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1999), for example, such as when ‘Strangers in the Night’ features as instrumental backing during a masked orgy. While Eyes Wide Shut as a whole is not explicitly comic, the intention here still seems to have been that the tune’s appropriateness to the context would raise at least a knowing smile. Moreover, the point was surely partly that the tune’s relevance is hidden by its instrumental rendition, so that only those paying close attention will have the pleasure of getting the joke (as with Giacchino’s Underground reference). In other cases, an instrumental version of a song might also be preferable to a vocal cue that disturbs the score’s unity, or that could clash with concurrent dialogue. The lyrics of ‘When Johnny’ celebrate a soldier returning home: When Johnny comes marching home again Hurrah! Hurrah! We’ll give him a hearty welcome then Hurrah! Hurrah! The men will cheer and the boys will shout The ladies they will all turn out And we’ll all feel gay When Johnny comes marching home. These lyrics go unheard in Dr. Strangelove, too, but have fairly clear relevance there. The piece accompanies the B-52 crew who eventually drop the bomb that will (unbeknown to them) prompt worldwide nuclear annihilation, and its lyrics have generally been read to undercut the blindly ‘heroic’ pursuit of that mission objective (see McQuiston 2013, p. 26, for an academic account).29 Whether the lyrics of ‘When Johnny’ were important to McTiernan’s intent is less clear, both from lack of paratextual or extratextual

Intention and interpretation  75 confirmation and because they bear no obvious relation to the scenes the song accompanies, which show the East German terrorists’ elaborate gold heist coming to fruition.30 Importantly, though, this has not stopped viewers from offering lyrical interpretations as to why the song was chosen. Inevitably, those interpretations vary. One writer suggests that the song ‘is a fitting choice considering it is the first Die Hard movie where we actually see [main character] John McClane in his home town [New York]’ (Williams 2012). Another postulates that the return to the franchise of McTiernan himself – his return ‘home’, having been absent on Die Hard 2 (dir. Renny Harlin, 1990) – ‘may explain’ the use of ‘When Johnny’ (Knaus n.d.). The name fits in both cases, but these connections would seem more plausible if the theme was not associated so explicitly with the terrorists. It first enters to score the terrorists’ own, decisive entry into the Federal Reserve Bank, for instance, and only fades out after more than five minutes as the film cuts to a sequence involving McClane and his associate Zeus Carver. This pattern then repeats: after returning with the terrorists a few minutes later, the song cuts abruptly mid-phrase as the action jumps back to McClane and Carver once again. It is certainly difficult to hear it as McClane’s theme, then, while we could also question why McTiernan would choose ‘his’ theme to be that of the terrorists (and whether he would really wish to blow his own trumpet in this quite literal manner). Other readings build on the music’s connection with the terrorists. One interprets the use as satirical, arguing that it ‘made the scenes more witty and interesting to use patriotic American music to underscore some ­German terrorist walking all over America’ (Matalqa 1996). Others turn to alternative sets of lyrics to explain the music’s relevance. The aforementioned Stack Exchange discussion (stevvve 2013) of the music’s intended significance in With a Vengeance (in which the readings of ‘Johnny’ as ­ cTiernan again feature) includes two posters referencing McClane or M ‘Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye’ and its bleaker tale of a soldier disfigured by war, as told by the displeased lover to whom he returns. The first writes that ‘[t]he tie-in there . . . relates partly to the way the enemy (Simon) picks away at him [McClane] to try to win . . . and partly to the fact that Simon is angry, vengeful over his loss of his brother’ (dglickler 2014). The other follows, connecting the ‘more pessimistic’ lyrics of the Irish song to the terrorists’ backgrounds: Seeing that they are depicted as former GDR soldiers and the movie is likely set around its release in 1995, they might feel like having been taken away their homeland and with that basically their existence as soldiers. So they more or less feel a bit like disillusioned veterans returning from war (albeit a rather cold one), not knowing what to do now or what to fight for and trying to get their share from the world. (Napoleon Wilson 2014)

76  Intention and interpretation Perhaps the most convincing interpretation of all, though, results from Crow’s (2013) naming of the tune as ‘The Ants Go Marching’: he hears the music to give ‘a meticulous drone-like purpose to Simon’s machinations’. With a lack of clarity surrounding McTiernan’s intent in using ‘When Johnny’ in With a Vengeance, then, interpretations of the pre-existing piece’s meaning in its quoting context have been relatively varied. Again, this is music that works on a simpler level, as a repetitive but rousing martial tune accompanying the terrorists’ methodical and largely untroubled ­execution of their plan. Clearly, though, this basic congruity has not been enough for a proportion of perceivers, whose familiarity with the quoted piece has led them, first, to assume that there must be a deeper meaning behind the filmmakers’ choice of music, and, second, to spend time questioning what that meaning could be, constructing it in varying ways. In the next and final section of this chapter, examples show this process of intentional reading extended into criticism.

Judging intention The findings of Anderson’s audience surveys support and extend the idea that viewers tend to read films intentionally. Discussing three ‘chick flicks’ with focus groups, Anderson (2016, p. 45) found that the focus group participants seemed to work with a sense of the kind of viewer implied by the film, the song, or the film-makers . . . and, following this, a sense of the kind of viewer they wanted to be in response. A layer of self-awareness is apparent here: audiences do not necessarily proceed blindly to the reading they believe to have been intended, but can instead position themselves critically in relation to that reading. In some cases, this can mean being an oppositional viewer, as Anderson found with her focus group of young men who distanced themselves from the ‘female’ viewers and readings they believed were targeted by the films discussed. Further reactions to the use of ‘When Johnny’ in Die Hard: With a Vengeance demonstrate perceivers critically judging McTiernan’s intentions. One blogger (Anderson 2015), for instance, writes that the piece’s insertion was ‘[a] gigantic part of what dragged [the film] down’, because the use of a pre-existing piece as a main theme was simply a tired retread of the series formula. While for this viewer the ‘Ode to Joy’ in the original Die Hard ‘mirrors the joy and posed sophistication of the villains’, ‘When Johnny’ was relevant only as ‘an obligation of the franchise’. Another writer similarly criticizes ‘When Johnny’ as a ‘redundant soundtrack’ to the terrorists’ plot that helps to ‘stop the movie in its tracks’ (Wurst II 2015). For both of these viewers, the music had no clear relevance to the film’s action, and its use therefore invited harsh judgement.31

Intention and interpretation  77 Critical reactions to a use of pre-existing music can also be found in reception of The King’s Speech (dir. Tom Hooper, 2010), specifically regarding the use of the Allegretto of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony to score the film’s climactic sequence, in which King George VI broadcasts to the British Empire on the declaration of war with Germany in 1939. A ­ lexandre Desplat, composer of the original score for The King’s Speech, explained that he thought the Allegretto ‘worked marvellously, and it made sense since it has such a universal quality to it . . . It’s universal beyond countries and cultures’ (in V. 2011). The notion of Beethoven’s universality is also implied in remarks made by director Hooper, relating how Desplat ‘explained that Beethoven was actually the anthem of the French Resistance which I didn’t know because you’d think a German composer wouldn’t end up as that’ (in Kagan, 2013, p. 260).32 It is possible the filmmakers did not intend to draw on any particular meaning of Beethoven’s music; Terry Davies, conductor of the recording of the piece made especially for the film, had ‘a suspicion that it was used as great music and it has a wonderful exuberance and it fit. I don’t know that it goes any deeper than that’ (in Wise 2011). It is clear, however, that their view was more of Beethoven as universal than of Beethoven as German. Nonetheless, the relevance of Beethoven’s nationality to his music’s use in The King’s Speech has been the subject of much speculation among audience members. Comments posted online and elsewhere clearly demonstrate the attempts of perceivers to reconstruct the filmmakers’ intentions in this regard, as well as illustrating again the potential for difference in interpretation prompted specifically by pre-existing music’s ambiguity. One blogger asks, ‘[w]as it intended to be ironic in some way? The King’s triumphant speech set against the reality of what was to come?’ (Whispering Gums 2011). Another, commenting on the use of ‘German’ music in the film more generally (which includes additional music by Beethoven, as well as pieces by Brahms and Mozart), seems equally unsure as to whether the filmmakers were making a statement through their musical choices: ‘Maybe it is supposed to bring out both sides of the German people. Maybe it reflects that the British royal family was German, and the confusion and sadness of that’ (Goldman 2010). And a letter to The Telegraph (Young, J. 2011) reads, perhaps with a hint of sarcasm: am I alone in wondering why the wireless address to the nation on the impending war with Germany was accompanied by Austro-German music – Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms – instead of something more patriotic by, say, Elgar, Purcell, or Parry? Or am I missing a subtle point? The Telegraph reader is not alone even in suggesting alternatives to the ­ eethoven, while their implied negative judgement of the filmmakers’ choice B is also uttered more explicitly elsewhere. Writing in the Huffington Post,

78  Intention and interpretation Glenn Young (2011a) argues that the Allegretto is ‘just not geopolitically correct. The King’s filmmakers could have gone with almost any other nationality. What about Copland? Foreshadowing the American entrance into the European war. Or, at least those good old home-growns, Williams or Elgar.’ A comment posted on a review of the film on the Charlotte Observer website (seneca91 in Toppman 2010) argues similarly but more strongly that George VI’s patriotic speech aiming to inspire and hearten his subjects for the coming war on Germany should not have been accompanied by one of Hitler’s favorite composers. The moment called for music by the likes of Elgar or William Walton or any number of other distinctly British composers. Beethoven at that moment in the film bordered on treason. Other online posts echo these sentiments: the ‘[e]ntirely inappropriate’ choice ‘left me reeling’, and ‘[s]urely Elgar or Britten or Vaughan ­Williams would have been more appropriate’ (victoria trow in Lochner n.d.); ‘[i]t doesn’t make sense’ (MAC in McNabb 2011); ‘[s]hould have used Elgar’s “Nimrod” from the Enigma Variations’ (Robert in ibid.). A video posted to YouTube provides the logical conclusion, taking the images from the King’s Speech sequence and rescoring them with ‘genuine British composer (and patriot)’ Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (rvwfan 2011a). Other viewers did read the Allegretto’s use in different ways, including some looking to alternative aspects of Beethoven’s identity: When I left the theater, I thought: what a brilliant choice for a soundtrack: the music of a composer who could not hear, used as the backdrop for the first public speech given by a king who could not speak, without painful difficulty. Therein was the reason for the selection, I thought, and how perfect . . . (celia in Wise 2011) Whether aware of the filmmakers’ own statements or not, some viewers also came to conclusions that noted Beethoven’s universality. Responding to the aforementioned YouTube video, for instance, one forum poster argues, ‘I think that using a big name German composer in a moment of British triumph actually speaks of how great music transcends such a loathsome concept as national exclusivity’ (Crudblud 2012), and another replies, ‘­[e]xactly. Beethoven’s music is defined by its humanity, not its nationality, and we are all human’ (Polednice 2012). The use of Beethoven in The King’s Speech generated an unusually large amount of public commentary. Surveying this commentary, it is apparent that the critics of the choice are a vocal minority. The basis for their negative judgement, however, is comparable to that seen above in relation to Die

Intention and interpretation  79 Hard: With a Vengeance, and indeed in other cases. Neil Sinyard’s comments regarding the repeated use of the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony in Death in Venice (dir. Luchino Visconti, 1971), for example, also question the appropriateness of the music’s existing associations for its new filmic context: the Fifth Symphony . . . charts a movement from tragedy to triumph, from darkness to light, which one could argue is exactly the reverse of what happens in Death in Venice. I suppose one could say that [main character Gustav von] Aschenbach moves from the darkness of self-­ ignorance to the illumination of self-knowledge, but it is not clear Visconti sees him like that and, if he does not, then the associations of the music run contrary to the drift of the film. Its inappropriateness is crippling to a film that prides itself on its cultural refinement. (1986, p. 129) Here, a negative reaction results from Sinyard’s knowledge of the symphony from which the Adagietto was excerpted, the dramatic progression of which he effectively accuses Visconti of either ignoring or being ignorant of.33 Perhaps Visconti felt that the Adagietto’s musical appropriateness for Death in Venice would have been supplemented only by signification attached to that movement specifically. Jeremy Barham (2011, pp. 268–9) writes of [t]he mournful, death-related assumptions [about the movement’s ‘intrinsic’ meaning, that] had previously been substantially underpinned by Leonard Bernstein’s approach to Mahler, and more specifically by his conducting of the Adagietto at the funeral of Robert Kennedy in New York, in 1968. While Sinyard’s verdict would probably not occur to many people, though, it is not particularly unreasonable or eccentric.34 In part at least, the apparent increased quantity of debate around the King’s Speech example is likely to represent an increased visibility of debate, owing to the film’s release well into the internet age. Ordinary viewers could now ‘post what formerly was only an oral opinion expressed in discussions with friends of relatives’ (Jullier and Leveratto 2012, p. 151) into the public domain (even, in one case, in the form of a ‘remix’ of the film itself, an extreme demonstration of film’s newly interactive nature), communicating with both established critics and fellow amateurs around the world. This visibility has benefits for those interested in studying the debate, too: its online venues, and other traces left by its contributors, give us clues as to who was invested enough in this use of pre-existing music to engage in discussion about it, and to why some positioned themselves in opposition to the filmmakers. Glenn Young’s Huffington Post article (2011a) is one of a series of ‘contrarian rants against prevailing critical tides’, for instance, suggesting an author either being deliberately oppositional in

80  Intention and interpretation criticizing a generally well-received film, or at least delighting in that opposition, in order to mark theirs as a unique take on the film to potential readers.35 The lengthiest single-venue discussions of the Allegretto’s use appeared on websites devoted to classical music, suggesting that contributors were likely to be relatively knowledgeable about such music (especially that of a popular composer such as Beethoven), and also to care about how it is represented and understood in and through film and other cultural venues. Similar backgrounds and concerns can foster different views in different individuals, however. The above-quoted forum posts defending Beethoven’s universality appeared on Talk Classical, a ‘community covering every aspect of classical music’ over more than 44,000 threads (as of this writing), within a 17-post discussion begun by rvwfan (2011b) to promote his YouTube rescoring of the scene. On the website of WQXR, a classical-music radio station based in New York, an article itself detailing ‘a growing debate on Web sites and blogs’ about the King’s Speech usage (responding primarily to Young in the Huffington Post) prompted further discussion among readers over 42 comments (Wise 2011). These similarly included telling appeals to music-history expertise in support of opposing views. For Henry Wallhauser, ‘[o]nly persons unfamiliar with classical music would attempt to associate ­B eethoven with Nazi Germany’, whereas for Rob, Beethoven’s nationality made his music ‘an ignorant choice’, and ‘you could instantly identify the musically-trained in the audience because they all had an expression that said “Beethoven? In this instance?”’ An air of superiority in debate over The King’s Speech is also common to those critical voices less easily identified as classical-music enthusiasts. Like Rob (who positions himself with the ‘musically trained’, and so against supposedly less knowledgeable viewers), Young (2011a; my emphasis) writes that ‘those who listen carefully will sadly find something discordant at the film’s scène à faire’, for example. These individuals appear to believe that they understand the implications of Beethoven’s use better than others in the audience, and even than the filmmakers. This is most explicit in a post by one film blogger (Greg Orypeck 2011), who first makes clear they know more than ‘some viewers’: Some viewers of the film might marvel at the ‘genius’ of [Alexandre] Desplat, how, when the King delivers his war speech at the end, he so perfectly fills the pauses with a repeated phrase from the soundtrack, while during spoken words, the music drops softly, even becomes silent. Truth is, the ‘score’ is an unedited bit from the slow movement of ­Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.36 The author then takes on the filmmakers directly, questioning the appropriateness of this and other music in the film for now-familiar reasons:

Intention and interpretation  81 if a film composer hasn’t the time or inspiration and insists on borrowing music – and how I hate the practice – in this case for a film with a British setting, why not use British music? [. . .] Don’t producers, directors and composers think about these things? Plan ahead? So simple to avoid these misjudgments at the beginning . . . Forgive my rationale, but I say tacking on Mozart and Beethoven in this instance is . . . ridiculous. Filmmakers are inevitably taking some risk with audience reaction when employing pre-existing music in a film. Whether they intend to draw on meanings and associations developed in the music’s prior existence or not, they open their film up to readings based on those meanings and associations, albeit conditioned by each individual’s own perspective on them. Recognition of pre-existing music can never be guaranteed, and even among those who recognize the music, familiarity with it will vary from those who know it only barely to those who know it better than the filmmakers themselves. Across this range, audiences also ‘know’ music in different ways, as Anderson (2016) points out and as examples above have shown. There are many more factors at play than those considered directly here, though. Negative opinions of a usage could also be connected to musical taste, for instance, in that a perceiver hearing in a film a piece of music they abhor – for whatever reason – might consequently and somewhat automatically take a dim view of that quoting film in part or whole. And a pre-existing piece might hold many other kinds of unique, personal meaning for individual perceivers. Hearing the Beethoven Allegretto in The King’s Speech, for example, might evoke memories of the close friend’s funeral at which the piece was played, and so also feelings and emotions associated with that event. Some viewers, on recognizing the melody of ‘When Johnny’ in Die Hard: With a Vengeance, might even have the initial reaction of recalling the lyrics they themselves previously invented to fit the same tune. Filmmakers cannot possibly account for personal histories, or for any futures. McTiernan could not have known that Antz (dir. Eric Darnell, Tim Johnson, 1998) would have its titular characters sing a slightly modified version of ‘The Ants Go Marching’, perhaps giving those lyrics greater prominence for viewers coming only later to With a Vengeance, for example. The potential impact of associations developed within personal and future contexts on perception of pre-existing music in a film is unavoidable, though. Clearly, such associations could never be part of a filmmaker’s intention in using pre-existing music, but even intentional reading will not shut them out entirely for the perceiver. The memory of our friend’s funeral will come to mind when we hear the Allegretto, and though we might attempt to quickly dismiss it with the goal of reconstructing the filmmakers’ intentions, that recollection will still have impinged on our experience of The King’s Speech in some regard.

82  Intention and interpretation Given that filmmakers can never account for all potential readings, is it reasonable to expect them to account for certain others? And if so, which? Is there a line beyond which a reading can be judged so niche, or so pedantic, that a filmmaker might fairly discount it? In reality, certain readings will not occur to filmmakers as possibilities, not least because filmmakers are themselves interpreters who hear any piece of pre-existing music filtered through their own knowledge and experience. The amount of consideration they give to likely interpretations of that music will also vary, depending on their particular awareness of and attitude towards pre-existing music’s ability to invite multiple readings, and the circumstances of each of their deployments of such music. To use pre-existing music can be to add richness and vitality to a film, as even a few notes can potentially carry a world of meanings and so invite deliberate, detailed interpretation to an extent simply not true of other kinds of scoring. As we have seen, however, this is not without its dangers.

Notes 1 Anderson’s latter distinction is based on one used by Laura Barton (2008). 2 Max Steiner declared himself ‘opposed to the use of thematic material that might cause an audience to wonder and whisper and try to recall the title of a particular composition, thereby missing the gist and significance of a whole scene which might be the key to the entire story’ (2011 [1937], p. 226). 3 Babe (dir. Chris Noonan, 1995) does similar to Trading Places with ‘Music Composed by Nigel Westlake’, in spite of the concurrent title cue’s (and score as a whole’s) overt reliance on pre-existing material, most notably the Maestoso theme from the finale of Camille Saint-Saëns’s Symphony No. 3. One might point to the ‘putting together’ definition of the word ‘composition’ in defence of this, but I would say that the common view, in relation to music at least, is that a composer writes original (even if, in some cases, derivative) music. An interesting example for comparison is noted by Ben Winters (2007, p. 40), who writes that Erich Wolfgang Korngold ‘took pains to have his title card on Captain Blood (dir. Michael Curtiz, 1935) changed to “musical arrangement by” in case it was thought he was taking credit for the Liszt extracts he used’. The circumstances surrounding the credits of Trading Places and Babe are unclear, however, and I certainly do not wish to imply any kind of negative character judgement of Bernstein or Westlake with my comments here. 4 On the experience of watching films on a mobile phone, see Odin (2012, pp. 156–61). 5 The submarine music is a theme from the Medal of Honor soundtrack cue ‘The U-Boat’. In The Incredibles, as one of the titular heroes catches sight of a large rocket while infiltrating the villain’s base, Giacchino quotes a short flute motif originally written for a Medal of Honor level set in a German V2 rocket plant (from the cue ‘Stopping the V2 Launch’). 6 As Anderson (2016, p. 39) puts it, ‘“knowledge”, rather than being immanent in viewing processes, has to be made relevant to an act of listening, or watching, in a particular context’. 7 Giacchino (in Desta 2017) remarks that the practice of giving tracks punny names on album releases of his scores ‘started when I was working on Alias [2001–06] with my music editor, Stephen Davis[.] We would have these little

Intention and interpretation  83 contests about who could come up with the best title . . . I started working on other movies and with different music editors. It became a little contest between all of us, and it’s something we continue to this day.’ 8 Emilio Audissino’s book John Williams’s Film Music: Jaws, Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the Return of the Classical Hollywood Music Style, published in 2014, is the first English-language book on Williams’s career and music. To date there is no substantial academic work on Giacchino. 9 A Filmtracks review of the WaterTower Music release of Andrew ­Lockington’s score for San Andreas (dir. Brad Peyton, 2015), for instance, claims that ‘­Lockington has a knack for producing action music that straddles the line between harmonic accessibility and dissonant challenges while yielding a highly listenable result on album’ (Clemmensen 2015). 10 Night_Trekker made much the same observation about the quotation’s subtlety in our email exchange, having also recalled that they heard the quotation on first viewing. Night_Trekker’s generally attentive viewing practices were evidently particularly significant to that hearing, as they noted in a forum post (2008b) that they were not aware Giacchino had written the Ratatouille score before they noticed the quotation. 11 Night_Trekker stated by email that they frequently use this technology to assist their own mode of close attention to films (though not specifically to recognize the Underground quotation), to ‘rewind to catch or understand small snippets of dialogue I didn’t get the first time and sometimes even to make sure I get the mannerisms or facial expressions of the actors if I’ve looked away for a moment’. 12 Roger Odin (2012, p. 157), writing of uses of phones ‘to learn about filmmakers and films, to read reviews, find out where a movie is playing, and to book a seat in advance’, characterizes the smartphone as ‘a compound of the “filmgoer” that is in us and of the “cinema machine” (Metz) to which it contributes’. 13 In a 2010 study of the Dutch population, for instance, Alexander van Deursen and Jan van Dijk argued that, ‘[b]ecause of the growing amount of information on the internet and people’s increasing dependence on information, internet skills should now be considered as vital assets’ (2010, p. 894). They also noted that ‘a large part of the Dutch population seems to be struggling to equip themselves with the skills they need to participate in contemporary society’ (p. 908). The most important factors determining levels of internet skills, in those authors’ experiments, were age and educational attainment, the latter particularly in relation to locating information online and using the internet strategically to accomplish goals (p. 906). 14 In expanding on this, Night_Trekker also revealed the attachment that fans can feel towards a specific composer: ‘Me and one of my friends became big fans of his [Giacchino’s] work in gaming, and we thought it was cool when he finally moved into movies. It was almost like “one of ours” had climbed the ranks.’ 15 In remarking that he inserted the Medal of Honor quotation in Lost ‘for the fans, to see if anyone would notice’, Giacchino (2014) also notes that ‘they did’. It is possible that Giacchino’s awareness of fan engagements with his work encouraged him to include references in subsequent scores (Ratatouille, for i­ nstance), deliberately extending the game. I am not aware of any self-quotations in ­Giacchino scores more recent than Ratatouille, however. 16 Whether the Underground quotation was intentionally placed beneath dialogue (which is one factor in its being ‘hidden’) is not certain. It is possible that ­Giacchino was the only person involved in the film’s production aware of the quotation, yet there will have been others involved in its precise placement and mixing regardless, each with their own considerations and priorities. The final effect is certainly of an Easter egg, however, even if the intention was not.

84  Intention and interpretation 17 The idea that pre-existing music’s familiarity might render it too ‘audible’, and thus distracting, has been the basis of some general criticism of such music’s use. The opinion of film composer Ernest Gold, that, ‘[if] you know the music, it draws more attention to itself than it should’ (quoted in Larson 1985, pp. 351–2), already cited in Chapter 1 (p. 33), might have been motivated by his vested interests as a film composer standing to benefit from the continuing attachment of value to original scores. The same idea that underpins it appears elsewhere, however. Music supervisor Randall Poster, for instance, who commonly works to select pre-existing music for use in films, similarly (and more recently, in an era more accustomed to such uses) suggested that ‘iconic’ music can ‘take the audience out of the moment’ because of its ‘emotional baggage’ and ‘associative qualities’ (in Jewell 2015): ‘Ideally, music has to be part of the fabric of a film; if it jumps out too much it can be a distraction. Sometimes people will tell me the music in a film I have worked on was what they most liked about it. While seemingly complimentary, sometimes it speaks to our failure to fully integrate all the elements of a film into a seamless whole.’ 18 I appeal here to Vandaele’s (2002) combination of the incongruity and superiority theories of humour, which have otherwise generally been considered to compete with each other. Vandaele ‘hold[s] that it is impossible to offer a satisfactory explanation of the field of humor by means of one of the two main principles alone’ (ibid., p. 225), and so proposes an ‘interactional incongruity-superiority framework that . . . reduces conceptual gaps’ (ibid., p. 226). 19 I have written elsewhere about this parody and other uses of the song ‘Mrs. ­Robinson’ after its initial appearance in The Graduate (Godsall 2014). The first Wayne’s World (dir. Penelope Spheeris, 1992) itself features a parody of the opening title sequence from the TV show Laverne & Shirley (1976–83) that is similar in its palimpsestic nature, incorporating, of course, the show’s title song ‘Making Our Dreams Come True’. This parody is not as thoroughly woven into the story’s progression as is the Graduate sequence in the sequel, though, functioning more as a ‘cutaway gag’. 20 Contemporary critics of Wayne’s World 2 were also worried about a mismatch of reference and audience. One, while appreciative of the sequence, wondered ‘if more than a couple of people in the theater will be in on the joke’ (Hicks 1993), while another argued that ‘the movie’s most appreciative audience – pre-teen boys, I would say – won’t have a clue’ (Theis 1993). 21 Mark S. Graybill (2004, p. 45) reads the ‘sunny, pepped-up, electric’ Lemonheads cover as helping to replace the ‘angst’ of The Graduate’s successful escape with a sense of ‘child’s play’. 22 As Vandaele (2002, p. 242) explains, ‘the more particular the references of parody and satire, the more pleased are the successful understanders to find themselves among “the happy few”’. 23 A posting on the ‘OutOfTheLoop’ subreddit (on which Reddit users ask others to update them on topics for which they feel ‘out of the loop’, such as trending news stories) asks for the source of the ‘[o]ften parodied movie scene of a guy pounding on a church window to interrupt a marriage inside’, the poster having ‘seen this redone on Wayne’s World [sic], The Simpsons, and a Jon Secada video’ (WillUpvoteForAss 2013). The episode of The Simpsons in question is probably ‘Lady Bouvier’s Lover’ (dir. Wes Archer, 1994), in which Grandpa Simpson attempts to stop the wedding of Marge’s mother to Mr Burns, but crashes through the church window in the process. The Jon Secada video is that for his 1994 song ‘If You Go’, featuring a wedding interruption that is less clearly an intentional parody of The Graduate. Here, nonetheless, is another way in which perceivers might understand the Wayne’s World 2 sequence to be a parody even if they do not know the target, namely through having seen other takes on that target.

Intention and interpretation  85 24 Relevant to the discussion of interpretive communities above is Robynn J. Stilwell’s (1997, p. 571) point that A Clockwork Orange was, at the time of Die Hard’s release, ‘not common currency in the United States, at least among the young male audience at which blockbuster action films like Die Hard are primarily targeted’. It was also ‘banned in the United Kingdom, making the connection even more tenuous in this market’. 25 In an interview conducted while With a Vengeance’s score was still in production, Kamen does not mention ‘When Johnny’ at all, despite discussing the Clockwork connection in the first Die Hard (in Shivers 1995, p. 13). He notes that his ‘big conceit’ for the With a Vengeance score is to use Brahms’s First Symphony (‘leaning on it fairly heavily’), because of that piece’s popular reputation as ‘­Beethoven’s Tenth’ (thus following on from the use of Beethoven’s Ninth in Die Hard) (ibid., p. 15). Brahms material is barely used in the final film, though. Detailing various changes to the film and its score made late on by McTiernan, Bond (2012, p. 16) notes a request by McTiernan for ‘more use of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” to accompany footage of the dump trucks from the heist moving on their way toward Canada’. It is possible that the role of ‘When Johnny’ was expanded in other ways, too. Kamen relates in the 1995 interview that ‘I am now two weeks away from finishing recording the score although the film will be out in three and a half weeks and the record was done last week. So the record will be a compendium of cues that are done so far’ (in Shivers 1995, p. 14). It may be telling that, while hints of ‘When Johnny’ appear in some cues on that OST (RCA Victor 09026 68306 2, 1995), there is no major rendition of the kind heard repeatedly in the film (where it certainly sounds like the score’s ‘big conceit’). 26 Crow is not the only viewer to have named the tune in this way in relation to With a Vengeance. In a review of that film’s CD OST on Amazon.com, one customer advises that, ‘[i]f you’re a “real” soundtrack collector, you’ll be disappointed that the “Ants Go Marching” theme, which was featured so prominently in the film, can’t be found anywhere on this soundtrack’ (Eelco Hoenselaar 2002). 27 Cormack’s conclusion is underpinned by a similar idea. For him, the absence of a clear, singular understanding of a pre-existing piece’s significance ‘should be celebrated rather than regretted’, because ‘[t]he experience of watching the film is enriched’ (2006, p. 30). 28 As Cormack (2006, p. 30) notes, it may be that some filmmakers using pre-­ existing music ‘had a clear idea of what they thought the music would convey and assumed that such clarity of understanding would be accessible to attentive members of their audiences’. 29 In this regard, the unheard lyrics of ‘When Johnny’ work similarly in Dr. Strangelove to the heard lyrics of Vera Lynn’s ‘We’ll Meet Again’, which subsequently play against images of that nuclear annihilation. 30 McTiernan (2006) states in his director’s commentary that he ‘tried desperately’ to get Sam Phillips, a singer who plays one of the film’s terrorists, to sing ‘When Johnny’ ‘in the end credits’. Phillips (in Klimek 2013) has said that she does not recall being asked to sing it, however. 31 Though Anderson (2015) singles out With a Vengeance, his criticism is directed more generally at the franchise’s sequels, including Die Hard 2. In that film, Jean Sibelius’s Finlandia was incorporated because, as Kamen himself put it, ‘it was snow[ing] and the director was from Finland’ (in Shivers 1995, p. 15). 32 The Allegretto was not suggested by Desplat: he credits it to Hooper (in V. 2011), while Hooper (in Kagan 2013, p. 260) credits it to the film’s editor, Tariq Anwar, who used it as a temp track that Desplat declined to replace.

86  Intention and interpretation 33 The ‘darkness-to-light’ reading of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony is not unique to ­Sinyard. Michael Steinberg (1995, p. 326) remarks on the piece’s ‘minor-to-­ major, darkness-to-light scenario’, for instance. 34 Like those individuals promoting other composers for The King’s Speech, ­Sinyard offers his own suggestion: Mahler’s Ninth Symphony ‘has exactly the resonances Visconti needs’, he writes, in being ‘essentially a sonic presentation of a death – and, like Death in Venice, not simply about the death of one particular artist, but about the death of a whole culture and society’ (1986, pp. 128–9). 35 Three of four articles in Young’s series take The King’s Speech as their topic, with the second, for instance, criticizing a ‘gaping hole in the film’s logic’ (Young, G. 2011b). The target of the other article is The Social Network (dir. David Fincher, 2010), another critically acclaimed film (Young, G. 2010). 36 By this point, the author has already revealed that they do not know as much as they think: the excerpt of the Allegretto was ‘edited’, and recorded anew, to fit the sequence, as is discussed in Chapter 3 of this book (pp. 105–8).

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Intention and interpretation  87 Biancorosso, G. (2009) ‘The Harpist in the Closet: Film Music as Epistemological Joke’, Music and the Moving Image, 2(3), pp. 11–33. Bond, J. (2012) ‘Die Hard 3: Score Harder’, liner notes to Die Hard: With a Vengeance: Expanded Original Motion Picture Soundtrack [CD]. Burbank: La La Land (LLLCD 1233), pp. 2–19. Booker, M. K. (2010) Disney, Pixar, and the Hidden Messages of Children’s Films. Oxford: Praeger. Clemmensen, C. (2015) ‘San Andreas (Andrew Lockington)’, Filmtracks. Available at: www.filmtracks.com/titles/san_andreas.html (accessed 26 March 2018). Cormack, M. (2006) ‘The Pleasures of Ambiguity: Using Classical Music in Film’, in Powrie, P. and Stilwell, R. (eds) Changing Tunes: The Use of Pre-existing Music in Film. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 19–30. Crow, D. (2013) ‘Die Hard Retrospective’, Den of Geek, 14 February. Available at: www.denofgeek.com/us/movies/die-hard/61203/die-hard-retrospective (accessed 26 March 2018). Crudblud (2012) ‘Curious Case of The King’s Speech (Video Analysis of Beethoven vs Vaughan William)’, Talk Classical, 15 January. Available at: www.­talkclassical. com/13595-curious-case-kings-speech.html#post259523 (accessed 26 March 2018). D’Angelo, M. (2014) ‘Comedy + Time = Absurdity’, Dissolve, 3 July. Available at: https://thedissolve.com/features/movie-of-the-week/645-comedy-time-absurdity (accessed 26 March 2018). Desta, Y. (2017) ‘Michael Giacchino Is the Punniest Composer Alive’, Vanity Fair, 13 July. Available at: www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/07/planet-of-the-apesscore-soundtrack-michael-giacchino-puns (accessed 26 March 2018). dglickler (2014) ‘Is There Any Significance to the Use of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home”?’, Movies & TV Stack Exchange, 31 January. Available at: https://movies.stackexchange.com/a/17026 (accessed 26 March 2018). Docteur Qui (2007a) ‘The Official Michael Giacchino Thread’, John Williams Fan Network, 22 June. Available at: www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php?/­topic/4261the-official-michael-giacchino-thread/&page=34&tab=comments#comment348058 (accessed 26 March 2018). Docteur Qui (2007b) ‘Medal of Honor reference in Ratatouille’, John Williams Fan Network, 9 July. Available at: www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php?/­topic/13335medal-of-honor-reference-in-ratatouille/&tab=comments#comment-352035 (­accessed 26 March 2018). Eelco Hoenselaar (2002) ‘Eelco Hoenselaar’s review of Die Hard with a Vengeance: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Audio CD)’, Amazon.com. Available at: www.amazon.com/review/R335RNCK806VEO/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm?ie= UTF8&ASIN=B000003FYR (accessed 26 March 2018). Erik Woods (2008) ‘Lost Season 3’, Intrada Soundtrack Forum, 17 January. Available at: http://intrada.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=15543#p15543 (accessed 26 March 2018). Fish, S. (1980) Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Floyd, J. (n.d.) ‘Die Hard with a Vengeance [review]’, Celluloid Dreams. Available at: www.celluloiddreams.co.uk/diehardwithavengeance.html (accessed 26 March 2018).

88  Intention and interpretation Giacchino, M. (2014) ‘We Are Matt Reeves and Michael Giacchino and We’re Ready to Answer Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Apes! AUA’, Reddit, 10 July. Available at: www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2aacmx/we_are_matt_ reeves_and_michael_giacchino_and_were/cit1ugf (accessed 26 March 2018). Godsall, J. (2014) ‘Further Seductions: “Mrs. Robinson”, post-Graduate’, The Soundtrack, 7(2), pp. 133–45. Goldman, M. K. (2010) ‘The Music of The King’s Speech’, Mary Kunz Goldman –­ Music Critic, 29 December. Available at: http://goldmanmusic.blogspot.co.uk/ 2010/12/music-of-kings-speech.html (accessed 26 March 2018). Gorbman, C. (2006) ‘Ears Wide Open: Kubrick’s Music’, in Powrie, P. and Stilwell, R. (eds) Changing Tunes: The Use of Pre-existing Music in Film. Aldershot: ­Ashgate, pp. 3–18. Graybill, M. S. (2004) ‘“Nothing Really Matters”: Inauthenticity, Intertextuality, and Rock in Wayne’s World’, CEA Critic, 66(2/3), pp. 39–46. Greg Orypeck (2011) ‘The King’s Speech (2010)’, Classic Film Freak, 25 ­February. Available at: www.classicfilmfreak.com/2011/02/25/the-kings-speech-2010 (accessed 26 March 2018). Heldt, G. (2013) Music and Levels of Narration in Film: Steps Across the Border. Bristol: Intellect. Hicks, C. (1993) ‘Wayne’s World 2 Is One Too Many Sequels’, Deseret News, 10 ­December. Available at: www.deseretnews.com/article/325191/waynes-world-2is-one-too-many-sequels.html (accessed 26 March 2018). Hutcheon, L. (1985) A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Jenkins, H. (2006) Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. ­London: New York University Press. Jewell, C. (2015) ‘Music and the Movies: An Interview with Randall Poster’, WIPO Magazine, May. Available at: www.wipo.int/wipo_magazine/en/2015/02/­ article_0003.html (accessed 26 March 2018). Jullier, L. and Leveratto, M. (2012) ‘Cinephilia in the Digital Age’, in Christie, I. (ed.) Audiences: Defining and Researching Screen Entertainment Reception. ­A msterdam: Amsterdam University Press, pp. 143–54. JWFAN (n.d.) ‘Top Members’, JWFAN. Available at: www.jwfan.com/forums/­ index.php?/topmembers (accessed 26 March 2018). Kagan, J. (ed.) (2013) Directors Close Up 2. Plymouth: Scarecrow Press. Kassabian, A. (2001) Hearing Film: Tracking Identifications in Contemporary Hollywood Film Music. 2nd edn. London: Routledge. Klein, M. L. (2005) Intertextuality in Western Art Music. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Klimek, C. (2013) ‘Where There’s a Willis, There’s a Way, or They Still Call Me John McClane: Being a Die Hard’s Guide to the Die Hard Galaxy’, Chris Klimek, 15 February. Available at: http://chrisklimek.net/blog/2013/2/14/a-die-hards-guideto-the-emdie-hardem-galaxy (accessed 26 March 2018). Knaus, R. (n.d.) ‘Review: Die Hard with a Vengeance (Special Edition)’, DVD In My Pants. Available at: http://web.archive.org/web/20101122225142/http://­dvdinmypants.com/ reviews/A-G/die_hard_with_vengeance.php (accessed 26 March 2018). Lang, E. and West, G. (1920) Musical Accompaniment of Moving Pictures. Boston: Boston Music.

Intention and interpretation  89 Larson, R. (1985) Musique Fantastique: A Survey of Music in the Fantastic Cinema. Metuchen: Scarecrow Press. Lochner, J. (n.d.) ‘CD Review: The King’s Speech’, Film Score Click Track. Available at: http://filmscoreclicktrack.com/cd-review-the-kings-speech (accessed 26 March 2018). Luke Skywalker (2007) ‘Medal of Honor reference in Ratatouille’, John Williams Fan Network, 8 July. Available at: www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php?/­topic/­13335medal-of-honor-reference-in-ratatouille/&do=findComment&comment=352108 (accessed 26 March 2018). McNabb, K. (2011) The King’s Speech Score Review’, Popoptiq, January 28. Available at: www.popoptiq.com/the-kings-speech-score-review (accessed 26 March 2018). McQuiston, K. (2013) We’ll Meet Again: Musical Design in the Films of Stanley Kubrick. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McTiernan, J. (2006) ‘Commentary’, Die Hard with a Vengeance, dir. J. McTiernan, 1995. DVD, Twentieth Century Fox. Matalqa, A. (1996) ‘Dr. Strangelove/Die Hard with a Vengeance Music’, rec.music. movies, 4 June. Available at: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rec.music.movies/ jP6pBlMlXQU/MimqjWe_I20J (accessed 26 March 2018). Mugtwaine (2007) ‘Medal of Honor reference in Ratatouille’, John Williams Fan Network, 8 July. Available at: www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php?/topic/13335-­medalof-honor-reference-in-ratatouille (accessed 26 March 2018). Napoleon Wilson (2014) ‘Is There Any Significance to the Use of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home”?’, Movies & TV Stack Exchange, 14 March. Available at: https://movies.stackexchange.com/a/17984 (accessed 26 March 2018). Nattiez, J.-J. (1990 [1987]) Music and Discourse: Toward a Semiology of Music. Translated from the original French by C. Abbate. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Night_Trekker (2008a) ‘Ratatouille’, NeoGAF, 15 January. Available at: www.­ neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=9336870&postcount=95 (accessed 26 March 2018). Night_Trekker (2008b) ‘Ratatouille’, NeoGAF, 16 January. Available at: www. neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?s=0c412e0ac2ef57a938079bfa654a6bb7& p=9343389&postcount=149 (accessed 26 March 2018). Odin, R. (2012) ‘Spectator, Film and the Mobile Phone’, in Christie, I. (ed.) Audiences: Defining and Researching Screen Entertainment Reception. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, pp. 155–69. OED Online (2018) ‘Easter egg, n.’. Available at: www.oed.com/view/Entry/258963 (accessed 26 March 2018). Oliver_C (2013) ‘Is There Any Significance to the Use of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home”?’, Movies & TV Stack Exchange, 28 November. Available at: https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/15440/is-there-any-significanceto-the-use-of-when-johnny-comes-marching-home#comment19656_15440 (­accessed 26 March 2018). Polednice (2012) ‘Curious Case of The King’s Speech (Video Analysis of ­B eethoven vs Vaughan William)’, Talk Classical, 17 January. Available at: www.­ talkclassical.com/13595-curious-case-kings-speech.html#post259995 (accessed 26 March 2018).

90  Intention and interpretation QuestionMarkMan (2007a) ‘The Official Michael Giacchino Thread’, John Williams Fan Network, 30 June. Available at: www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php?/­ topic/4261-the-official-michael-giacchino-thread/&page=35&tab=comments# comment-349881 (accessed 26 March 2018). QuestionMarkMan (2007b) ‘The Official Michael Giacchino Thread’, John Williams Fan Network, 26 June. Available at: www.jwfan.com/forums/­ index.php?/topic/4261-the-off icial-michael-giacchino-thread/&page=35& tab=comments#comment-349298 (accessed 26 March 2018). QuestionMarkMan (2007c) ‘Medal of Honor reference in Ratatouille’, 8 July. Available at: www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php?/topic/13335-medal-of-honor-­reference-inratatouille/&tab=comments#comment-351894 (accessed 26 March 2018). rvwfan (2011a) The Curious Case of Beethoven in The Kings Speech. YouTube video. Available at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPqw_b-Pm-Y (accessed 26 March 2018). rvwfan (2011b) ‘Curious Case of The King’s Speech (Video Analysis of Beethoven vs Vaughan William)’, Talk Classical, 4 June. Available at: www.talkclassical. com/13595-curious-case-kings-speech.html (accessed 26 March 2018). Shivers, W. (1995) ‘Kamen Hard’, Film Score Monthly, 58, pp. 12–15. Sinyard, N. (1986) Filming Literature: The Art of Screen Adaptation. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Smith, J. (1998) The Sounds of Commerce: Marketing Popular Film Music. New York: Columbia University Press. Steinberg, M. (1995) The Symphony: A Listener’s Guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Steiner, M. (2011 [1937]) ‘Scoring the Film’ in Hubbert, J. (ed.) Celluloid Symphonies: Texts and Contexts in Film Music History. London: University of California Press, pp. 221–30. stevvve (2013) ‘Is There Any Significance to the Use of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home”?’, Movies & TV Stack Exchange, 26 November. Available at: https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/15440/is-there-any-significance-tothe-use-of-when-johnny-comes-marching-home (accessed 26 March 2018). Stilwell, R. J. (1997) ‘“I Just Put a Drone Under Him…”: Collage and Subversion in the Score of Die Hard’, Music & Letters, 78(4), pp. 551–80. Tangonan, E. J. (2013) ‘Die Hard Retrospective: Die Hard with a Vengeance’, EJ Tangonan, 23 May. Available at: https://ejtangonan.weebly.com/from-the-mindof-ej/die-hard-retrospective-die-hard-with-a-vengeance (accessed 26 March 2018). Theis, D. (1993) ‘Wayne’s World 2 [review]’, Houston Press, 16 December. Available at: www.houstonpress.com/film/waynes-world-2-6573110 (accessed 26 March 2018). ­ ecember. Toppman, L. (2010) ‘King’s Speech Is Impeccable’, Charlotte Observer, 24 D ­Available at: http://web.archive.org/web/20131111051458/http://events.­charlotteob server.com/reviews/show/11031005-review-the-kings-speech (accessed 26 March 2018). V. (2011) ‘Interview: Alexandre Desplat – Composer for The King’s Speech’, One Movie, Our Views, 15 January. Available at: http://onemovieourviews. com/2011/01/15/interview-alexandre-desplat-composer-for-the-kings-speech (­accessed 26 March 2018). van Deursen, A. and van Dijk, J., ‘Internet Skills and the Digital Divide’, New ­Media & Society, 13(6), pp. 893–911.

Intention and interpretation  91 Vandaele, J. (2002) ‘Humor Mechanisms in Film Comedy: Incongruity and Superiority’, Poetics Today, 23(2), pp. 221–49. Whispering Gums (2011) ‘Monday Musings on Australian Literature: The King’s Speech (Movie)’, Whispering Gums, 3 January. Available at: http://­whisperinggums. com/2011/01/03/monday-musings-on-australian-­l iterature-the-kings-speechmovie (accessed 26 March 2018). Williams, M. A. (2012) ‘Die Hard Soundtrack’, HubPages, 18 March. Available at: http://m-a-williams.hubpages.com/hub/Die-Hard-Soundtrack (accessed 26 March 2018). WillUpvoteForAss (2013) ‘Often Parodied Movie Scene Of A Guy Pounding on a Church Window to Interrupt a Marriage Inside’, Reddit, 18 November. Available at: www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/1qxczi/often_parodied_movie_ scene_of_a_guy_pounding_on_a (accessed 26 March 2018). Winters, B. (2007) Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s The Adventures of Robin Hood: A Film Score Guide. Plymouth: Scarecrow Press. Wise, B. (2011) ‘A Soundtrack Fit for a King’, WQXR, 22 February. Available at: www.wqxr.org/story/115595-soundtrack-fit-king (accessed 26 March 2018). Wurst II, B. (2015) ‘Looking Back: Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995)’, MAUIWatch, 16 July. Available at: http://mauiwatch.com/2015/07/looking-back-die-hard-witha-vengeance-1995 (accessed 26 March 2018). Yavar Moradi (2008) ‘Lost Season 3’, Intrada Soundtrack Forum, 17 January. Available at: http://intrada.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=15544#p15544 (accessed 26 March 2018). Young, G. (2010) ‘Au Contraire! The Social Network – First in a Series of Contrarian Rants’, Huffington Post, 21 December. Available at: www.huffingtonpost.com/ glenn-young/au-contraire-the-social-n_b_798670.html (accessed 26 March 2018). Young, G. (2011a) ‘Au Contraire! The King’s Speech’, Huffington Post, 14 February. Available at: www.huffingtonpost.com/glenn-young/au-contraire-the-kingssp_b_821746.html (accessed 26 March 2018). Young, G. (2011b) ‘Au Contraire: Double Take – Another Look at The King’s Speech’, Huffington Post, 21 February. Available at: www.huffingtonpost.com/glennyoung/au-contraire-double-takea_b_825468.html (accessed 26 March 2018). Young, J. (2011) ‘The King’s Music’, The Telegraph, 16 April. Available at: www. telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/8454692/It-isnt-racist-for-the-British-to-be-­ doubtful-about-the-scale-of-immigration.html (accessed 26 March 2018). yourturnHeather (2011) ‘Obligatory Die Hard Post of the Month’, yourturnHeather, 4 August. Available at: http://yourturnheather.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/­obligatorydie-hard-post-of-month.html (accessed 26 March 2018).

3 Functions of musical reference

A musical quotation within a film makes direct reference to the quoted music as it exists outside of that film. In its prior and continuing real-world existence, that quoted music has structure and meaning that are independent of the quotation, at least at the initial moment the connection between the two is made in the minds of either filmmaker or audience. This independence may then be eroded, as familiarity with the quotation changes our perception of the quoted text (the subject of Chapter 4), but at first can be crucial to our process of interpretation, whether we are creating a film or viewing one. By comparing (our conception of) what the quoted text is, and what it means, outside of the film, with the form and placement of the quotation within the film, we can come to an understanding of the latter’s purpose and effect. Examples in the previous chapter have already illustrated this process in action, from the perspectives of both filmmakers and audiences (that is, of poietic and esthesic intertextuality). In cases discussed there, reference to the quoted music and its contexts was considered an end goal in itself: an expansion of a film’s horizon that may have generated humour or additional meaning, for instance, but that had no other obvious narrative effect. The selection of such relatively simple examples allowed the idea of interpretive variation to be most clearly elucidated. This chapter, though, explores how this process of reference can be exploited towards other specific purposes. While these purposes and the examples supporting them are varied, the broader argument I outline here is that the underlying process – or, to put it another way, the referentiality of the music within the film – is central to the deployment and interpretation of pre-existing music in the cinema. As I will show, it also has implications for certain general theories of film music. Moving away from the approaches used in Chapter 2 to understand the intentions and interpretations of real filmmakers and audiences, this chapter relies more upon conventional textual analysis – on my interpretations of uses of pre-existing music, in other words, as well as those of other ­scholars – but does so in light of points made previously about the ambiguities to which pre-existing music always gives rise. I offer the readings below as examples of how pre-existing music can and could function, and not of how it necessarily will or should, though I have sought to ground them in reality.

Functions of musical reference  93

Time and place Among the most common functions of pre-existing music in film are the establishment of historical and geographical setting. For films set in the real world, filmmakers can quote pre-existing music that is of the setting, or at least associated with it, and therefore reference that setting for the audience. From a filmmaker’s perspective, this is a simple operation that lends a sense of authenticity to a film’s constructed world. Moreover, even if a perceiver does not recognize the particular piece they hear, they may still recognize the setting it implies through features such as musical style or, in autosonic quotations, the quality of recorded sound. In establishing a past temporal setting in particular, films have most prominently employed pre-existing popular music. In Dazed and Confused (dir. Richard Linklater, 1993), set in 1976, and Adventureland (dir. Greg ­Mottola, 2009), set in 1987, for instance, the overriding musical tactic is for using ‘then’-recent popular songs on the soundtrack, by the likes of Alice Cooper and ZZ Top in the first case, and David Bowie and Falco in the second. On a grander scale, the decade-crossing tale of Forrest Gump (dir. Robert Zemeckis, 1994) is accompanied by a musical journey from Elvis Presley and Duane Eddy (the 1950s) to the Doobie Brothers (1970s) and ­Willie Nelson (1980s). Gump also uses arrangements of ‘Joy to the World’ and ‘Silent Night’ to establish the Christmastime setting of two scenes. That film’s executive music producer Joel Sill stressed the need to use ‘very recognizable material that would pinpoint time periods’ (in Rice 1994, p. 60), reflecting the importance of music to establishing the settings and therefore the structure of Gump’s narrative, and the consequent need to account for the likely familiarities of the film’s audience. Music is not the only element that signposts the times at which films such as these are set, but it is doubtless a powerful one, as Mark Kermode suggests in describing Quadrophenia (dir. Franc Roddam, 1979) as ‘a drama set in 1964 in which the on-screen appearance of modern-day buses and cinemas showing Grease [dir. Randal Kleiser, 1978] are easily plastered over by a soundtrack blaring Booker T. and early Who’ (1995, p. 13). Jeff Smith (1998, p. 165) argues that popular music is ‘especially effective’ for establishing period, because its ‘perpetually changing fads and­ fashions . . . furnish a kind of built-in obsolescence to the idiom, which in turn imparts a certain historical specificity to individual styles, performers, and songs’. He contrasts this to a common perception of classical music ‘having a kind of universality’.1 These are broad generalizations, but certainly reflect the manner in which pre-existing music has most often been selected and deployed in past-set mainstream films. Boldly anachronistic uses of popular songs, as in the use of tracks by New Order, the Cure, and others in ­Marie Antoinette (dir. Sofia Coppola, 2006), a film set supposedly in the eighteenth century, are commonly heard as an aesthetic choice, placed ‘in order to make an ironic, knowing postmodern statement . . . to

94  Functions of musical reference attract a younger audience, or simply to jump upon a popular bandwagon’, in ­Alexandra ­Wilson’s words (2017, p. 109). By contrast, there are many examples of classical works similarly used with ‘little or no meaningful connection to the period being depicted’ (ibid., p. 120) that pass less noticed by general audiences, as in the use of Edward Elgar’s 1899 ‘Nimrod’ (from the Enigma Variations) at the climax of Elizabeth (1998), Shekhar Kapur’s biopic of the eponymous sixteenth-­c entury monarch.2 As for establishing location, pre-existing music can do this in two senses. In a broad sense, the use of mostly American (and all English-language ­Western) music in Dazed and Confused, Adventureland, and Forrest Gump situates those films in the United States, while the United Kingdom-set Quadrophenia features a higher proportion of British artists such as the ­Merseybeats and Manfred Mann. The use of ‘Nimrod’ in Elizabeth also constructs place, even as it collapses time. In a narrower sense, much pre-­existing music in these films is source music: music implied to emanate from a source somewhere within the diegetic setting of the scene depicted, such as a radio or jukebox. In this role, the music furnishes the particular local environment in which it is heard. Pre-existing music is, literally, real music that refers to its own existence outside of the film. Its deployment as source music can therefore be a particularly effective means of authentically furnishing real-world settings, much like the sight of a Starbucks café or Ford car.3 I will argue here, though, that pre-existing music’s referentiality also works to blur any neat distinction between diegetic and nondiegetic sound, and that ‘source music’ and ‘diegetic music’ might therefore not be considered synonymous, as they have commonly been in much screen-music scholarship. Source music can be on-screen or off-screen, those labels referring to whether the music’s implied source is within or outside of the film’s visual frame. In either case, but naturally to a greater extent when off-screen, the implication of source status relies upon the music’s aural fidelity: ‘the extent to which the sound is faithful to the source as we [the audience] conceive it’ (Bordwell and Thompson 2010, p. 283).4 In Forrest Gump, for example, Wilson Pickett’s ‘Land of 1000 Dances’ is heard faintly as Forrest and his friend Jenny walk and talk on a road bridge. With its low volume and muffled sound quality, the song’s apparent fidelity here is to a nearby club or bar (perhaps the one in the far background of the shot, or perhaps another). Functioning on an immediate level more as ambient sound than as music per se, the distant presence of ‘Land of 1000 Dances’ serves to flesh out a living, real locale in which the interaction of Forrest and Jenny is only one of countless concurrent events. Not all of the pre-existing music in Forrest Gump and the other films mentioned above is source music, though. In fact, of the tracks by Presley, Eddy, the Doobie Brothers, and Nelson that I argued help to construct Gump’s evolving temporal setting, only Presley’s ‘Hound Dog’, which F ­ orrest sees the singer performing on television, is clearly a source track. Eddy’s ­‘Rebel-’Rouser’ accompanies a sequence in which high-school-age Forrest

Functions of musical reference  95 runs from a group of bullies chasing him on a truck: the music fades up as the truck approaches, and so could initially be interpreted as playing from a speaker within the vehicle, but does not have fidelity to such a source as the scene progresses (maintaining the same volume through various shots that position the truck at different distances from the audience’s point of view, and even when the truck disappears from the scene). The Doobie Brothers’ ‘It Keeps You Runnin’’ and Nelson’s ‘On the Road Again’, meanwhile, are two of six lyrically appropriate songs heard alongside a visual montage of adult Forrest’s three-year cross-country run. A source for these songs is not shown or implied to exist anywhere within the scenes shown, meaning that we would conventionally interpret them as nondiegetic. Does it make sense to say that this music does not belong to the film’s diegesis, though? Claudia Gorbman, who brought the diegetic–nondiegetic distinction to the study of film music through adapting the narratological theories of Gérard Genette and Étienne Souriau, describes the diegesis as ‘the narratively implied spatiotemporal world of the actions and characters’ (1987, p. 21). In Forrest Gump, that ‘narratively implied spatiotemporal world’ is our world, as it existed at particular points in the second half of the twentieth century, and in which the tracks in question were created and consumed as a matter of historical fact. Forrest is not listening to ‘It Keeps You Runnin’’ at the moments depicted to the sounds of that song for the film’s audience. But this is not to say that he has not heard it at some point in his implied existence beyond the bounds of the events portrayed in the film; certainly, it would have been possible for him to hear it. According to this logic, ‘It Keeps You Runnin’’ belongs to the diegesis, and so is diegetic. In this questioning of common distinctions between diegetic and nondiegetic music I follow Smith (2009, p. 4) in suggesting that we ‘divorc[e] the concept of the diegetic from the “realistic”’, an equivalence he accuses screen-music scholars of propagating in isolation from broader understandings: nowhere else in film studies is the notion of the ‘diegetic’ wholly equated with a concept of realism. Elements of mise-en-scène or cinematography, for example, are often treated in a highly stylized fashion, but a film’s departure from realism does not disqualify spaces and objects from being considered a part of the film’s diegesis. The ‘unrealistic’ manner in which ‘It Keeps You Runnin’’ accompanies ­Forrest’s run, then, is a stylistic choice that allows the filmmakers to combine a standard function of diegetic music – furnishing and so constructing a ‘living’ diegesis, here historically and geographically – more easily with others: in this case, providing lyrical commentary and continuity in a sequence constructed of multiple temporally and spatially discontinuous shots. As Smith argues, fidelity (‘realistic sound levels’, in his terms) is sufficient to identify music as diegetic, but not necessary. While source music is

96  Functions of musical reference therefore (a kind of) diegetic music, it does not follow that the category of diegetic music is constituted only by source music. Where I expand on Smith is in stressing the crucial part that pre-existing music’s referentiality has to play in our considering a song like ‘It Keeps You Runnin’’ to be somehow diegetic in Forrest Gump. In the examples Smith discusses, the music’s apparent fidelity changes. In the opening scene of ­Zodiac (dir. David Fincher, 2007), for instance, Donovan’s song ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man’ sounds initially as if it emanates from a car radio, but soon ‘swells in volume in a manner that departs from any sort of realistic motivation for the sound’ (2009, p. 11).5 Smith argues that the song would therefore often be understood to move from a diegetic (source) to nondiegetic ­position, or into some zone between the two states (such as Robynn ­Stilwell’s ‘fantastical gap’ (2007)). In his view, though, it ‘remains anchored within the diegesis throughout the scene, but departs from conventions of aural fidelity in order to heighten the expressive qualities of the music’, for dramatic purposes (ibid., p. 13). The music’s pre-existing status is not crucial here; if the song were original, Smith’s reading of the shift could still apply. In the case of ‘It Keeps You Runnin’’, by contrast, the music never has fidelity to any apparent source, and interpreting it as diegetic thus relies entirely on our knowledge that the song existed in our (and therefore Forrest’s) world at the time the scene takes place. That interpretation relies, in other words, on the music referencing its own prior existence.6 This referentiality differentiates ‘It Keeps You Runnin’’ from Alan Silvestri’s original score for Forrest Gump, despite its technically identical presentation: Silvestri’s score does not exist in any manner within the film’s ‘narratively implied spatiotemporal world’ (because the film does not), and so is fully nondiegetic.7 ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man’ and ‘It Keeps You Runnin’’ are nonetheless diegetic in slightly distinct ways. The fidelity of ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man’ may change, but the song still belongs to the particular scene depicted at the time we hear it. ‘It Keeps You Runnin’’, though, does not belong to any of its concurrent scenes in the same way. This is also the case, in part, with examples of temporally and spatially displaced diegetic music similarly discussed by Smith (2009, pp. 14–20): tracks that begin as source music in one scene, for instance, but then continue over one or more additional scenes in which they cannot realistically be playing. While Smith relies on existing terminology to make his points, I suggest a pair of neologisms to account for this particular ‘expansion’ of the definition of diegetic music (and sound, more broadly). Just as such music can be on-screen or off-screen, I argue that it can be on-scene or off-scene. On-scene diegetic music is source music: music attached to a source within the specific scene at hand. Off-scene diegetic is the position of ‘It Keeps You Runnin’’: music that still belongs to the diegesis as a whole, but not realistically to the scenes alongside which it is heard.8 While any music can move between on- and off-scene positions through temporal and spatial displacement, as in Smith’s examples, pre-­existing music, perhaps uniquely, can be entirely off-scene diegetic. ‘It Keeps You

Functions of musical reference  97 Runnin’’ is not displaced, and it is primarily for this reason that a new term may be helpful. The reason for writing, in scare quotes, of an ‘expansion’ of our understanding of diegetic music above is that the broad definition of such music proposed here corresponds clearly to Gorbman’s writing of the diegesis as the ‘narratively implied spatiotemporal world’. The idea of off-scene diegetic music fits less well with her definition of diegetic music as ‘music that (apparently) issues from a source within the narrative’ (1987, p. 22; my emphasis), however, and defining diegetic music more broadly certainly has catches.9 If a film’s storyworld is understood as equivalent to our world (past, present, or future, and with whatever fictional elements that do not impact on the ability of the music employed to exist as it did, does, or will for us), as it will be in many cases, all pre-existing music can appear diegetic, so long as it is not anachronistic. This is arguably stretching the category so far that it becomes meaningless, and I would therefore suggest off-scene diegetic status as a matter for case-by-case interpretation.10 If the music seems to represent the sonic environment in which the characters exist – more as music that they would hear than music they could hear – then labelling it as diegetic seems fair. A strong claim for this is offered when the music in question is similar to music that is heard as source music within the same film, in being of the same genre, say, or by the same artist. In Forrest Gump, though no other Doobie Brothers tracks are heard, ‘It Keeps You Runnin’’ not only corresponds to the overall strategy of era appropriateness, but is also a comfortable fit stylistically alongside songs such as ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ by Lynyrd Skynyrd, which plays as source music (at least in part) a few minutes beforehand.11 An off-scene diegetic interpretation of ‘It Keeps You Runnin’’ might still be plausible if Forrest Gump contained no source music (or even no other music whatsoever), but is a much more obvious possibility given the context in which it actually appears.12 More than anything, accounting for pre-existing music’s referentiality in this way points to a small (and primarily terminological) twist or flaw in narratological theories of film music. Other scholars have already suggested problems with, additions to, or replacements for the diegetic–nondiegetic distinction (see Heldt 2013, pp. 48–9, for a summary), and will undoubtedly continue to do so. In my view, the system based on Gorbman’s definitions is an easily understood means of accounting for the vast majority of cases, and I therefore suggest primarily that we be aware of the twists and flaws, and apply the concepts with care and qualification where necessary. It is worth noting, however, that my proposed idea of off-scene diegetic music is not based solely on theoretical wrangling. Filmmakers appear to accept (however unwittingly) that music can be presented entirely ‘unrealistically’, and yet still belong to the diegesis. Sill, Forrest Gump’s executive music producer, relates that the makers of that film chose pre-existing music for the soundtrack based on what Forrest would be likely to buy, and that this is the primary reason for the preponderance of American artists noted above:

98  Functions of musical reference ‘All the material in there is American[.] Bob [Zemeckis] felt strongly about it. He felt that Forrest wouldn’t buy anything but American [music]’ (Sill in Rice 1994, p. 60). No distinction is made here between source and background music, and Forrest is never actually shown buying music in the film. ­Similarly, Martin Scorsese has spoken of how, on Goodfellas (1990), ‘the only rule was to use music which could only have been heard at that time. If a scene took place in 1973, I could use any music that was current or older’ (in Christie and Thompson 2003, p. 161). Again, he does not differentiate between music that is placed ‘realistically’ and ‘unrealistically’ (there are many examples of both); all of the film’s music had to abide by this rule, because all of the film’s music was, effectively, diegetic.13

Musical agents Pre-existing music’s referentiality can play an important part in informing audiences about character. When such music is associated specifically with a film’s character – through accompanying their actions, or being listened to or performed by the character themselves – our knowledge of it, gleaned outside of the film, can affect our impressions of that character. This may be a simple case of positioning them historically and geographically (‘Forrest Gump is American’, for example), but can also involve more complex indications of personality or socio-economic status, drawing on an audience’s own experiences of the music and its other listeners in the real world. Once again, pre-existing music can contribute towards characterization at general levels accessible to those who do not recognize any specific piece used, drawing on conventions of musical meaning developed not least in the cinema (like the association of jazz with ‘insalubrity’, for instance, on which see Cooke 2008, pp. 212–25). Its referentiality does have particular implications for filmmakers and audiences, though. For one, while pre-existing music’s status as ‘real music’ lends authenticity to scenes in which film characters interact with it, in certain contexts this status can also complicate our impression of the music’s source in a manner similar but additional to that considered in the section above. Consider two examples from Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (dir. Beeban Kidron, 2004). In the first, as Guido Heldt outlines (2012, p. 86): when in her mind she [Bridget] is singing the praises of Mark, we hear Minnie Ripperton sing ‘Loving You’ [sic]. There is no diegetic source for the music, and we assume that it is another piece of conventional pop-song underscoring. But when Bridget suddenly realises that Mark is awake, the music suddenly stops with a ripping sound we understand to imply that she was hearing the music in her mind. Here, the internal-diegetic status of Riperton’s ‘Lovin’ You’ is actively signalled to us by the ‘ripping sound’ (a vinyl needle scratch). However, Heldt

Functions of musical reference  99 argues that this and other similarly explicit ‘instances of Bridget’s utterly conventional pop-cultural imagination’ (which include visual as well as sonic imaginings) in the same film ‘cast a cloud over music not overtly signalled to play in her mind’ (ibid., p. 86). When Bridget successfully deploys her parachute during the jump that opens the film, for example, Carly ­Simon’s ‘Nobody Does It Better’ – from the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me (dir. Lewis Gilbert, 1977) – strikes up on the soundtrack. ­Regarding this second example, Heldt (ibid., p. 87) asks, ‘is this Bridget glamorising the moment by casting herself in the role of James Bond? Or is the choice of music another bit of ironic narration? Or both?’ There is no wrong answer here; these interpretations are all valid. And though Heldt does not spell out the part that the pre-existing status of ‘Nobody Does It Better’ plays in leaving the song’s source open to such interpretation, clearly it is a crucial one. The world of The Edge of Reason is a version of our own, and ‘Nobody Does It Better’ is music that Bridget could and would know, and that she therefore might choose to ‘hear’ in her mind as a soundtrack to this moment in her life. That Bridget does the same thing with other, similarly pre-­existing pieces like ‘Lovin’ You’ strengthens the case for the internal-diegetic reading, but it would arguably not be necessary for such a clarification of her ‘pop-cultural imagination’ to occur. The internal experience of music is something with which film audiences will be familiar from their own lives: recalling music internally is, simply, something that people do, and that they could therefore fairly assume Bridget to do, too. Bridget’s musical agency overrides concerns of a precise connection of music to the time and place of a film’s action. While The Edge of Reason is set in present-day 2004, ‘Lovin’ You’ was released in 1975, and ‘Nobody Does It ­Better’ in 1977. The Edge of Reason also features up-to-date tracks, but in these aforementioned instances differentiates characterization from – and indeed prioritizes it over – the establishment of setting. Bridget’s musical tastes, and the ways in which she deploys music in her life, may still be ‘utterly conventional’, as Heldt suggests (an identification for which the use of pre-­existing music is, again, crucial), but there is clear justification for this in terms of her characterization. Her conventionality is part of her appeal to a mass audience: in the words of one reviewer, Bridget is ‘everygirl’ (Pierce 2004). In other cases, films play against established conventions in their association of music and character. Spike Lee’s He Got Game (1998) consistently uses music by Aaron Copland to score its story of the relationship between a young African-American basketball star and his incarcerated father. ­Relating that he listened to Copland while writing the film, Lee notes of his intention simply that ‘Aaron Copland is one of the American composers and basketball is an American game’ (in Fuchs 2002, p. 173). This statement accounts straightforwardly for the film’s introduction, in which a visual montage of young basketball players of mixed race and gender, in urban and rural settings, is accompanied by Copland’s John Henry. That combination is striking enough: the images present a vision of America unified

100  Functions of musical reference by basketball, a sport invented in 1891 and so youthful in more than one sense, while Copland’s folk-influenced music, in the popular imagination at least, signifies Americana, a nostalgic vision of an idealized and largely rural past.14 Yet that immediate incongruity is extended in the film’s subsequent focus on the aforementioned relationship between father (Jake) and son (Jesus). Here, Copland’s music continues to be associated with images of the sport (‘Hoe Down’, from Rodeo, accompanies a late-night playground basketball game, for example), but is also more generally used to score these individuals’ lives, as when ‘Grover’s Corners’ from Our Town is paired with Jake visiting his wife’s grave, and Jesus talking with his girlfriend. Copland quotations are, furthermore, juxtaposed musically with original songs by the hip-hop group Public Enemy. Given Lee’s interest in racial politics (as exemplified in his film Do The Right Thing (1989), for instance, which concerns racial tensions in a Brooklyn neighbourhood), it seems inconceivable that his intention was to cast only basketball in the glow of Copland’s Americana. As Richard Brooks (2002, p. 104) puts it, ‘[a]s always, Lee’s portrayal of black Americans is meant to provoke a consideration of American culture as a whole’. For Krin Gabbard (2000, p. 372), then, by using Copland in this context, ‘just as Lee has made the obvious statement – African Americans are ­American – he is also stating the inverse – Americans are African American’.15 A similar tactic infuses two horror films directed by Rob Zombie, as Laura Wiebe Taylor (2009, p. 229) argues: The merging of iconic American music with scenes of horrific torture and violence in House of 1000 Corpses [2003] and The Devil’s Rejects [2005] embeds the villains’ brutality within US history and reality, and makes it difficult to see these vicious killers – the Fireflys – as entirely ‘other’. The Fireflys’ love of popular music and the films’ juxtaposition of familiar hit songs and horror establish a sense of shared cultural history and taste between villain and viewer, supporting the idea that these villains, while sadistic and violent, are not entirely unlike the rest of American society. In one scene in House of 1000 Corpses, for instance, one of the Fireflys tunes a radio to a station playing the Commodores’ ‘Brick House’, before she and an accomplice torture another character. The ‘Stuck in the Middle with You’ scene in Reservoir Dogs (dir. Quentin Tarantino, 1992), in which Mr. Blonde tunes a radio to his ‘personal favourite’ programme – ‘K-Billy’s Super Sounds of the Seventies’ – and then tortures a police officer while singing and dancing along to the Stealers Wheel tune, is a comparable example. In these cases as well as in He Got Game, the manner in which pre-existing music is contextualized not only affects how we might perceive the characters within the films, but can also prompt us to reconsider how we view ourselves and others outside of them. The music’s referentiality is arguably key to this. These films could make similar points using original music:

Functions of musical reference  101 Copland-esque pieces would still signify ‘America’ in He Got Game (as they have in countless other films),16 and original tracks in popular styles would still suggest the ‘ordinary’ tastes of Zombie’s villains, just as the pre-existing selections can for anyone who does not recognize them. Pre-existing music can act in a particularly direct way, though. If this is music that we know, that we perhaps like, its appropriation for such purposes as in the cases here could strike us as especially unusual and maybe even controversial. In other words, hearing familiar music used in these unfamiliar ways could attract our attention and consideration more so than broader kinds of stylistic incongruity. Moreover, that consideration will be informed by – and inform – our experiences of the very same music in the outside world.17 In American cinema, villains have often been associated with classical music. Janet K. Halfyard (2006, pp. 74–5) argues that ‘there appears to be only one condition under which American characters may be seen playing classical music in a Hollywood film, and that is when the character is corrupt or being corrupted’. Halfyard’s examples include Hannibal Lecter, who is shown performing J. S. Bach on a piano in Hannibal (dir. Ridley Scott, 2001), having previously been portrayed listening to music by the same composer in The Silence of the Lambs (dir. Jonathan Demme, 1991).18 Another is Tom Ripley of The Talented Mr. Ripley (dir. Anthony M ­ inghella, 1999). Notably, while Lecter’s musical tastes originate in the novels by Thomas Harris featuring that character, the strong musical elements of ­Ripley are original to the film, being absent in the Patricia Highsmith book from which it is adapted. In Minghella’s vision, Ripley and fellow character Dickie Greenleaf are defined (and opposed) in large part through their musical tastes. While Greenleaf, a saxophonist and jazz fan, is a ‘free spirit’, Ripley – a pianist and classical music buff – is rather uptight and awkward, and becomes embroiled in deception and murder over the course of the narrative.19 Halfyard (2006, pp. 77–8) suggests that the high-culture, European associations of classical music have positioned it against ‘American values’ in ­Hollywood cinema (whereas, in European films, ‘there is no specific association between classical music and villains or anti-heroes’, and ‘confrontational juxtaposition of high culture and popular culture is largely absent’). This opposition is apparent in Sleeping with the Enemy (dir. Joseph Ruben, 1991), even though the characters in question here are not serious musical performers as such. When characters interact with music, the particular manners in which they do so can be significant, whatever these are. That Lecter and Ripley are serious performers, for example, heightens our impression of their involvement with – and in – classical music, and the associated impression that they are not simply troubled or evil, but somewhat intelligent, sensitive, and sophisticated, too. In Sleeping with the Enemy, different kinds of interaction nonetheless tell us much about the two men in protagonist Laura’s life, while specific associations of the music heard can add depth to characterization beyond the generic signals also in play.

102  Functions of musical reference At the start of the film, Martin, Laura’s husband, appears relatively normal to the audience. This impression begins to be dismantled a few minutes in, however, when he forcefully instigates sex with his wife directly after selecting the ‘Dies Irae’ section from the fifth movement of Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique to play from a CD. The same music returns to accompany another sex scene soon after (before Laura fakes her own death to escape Martin’s obsessions and violence), and also at the climax of the film when Martin invades Laura’s new home. The music’s source is unclear in both of these latter instances: in the second sex scene the lack of a visual source combines with the music’s uncontrolled exit from the soundtrack to suggest a nonphysical source, perhaps Laura’s mind, and while the piece is visually and sonically implied to play from a cassette machine at points in the climactic sequence, it similarly lacks fidelity to such a source in the manner it starts and stops at other moments without that machine’s physical operation. That Laura later tells new love interest Ben that ‘Symphonie fantastique gives me the chills’ implies that she associates the piece with ­Martin, which could explain why she would hear the music in her head at those moments. In any case, for the film’s audience, Martin’s association with classical music is not merely an abstract signifier of his depravity; the way in which he uses this music – this dark music, based on the Latin hymn describing the Last Judgement20 – as an accompaniment to sex is itself weird. By contrast, Laura’s first sighting of Ben comes as he waters his garden while singing the ‘Jet Song’ from West Side Story. Again here, the filmmakers’ choice of a song from an American musical (and that is associated with the American gang within it) is important in differentiating Ben from Martin, but so is the manner of Ben’s interaction with the music: his ‘performance’ entails dancing around his garden and substituting most of the song’s lyrics (which he has either forgotten or simply does not know) for nonsense syllables and made-up lines. We are subsequently unsurprised when Ben is revealed to be a drama teacher, but more broadly are led to understand him as flamboyant and spontaneous in a way that is obviously at odds with Martin’s controlling and obsessive–compulsive traits. For some audience members, though, this music will not point solely or even primarily to Sleeping with the Enemy’s characters. On the whole, the film was not well reviewed on its release, with critics pointing to flaws in plot logic such as Martin’s apparent decision, upon gaining access to Laura’s house near the film’s end, to rearrange her towels and canned goods in a neater fashion rather than attacking Laura straight away (Ebert 1991). The musical strategy arguably points to the film’s artificial nature in a similar manner. To my ears, and those of students who laugh when I play them clips from the film in class, the musical opposition of classical versus popular, canned accompaniment for nonconsensual sex versus improvised garden dance, is too obvious to be taken seriously.21 So, too, might be the choice of Symphonie fantastique as the obsessive Martin’s piece, given Berlioz’s narrative programme of an artist who sees ‘a woman who encapsulates all the

Functions of musical reference  103 charms of the ideal being dreamed of in his imagination, and becomes infatuated by her to distraction’ (Berlioz 2006, p. vii). One could give more credit to the filmmakers here for such an apt choice, but either way the parallels between the characters in the programme and in the film point again to the film’s status as an object constructed by authorial agency (if the choice is not read as a bizarre self-commentary on Martin’s part).22 In Sleeping with the Enemy, then, the particular ways in which pre-­existing music is diegetically employed signal the hand of an implied author: ‘a sensibility behind the narrative that accounts for how it is constructed’ (Abbott 2008, p. 84). An implied author is ‘a kind of construct’ of which we ‘develop our own idea’ as we read (ibid., p. 85), given our predilection for assuming ‘that a narrative, like a sentence, comes from someone bent on communicating’ (ibid., p. 102). We need not know who the real author is in order to interpret in this way; there might not even be a singular, identifiable real author, and even where there is it would be a mistake to assume that the authorial voice apparent in a text corresponds to the actual voice of a human being. In some cases, however, pre-existing music itself – regardless of how it is used – can clearly signal a real author, because it refers outwards to its own history in the real world. Symphonie fantastique and the ‘Jet Song’ have no obvious connection to any of Sleeping with the Enemy’s makers, but this is not true of, say, the nondiegetic quotation of ‘Yoda’s Theme’ (first heard in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (dir. Irvin Kershner, 1980)) in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1982). Here, composer John Williams is quoting his own music. Under the pretence of ‘trick or treating’ on Halloween, characters Michael and Elliot disguise friendly alien E.T. as a ghost. In the street, E.T. walks towards a child dressed as the Star Wars character Yoda while repeating the word ‘home’, at which point ‘Yoda’s Theme’ is heard (see Figure 3.1).23 While the theme denotes Yoda here as in the Star Wars films, for those aware that Williams wrote both ‘­Yoda’s Theme’ and the E.T. score, the quotation also draws attention to the composer’s own presence behind E.T.’s narration:

Figure 3.1  Fragment of ‘Yoda’s Theme’ (from Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back) as heard in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial cue ‘The Magic of Halloween’, comp. John Williams.

104  Functions of musical reference it is ‘Williams’s Theme’, too.24 (Comparable are Michael Giacchino’s various self-quotations, as discussed in Chapter 2, pp. 55–66.) Extending this point, compare two appearances of the song ‘Strangers in the Night’: in The Big Chill (dir. Lawrence Kasdan, 1983) and Eyes Wide Shut (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1999). In both films it appears instrumentally as background source music, in The Big Chill as supermarket muzak during a scene in which Sam and Karen shop for food, and in Eyes Wide Shut during a sequence set at a masked orgy, where it plays for dancing couples in a ballroom. The all-too-appropriate relevance of the song’s title to the latter scenario is obvious. In the earlier case, similarly, its unheard lyrics speak of potential lovers ‘exchanging glances’, and so could be understood to relate to the palpable romantic tension that Sam and Karen will act upon later in the film.25 While the song sounds like source music in these cases, then, it can be heard to comment upon concurrent events too intelligently to be truly veristic, and so to signal an implied author’s hand in constructing the films’ diegeses.26 As in Sleeping with the Enemy, in neither of these cases is there any direct connection from ‘Strangers’ to an actual figure involved in the film’s production, as there is with ‘Yoda’s Theme’ in E.T.. However, by the time of Eyes Wide Shut’s release in 1999, the use of pre-existing music was firmly ensconced as one of director Kubrick’s signature devices, featuring prominently in all of his films since Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). With ‘Strangers’ (and other songs placed to have lyrical relevance elsewhere in Eyes Wide Shut, on which see Gorbman 2006, pp. 15–17), audiences might even specifically recall a similar technique used in The Shining (1980): as Jack and (the ghost of) previous caretaker Grady converse in a bathroom, and both fail to recall their pasts in the Overlook Hotel, a rendition of ‘It’s All Forgotten Now’ plays faintly in the background as (supernatural) source music (here with some heard lyrics, including the titular line). While in The Big Chill ‘Strangers’ points most probably to authorial control in an abstract sense, then, in Eyes Wide Shut it can easily point beyond this to Kubrick’s control, and not because of its specific history as a pre-existing piece of music, but because it simply has a history.27 Kubrick can be heard behind both diegetic and nondiegetic pre-existing music in Eyes Wide Shut; Gorbman (2006, p. 18) does not differentiate in arguing that the film’s music ‘is the signifier not only of moods and feelings in the story, but of the very presence of Kubrick’s narrational agency, godlike in its aloofness and audaciously heterogeneous taste’. She does not delve into the archives to support this statement with evidence of Kubrick’s decision-­ making process. But that is not the point. The ‘presence of Kubrick’s narrational agency’ is an impression created by the film’s place in Kubrick’s oeuvre. More broadly, it is created by an idea of auteur control over pre-­ existing music that remains prevalent in both academic and popular discussion on film, and that may influence perception of films that do not clearly warrant an auteurist reading, for which choice and use of music may be

Functions of musical reference  105 more correctly attributed to a music supervisor or other figure (as discussed in Chapter 1, pp. 40–2). Whether any use of pre-existing music will be taken to refer to a specific individual involved in a film’s production will depend on how prone a perceiver is to deconstructing films they watch. The identification of that individual will also depend on the perceiver’s knowledge of film production processes generally, and of the film in question’s production process specifically. What is clear, however, is that in certain circumstances such music can point directly to a real author, scoring a filmmaker just as it can score a character. It does this, again, through referring outwards to its own existence in the real world.

Form and expectations For both filmmakers and audiences, the musical structure of a quotation can compete, in a sense, with that of the quoted text to which it refers. For filmmakers, the form of the quoted text looms over their treatment of the quotation: the former does not fix the shape of the latter, but can certainly be prescriptive, for reasons both practical and aesthetic. Similarly, an audience’s hearing of a quotation within a film may be conditioned by memory of the source, so that the quotation is expected to have the same musical properties. These ideas and their implications are examined in this section. Miklós Rósza (in Thomas 1973, pp. 96–7) had the following to say on adapting his own Violin Concerto for The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (dir. Billy Wilder, 1970): [Wilder] had written it [the film] around my concerto, inspired by the fact that Holmes liked playing the fiddle . . . I agreed to score the film for him, using the concerto. He seemed to think this would be easy because I wouldn’t have to think up any new themes. Actually, it was very difficult. The concerto was not written with any images in mind and the timings had to be altered to fit the film sequences. It would have been much easier to invent something fresh. Rósza has a point: in cases where a degree of correspondence between music and a film’s other elements is desired, the use of pre-existing music presents inherent obstacles. Yet there have been countless instances of the successful and sophisticated integration of pre-existing forms into new contexts, exploiting the malleability of the music that nonetheless remains, the flexibility of other filmic elements, or both. Consider the use of the Allegretto from Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony in The King’s Speech (dir. Tom Hooper, 2010). The climactic sequence of the film, in which King George VI must overcome his stammer to deliver a broadcast on the declaration of war with Germany in 1939, is around five minutes long, and is scored continuously by the Beethoven. It is possible that the decision to employ the Allegretto in the final film related to a notion

106  Functions of musical reference of ‘universality’ associated with Beethoven’s music, which the filmmakers felt was appropriate to the sequence (as discussed in Chapter 2, p. 77). Alexandre Desplat wrote the film’s original score, but declined to replace the Allegretto, apparently also for broader reasons connected to the piece’s status as a well-known piece of pre-existing music. According to Hooper (in Minow 2011): He [Desplat] said, ‘The reason that choice is so good is that Beethoven exists in our public imagination, our public space. It helps to elevate the speech to the status of a public event instead of a private event. No [original] film score can do that because it’s always internal to the movie.’ And I thought [that] was a rather brilliant explanation about why that was a perfect choice. Clearly, however, the choice must have been ‘perfect’ for musical reasons, too. Otherwise, logic dictates that we could drop any well-known Beethoven piece into the sequence without a change in effect. As David Bashwiner (2013, p. 106) observes in his analysis of the sequence, this is simply not the case: Watching the scene accompanied by the fourth movement of the [same] symphony . . . Bertie [the King] appears to be giddily triumphant about being able to speak at all. In contrast, the third movement . . . seems to intensify his stutter rather than smooth it out. When the second movement accompanies the speech, however (as it does in the film), the audiovisual juxtaposition is just right: the unevenness of Bertie’s stammer is mollified, and his confidence grows over the course of the cue. What were the existing musical qualities of the Allegretto likely to have appealed to the makers of The King’s Speech? The first 100 of the movement’s 278 bars, formally comprising the opening A-section theme and variations, are quoted. For Bashwiner (ibid., p. 107): Perhaps the most powerful set of forces working dramatically in this cue are a pair of opposites: along one set of dimensions, the cue is static, repetitive, and predictable; yet along another, the dramatic arc is that of a large crescendo, climaxing and then diminishing again only in the final moments of the cue, as the speech too comes to a close. On one hand, then, the music provides a steady, unceasing accompaniment that lends a tempo and continuity to the sequence, through properties such as its repeating large-scale structure and crotchet–quaver–quaver–crotchet– crotchet ostinato. Parameters such as its overall tonality – the excerpt is in A minor – and slow pace also support the broadcast’s sombre tone. On the other, the music offers a relatively gradual progression from a quiet, sparse,

Functions of musical reference  107 and thus tentative opening, to a loud passage with a full texture (bars 75–90, the start of the third and final variation), before a calm ending. This parallels and so reinforces the King’s concurrent progression in his speech from a nervous, stammering start to a confident, flowing delivery and poised conclusion. The King’s broadcast speech dictates the length and structure of this sequence; musical form cannot have been prioritized in this case. Thus, ­further alterations were made to the quoted portion of the Allegretto to ensure an appropriate fit. Most obviously, bars 27–50, the first of the variations, are repeated once directly after their initial statement. This repetition lengthens the extract overall, and delays the musical climax until the appropriate moment. The movement’s opening chord, heard only once in any standard performance, is also repeated immediately. Its first statement marks the beginning of the live broadcast, cueing the King aurally (from our perspective; the music is nondiegetic) much as his speech therapist Lionel Logue does visually (rather in the manner of an orchestra’s conductor).28 Its second statement repeats that cue, and extends the tense period before the entry of the aforementioned ostinato offers some forward movement, and a sense that the King will at least begin his speech before he actually starts orating. It would have been possible to alter an existing recording of the ­Allegretto in these simple, linear ways. Instead, the filmmakers chose to quote allosonically, commissioning a new recording of the piece tailored to the sequence. This was made by the London Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Terry Davies. This decision allowed, for one, further control over interpretational factors such as tempo. Initially, a tentative quality to the piece’s opening phrases is brought out by adopting a tempo of roughly ‘crotchet = 54’. Beethoven’s marked tempo is ‘crotchet = 76’, and though most performances are somewhat slower than this, the film’s tempo is among the slowest to be found on record. ‘Crotchet = 54’ inhibits the music’s sense of momentum, and also means that the Allegretto resembles a funeral march, reflecting even more clearly the grave subject matter of the King’s address. Davies’s extreme rubato then serves to further exaggerate the tutti rests in bars 10 and 18, again echoing the King’s faltering delivery. As Davies puts it, ‘I did make the early parts particularly tenuous and uncertain and at one point the music kind of stops even’ (in Wise 2011).29 Hooper’s film is also served by a more complex recomposition of ­Beethoven’s music possible only through allosonic quotation. While the original composition cadences into the tonic major at the end of the third A-section variation (to move into its first B section), the reworked version remains in A minor while lowering the octave in certain parts (see Figures 3.2 and 3.3). This creates a sense of finality appropriate for the conclusion of the King’s broadcast. The new cadence actually sounds even more final (though, suitably, more subdued) than the original movement’s eventual unresolved end on an E  chord (the chord with which it also opens) (Figure 3.4). ­Quoting the Beethoven allosonically, with the climactic sequence of The King’s Speech explicitly in mind, thus ensured an ideal fit in several respects.

108  Functions of musical reference

Figure 3.2  Beethoven, Symphony No. 7, Allegretto, bars 99–102.

Figure 3.3  Recomposition of Beethoven, Symphony No. 7, Allegretto, bars 99–, in The King’s Speech.

Figure 3.4  Beethoven, Symphony No. 7, Allegretto, bars 275–8.

One of the most famous of all uses of pre-existing music in film illustrates different means of achieving a similarly close correspondence between aspects of music and a film’s other elements. As the helicopter attack sequence in Apocalypse Now (dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 1979) begins, ­Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore has loudspeakers on his aircraft blast out Richard W ­ agner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’, asserting that it ‘scares the hell out of the slopes’.

Functions of musical reference  109 The  cultural associations both of Wagner generally (with racism and ­Nazism) and the ‘Ride’ specifically (for instance, those gained through its use in the Joseph Carl Breil score for D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915) as accompaniment for the Ku Klux Klan’s heroic horseback charge against a black militia) are among factors that persuade James MacDowell (2016, pp.  155–202) to read director Coppola’s intentions in this sequence as ironic. That the music is shown to be chosen by Kilgore, ‘to some extent less a fully fledged character than a pointedly exaggerated figure of satire’ (ibid., p. 190), is also significant in distancing us from its immediate musical effects. Specifically, for MacDowell (ibid., p. 160; emphasis original): the film pretends excessively to affirm Kilgore’s use of the Wagner piece for what he calls ‘psy-war’ (psychological warfare), when in fact it is implicitly asking us to be revolted by this music’s apparent emotional appeals in this context, as well as by the very congruence between music and action that the style ostensibly heightens. The ‘emotional appeals’ of the ‘Ride’ come from its ‘aggressive and assertive’ stylistic register, and ‘utterly triumphant nature’ (ibid., p. 170; emphasis original). Meanwhile, ‘the sequence is notable for creating an overwhelming complementarity between its action, musical accompaniment, and visual style’ (ibid., p. 159), to signal an apparent, though excessive, endorsement of Kilgore’s actions. The musical quotation here is autosonic, of an existing recording of the ‘Ride’ by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra under Georg Solti, released by Decca in 1966. While ostensibly source music, playing from a tape machine, the track is ‘unrealistically’ edited at several points to better fit the sequence. For example, while the piece begins as usual at bar 1, the third phrase of its main melody is elided at bars 27–31. This occasions the earlier introduction of the trombones, who take the second statement of the melody from bar 37. Prior to the trombones’ entry, the visual track consists largely of short shots of two or three seconds in length, most of which focus on individual soldiers within helicopter interiors. Roughly concurrent with the shift in orchestration, however, comes a shift in visual style, to longer, wide-angle exterior shots showing the entire group of helicopters. The elision of bars 27–31 therefore appears to have been made either to bring about this ‘match’ of music and image (assuming the longer exterior shots always appeared at that point in the visual sequence), or to hasten its arrival (assuming the trombone–exterior ‘match’ was always in place). The precise reason for and manner of the elision of bars 27–31 is unclear, not least because the ‘Ride’ was an integral part of the Apocalypse Now sequence from the script stage. The Solti recording also entered proceedings earlier than is often the case: Todd Decker (2017, p. 165) observes that ­‘Coppola watched rushes to the sound of this recording’, and that editor Walter Murch ‘assembled the sequence in California using Solti’s recording as well’.30 Unlike in the case of the Beethoven Allegretto in The King’s Speech, then, the non-musical elements of this sequence did not take priority

110  Functions of musical reference over the musical ones. Indeed, at other points visual gestures and cuts were clearly placed to coincide with particular musical moments in unedited portions of the recording. Alongside bars 5–7, for instance, MacDowell (2016, p. 159) observes ‘a sequence of aerial shots that zoom into the choppers . . . each one of these cuts and zooms timed perfectly to coincide with one of a series of fast, stabbing crescendos’. Similarly, later on, several successive visual cuts occur in conjunction with repeated octave leaps and a final downbeat in a soprano vocal line (Helmwige’s cries of ‘Hojotoho!’), before the initial firing of the helicopters’ weapons is timed to a subsequent musical climax (the re-entry of the main melody in the new key of B major, at bar 59). Here, the film is choreographed to the music (see Figure 3.5).31 Rather than or as well as recomposing or merely reperforming pre-­ existing music to better fit other elements of a film, then, those elements can be designed, captured, and edited to that music. This second manner of production is not exclusively connected to the use of pre-existing music; it is possible when original music is composed early on in a film’s production process. It presents itself as a relatively obvious option when using pre-­existing music, though, if a filmmaker has given some thought to which piece(s) they will use in advance of planning and executing a particular scene or sequence. Whether quoting allosonically or autosonically, musical reinterpretation and adaptation can also extend beyond the linear parameters primarily considered above, to rearrangement of aspects such as melody, orchestration, or mixing. A filmmaker might consider any of these key to the fit between music and other elements of their film. The potential implications of a quotation’s linear structure, and the relationship of that structure to that of the quoted text, for an audience’s experience of a film invite further close attention here, however. Kristi A. Brown writes of the use of Edvard Grieg’s ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’ (from Peer Gynt) in, among other films, Needful Things (dir. Fraser Clarke Heston, 1993) and Rat Race (dir. Jerry Zucker, 2001). In her words: If you know the piece . . . you will probably, at least initially, perceive the images [in those films’ relevant scenes] as generated by the music. We know what will happen in the piece and wait to see how the actors and images will ‘respond’. (Brown 2006, p. 86) One can generalize from this idea. On identifying a familiar piece of music, a perceiver will normally expect the piece to unfold in the familiar manner (at least, to the extent that they can recall its structure) as it continues to play. That is, the perceiver will draw, consciously or unconsciously, on their veridical memory of the piece to form veridical expectations: ‘Expectations that arise from past knowledge of a familiar sequence of events’, in David Huron’s terms (2007, p. 422). If expecting that familiar sequence of (musical)

Figure 3.5  Choreographing of cuts and action to Wagner, ‘Ride of the Valkyries’, bars 52–9, in Apocalypse Now.

112  Functions of musical reference events to play out in a film, moreover, the perceiver may anticipate that certain musical moments will correspond to notable events in the film’s action, given the convention for such correspondence between music and action in many cinematic uses of (not only pre-existing) music. Taking Brown’s examples, those familiar with the Grieg will know that its structure is essentially that of a sustained crescendo leading to a grand and rather abrupt climax. Needful Things begins the piece at its fifth bar (cutting its opening phrase), Rat Race at bar 1. Recognizing these first musical gestures, then, we can anticipate that the tension in the respective sequences will gradually increase and culminate in some kind of significant, final event, matching the musical structure. In Needful Things, one character is sneaking around the house of another, while in Rat Race two foolish brothers attach their car’s tow cable to an airport’s radar antenna, with the intention of disabling that antenna. The musical impression of progress towards a conclusion is solidified as the sequences continue, as neither film makes any other structural changes to the music prior to Grieg’s climax; the crescendo remains intact. In Needful Things, the first character leaves offensive notes around the house, while cuts to the owner in another room suggest the potential of imminent discovery. In Rat Race, the car is hauled up the radar tower by the now-spinning antenna. The changes at the climax amount to a few bars cut in both films, and an extra two added in N ­ eedful Things (both quotations are allosonic), but the music nonetheless ends in something like the normal way in each case (see Figure 3.6).32 And while Rat Race provides a conclusion to the action to match that in the music, as the antenna breaks from its base to leave the car hanging halfway up the tower, Needful Things plays with our expectations. The music climaxes at a moment of relative pause in the action: the note-leaver rests, undiscovered. ‘Is that it?!’, we might ask, our expectations apparently thwarted. It is not: detection suddenly becomes probable, and the music restarts a short way before that same climax to score the character’s speedy escape, concluding at the moment the front door slams behind her. I noted changes to the original structure of ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’ in the films above because, of course, such changes can affect the generation of expectations for the music’s unfolding. If a perceiver detects divergence from a familiar sequence of events, their veridical memory becomes less relevant to predicting the future. In Needful Things and Rat Race, the structural alterations are relatively minor and irrelevant to veridical expectation that the usual climax will occur, because any that change the order of events are made after that climax has begun. Even when a piece’s overall structure is significantly reworked, however, familiar passages can still engender veridical expectation. For example, the aforementioned moment in Apocalypse Now when the helicopters’ weapons fire in conjunction with a musical climax (shown in Figure 3.6) can be anticipated by a viewer who knows ‘Ride of the Valkyries’, even though it occurs soon after a substantial alteration to the music’s form. Having previously played continuously

Functions of musical reference  113

Figure 3.6  Grieg, ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’, bars 72–89, with cuts and additions as in Needful Things and Rat Race.

(notwithstanding the elision of bars 27–31), the piece is momentarily silenced at the end of bar 43 as the film cuts from the helicopters to the perspective of the soon-to-be-attacked villagers. It then gradually fades back in as the helicopters approach the village (maintaining fidelity to its source here, even though the music’s sound is unrealistically loud and full during the shots on and around the aircraft).33 Upon its reappearance at this moment, the piece plays from approximately bar 30, a point in the score prior to that reached at the interruption. Nonetheless, that it then continues uninterrupted to the climax at bar 59 in the usual fashion allows those in the audience who noticed the structural change to realign their veridical system with the music’s

114  Functions of musical reference new temporality, and predict some climactic action in the film to match the upcoming musical eruption. Structural changes might also be meaningful in themselves, in regard to what we expect to happen in a film’s action. On one hand, in The King’s Speech, prior knowledge of the Beethoven Allegretto’s progression away from its tentative start and towards the assurance of the third variation may render the scene ‘safe’ for a perceiver. In this light, the King’s opening stammers are only a prelude to an inevitable success (though the film’s genre and basis in real history also make a ‘happy ending’ inevitable, to those not caught up in the moment). On the other, though, the novel repetitions of the opening chord and first variation, if noticed, might hint that this music – and therefore the speech – can go wrong, adding suspense to the scenario. Here, the music suggests to us that we cannot make secure dramatic predictions. Huron discusses other kinds of musical expectations: schematic and dynamic expectations. These are based, respectively, on the recall of schemas – ‘common enculturated aspects of musical organization’ (2007, p. 225) – and short-term memory of prior events and patterns within the same musical utterance (ibid., pp. 227–8). These types of expectation operate when we already know a piece, ready to take over from the veridical system if anything unfamiliar occurs.34 But they also mean, in Huron’s words, that ­‘listeners exhibit expectations even when they are hearing passages for the first time’ (ibid., p. 224). Regarding Apocalypse Now, Decker thus argues that ‘any viewer familiar with Western music – anyone conditioned by Hollywood movie music – will feel the move toward firing the first rocket’ (2017, p. 169). Similarly, the Grieg’s ever-growing intensity is likely to create the impression of an impending climax in both music and film for those new to the piece. We can at least say, though, that veridical expectations based on recognition of a familiar piece of pre-existing music can offer a perceiver more precise clues about both when something is going to happen in the music (and therefore the film), and what that something is going to be. One final example illustrates the latter point clearly. When pre-existing music is familiar from another film, expectations for concurrent action can be especially specific, because they may relate to knowledge not just of the music’s progression, but also of other images and events that have previously been associated with it. A more recent use of ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’ that aligns with Brown’s conclusions can be found in Hanna (dir. Joe Wright, 2011). To structure the drama of a particular scene, this film draws upon not only the piece’s musical unfolding, but also its associations with the actions of the child murderer who whistles it in Fritz Lang’s M (1931). Hanna’s titular character is a teenage assassin on the run from villains attempting to kill her. When Hanna takes refuge with Knepfler, a friend of her father, Knepfler plays her a record of Grieg’s piece, which here begins midway through its structure and continues without alteration to its conclusion.35 Recall of M is encouraged by the film prior to this point: Isaacs, one of the villains, whistles a particular (original)

Functions of musical reference  115 tune almost every time he appears on screen, much as M’s Hans Beckert whistles the Grieg. When ‘In the Hall’ begins to play from the record, then, we might predict the impending appearance of Isaacs and his accomplices, and a climactic demise for Hanna to match those of Beckert’s own youthful victims.36 Here, the first expectation is matched, while the second – perhaps to our relief – is not. Viewers who recognized the piece and its associations may nonetheless have endured a greater roller coaster of tension and emotion than those who did not, another potential effect of pre-existing music’s referentiality.

Unity and coherence Pre-existing music’s referentiality clearly plays against both the means and effects of musical ‘unity’, as that concept is defined within Claudia ­Gorbman’s seminal study of classical-Hollywood film music, Unheard ­Melodies (1987). From the opening titles, Gorbman argues, music in the classical film encourages us to ‘drift into [the film’s] daydream’ (p. 82), title music and its common recapitulation at the narrative’s end forming a ‘musical envelope’ that ‘encloses the film’ as a somewhat self-contained system also encompassing the spectator (p. 90). ‘[R]epetition and variation of musical material and instrumentation’ throughout the body of the film further ‘aids in the construction of formal and narrative unity’ (p. 73), forming a key part of classical cinema’s ‘transparent and invisible discourse’ that aims at ‘promoting fullest involvement in the story’ (p. 72). These apparent effects of musical unity on a film’s audience relate to ­Gorbman’s psychoanalytic perspective on film music. Such music ‘depends upon its not being listened to’ (ibid., p. 57) so that it can exploit its ‘direct line to the [viewer’s] “soul”’ (p. 60), a connection established during ‘the very earliest periods of development’ (p. 61). This perspective has already been widely challenged, even in relation to the original scores of classical-­ Hollywood cinema that were nonetheless evidently created and deployed according to structural principles identified by Gorbman (see Smith 1996, for one relevant critique). Even putting psychoanalysis aside and focusing more mundanely on film music’s semiotic and narratological work, it hardly need be said that ideas of such music’s ‘inaudibility’, and of it guiding the spectator into clear, predefined subject positions, do not stand up when attending to pre-existing music. Regarding unity specifically, pre-existing music encourages the viewer to escape Gorbman’s ‘musical envelope’, even when seemingly placed in accordance with classical practice. Also sprach Zarathustra can certainly be heard as conventional opening-title music in 2001: A Space Odyssey (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1968), for instance, and is later repeated in the final moments before the end credits as well as in a key scene early on. For those familiar with the piece and its real-world history, though, its initial gestures work inevitably not only to open Kubrick’s film, but also to open it out to the world beyond the screen, and to a variety

116  Functions of musical reference of interpretations connected to understandings of the music.37 As already shown with other examples throughout this chapter, this is, simply, what pre-existing music does. Moreover, while the use of pre-existing music does not necessarily lead to a film’s music track being a compilation of cues from various sources, the two have strong ties in practice. Brief Encounter (dir. David Lean, 1945) is an obvious exception, with its music track based entirely around Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2. Extracts from all three movements of the concerto were newly recorded for the film (by Eileen Joyce and the National Symphony Orchestra, under Muir Mathieson), in some cases undergoing light rearrangement, while in others simply fading in and out to score the appropriate moments of the film’s story. This approach echoes the classical-Hollywood ideal of a stylistically coherent, single-composer score. A film like He Got Game, in quoting from a number of separate pre-existing pieces by Copland (as discussed earlier in this chapter), also evokes that ideal. However, mixed compilations such as in 2001, and indeed all of the other films also mentioned above in this chapter, are far more common. In these, the pre-existing music is from various sources and in various styles: compare Johann Strauss II’s orchestral Viennese waltz The Blue Danube to György Ligeti’s avant-garde choral Requiem in 2001, for example. ­Additionally, quotations are often combined with original scoring in another idiom, as in Forrest Gump or The King’s Speech. One might cite such films as evidence that many filmmakers have long been unconcerned with complete musical unity in the classical sense. In some cases, they have clearly gone further, though, deliberately seeking disunity in a demonstration of ‘serious or epic filmmaking’, a trend Julie Hubbert (2017, p. 141) attributes to Kubrick’s influence and traces on Norman Jewison’s Rollerball (1975) (as noted in Chapter 1, p. 35). Ambitious filmmakers such as Jewison, in other words, sought to emulate the musical collages by which Kubrick flaunted his own apparent auteurist control over the soundtrack, for a similar self-promotional purpose. Taking a step back, however, in many cases a conventional kind of musical unity has evidently been part of filmmakers’ intentions when using pre-existing music. This may be attributed simply to force of convention, though Gorbman’s ‘formal and narrative unity’ can be considered aesthetically as well as psychologically desirable. Such unity is present even in 2001: certainly through the direct repetitions of Zarathustra and other works; arguably, following David Patterson’s (2004, p. 470) analysis, through a highly sophisticated scheme in which the soundtrack divides ‘into two mutually exclusive harmonic streams – the atonal and the tonal’, each of which ‘develops its own metaphors to reaffirm the film’s central quest toward the confirmation of a fundamental, higher order’. Within the quotations of the atonal Ligeti works heard in the film, Patterson suggests, ‘contrasts in orchestration, texture, text and compositional technique establish gradations between the film’s various depictions of the cosmic “other”’. The tonal works,

Functions of musical reference  117 meanwhile, display at the most complex level a ‘long-range integration’ in which the intervallic structures of their opening melodic motives, taken together in the order they first appear in the film, align with the intervals present in a rising and descending harmonic series, to form an arch (see ibid., p.  467). ­Initially, for instance, ‘Zarathustra’s motive proceeds from bass pedal through octave, fifth, and fourth; the Blue Danube rises through major third and minor third; and the opening figure of [Aram Khachaturian’s] “Gayane’s Adagio” ascends by a minor third and two whole steps’ (ibid., pp.  459–60) (see F ­ igure  3.7). For Patterson, the arch – topped by ‘Happy Birthday’, and completed by the descending ‘Daisy Bell’ – forms a metaphor for the cycle of human evolution depicted in the film. Patterson’s reading presents an interpretation of the music as it functions in 2001, more than it does an attempt to reconstruct Kubrick’s actual intention. It may nonetheless provide some explanation for why the different quotations in the score work together as they do, and therefore for why Kubrick chose them, even if he was not consciously aware of the connections Patterson describes. That lack of awareness seems likely in regard to the relationship of particular intervals from the chosen pieces to those in the harmonic series, given the musical sophistication of this apparent scheme and Kubrick’s lack of formal musical training, and the order in which we know the pieces were selected for use on the soundtrack (the Blue Danube entering Kubrick’s thoughts before Zarathustra, for instance, and initially ‘not in connection with a specific scene’ (Merkley 2007, p. 4)).38 It is easier to imagine Kubrick was aware of simpler connections, though, for example that Zarathustra, the Blue Danube, and ‘Gayane’s Adagio’ all open with melodic rises. This similarity itself unites these distinct cues, in a manner still relatively sophisticated and subtle when compared to the direct repetitions also present in 2001’s music track. Of course, the direct repetitions in 2001 serve a dramatic purpose. ­Zarathustra’s three appearances, for example, connect ‘dramatic turning points of “becoming”’, in Patterson’s (2004, p. 451) words: the alignment of celestial bodies in the opening credits; the ape learning to use a bone as a weapon; and the birth of the ‘star child’ at the film’s end. Later, in Eyes Wide Shut, Kubrick similarly deployed a three-minute portion of the second movement of Ligeti’s Musica ricercata on five separate occasions (as part of a slightly longer excerpt on two of these). Here, for Gorbman (2006, pp. 11–12), the music ‘marks some key moments of [main character]

Figure 3.7  Opening melodic motives of Strauss, Also sprach Zarathustra, Strauss II, The Blue Danube, and Khachaturian, ‘Gayane’s Adagio’.

118  Functions of musical reference Bill’s emotional fall’, which together form ‘a sort of theme and variations, with the unchanging music acting as the constant, rigorously demanding figured bass’ (a statement that could easily be applied to the aforementioned moments in 2001). Gorbman also notes, however, that the Ligeti in Eyes Wide Shut ‘goes on too long, and is repeated note for note too many times throughout the story to act as conventional movie music’ (ibid., p. 11). Like overt variety, exact repetition can signal a film’s constructedness, breaking ‘the transparency of “normal” scoring’. And while for Kubrick this might have been desirable, for others it is not. Jack Curtis Dubowsky’s remarks on his work compiling a temp score for Monsters, Inc. (dir. Pete Docter, 2001) indicate that concerns over exact repetition colour even the creation of music tracks that will not be heard by general audiences. Dubowsky (2011, p. 15) discusses specifically the placement of a ‘punchy, contemporary, hi-fidelity, stereo recording of Louis Prima’s “Sing, Sing, Sing”’ on the temp track of Monsters, Inc., noting that ‘[v]arious qualities within this song, for purposes of style and continuity, would need to be recalled elsewhere in the temp score; however, it would be tiresome to endlessly recycle that particular recording’. In this case, Dubowsky found that ‘Sing, Sing, Sing’ ‘had already been widely used and imitated in previous Hollywood film scores’. Those other pre-existing versions and imitations of the piece thus provided the temp’s creators with additional options, enabling them to use ‘Sing, Sing, Sing’ as a recurring theme, but with slight musical variations each time. Even when using unaltered autosonic quotations, then, relatively pronounced thematic variation can be incorporated into a music track. Allosonically, the possibilities are naturally greater. Elmer Bernstein’s score for Trading Places (dir. John Landis, 1983) provides a clear illustration of this, as well as of other cohering strategies. It features a selection of material from Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, including an almost-complete rendition of the opera’s overture at the film’s opening, and other motifs that appear at various points throughout. The score further comprises quotations of other works by Mozart, music in a general Mozartian style, and pastiches of particular works by Brahms, Mendelssohn, and Elgar, as well as material written by Bernstein in a more original manner. Bernstein weaves these elements together into a coherent tapestry: arranged, orchestrated, and recorded together, they sound ‘as one’, even though the score clearly displays its status as collage. The film tackles issues of race and social class through its comic tale of a cruel experiment run by two super-rich brothers, in which a member of their white ‘elite’ (Dan Aykroyd) is forced to swap places with an African-American beggar (Eddie Murphy). At one level, as Ben Winters (2016, p. 31) puts it in a detailed account of the score, ­‘Mozart, with his high-culture associations, stands ostensibly for [the] uncaring social elite’ from the very beginning of the film. On another, however, the heavy use of music from Figaro specifically can be taken to allude to that work’s ‘typically opera buffa reversal of power relations’, which has clear parallels in the film’s plot. Nonetheless, at one early moment, as the two

Functions of musical reference  119 soon-to-be-subjects meet by chance and Aykroyd’s character, Winthorpe, mistakenly takes Murphy’s as a threat, a transformation of the opening motif from the Figaro overture works clearly on the first, more obvious level: the motif appears disfigured in the minor mode, the disfiguration representing straightforwardly the apparent danger posed to Winthorpe’s privileged existence (see Figure 3.8).39 Repetition aside, and now considering again more directly the implications of pre-existing music’s referentiality for filmic coherence, the use of the Figaro overture at the start of Trading Places demands further examination. The piece runs uninterruptedly, beginning and ending in the usual manner, but features one cut of seventeen bars, two of eight, and in the coda a non-original repeat of fourteen bars before a final cut of four. The music does not obviously synchronize with any other element of the film during its course, instead simply providing a continuous musical flow to bind the concurrent visual montage (which juxtaposes images of wealth and poverty) together. The alterations to it were thus possibly made only to change the piece’s overall length, while preserving the general musical progression and presenting a viable ‘version’ of the overture. Here, therefore, the music fulfils another cohering classical principle Gorbman identifies, by providing ‘formal and rhythmic continuity – between shots, in transitions between scenes, by filling “gaps”’ (1987, p. 73; my emphasis). And yet, because this version of the overture does not correspond with Mozart’s original, the idea that it binds discontinuous images is problematized. In a sense, the music is discontinuous itself, and can be recognized as such by viewers drawing on their veridical memory of that original.40 One could argue that the use of unaltered pre-existing music is advantageous for the provision of continuity, for such music brings its own pre-existing continuity to the film sequence. Pre-existing music recognized as being quoted in a structurally altered form can provide its own ‘gaps’, though, even as it fills others.41 Referentiality certainly offers other distinct advantages for the provision of musical unity, however. In I Am Sam (dir. Jessie Nelson, 2001), the newly commissioned cover versions of Beatles songs that are featured do, of course, have some stylistic unity owing to their common compositional origins. Given that a different artist performs each cover, though, it is the audience’s knowledge that the songs were all composed by John Lennon and

Figure 3.8  Recomposition of opening motif from Mozart, Marriage of Figaro overture, in Trading Places, comp. Elmer Bernstein.

120  Functions of musical reference Paul McCartney, and performed originally by the Beatles, that can connect them in a more concrete way. Similarly, in The Five-Year Engagement (dir. Nicholas Stoller, 2012), pre-existing songs written by Van Morrison are a unifying thread. These are presented through autosonically quoted original versions recorded by Van Morrison himself, autosonically quoted covers of his songs by other artists (for instance, ‘Jackie Wilson Said (I’m in Heaven When You Smile)’ by Dexy’s Midnight Runners, which opens the film and so sets the musical tone), and new allosonic cover versions. Again, therefore, the songs here are connected more clearly by the identity of their composer and original performer than they are by any of their sonic attributes. In a film such as Brief Encounter, the music’s pre-existing unity arguably renders its superficial stylistic coherence more concrete, for those aware of its origin. In I Am Sam and The Five-Year Engagement, though, it is primarily the pre-existing nature of significant parts of those films’ music tracks that promotes unity. Moreover, in both cases this is not merely an abstract matter. The Beatles and Van Morrison are also associated with the musical tastes of the films’ main characters: in I Am Sam, this is achieved through dialogue and other references (with all of the music presented nondiegetically), while in The Five-Year Engagement some of Van Morrison’s music appears as source music, with his version of ‘Sweet Thing’ notably serving as the lead couple’s ‘our song’. The unifying strategy in both cases thus ties music directly to story. Whether or not that extra tie existed, though, musical unification in these films effectively depends on audiences identifying the organizing concepts around which the music tracks were constructed. Unifying concepts can be even more obscure. The pre-existing music used in Boogie Nights (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 1997) is, for one, appropriate to the film’s setting of 1970s and 1980s California. But an extra twist here is the apparently intentional use of ‘one-hit wonders’. Jeff Smith (2001, p. 424) notes that ‘several of the artists included on the soundtrack had successful or even legendary careers . . . Yet for every Marvin Gaye classic, there are four tunes by less successful artists’. This concept is, again, integrated with the story of the film. Smith (ibid.) suggests that an analogy is drawn ‘between the film’s central character [porn star Dirk Diggler, played by Mark ­Wahlberg] and the score’s overall concept’; that [t]he notion of a ‘one-hit wonder’ is particularly important here since it is not only an apt assessment of star Mark Wahlberg’s recording career [as Marky Mark], but it also summarizes Dirk’s belief that ‘everyone is blessed with one special thing’. In his case, it just happens to be a gargantuan penis. In the very scene in which Dirk utters the line Smith quotes it is, appropriately, the Starland Vocal Band’s only major hit, ‘Afternoon Delight’, that can be heard playing in the background. Compare this song with another

Functions of musical reference  121 one-hit wonder heard in Boogie Nights: ‘Jungle Fever’ by the Chakachas. Musically, the two are very different: soft rock with close vocal harmonies, versus largely instrumental Latin-influenced funk. Dissimilarity in stylistic and other respects is, in fact, somewhat innate to the very idea of one-hit wonders, making the provision of unity through that shared status in Boogie Nights unity through disunity, and thus meta-unity: unity that comments on the notion of unity. Between ‘Afternoon Delight’ and ‘Jungle Fever’ there is at least some immediately discernible connection: the former has sexually suggestive lyrics, while the latter’s only vocal sounds are those of heavy breathing and moaning. This is another concept underpinning many of the musical choices for Boogie Nights, and that also links to the film’s porn-industry narrative: Smith (2001, pp. 424–7) notes that many of the songs used either feature intended sexual allusions (as in the two examples above), or are contextualized in a way that creates such allusions (so that ELO’s ‘Livin’ Thing’, for instance, appears to refer to Dirk’s penis). The one-hit wonder concept, though, will only be apparent to viewers who recognize multiple songs and know of their cultural status. This requires a high degree of pop-cultural knowledge, and a strategy of viewing within which that knowledge might be applied (or, alternatively, extratextual assistance of the type provided by Smith’s chapter). Yet, the use of pre-existing music allows – encourages, even – audiences to identify those concepts through the application of such knowledge. It presents a concept more clearly as something to be identified as part of the experience – or game, perhaps – of a film, rather than as merely a routine element of a film’s production. Here is further evidence of the audience interactions and investigations that are invited by the use of pre-existing music, as outlined initially in Chapter 2. Even though pre-existing music’s use does not preclude sophisticated musical unifying strategies, then, such music’s inherent referentiality means it tends to push back against any sense of organic unity, of the kind implied by Gorbman’s classical ideal of ‘transparent and invisible discourse’ (1987, p. 72). Instead, its natural work is in outing the film as an artificial, authored object. While some filmmakers have nonetheless attempted, often successfully, to wrangle pre-existing material into scores that cohere in conventional ways (on the surface, at least), others have embraced the music’s referential nature, and the sense of artifice it creates. Here, and with other devices considered earlier in this chapter that are similarly reliant upon the music’s referentiality for their fullest effect, pre-existing music points audiences outwards in order to draw them back in. The audience’s potential reward is less accessible and less immediate than in an original, classical score, but Gorbman’s ‘fullest involvement in the story’ (ibid.) (or certainly, involvement in the film) is arguably provided not by ‘inaudible’ music that seeks to avoid disrupting the film’s surface, but by music that does the opposite.

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Notes 1 The art-music influences of countless original scores of classical Hollywood and beyond have undoubtedly contributed to our sense of such music’s ‘universality’, precisely because those scores have drawn on that quality for their effect. A late-Romantic idiom in particular has proven universal enough to score everything from period drama to science fiction. As Claudia Gorbman (1987, pp.  78–9) puts it, ‘one reason why the nineteenth-century Romantic orchestral idiom of Wagner and Strauss predominated for so long in classical cinema [is that i]t was (and is) tonal and familiar, with easily understood connotative values’. 2 Wilson (2017, p. 106) offers another valid generalization to account for this, arguing that ‘the association of music and era becomes less clear the further back in time one goes, certainly from the perspective of a non-specialist audience’. 3 That music more generally can be an effective means of establishing any storyworld is evidenced perhaps most famously by original tunes played by the ­‘Cantina Band’ in Star Wars (dir. George Lucas, 1977). If pre-existing music is real music, the music heard in the Mos Eisley Cantina, which is implied to have been composed by a character or characters of the film’s storyworld, is therefore an example of fictional music. See Godsall (2017) for a discussion of this concept, examples of which also occur in many real-world-set films. 4 This applies regardless of when and how the sound was actually recorded: postproduction Foley sounds can have fidelity just as can sounds recorded live on set, from the audience’s perspective. 5 Incidentally, the director’s cut of Zodiac later features a wonderful illustration of pre-existing music’s power to set historical period. The film’s narrative primarily spans the late 1960s to mid 1970s. In place of a silent ‘Four years later’ intertitle seen in the theatrical version, the director’s cut features a complex audio montage – visually accompanied by a plain black screen that only reveals the aforementioned title at the sequence’s end – of short clips from historical news reports and seven songs, beginning with 1972’s America’s ‘A Horse with No Name’ and ending with 1975’s ‘Love Rollercoaster’ by the Ohio Players (though not progressing entirely chronologically between those points). 6 There are similarities here to another kind of diegetic music identified by Smith, that is implied to exist by the film’s narrative but never heard within it. Smith’s examples concern pre-existing pieces specifically, for instance: ‘in film biographies of composers, we assume that the film’s diegesis includes the totality of the subject’s work whether or not it is explicitly mentioned. Thus, Mozart’s opera, Idomeneo, is a piece of diegetic music in Amadeus ([dir. Miloš Forman,] 1984) even though no one ever discusses it or performs it on screen’ (2009, p. 2). We might term this ‘unheard diegetic music’, though it also corresponds to ­Gorbman’s definition of ‘off-track sound’, as ‘sound that the diegesis gives us to believe exists, which we infer, but do not hear on the soundtrack’ (1987, p. 146). 7 Of course, this is not true of all original scores, or even of all those that, like ­Silvestri’s, are not at any point explicitly signalled to be part of a film’s diegesis. For example, Gorbman describes how ‘[t]he first diegetic shots of Casablanca [dir. Michael Curtiz, 1942] are accompanied by a vaguely Middle-Eastern cue (a clarinet plays a minor-key melody with much ornamentation), to supply the impression of the exotic streets and markets of Casablanca, as if to situate us in it (when really it’s the other way around), to create the sense of a world, even though no one in that world is (diegetically) playing the music’ (1987, p. 83, emphases original). The music at this point in Casablanca is a direct continuation of the score that has been heard over the opening credits and scene-setting narration, and occupies the same sonic space with identical sound quality. Moreover,

Functions of musical reference  123 it is not attributable to a visible on-screen source, or a source actively implied to be somewhere out of view. That Gorbman brackets the word ‘diegetically’, however, suggests a concession that the music might, in some sense, be being played in the environment depicted. Indeed, is the audience not meant to believe that someone in this locale at least could or would often be playing this music, or music very much like it? 8 It may be helpful to clarify the relationship of the -screen and -scene binaries here. While on-screen diegetic music must be on-scene, off-screen diegetic music can be either on-scene or off-scene. Thus, on-scene diegetic music can be either on-screen or off-screen, and off-scene diegetic music must be off-screen. Films employing devices such as split screen may complicate these divisions, but can be dealt with individually as exceptions. 9 Smith (2009, pp. 1–2) correctly points out, with reference to the work of James Buhler (2001, p. 40), that the idea of temporally and spatially displaced diegetic music is consistent with Gorbman’s ‘within the narrative’ definition of diegetic music. Smith and Buhler argue that subsequent scholars have unintentionally corrupted Gorbman’s narratological diegetic–nondiegetic distinction to refer to music’s placement in relation to the space and time of a given scene rather than to the entire narrative, and therefore to correspond to the more rudimentary film-industry terms ‘source music’ and ‘background music’. If music is exclusively off-scene diegetic, however, and thus never attached to a source in any scene, it cannot be said to emanate from anywhere within the narrative. 10 H. Porter Abbott (2008, p. 151) expresses the logic underpinning the ‘all pre-­ existing music is diegetic’ idea, noting that, ‘unless we [the audience] are told otherwise, we assume that the fictional world is a simulacrum of the world we actually live in . . . This assumption . . . is one of the ways we fill many of the gaps of narrative’. But we will, nonetheless, fill a narrative’s gaps to create a story in different ways. In Seymour Chatman’s words, ‘story in one sense is the continuum of events presupposing the total set of all conceivable details, that is, those that can be projected by the normal laws of the physical universe. In practice, of course, it is only that continuum and that set actually inferred by a reader, and there is room for difference in interpretation’ (1978, p. 28; emphasis original). 11 The Doobie Brothers actually toured with Lynyrd Skynyrd in 2011 and 2012, which certainly shows that the two bands appeal to a similar audience. 12 Context is the basis for a similar argument about diegetic status made by ­Simon Frith, regarding music in The Big Chill and also American Graffiti (dir. George Lucas, 1973), the latter a film set in 1962 with a music track consisting of a compilation of songs dating from 1954 to 1962. In these films, Frith (1984, p. 85) suggests that ‘rock’n’roll is so much part of the “diegesis” (and we do indeed see radios and record players turned on, even discs being played by [DJ] ­Wolfman Jack himself [in American Graffiti]) that it is misleading to assert that in those scenes when such music has no “real” source that it suddenly becomes non-diegetic’. 13 It might also be notable that Wilson (2017) does not consider diegetic status when examining musical anachronisms in historical films. The anachronisms in Elizabeth (like ‘Nimrod’) are all presented nondiegetically, in fact, while the diegetic music heard is period appropriate (a pattern repeated in another film Wilson discusses in detail, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (dir. Peter Weir, 2003)). Acknowledging this distinction arguably renders Wilson’s points moot, though her avoidance of it might simply correspond to how she understands the music in these films as an audience member. 14 Copland’s oeuvre is not constituted solely by the Americana of his best-known works, of course, though this is the style heard in He Got Game. Copland also wrote music drawing on folk materials from Europe to South America, and

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15

16 17

18 19

sounds and techniques from jazz to serialism. Howard Pollack (1999, p. 553) argues that the composer ‘had an uncanny ability to absorb a wide variety of styles, techniques, and ideals and respond to a variety of stimuli without sacrificing his own authentic, inimitable voice’. Nonetheless, as Nadine Hubbs (2004, p. 3) acknowledges, it is ‘[f]or representation of the spirit of the wide-open American West, and of America writ large’ that Copland is most remembered, even if there are ironies in this representation having ‘long been entrusted to this Brooklyn-bred Jew, communist sympathizer, and homosexual composer’. Gabbard’s article explores other associations brought to He Got Game by ­Copland’s music, connected to aspects of the composer’s identity and the specific works quoted. For instance, he notes that ‘[t]he “Hoe-Down” section of [Rodeo] was clearly intended as a dance of sexual aggression in which the cross-dressing, adventuresome Cowgirl reveals her femininity, only to be subdued in a vigorous dance by the overbearing Buck. In He Got Game Copland’s music for Rodeo has been joined to an action [the playground basketball game] that has nothing to do with women but everything to do with phallic aggressivity and male display. That Copland was writing as a gay man intrigued by staged masculinity undermines the black athletes’ seemingly natural display of gender. At the same time the music looks forward to the subordination of women that is an all-too-significant element in He Got Game’ (2000, p. 381). Other writers have attempted similarly detailed readings. Brooks draws a connection between ideas of family in the film and in the ballet Appalachian Spring, suggested by Lee’s repeated deployment of the introduction from Copland’s score, but also distinctions, the most obvious of which ‘is that Spike Lee’s film is in part about the experience of black people in America, whereas Appalachian Spring (both choreography and music) is altogether white’ (2002, pp. 104–5). And Neil Lerner (2001, p. 505) points out that John Henry is ‘an orchestral arrangement of a folk song that refers specifically to the exploitation of African American physical labor’, and therefore reminds us, ‘if we are listening closely to the music, of the United State’s [sic] history of racial and class exploitation’, such exploitation being part of the film’s subsequent narrative. It is unclear whether Lee intended to draw upon or was even aware of any of these associations. See Lerner (2001) on the influence of Copland’s ‘pastoral’ music, for instance. That three academic essays at least partly devoted to discussing the use of ­Copland in He Got Game (Gabbard 2000; Lerner 2001; Brooks 2002) emerged independently within a few years of the film’s release provides some evidence of that appropriation’s strong impact on audiences. The ‘Stuck in the Middle’ scene in Reservoir Dogs, meanwhile, is one of the most renowned uses of pre-­existing music (or indeed music) in all cinema, and as such was selected by Kathryn ­Kalinak to open her general-readership book Film Music: A Very Short Introduction (2010, pp. 2–8). That a film’s use of pre-existing music can affect our perception of that music outside of the film is the topic of Chapter 4. On Lecter’s penchant for Bach, see Cenciarelli (2012). Ripley, like Lecter, is shown playing Bach at a piano (part of the first movement of the Italian Concerto, specifically, in an early scene). Bach’s music is a common presence in Minghella’s films, so the use of it here has as much to do with authorial preference as it does any specific connotations of ‘evil’. (My thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out.) Ripley and Lecter (the latter across the multiple films in which he features) are both shown to also enjoy the music of other classical composers, though. Todd Decker (2012) argues that associations of the classical genre, and of specific works heard within The Talented Mr. Ripley, actually hint at Ripley’s probable closeted homosexuality, which is not explicitly indicated in the film.

Functions of musical reference  125 20 The Dies Irae melody has been quoted in a number of original film scores (see Cooke 2008, pp. 40–1). 21 Martin’s use of a CD, though perhaps to be expected in 1991, might also be understood (particularly from today’s perspective) to articulate his lack of humanity. Interviewing collectors of vinyl records, Emily Chivers Yochim and Megan Biddinger (2008, p. 193) found that those collectors spoke of records ‘in terms of a sense of humanity that makes them seem authentic. When defining records as special, collectors compare them to CDs and MP3s, which they describe as disposable, sterile and technocratic, all qualities associated with the inauthentic aspects of consumer culture.’ 22 That Martin manages to instantly select a specific section of a specific movement from his Symphonie fantastique CD also points to an author’s helping hand. The CD appears to be of the whole symphony, though curiously lists only four movements on its cover, missing off ‘Un Bal’, the second. Symphonie fantastique’s programme is surely based semi-autobiographically on Berlioz’s own infatuation with the actress Harriet Smithson (see Temperley 1971). 23 The implication that the species to which E.T. and Yoda belong have previously encountered each other is carried over to a brief glimpse of E.T.-like aliens taking part in a sitting of the Galactic Senate in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (dir. George Lucas, 1999). Williams, who also wrote the score for that film, does not quote himself on this occasion. 24 Heldt (2013, p. 79) suggests that ‘we cannot hear the implied author in nondiegetic music’. If we did not recognize the quotation in E.T. (or if we recognized the music but not its authorship), the music would be attributable simply to the film’s narration and not to an implied author. 25 Melissa Carey and Michael Hannan (2003, p. 174) offer a slightly different reading of the song’s relevance to the Big Chill scene, suggesting that its title appears to refer to the ‘marital and familial problems’ of which Sam speaks to Karen. 26 One might understand its presence in Eyes Wide Shut to owe more mundanely to a sense of humour on the part of the orgy’s hosts, though given the serious, ritualistic nature of that orgy, a musical pun seems somewhat unlikely. 27 Heldt (2013, pp. 33–4) offers a reading of the opening of Eyes Wide Shut, in which the use of pre-existing music (the Waltz 2 from Dmitri Shostakovich’s Suite for Variety Orchestra) as title music also refers to Kubrick’s own musical tendencies (albeit here with the novel addition of a ‘diegetic reveal’ trick, when a character stops the music we had probably assumed was nondiegetic by pressing a button on his hifi system). Heldt’s book covers ideas of film music’s role in signalling both real and implied authors in much more detail than I do here. 28 Earlier in the film, Logue enables the King to speak freely by playing him music through headphones while he reads aloud. The music played, which the audience hears clearly through a shift of aural perspective, is the overture to Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. The nondiegetic use of Beethoven later in the film thus echoes a previous diegetic use of classical music. 29 While I broadly agree with the conclusions of Bashwiner’s (2013) more detailed examination of this sequence, one curious oversight is his observation that the music’s tempo ‘does not hesitate at the ends of phrases’ (p. 108). While true after the first few phrases of the piece, the early rubato is key to the tension created at the start of the speech. Bashwiner also understands the ostinato only to ‘encourage movement’ (p. 108), and therefore as one musical attribute ‘responsible for mollifying the King’s stammer and reducing any anxieties that arise on account of it’ in the viewer (p. 110). Yet the crotchet–quaver–quaver–crotchet–crotchet rhythm may also provide a musical parallel for stuttering that thus emphasizes the King’s struggle, at least when unadorned in the theme (before it is submerged

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30

31 32

33 34

beneath a smoother musical surface in the variations). The quavers represent an acceleration – an excitement – but one that returns to steady crotchets, before the pattern occurs all over again, stuck where it began. This parallel is considered briefly by Marc Shell (2015, pp. 119–21). Murch recalls that the rights to the Solti recording around which the sequence was edited were then initially not granted, leading to a frantic search for an alternative performance. Requiring one that closely matched the timings of Solti’s so that any synchronizations with the film’s action would remain in place, Murch listened to a number of other recordings. He has given different accounts of the recording on which he settled, naming both ‘the L.A. Philharmonic, Zubin Mehta’ (in LoBrutto 1994, pp. 93–4, cited in Cooke 2008, p. 428) and ‘Erich Leinsdorf’s 1977 recording with the Los Angeles Philharmonic’ (Murch 2015). The reasons given for the decision that followed after he played this recording with the rest of the film are broadly the same in both accounts, but I quote here from the latter as it is slightly more detailed. Murch refers to a ‘point in the film – about 35 seconds from the start of the music – there are a series of shots featuring portraits of soldiers going into battle, the first one a down-angle shot of a rocket with the hand of marine caressing its breast, so to speak. In each of the shots the ocean is spread widely in the background.’ Here, ‘[a]lthough Leinsdorf’s performance of the “Valkyries” was rhythmically in synch with Solti’s, at this moment Leinsdorf had emphasized the strings in his orchestral balance, whereas at that same point Solti had chosen to emphasize the brasses, which – I realized now only in retrospect – were responsible for synergizing that wonderful acid blue of the ocean. In Leinsdorf’s recording, the strings were soft and pillowy, and as a result the blue looked dead: The chemistry of the image and sound worked against each other to the detriment of both.’ Fortunately, the rights to the Solti recording were eventually granted. Murch’s impression of how these different musical interpretations interacted with the images of the film is highly subjective, and so difficult to properly appraise. But, as in the case of ­Beethoven’s ­A llegretto in The King’s Speech, we see again the striking attention to detail paid by filmmakers to aspects of pre-existing music’s performance beyond timing, here when quoting autosonically. Murch (2015) refers to this part of the sequence as ‘a remarkable series of moving shots of the helicopters, the singing Valkyrie accentuating each cut, building in intensity until the beach is crested and the first shots are finally fired’. It is worth noting that the two performances do sound quite different. Needful Things employs the version of the piece for orchestra and chorus, which, for Brown (2006, p. 83), ‘adds to the spirit of gothic camp already introduced in ­[Patrick] Doyle’s [original] score’. It also ‘stretches the limits of the written-in ­a cceleration’, here taking advantage of the flexibility afforded by allosonic ­quotation for dramatic effect. Rat Race, using the orchestral version, exploits the same flexibility to the opposite end: this version ‘never attains the madcap velocity of most standard performances, reflecting perhaps the gravitational resistance of the jeep’s impossible climb’ (ibid., p. 84 n. 7). Decker (2017, p. 168) notes that ‘the conceit of the music as diegetic and heard by all is frankly ridiculous’. Huron (2007, p. 231) writes: ‘It is important to note that all three expectations [veridical, schematic, and dynamic] operate concurrently and in parallel. Schematic expectations are omnipresent in all of our listening experiences. When listening to a familiar work, the dynamic system remains active even though the veridical system knows exactly what to expect. Similarly, even when listening for the first time to an unfamiliar work, the veridical system is constantly searching

Functions of musical reference  127

35 36

37

38

39

40

41

for a match with familiar works. The veridical system is ever vigilant, allowing us to catch the rare moments of musical quotation or allusion.’ In this case, Grieg’s musical drama is augmented by electronic sounds that make the procession towards climax even more inexorable. Brown notes that M itself draws on dramatic implications of the music from its original Peer Gynt scenario, the associative trail thus stretching further back. For Brown (2006, pp. 77–8), ‘Lang’s choice of music for his child murderer . . . would have been an obvious marker for German audiences of the time . . . ­W histling the [troll] mountain king’s theme whenever he is driven by compulsion to violence, Becker [sic] becomes a mindless troll, kidnapping and killing human children’. Brown (ibid., p. 85) also recognizes the ‘Mountain King’ scenes in Needful Things and Rat Race to demonstrate ‘the corruptive force of the troll proposition’ from Henrik Ibsen’s story. Kubrick certainly wished for audiences to find their own ways into and around 2001, and it is hard to imagine his use of pre-existing music was not designed to encourage this when reading statements such as, ‘I intended the film to be an intensely subjective experience that reaches the viewer at an inner level of consciousness, just as music does’ (in Nordern 1970 [1968], p. 328; my emphasis). Kubrick did consult various musicians on the pre-existing selections for 2001, as Paul A. Merkley (2007) shows in his account of the production process. The director nonetheless took the final decisions about which excerpts were used. No consideration of intervallic content is described either by Merkley or others who have conducted interviews and surveyed archival materials (e.g. McQuiston 2013, pp. 128–62). This is an example of the first type of Wagnerian thematic transformation ­Matthew Bribitzer-Stull (2015, pp. 284–5) identifies as having been employed by contemporary film composers: ‘Change of Mode’. Precisely because the ­Figaro motif transforms musically, affecting the dramatic implications of its association with the ‘social elite’, it is also a true leitmotif in Trading Places, per ­Bribitzer-Stull’s definition: not merely an associative theme (like an idée fixe), but a developmental associative theme (see ibid., pp. 1–30). This may be the point in Trading Places. Winters (2016, p. 43) suggests the possibility that the film’s ‘subversion of the overture’s structure, through elisions and fractured repetitions in the coda, hint that the divisions in society and culture that the images suggest may not only be turned upside down and intermixed in the narrative that follows but may also be revealed to be more complicated than [a] simple binary [of, for instance, rich and poor] suggests’. Writing elsewhere of versions of pre-existing pieces that are diegetically performed by characters within film narratives, Winters (2014, p. 35) points out a related potential effect of altering those pieces’ structures: upon a viewer recognizing any alterations, ‘the intrusion of the real into the reel creates a mismatch that draws attention to the very fictionality of the story’. For Nicholas Cook (1998), ‘gaps’ are essential to a relationship of ‘complementation’ between media in a multimedia form; they work to ensure that ‘conflict is avoided’ when ‘different media are seen as occupying the same terrain’ (p. 104), for each ‘leaves space’ for the other (p. 122). Cook writes specifically of ‘pre-compositional gap making’, when ‘an existing text is adapted for cohabitation’ (p. 123), and in fact gives as one example the structural recomposition of the Marriage of Figaro overture for use in a Citroën television advert (p. 105). My analysis here suggests, though, that while conflict between media may be avoided through such gap making, perception of the gapped nature of a pre-existing text can create conflict between those media and an audience member’s memory.

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References Abbott, H. P. (2008) The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bashwiner, D. (2013) ‘Musical Analysis for Multimedia: A Perspective from Music Theory’, in Tan, S.-L., Cohen, A. J., Lipscomb, S. J. and Kendall, R. A. (eds) The Psychology of Music in Multimedia. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 88–117. Berlioz, H. (2006) Symphonie Fantastique. Edited by N. Temperley. London: Ernst Eulenberg. Bordwell, D. (2006) The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies. London: University of California Press. Bordwell, D. and Thompson, K. (2010) Film Art: An Introduction. 9th edn. New York: McGraw-Hill. Bribitzer-Stull, M. (2015) Understanding the Leitmotif: From Wagner to Hollywood Film Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brooks, R. (2002) ‘Simple Gifts and Complex Accretions’, in Dickinson, P. (ed.) Copland Connotations. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, pp. 103–17. Brown, K. A. (2006) ‘The Troll Among Us’, in Powrie, P. and Stilwell, R. (eds) Changing Tunes: The Use of Pre-existing Music in Film. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 74–87. Buhler, J. (2001) ‘Analytical and Interpretive Approaches to Film Music (II): Analysing Interactions of Music and Film’, in Donnelly, K. J. (ed.) Film Music: Critical Approaches. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 39–61. Carey, M. and Hannan, M. (2003) ‘Case Study 2: The Big Chill’, in Inglis, I. (ed.) Popular Music and Film. London: Wallflower Press, pp. 162–77. Cenciarelli, C. (2012) ‘Dr Lecter’s Taste for Goldberg, or: The Horror of Bach in the Hannibal Franchise’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 137(1), pp. 107–34. Chatman, Seymour (1978) Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. London: Cornell University Press. Chivers Yochim, E. and Biddinger, M. (2008) ‘“It Kind of Gives You That Vintage Feel”: Vinyl Records and the Trope of Death’, Media, Culture & Society, 30(2), pp. 183–95. Christie, I. and Thompson, D. (eds) (2003) Scorsese on Scorsese. Rev. edn. London: Faber and Faber. Cook, N. (1998) Analysing Musical Multimedia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cooke, M. (2008) A History of Film Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Decker, T. (2012) ‘The Musical Mr Ripley: Closeting a Character in the 1950s and a Film in the 1990s’, Music, Sound, and the Moving Image, 6(2), pp. 185–207. Decker, T. (2017) Hymns for the Fallen: Combat Movie Music and Sound after Vietnam. Berkeley: University of California Press. Dubowsky, J. C. (2011) ‘The Evolving Temp Score in Animation’, Music, Sound, and the Moving Image, 5(1), pp. 1–24. Ebert, R. (1991) ‘Sleeping with the Enemy [review]’, RogerEbert.com, 8 February. Available at: www.rogerebert.com/reviews/sleeping-with-the-enemy-1991 (accessed 26 March 2018). Frith, S. (1984) ‘Mood Music’, Screen, 25(3), pp. 78–88. Fuchs, C. (ed.) (2002) Spike Lee: Interviews. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Gabbard, K. (2000) ‘Race and Reappropriation: Spike Lee Meets Aaron Copland’, American Music, 18(4), pp. 370–90.

Functions of musical reference  129 Godsall, J. (2017) ‘Music by Zbigniew Preisner? Fictional Composers and Compositions in the Kieślowski Collaborations’, in Coleman, L. and Tillman, J. (eds) Contemporary Film Music: Investigating Cinema Narratives and Composition. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 63–86. Gorbman, C. (1987) Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music. London: British Film Institute. Gorbman, C. (2006) ‘Ears Wide Open: Kubrick’s Music’, in Powrie, P. and ­Stilwell, R. (eds) Changing Tunes: The Use of Pre-existing Music in Film. Aldershot: ­Ashgate, pp. 3–18. Halfyard, J. K. (2006) ‘Screen Playing: Cinematic Representations of Classical Music Performance and European Identity’, in Mera, M. and Burnand, D. (eds) European Film Music. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 73–85. Heldt, G. (2012) ‘… There’s No Music Playing, and It’s Not Snowing: Songs and Self-Reflexivity in Curtisland’, Music, Sound, and the Moving Image, 6(1), pp. 73–91. Heldt, G. (2013) Music and Levels of Narration in Film: Steps Across the Border. Bristol: Intellect. Hubbert, J. (2017) ‘Records, Repertoire and Rollerball: Music and the Auteur Epic’, in Meyer, S. C. (ed.) Music in Epic Film: Listening to Spectacle. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 126–45. Hubbs, N. (2004) The Queer Composition of America’s Sound: Gay Modernists, American Music, and National Identity. London: University of California Press. Huron, D. (2007) Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Kalinak, K. (2010) Film Music: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kermode, M. (1995) ‘Twisting the Knife’, in Romney, J. and Wootton, A. (eds) Celluloid Jukebox: Popular Music and the Movies Since the 50s. London: British Film Institute, pp. 8–19. Lerner, N. (2001) ‘Copland’s Music of Wide Open Spaces: Surveying the Pastoral Trope in Hollywood’, Musical Quarterly, 85(3), pp. 477–515. MacDowell, J. (2016) Irony in Film. London: Palgrave Macmillan. McQuiston, K. (2013) We’ll Meet Again: Musical Design in the Films of Stanley Kubrick. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Merkley, P. A. (2007) ‘“Stanley Hates This But I Like It!”: North vs. Kubrick on the Music for 2001: A Space Odyssey’, Journal of Film Music, 2(1), pp. 1–34. Minow, N. (2011) ‘Interview: Tom Hooper of The King’s Speech’, Movie Mom, 13 January. Available at: http://moviemom.maxlazebnik.com/interview-tom-hooper-­ of-the-ki (accessed 26 March 2018). Murch, W. (2015) ‘How I Tried to Transplant the Musical Heart of Apocalypse Now’, Nautilus, 12 November. Available at: http://nautil.us/issue/30/identity/how-i-triedto-transplant-the-musical-heart-of-apocalypse-now (accessed 26 March 2018). Nordern, E. (1970 [1968]) ‘Playboy Interview: Stanley Kubrick’, in Agel, J. (ed.) The Making of Kubrick’s 2001. New York: Signet, pp. 328–54. Patterson, D. W. (2004) ‘Music, Structure and Metaphor in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey’, American Music, 22(3), pp. 444–74. Pierce, N. (2004) ‘Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004) [review]’, BBC, 11 November. Available at: www.bbc.co.uk/films/2004/11/08/bridget_jones_the_edge_of_­ reason_2004_review.shtml (accessed 26 March 2018).

130  Functions of musical reference Pollack, H. (1999) Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Rice, L. (1994) ‘Songs Set the Mood for Gump’, Gainesville Sun, 14 August, p. 60. Shell, M. (2015) Talking the Walk & Walking the Talk: A Rhetoric of Rhythm. New York: Fordham University Press. Smith, J (1996) ‘Unheard Melodies? A Critique of Psychoanalytic Theories of Film Music’, in Bordwell, D. and Carroll, N. (eds) Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies. London: University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 230–47. Smith, J. (1998) The Sounds of Commerce: Marketing Popular Film Music. New York: Columbia University Press. Smith, J. (2001) ‘Popular Songs and Comic Allusion in Contemporary Cinema’, in Wojcik, P. R. and Knight, A. (eds) Soundtrack Available: Essays on Film and Popular Music. Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 407–30. Smith, J. (2009) ‘Bridging the Gap: Reconsidering the Border between Diegetic and Nondiegetic Music’, Music and the Moving Image, 2(1), pp. 1–25. Stilwell, R. J. (2007) ‘The Fantastical Gap between Diegetic and Nondiegetic’, in Goldmark, D., Kramer, L. and Leppert, R. (eds) Beyond the Soundtrack: Representing Music in Cinema. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 184–202. Temperley, N. (1971) ‘The Symphonie fantastique and Its Program’, Musical Quarterly, 57(4), pp. 593–608. Thomas, T. (1973) Music for the Movies. London: Tantivy Press. Wiebe Taylor, L. (2009) ‘Popular Songs and Ordinary Violence: Exploring Basic Human Brutality in the Films of Rob Zombie’, in Hayward, P. (ed.) Terror Tracks: Music, Sound and Horror Cinema. London: Equinox, pp. 229–37. Wilson, A. (2017) ‘From Authenticity to Anachronism: Pre-Existing Music and “Epic Englishness” in Elizabeth and Master and Commander’, in Meyer, S. C. (ed.) Music in Epic Film: Listening to Spectacle. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 105–25. Winters, B. (2014) Music, Performance, and the Realities of Film: Shared Concert Experiences in Screen Fiction. Abingdon: Routledge. Winters, B. (2016) ‘The Sound of Satire; or, Trading Places with Mozart’, in Evans, M. and Hayward, P. (eds) Sounding Funny: Music and Comedy Cinema. Sheffield: Equinox, pp. 29–50. Wise, B. (2011) ‘A Soundtrack Fit for a King’, WQXR, 22 February. Available at: www.wqxr.org/#!/articles/wqxr-features/2011/feb/22/soundtrack-fit-king (accessed 26 March 2018).

4 Post-existing music

Pre-existing music does not just pre-exist. The music quoted by a film continues to exist alongside that film and the quotation within it. It is clear, for instance, that neither the Herbert von Karajan/Vienna Philharmonic recording of Also sprach Zarathustra, nor Richard Strauss’s composition itself, ceased to be entities in their own right upon their partial quotation in 2001: A Space Odyssey (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1968). These musical texts pre-existed the quotation, and they now – to coin a term – post-exist it. It would be naive to imagine that music is not affected in certain ways by its use in a film, though. True, today I can purchase a new copy of that ­Karajan recording much as it was possible to do so prior to 2001’s release (albeit now with a wider range of formats from which to choose). And I can also hear Strauss’s work in other recorded, broadcast, or live performances, with the performers adhering to the original instructions set out by the composer in 1896. In doing so, though, will I and other listeners not be thinking – however briefly, unwillingly, or unwittingly – of 2001, and the music’s use in that film? Will the liner or programme notes, or the radio announcer, neglect to mention that most famous of appropriations, furnishing even those unaware of the 2001 connection with the necessary information? Will even the performers of subsequent renditions have Kubrick’s use of the piece somehow in mind? These post-existing musical texts might not have changed in any objective, material sense, but that is not to say that the changes they have undergone are any less real or significant. Here we can return to the ideas of JeanJacques Nattiez and Michael L. Klein, introduced in Chapter 2 in regard to the interpretation of uses of pre-existing music in film, and now helpful in considering how such uses can affect later interpretations of the music. Nattiez (1990 [1987]) argues that, while ‘symbolic forms’ such as musical compositions result from a process of creation (poiesis), any understanding of those forms is constructed within processes of reception (esthesis). Moreover, for Nattiez (ibid., p. 9): An object of any kind takes on meaning for an individual apprehending that object, as soon as that individual places the object in relation to

132  Post-existing music areas of his lived experience – that is, in relation to a collection of other objects that belong to his or her experience of the world. Hence, my understanding of Zarathustra will not necessarily correspond to – indeed, is highly unlikely to correspond to – Strauss’s understanding, or even that of another listener experiencing the piece at the same time and place as me. Klein (2005) differentiates between poietic intertextuality and esthesic intertextuality. The former concerns the author’s outlook, which in the ­ riedrich case of Zarathustra’s composition would most obviously include F Nietzsche’s philosophical treatise of the same name, by which Strauss was directly inspired. Esthesic intertextuality concerns the listener or performer’s outlook. Today this may or may not include Nietzsche and other texts with which Strauss could have been familiar, but significantly this type of intertextuality is also inherently transhistorical (to borrow another of Klein’s terms). 2001 was released 19 years after Strauss’s death, but since then has nonetheless been able to influence how listeners construct their understanding of Zarathustra, whether or not those listeners are aware that Strauss could not have intended or even imagined that connection be made.1 In this chapter I am less concerned with individual and community-­ related variations in textual interpretation than in Chapter 2. These variations exist, of course, and the observations of Lauren Anderson, Martin Barker, and others on how real audiences could and should be acknowledged and studied apply just as well to musical audiences (influenced by prior film viewing) as they do to film audiences (influenced by prior music listening). Regarding Anderson’s plea for ‘a broader conception of “knowledge” and “ways of knowing”’ (2016, p. 39), for instance, it is clear that listeners coming to Zarathustra having previously seen 2001 will not all ‘know’ the film in the same way. An either/or conception of the effects familiarity (or not) with 2001 will have on perception of Zarathustra is therefore inadequate. ­Barker’s assertion that investment is ‘crucial within audiences’ responses’ (2012, p. 191) is equally valid here: the ways in and extents to which we care about both Zarathustra and 2001 will undoubtedly influence how we process the interaction of the two, so that a classical-music ‘purist’ and Strauss fan may be more able – or certainly eager – to forget or ignore Kubrick’s imagery and narrative content in their post-2001 encounters with the piece. These ideas are worthy of further exploration, but I am primarily interested here in examining broad cultural and historical changes in musical consumption and understanding brought about by film, not least to highlight that film has brought about such changes. The effects of film on musical reception have been widely acknowledged and debated in previous scholarship. Much of this scholarship has focused on musician biopics and other films concerned largely with depicting musical performances. The Mozart biopic Amadeus (dir. Miloš Forman, 1984), for example, has attracted much comment, in which its musical and biographical liberties have been both criticized (Horowitz 1992) and defended

Post-existing music  133 (Marshall 1997; Joe 2006). That biopics intertwine music and biography, supporting their reworkings of each with the apparent ‘facts’ of the other, explains their particular power to affect subsequent understandings, whether they are seen – as in the case of Amadeus – to ‘narrow’ those understandings and ‘disarm’ our critical faculties (Horowitz 1992, pp. 14–15) or by contrast as ‘the most potent ally of everyone engaged in the enterprise of cultivating and promulgating classical music’ (Marshall 1997, p. 178). As Ben Winters (2014) has explored, narrative films in which musical performances play a key role can also appear to present pre-existing music particularly authoritatively. Their performances are often filmed in a somewhat documentary style, may feature musicians known to us from the real world (e.g. Jascha Heifetz in They Shall Have Music (dir. Archie Mayo, 1939) and Carnegie Hall (dir. Edgar G. Ulmer, 1947), on which see ibid., pp. 34–47), and show contexts for musical production and reception (e.g. the concert hall) with direct parallels in our own lives. The choices these films make in relation to their music – over which pieces to include, and how to interpret and even change them for the purposes of the narrative – might therefore wield special influence over audiences. Given the balance of prior scholarship and the particularities of films that are somehow ‘musical’, my concern in this chapter is with the effects on reception of pre-existing music used in films without an overt musical narrative. I argue that such films can nonetheless present – even perform – music in comparably influential ways. Dealing primarily with a handful of key examples, most of which involve music placed nondiegetically as conventional ‘film score’, I draw on ideas stated in relation to the types of film mentioned above, and on other previous work that has dealt with the films in which I am more interested here. As this other work has mostly appeared in reception histories of specific pieces or oeuvres, my task is partly to highlight common ways in and means by which films of different kinds have altered the reception of music of different kinds, corresponding to the general aims of this book in dealing with the category of pre-existing music as a whole.

Audience Films introduce audiences to pieces of music they might not have otherwise encountered. In extreme cases, a film can even be the only avenue through which certain pre-existing music can now be heard. Richard H. Bush (1989, p. 147) discusses the music, mostly composed by Bernhard Kaun, for the 1931 sound reissue of the silent film The Midnight Sun (dir. Dimitri ­Buchowetzki, 1926), noting that, ‘[s]ince no prints of either version of The Midnight Sun are known to be in circulation, the only music that can be heard from this film is through its reuse in subsequent Universal films’. One cue, as an example, is used in the second chapter of the 1936 Flash Gordon serial. More common are cases of music that is not (and is never likely to become) unavailable as such, but that is nevertheless introduced to and even

134  Post-existing music popularized with new audiences through use in a film. For instance, French chart data clearly illustrates the impact of Drive (dir. Nicolas Winding Refn, 2011) on the song ‘A Real Hero’ by College (featuring Electric Youth). Extracts from the song are heard prominently twice within the film: a two-minute portion of the four-and-a-half-minute track plays over a montage sequence one-third of the way through the film, while two-and-a-half minutes score the final scenes and the first part of the end credits. Dialogue is absent on both of these occasions, while sound effects are only occasional and unobtrusive; the music can be clearly heard. The track was released in 2009 on College’s EP A Real Hero, but entered the French singles chart for the first time only on 8 October 2011, a few days after Drive’s cinematic release on 5 October. Charting at position 54 initially, the song remained in the chart for several weeks (see Figure 4.1). After 3 December, when it briefly re-entered the chart following a week’s absence, ‘A Real Hero’ then did not appear on the chart until 11 February 2012, shortly after Drive’s home-­media release on 8 February, this time entering at position 66 (see Figure 4.2). The chart performance of ‘A Real Hero’ can thus be connected directly to audiences’ awareness of its use in Drive. ‘A Real Hero’ was not rereleased as a single in tangible form following its use in Drive. In fact, it was never released as a single at all. With music today available intangibly and continuously from download and streaming services, consumers do not need to rely on ‘old’ tracks being officially rereleased in order to propel them into the charts. And though this situation provides listeners with greater freedom than before to (re)discover ‘old’

10 Dec

3 Dec

26 Nov

37

19 Nov

38

12 Nov

29

5 Nov

22 Oct

26

29 Oct

15 Oct

8 Oct

1 Oct

Date (2011)

Chart posion

1

51 54

101

51 81 98

151

Figure 4.1  G  raph showing French chart performance of ‘A Real Hero’, perf. College feat. Electric Youth, 1 October–10 December 2011.

Post-existing music  135

7 Apr

31 Mar

24 Mar

17 Mar

10 Mar

3 Mar

25 Feb

18 Feb

11 Feb

4 Feb

Date (2012)

Chart position

1

51 53 66 101

65 79

86 119

115

151 169

Figure 4.2  G  raph showing French chart performance of ‘A Real Hero’, 4 February–­­7 April 2012.

music of their own accord, the extent of this freedom means that film’s ability to bring specific music to people’s ears – to direct musical consumption, in other words – remains a powerful one. It also allows scholars to see a relatively straightforward measure of this direction, uncontaminated by the consumption of any separate audience tapped by a commercial release strategy for the music. Unless to own it on a new medium (unlikely to have been a significant factor in the case of ‘A Real Hero’), consumers rarely purchase the same recording twice, and so new sales of music as represented by chart data can be assumed to equate to new listeners: people who were previously unaware of (or who had at least not previously paid much attention to) the music.2 With knowledge of clear-cut cases like that of ‘A Real Hero’, we can safely argue that film has played a crucial role in the many other apparent instances of music’s popularization or revival for which hard data might be less readily available or more difficult to interpret. As already mentioned, ‘A Real Hero’ is heard twice in Drive, both times in contexts where it is relatively audible to the watching audience. Both audibility and repetition of music are significant factors in a film’s ability to popularize that music with its audiences. Such musical foregrounding is, of course, present in the biopics and other musical films noted above as being particularly influential on reception, and will continue to be apparent in discussion of other examples and effects below. In relation still to the ability of film to bring music to new audiences, one example is that of the role of The Sting (dir. George Roy Hill, 1973) in the ‘ragtime revival’ of the 1970s.

136  Post-existing music Here, the film’s influence extends beyond a specific piece towards popularizing the music of a particular composer – Scott Joplin – and even a whole genre. That music, in terms now of composer and genre as well as of certain individual pieces, is repeated in The Sting, and certainly audible too: as well as being used over the opening and closing credits, it is often heard with the intertitle transitions that contribute to the general feel of a period production, and even over an otherwise silent montage sequence a little over thirty minutes in.3 Marvin Hamlisch, who ostensibly adapted Joplin’s music for the film, himself noted (in Universal Studios 2005) that 98 per cent of the music in The Sting, no-one’s talking, so you get the music really played, and you really can listen to it, and I think that’s one of the reasons it had such a great impact, ’cause the music can really be heard. Hamlisch’s authorship of The Sting’s Joplin adaptations, for which he won an Academy Award in 1973 in the now-defunct category of ­‘Original Song Score and Adaptation’, is a controversial matter.4 Both Gunther Schuller and Joshua Rifkin, already responsible for key editions and recordings of Joplin’s music in the few years prior to 1973, claimed to have been approached to work on The Sting (Waldo 1976, p. 187), and though they declined the music in the film is largely a combination of Schuller’s editions of ragtime-era ensemble arrangements (for which he received credit) and Rifkin-style piano solos. Nonetheless, for Terry Waldo (ibid.), ‘[c]ommercially at least, Marvin Hamlisch was the most important figure in the revival of Joplin’s music’. That revival saw ragtime not only become more popular than it had been since its heyday in the late nineteenth and early ­twentieth centuries, but also taken more seriously, elevated ‘from the saloon to the concert hall’ (ibid., p. 3). Schuller and Rifkin, two classically trained musicians also comfortable in jazz genres, had experienced some popular success with their work; Waldo (ibid., pp. 183–4) recounts that Rifkin’s recordings of Joplin rags, the first album of which was released in November 1970, ‘were a sensation of sorts’: they not only made the classical charts but were also played on many of the underground listener-sponsored radio stations that at the time broadcasted in many larger cities. So Scott Joplin became a household name among the ‘hip’ population. Following The Sting’s positive critical and commercial reception (including winning the Academy Award for ‘Best Picture’), though, its soundtrack album topped the general Billboard album chart in the United States for over a month, and a single of ‘The Entertainer’ – the rag deployed as the film’s main theme – reached number 3 on that publication’s ‘Hot 100’ (Wright 2016, p. 45). The Sting was therefore responsible for introducing Joplin to

Post-existing music  137 the 1970s ‘public at large’ (Waldo 1976, p. 3). As Bryan S. Wright (2016, p. 46) summarizes, the film cast onto the national stage a music that to the general public was often misunderstood or forgotten, helping to popularize a new vision of what ragtime may have been and what potential it had yet to be. Due in part to the selection of one composer’s music for The Sting, the ragtime revival of the 1970s was really a Joplin revival (as the interchangeability of terms in the above discussion may already have suggested). Moreover, for the general listener at least, the revival gave more prominence to certain of Joplin’s pieces, particularly ‘The Entertainer’.5 Films popularizing pre-­ existing music with new audiences are undoubtedly implicated in the creation and cementation of musical canons, as Theodor Adorno (2002 [1938], pp. 293–4) suggested even 80 years ago in opining that [t]he reactions of the listeners appear to have no relation to the playing of the music. They have reference, rather, to the cumulative success which . . . dates back to the command of publishers, sound film magnates and rulers of radio. For another illustration of this process and its potentially harmful repercussions, consider Samuel Barber’s irritated reply to an interviewer who said that the Adagio for Strings was the first of the composer’s pieces he had heard: ‘I wish you’d hear some new ones. Everybody always plays that’ (quoted in Howard 2007, p. 53). That interview took place in 1949, roughly contemporaneously with a study of Barber’s life and works in which Nathan Broder (1954, p. 74) similarly observed that the Adagio’s fame had come at the expense of the ‘undeserved neglect of the [String] Quartet’ from which it originates as the slow movement. The Adagio had by then been placed somewhat into the public ear, at least in the United States, through significant uses outside of the concert hall, for instance when broadcast on the radio at the announcement of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death in 1945 (Howard 2007, p. 53). But these remarks came years before the appropriations of the Adagio for popular films including The Elephant Man (dir. David Lynch, 1980), Platoon (dir. Oliver Stone, 1986), and Amélie (dir. Jean-Pierre ­Jeunet, 2001), which, alongside further uses at high-profile funerals and other events, surely gave it even greater prominence.6 Neglect of other repertoire aside, overexposure to particular music can have negative ramifications for that music itself. The popularity of Barber’s Adagio, for instance, led critic Martin Bernheimer to write in 1970 that it ‘has become so familiar as an all-purpose cultural theme song that it is a bit difficult for this listener to take seriously in the concert hall’ (quoted in Howard 2007, p. 55). Composed as a concert work, the piece had seemingly turned into something unworthy of the purist’s attention even before

138  Post-existing music its famous film appearances. More recently, Anthony Holden (2003), another critic, described the Adagio as having been ‘ultimately rendered null and void, if not downright irritating, by constant repetition in the wake of Oliver Stone’s film, Platoon’.7 Similar views can be found in relation to music of other kinds. George Thorogood and the Destroyers’ 1982 song ‘Bad to the Bone’, for instance, following use in films from Christine (dir. John ­Carpenter, 1983) to the Shaun the Sheep Movie (dir. Mark Burton, ­Richard Starzak, 2015), has been variously described in recent online articles as ‘overused to death’ (Heisler 2015), ‘used to the point where it loses all effectiveness’ (Chapman 2011), and ‘one of the first [songs] to get skipped when it hits the airwaves in the car’ (MC 2014). In discussing Steppenwolf’s ‘Born to Be Wild’ and its comparable ‘abuse’ by ‘the entertainment industry’ (presumably with uses such as in Dr. ­Dolittle 2 (dir. Steve Carr, 2001) and Herbie Fully Loaded (dir. Angela Robinson, 2005) in mind), the latter author reveals the considerations that often underpin such judgements regarding rock music (MC 2014). Crucial for many fans of this genre is ‘authenticity’, as defined by Lawrence Grossberg (1992, p. 207): ‘Authentic rock’ depends on its ability to articulate private but common desires, feelings and experiences into a shared public language. It demands that the performer have a real relation to his or her audience – based on their common experiences defined in terms of youth and a postmodern sensibility rather than class, race, etc. – and to their music – which must somehow ‘express’ and transcend that experience. It constructs or expresses a ‘community’ predicated on images of urban mobility, delinquency and bohemian life. Grossberg stresses that the same music can be defined in different ways by different audiences; in Allan Moore’s (2002, p. 210) terms, authenticity ‘is ascribed, not inscribed’. The rock styles and lyrical invocations of rebellion of ‘Bad to the Bone’ and particularly ‘Born to Be Wild’ clearly invite such ascription, however. By contrast, their use in commercial films and other products of ‘the entertainment industry’ suggests inauthenticity, per Grossberg’s description of ‘“establishment culture”, rock that is dominated by economic interest, rock that has lost its political edge, bubblegum music, etc.’ (1992, pp. 206–7). MC (2014) writes that Steppenwolf ‘clearly doesn’t seem to care’ about the ‘abuse’ of their work, implying that the band has ‘sold out’ (to cite a common expression) for cultural prominence and financial gain. The reality, of course, is more complicated. To accuse artists themselves of ‘selling out’, first of all, is to overlook the complexities of the licensing process (discussed in Chapter 1, pp. 18–27), whereby composers and performers of a piece might not be directly involved in decisions to allow its use in films and other contexts. More general complaints regarding the ‘overuse’

Post-existing music  139 of certain music, particularly in ‘commercial’ products, should also be balanced by recognition of the pervasiveness of ‘the entertainment industry’, and the interconnected nature of all cultural production and reception. Simply put, to produce and release music of any kind costs money. Klaus Heymann, founder of classical record label Naxos, states that ‘on most new recordings, especially with orchestral material that’s in copyright, we nowadays don’t recoup our investment. We record to broaden our catalog and make more stuff available’ (in Serinus 2007). Licensing music from that catalogue to filmmakers is one avenue through which Naxos makes the profit to invest back into those new recordings. Sales (of any kind) of ‘hits’ like an Adagio for Strings or a ‘Bad to the Bone’ subsidize lesser-selling parts of the catalogues of record companies, publishers, and individual composers and performers. The (apparently) authentic thus relies on the (apparently) inauthentic.8 Another obvious response to criticisms of film’s role in the construction of musical canons is that, were it not for films such as The Sting and Platoon, the vast majority of listeners may not know the names of ­Joplin and Barber at all. Notwithstanding the undoubted import of external influences, those listeners are also free to find and consume music for themselves. Holden’s ‘solution’ for those now ‘irritated’ by Barber’s Adagio is ‘to explore other works by the same composer, preferably taking the chance to chase down lesser-known pieces to which we might never otherwise have listened’ (2003). This is not mere wishful thinking; many listeners have evidently taken the musical offerings of films only as an initial cue for their own enquiries. Wright (2016, p. 46) notes that, ‘[e]ven forty years after the film’s release, The Sting remains a significant force in ragtime; many in the present [ragtime performance] community still trace their initial interest in the music to the [film]’. Moreover, this interest has often extended beyond Joplin, arguably not in spite of The Sting, but because of it: Joplin’s 1970s meteoric rise in popularity and resultant overexposure meant that many soon tired of the limited repertoire. New followers drawn to the music soon sought to supplement their listening, performing, and collecting habits with the music of other, lesser-known ragtime composers as well as ‘novelty’, stride, and early jazz composers. Film has thus assumed an important position as a musical tastemaker within a complex modern ecosystem. While not the only force that may shape listeners’ choices, documented cases of the cinema’s influence indicate its relative power, to an extent that should already situate film as a key feature of any general history of contemporary listening. This power will also be apparent as the chapter moves on to consider other effects on reception connected to cinematic appropriations of pre-existing music, however, now concerning less what music is consumed, and more how it is consumed.

140  Post-existing music

Cultural influence and ownership A film is not an invisible conduit for music’s delivery to an audience. Through using music for its own means, the film sets itself up as an intertext to which subsequent listeners to that music – even those previously familiar with it – may turn in their processes of interpretation. From then on, hearing the music may bring to mind the images and ideas of the filmmaker’s vision. The effect of experiencing music’s association with such images and ideas in a film can, in fact, be even stronger, as is suggested by one reviewer’s recollection of ‘A Real Hero’ becoming ‘driving music’: Working as a theme and mantra for [Ryan] Gosling’s Driver, it’s a shimmering, deeply romantic track that, thanks to its repeated use in [Drive], sticks in your head. ‘Try getting behind the wheel without hearing that “Real Hero” song’, a friend mentioned to me after I saw the film. (Kelly 2011) In the case of Barber’s Adagio for Strings, films have clearly played a significant role in the piece coming to be commonly understood as ‘sad music’. As Luke Howard (2007, p. 50) describes, a 2007 BBC survey to identify ‘the world’s saddest music’ saw the Adagio receive more votes than the other four shortlisted works combined. And yet, following its 1938 premiere as a standalone work for string orchestra, no critics, ‘for or against the Adagio, mentioned anything about it being “sad music”’ (ibid., p. 53). The piece’s consistent use in ‘scenes of loss, sacrifice, and tragedy’ (ibid., p. 56) in films including The Elephant Man and Platoon has contributed to this change of perception, both influencing and responding to the use of the Adagio in other contexts. These began with its aforementioned broadcast in the US on Roosevelt’s death in 1945, and more recently included its performance at the Last Night of the Proms in the United Kingdom shortly after the events of 11 September 2001, in place of the traditional patriotic anthems (see ­Lebrecht 2002). Such is the strength of the ‘sad’ signification today, that ‘when the Adagio has been used in recent films to accompany scenes other than a tragic death, the choice of music has seemed both to critics and viewers as inept and inappropriate’ (Howard 2007, p. 56).9 Among Western populations today, a listener’s understanding of ‘A Real Hero’ as ‘driving music’ is likely to be rooted far more clearly in knowledge of a single intertext – Drive – than is one of Barber’s Adagio as ‘sad music’. Drive was, of course, responsible for introducing ‘A Real Hero’ to the ears of many of those currently familiar with the song. In the weeks and months immediately following Drive’s cinematic and home-media releases, and the attendant chart success of the song, it might even have been true that most of the song’s listeners knew it from the film. Drive’s direct influence will then have waned as the song established greater cultural independence through factors including radio play and release on Electric Youth’s full-length

Post-existing music  141 album Innerworld in 2014. Drive nonetheless ‘got there first’, staking a claim to the song that other contexts have not yet surpassed: the use of the song in Taken 2 (dir. Olivier Megaton, 2012), possibly as a deliberate nod to Drive, was nonetheless prejudged in an IndieWire article as ‘lazy’ owing to its prominence in the earlier film (Jagernauth 2012), while the AllMusic review of Innerworld opens with reference to Drive’s use of ‘A Real Hero’, and even reads the album’s other songs in relation to that film in remarking that they ‘sound like they could have been on the Drive soundtrack’ (Sendra 2014). Drive has thus taken cultural ownership of ‘A Real Hero’, in the sense that the song is consistently linked to and understood through that single film not just by certain individuals (a possible result of any use of pre-existing music), but on a broader cultural level.10 By contrast, while the effects on reception of Barber’s Adagio have been similarly broad, the piece does not presently ‘belong’ to a single context in the manner of ‘A Real Hero’. Certainly, the Adagio’s use in Platoon – the most popular film to have featured it – is more culturally prominent than other uses. This is suggested, for one, by Holden (2003) blaming Platoon for starting a process through which the piece was ‘rendered null and void’, even though Stone’s film was released after numerous cinematic and noncinematic contexts had already appropriated the Adagio for similar means. Platoon’s claim to ownership of Barber’s composition is also evidenced – and, significantly, reinforced – by references subsequently made to that film’s repeated combination of Adagio and wartime death in contexts including Seinfeld and The Simpsons: in Seinfeld ‘The Fatigues’ (dir. Andy Ackerman, 1996), Frank Costanza has a flashback to the time he inadvertently ‘sent 16 of my own men to the latrines’ after serving a bad steak as an army cook in the Korean War; in The Simpsons ‘Strong Arms of the Ma’ (dir. Pete Michels, 2003), we see the aftermath of Marge’s violent rampage in Moe’s Tavern; the Adagio accompanies both scenarios. As well as ‘sadness’, associations such as ‘war’ and ‘violence’ might therefore be present in many perceivers’ minds when they hear the music now, along with a strong abstract connection to Platoon itself. Such is the range of contexts that have used the Adagio not in deliberate reference to Stone’s film, though, that from a general perspective the music does not appear ‘owned’ by that single context. It may be that ‘A Real Hero’ comes to be associated primarily with another context in future, or that it at least sheds such strong ties to Drive through association with multiple other contexts. The connection of ­Joplin’s music to The Sting was initially so strong that ‘The Entertainer’ was allegedly announced on US radio as ‘the theme from The Sting, by Marvin Hamlisch’ (Waldo 1976, p. 188). Eventually, though, The Sting’s appropriation of Joplin’s music resulted in neither relatively stable interpretations nor apparent cultural ownership. Wright (2016, p. 46), perhaps given the benefit of additional hindsight, implicates The Sting in the 1970s ‘classical’ revival of ragtime alongside Schuller, Rifkin, et al., whereas Waldo (1976, pp. 189–91) believed that the film resulted primarily in a ‘deluge of largely

142  Post-existing music Table 4.1  Performances of Strauss tone poems at Proms concerts, 1895–2017 Title

Total

1895–1968 (%)

Aus Italien, Op. 16 (1886)

3

3 (100)

Don Juan, Op. 20 (1888)

89

66 (74.16)

Macbeth, Op. 23 (1888)

3

0 (0)

1969–2017 (%) 0 (0) 23 (25.84) 3 (100)

Tod und Verklärung, Op. 24 (1889)

57

47 (82.46)

10 (17.54)

Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, Op. 28 (1895)

103

80 (77.67)

23 (22.33)

Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30 (1896)

18

3 (16.66)

15 (83.33)

Don Quixote, Op. 35 (1897)

40

33 (82.5)

7 (17.5)

Ein Heldenleben, Op. 40 (1898)

40

23 (57.5)

17 (42.5)

imitative and tasteless crap’: poor-quality recordings rushed to market; merchandise including ‘Joplin T-shirts, mugs, and bumper stickers’ and even a ‘write-your-own-rag-by-the-throw-of-a-dice game’; and a return of the 1950s honky-­tonk idea of ragtime ‘as background for the consumption of alcohol’. By promoting Joplin’s music to millions, the film undoubtedly worked to both ends. Overall, the music was opened out to a range of uses and interpretations in which The Sting itself was not an overt presence.11 The case of Zarathustra’s association with 2001: A Space Odyssey highlights that a single film’s ownership of a piece of formerly pre-existing music can also extend and even strengthen over decades, however. Following its first performance in 1896, Zarathustra had a troubled early reception history in which critics forwarded ‘objections to the use of Nietzsche, to programmes in general, and to Strauss’s powers of invention’, as John ­Williamson (1993, p. 41) notes. Even by the 1910s the piece was performed less often than other Strauss tone poems (ibid., pp. 41–2), while Williamson argues that ‘[t]he events of the thirties and forties, when Nietzsche’s writings were twisted to ends that he would have deplored and denounced, left a residue of embarrassment among writers as late as [the early 1960s]’ (ibid., p. 49). Today, though, the piece is regularly performed and recorded. Table 4.1 shows a comparison of the number of performances given of Strauss tone poems at Proms concerts in the UK, pre- and post-2001’s release in 1968. Zarathustra clearly bucks the general trend, receiving a substantially larger number of performances in the years from 1969, while by contrast most of Strauss’s other tone poems were performed fewer times in the later period. Zarathustra’s 15 post-2001 performances are roughly comparable even to the 23 of Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, the most-performed work overall and in both periods taken separately, whereas the former’s meagre three pre-2001 performances lag far behind the latter’s 80. Evidently, the fortunes of Zarathustra changed after 2001’s release.12 Williamson (ibid., p. 52) suggests that ‘Zarathustra’s revival was no doubt also influenced by the sudden

Post-existing music  143 rush to achieve new standards of fidelity in reproduction with the advent of stereophonic sound’, the piece’s ‘detailed and sumptuous orchestration’ making it ‘an essential vehicle for the demonstration of virtually every new recording device, company or star conductor’.13 2001’s appropriation of the piece, though, was ‘[u]ndoubtedly the biggest single factor in changing the general picture of Zarathustra’ (ibid., p. 50). As well as playing a key part in the revival of Strauss’s piece among classical performers and audiences, 2001 certainly ‘got there first’ in terms of bringing Strauss’s music to the ears of the general public. Moreover, it affected not only who was listening to the piece, but also how they listened. 2001 could hardly succeed better in presenting Strauss’s opening 22 bars to its audience: the quotation not only repeats, but also does so loud and clear and in connection with slow-paced imagery. Its presentation in the film can first be seen to have strengthened established (and authorially intended) significations of the piece and its opening section specifically. For one, ­Zarathustra from its conception had a clear connection to theories of human evolution and the Übermensch, as espoused by Nietzsche in his treatise of the same name. Wrote Strauss (quoted in Del Mar 1962, p. 134): I did not intend to write philosophical music or portray Nietzsche’s great work musically. I meant rather to convey in music an idea of the evolution of the human race from its origin, through the various phases of development, religious as well as scientific, up to Nietzsche’s idea of the Übermensch. The whole symphonic poem is intended as my homage to the genius of Nietzsche, which found its greatest exemplification in his book Also sprach Zarathustra. Though it is possible that Kubrick was unaware of Strauss’s intent, by employing this music in scenes of evolutionary significance – the ape’s first use of a bone as a weapon; the emergence of the star-child – the director played upon that existing meaning of the piece, and so reinforced it.14 Its main-title use, meanwhile, scoring a dramatic alignment of celestial bodies in which the sun rises from behind a planet to the top of the screen, is a relatively literal translation of the sunrise in Nietzsche’s prologue (which is taken by most to correspond to Strauss’s introduction),15 and of the fanfare’s assumed broader association with nature.16 In these senses, 2001 therefore presents Zarathustra relatively faithfully. That it promotes certain general meanings whilst eliminating their direct connection to Nietzsche may additionally have been helpful in presenting the piece for mass consumption. 2001 also introduced new elements to Zarathustra reception, though, most notably associations with space and with the film itself. For serious recordings of the piece, celestial imagery today forms a cover-art trope at least as prominent as that of Nietzschean sunrises (with solar eclipses providing something of a middle ground, as on the cover for Herbert von Karajan’s classic 1973 recording with the Berlin Philharmonic). The only

144  Post-existing music regular pairing with a non-Strauss work, moreover, is with Gustav Holst’s The Planets, most recently on a 2017 National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain recording for Chandos. No such imagery or pairing can be found on pre-1968 releases. The connection originates with the use of the piece’s introduction directly with space visuals at the opening and close of 2001, and more broadly as the main title theme for a film set primarily in space, through which it was also opened particularly to denotation of that film as a whole, pars pro toto. Strauss and his music are less susceptible to popular musical and material adaptations than Joplin, which may partly explain Zarathustra’s comparatively stable ties to 2001; Deodato’s jazz-funk (and tellingly titled) version of ‘Also sprach Zarathustra (2001)’, released in 1973 to reach number 2 on the Billboard ‘Hot 100’, is a relative outlier. Having contained the first major cultural appropriation of Zarathustra, 2001 has also since remained more prominent in critical and public consciousness than The Sting and even the most successful Barber-quoting films, Platoon and The Elephant Man.17 2001’s continued possession of Zarathustra reflects not just attributes and influence of the music and film, though, but also those of the cover designs and other contexts that have repeated the association of Strauss’s piece with the film or meanings developed within it. While Zarathustra’s association with space, for instance, now exists somewhat separately from that with 2001, the former’s origins, and subsequent repetition in numerous contexts that also reference Kubrick’s film in other ways, nonetheless arguably situate independent invocations of it as acknowledgements of 2001’s modern ownership of the piece. The space association of Zarathustra was picked up almost immediately following 2001’s release: Mervyn Cooke notes that ‘BBC TV used the piece in 1969 as the signature tune for its coverage of the first Apollo moon landing’ (2008, p. 442). In recent decades, many similar examples can be found. The opening of The Simpsons Movie (dir. David Silverman, 2007) plays a melodically adapted allosonic quotation of the fanfare within an Itchy & Scratchy Show spinoff-film-within-a-spinoff-film, to accompany a spacecraft arriving onto the moon’s surface and the emergence of Scratchy as an astronaut from it. The Houston Symphony has staged concerts featuring ‘striking high-definition images taken from NASA missions to Earth’s orbit’ accompanied by Zarathustra (Opus 3 Artists n.d.). And NASA itself has also embraced Strauss’s music: Andrew Smith (2009, p. 37) writes of his experience of the Visitor Complex at Kennedy Space Centre, complaining that he might attack someone with the canteen’s sterile cutlery ‘if I hear Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra – the theme from 2001 – one more time’. Referencing 2001 directly as well as space, in the Simpsons episode ‘Deep Space Homer’ (dir. Carlos Baeza, 1994), a brief excerpt from Strauss’s fanfare accompanies a match cut from a flying marker pen to a Fox satellite, echoing the famous (unaccompanied) cut in Kubrick’s film from a flying bone to another satellite. The Fox satellite further collides with a star child

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resembling Homer. In WALL·E (dir. Andrew Stanton, 2008), a longer portion of the ‘sunrise’ is used in a sequence depicting a human spaceship captain’s battle with his robotic autopilot. With its single red eye, the robot’s design recalls that of 2001’s artificial antagonist, the HAL 9000 computer that astronaut Dave Bowman must defeat to progress on his soon-to-be-­ evolutionary journey. Evolution (or re-evolution) is a theme in Stanton’s film, too: the captain’s victory necessitates him literally standing on his own two feet, a function lost to humans after centuries in outer space. Other texts have looked to different aspects of Kubrick’s film when using Zarathustra, suggesting from another perspective that the music’s associations with space and with 2001 can exist somewhat separately. In another Simpsons episode, ‘Lisa’s Pony’ (dir. Carlos Baeza, 1991), Kubrick’s scene of apes discovering the monolith is visually quoted when Homer dreams of himself as an ape napping against said monolith; an excerpt from Zarathustra’s opening plays here, rather than the less-recognizable Ligeti (the Kyrie from his Requiem) that forms part of the 2001 scene. In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (dir. Tim Burton, 2005), the ‘sunrise’ is heard in full as Willy Wonka teleports a monolith-sized bar of chocolate ‘into the television’, where it assumes the place of the monolith in actual images from the same 2001 scene of the apes’ discovery (now complete with Ligeti). Finally, in Zoolander (dir. Ben Stiller, 2001), a comic scene in which two vacuous fashion models fail in their attempts to operate an Apple iMac, regressing into ape-like movements, vocalizations, and recourse to an ornamental bone as a weapon as their frustration increases, is scored by the opening phrases of Zarathustra. This again connects the models’ actions to those of 2001’s apes, as well as to the man-versus-machine narrative of the central part of Kubrick’s film.19 Even where they do not cite 2001 through nonmusical means, and despite suggesting new associations for Zarathustra (such as to dim-witted supermodels), these contexts do not really compete with that film for ownership of Strauss’s piece. Instead, they acknowledge and so strengthen that ownership through repetition of certain of its key features. In all of the examples considered in this section the effects wrought on musical reception by appropriating films have been relatively strong. While any use of pre-existing music can affect subsequent interpretations of that music, only in certain cases is a single film’s influence so clearly channelled as to be visible on a broad cultural level. 2001’s impact on Zarathustra is perhaps the most visible of all.

Challenging conceptions Martin Scorsese has proclaimed that ‘[o]ne of the things I have against rock videos is that they specify certain images in your mind for each song. I would rather make up my own imagery for the music’ (in Christie and Thompson 2003, p. 45). Wim Wenders similarly argues that, in the era of music video, ‘each song already comes with its own dream’, whereas previously ‘[i]t’s like

146  Post-existing music everyone creates their own videoclip for a song . . . That was wonderful and creative’ (in Rauh 1990, cited in Davison 2004, p. 160). Both directors must surely be aware that uses of pre-existing music in their own films can have precisely that undesired effect on others (as, indeed, can the music videos they have helmed).20 Nonetheless, this concern over films establishing fixed meanings for music, whether in the minds of a few listeners or a broader population, is a fairly common one.21 For those holding formalist viewpoints, from Eduard Hanslick to Igor Stravinsky to Pieter van den Toorn, the idea that certain music – ­specifically, abstract instrumental art music – should have any meaning beyond itself is problematic. Film does not discriminate, appropriating supposedly absolute music just as it does pop songs and programmatic classical pieces such as Strauss’s Zarathustra, and lending to them all the associations developed through their combination with other cinematic elements. While that act might be seen as more problematic when the lendee is a work of abstract music, the notion that any originally intended extramusical stimuli can be joined by new ones – often, more prescriptive and widely disseminated ones that might supplant the originals – still raises questions. Zarathustra’s intended association with Nietzsche is relatively loose – recall Strauss’s remark that he ‘did not intend to write philosophical music or portray Nietzsche’s great work musically’ (quoted in Del Mar 1962, p. 134) – whereas the evidence of the piece’s recent reception presented above suggests that many of its modern listeners will have in mind one or more of a narrow set of images when they hear the opening fanfare: planets, eclipses, spaceships, apes.22 Kubrick himself argued that ‘to “explain” a Beethoven symphony would be to emasculate it by erecting an artificial barrier between conception and appreciation’, in stating that he hoped 2001 would work ‘just as music does’ in being ‘an intensely subjective experience’ (in Nordern 1970 [1968], p. 328). It is possible, in fact, that the inherent ambiguity of Zarathustra and the other classical works employed in 2001 was part of their appeal to Kubrick in constructing such an experience. But was he not guilty of ‘explaining’ those works at the same time? Like Scorsese and Wenders, Kubrick must have been aware of his own apparently hypocritical actions. The process by which music comes forcibly, through association with moving images, to mean something quite particular is a theme of his A Clockwork Orange (1971). The ‘Ludovico’ treatment that conditions main character Alex against violent actions works by drugging the subject into a nauseous response while they watch film footage of such actions. The footage that Alex sees is accompanied by the final movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, though, with the result that he is also inadvertently conditioned to feel sick whenever he hears that piece, previously one of his favourites. The film suggests that this loss of free will, represented in Alex’s relationships to both violence and music, makes him less human. As Galia Hanoch-Roe (2002, p. 178) puts it:

Post-existing music  147 The same Ninth encloses in its musical and textual elements an ode to humanitarian brotherly love alongside violent and aggressive messages. The complete person is allowed a choice in the meaning it ­furnishes . . . When choice is eliminated, so is humanity, which, according to Kubrick, includes violence and insanity on the one hand, and culture and aesthetics on the other.23 When influence on subsequent musical interpretation is as far-reaching as 2001’s has been for audiences of Zarathustra, a filmmaker may appear to insert themselves into the authorial position previously occupied by the music’s composer: Strauss’s Zarathustra becomes Kubrick’s Zarathustra. Roland Barthes’s ‘Death of the Author’ (1977 [1968], pp. 142–8) has taken place, in other words, only to be followed by the appearance of a potentially greater authority, as far as popular readings of the music are concerned. Even 2001’s influence should not be overstated, though. In the absence of behaviour-controlling drugs, there is always space for diverging interpretations, as proven by the student who told me that, despite knowing 2001, they associate Strauss’s ‘sunrise’ primarily with Elvis Presley, thanks to Elvis’s use of it as his entrance music in countless 1970s live performances. By considering uses of pre-existing music through the terms of intertextuality and its theoretical forerunners, we are reminded that 2001 is not a vampire, soaking up Zarathustra’s ambiguity for itself and leaving its victim lifeless. Appropriations do not destroy the original text; they only set up new relationships to it. Through its cultural force, an utterance may appear to have a monologic quality, in Mikhail Bakhtin’s terms, but can only ever be d­ ialogic – ‘an active participant in social dialogue’ (1981 [1934/5], pp. 276–7) – as the very act of appropriation suggests in this case.24 At the broadest level, a film’s use of pre-existing music reminds us that the music belongs to the world, not to any individual. This is not to doubt a film’s ability to limit our imagination when we come to hear a post-existing piece of music. Even on the level of individual perception, though, this is not the only potential effect of witnessing an influential appropriation. Films have, in the end, expanded the number and nature of interactions we might (be likely to) have with the pieces of music they have quoted. They challenge, perhaps usefully, the ways in which we might otherwise (be expected to) listen to those pieces. To publish music in any form is to offer it up to the world for consumption, and for the music’s author this inevitably entails some loss of control. In the classical tradition, for instance, a composer must generally cede control to a performer if their music is to be heard. This is an inescapable part of the process that may yield unexpected results, welcome as well as unwelcome. In some sense, a film’s ‘performance’ of a piece of music is only a variant of this practice; an extreme variant in some cases, perhaps, but one to which listeners can nonetheless react as they choose, just as to any other performance.

148  Post-existing music Michael Long has written of ‘cinematic listening’, ‘a process of simultaneous audiation and envisioning’ wherein ‘aural gestures can trigger the construction or recall of particular image registers and the reverse’ (2008, p. 7). Conceiving of such a distinct mode of listening, linked specifically to the emergence and popularity of film in the twentieth century, and encouraged not least by that medium’s public interpretations of pre-existing pieces, suggests that we view the aforementioned effects not as perversions of ‘correct’ manners of reception, but rather as offering valid new possibilities.25 The imagery, narratives, and even mechanics of film may provide widely understood reference points for the elucidation of musical experience. As Winters (2014, p. 145) has argued, to deny the validity of those reference points may be to perpetuate common exclusions of nonexpert listeners from such experience, particularly in relation to art repertoire. Winters (ibid., pp. 134–44) describes his own visualization in which, as he listens, the second movement of Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony cues imagined images inspired by cinematic experiences, but crucially not limited by them. While Winters suggests that, in other instances, recognizing music from particular films ‘may potentially limit the imagination and the resultant reading to those existing filmic narratives’ (ibid., p. 126), we should perhaps give audiences more credit when it comes to ‘creating their own videoclip’ (in Wenders’s terms). Indeed, today’s ‘ordinary’ listeners can literally create their own videoclip and post it for public consumption on services such as YouTube, in the process providing further evidence of both specific cinematic influences and more personal readings (that nonetheless demonstrate an impulse for pairing music with image). Celestial imagery abounds in YouTube visualizations of Zarathustra, but the ‘sunrise’ is also associated with images of terrestrial nature (some more Nietzschean than others), abstract designs, and miscellaneous objects and events – the arrival of a cruise ship into port, for instance (isthatwrong 2010) – that bear no necessary relation to Kubrick’s film. ‘Cinematic listening’ might be expanded from Long’s definition to include other effects of uses of pre-existing music on subsequent musical perception. These presentations challenge our expectations in more material ways. To hear (at most) the first 22 bars of Zarathustra repeatedly in 2001 and elsewhere, for example, may be to become familiar with those bars in a manner that impacts on how they are heard in relation to the lesser-known remainder of the tone poem when later encountering the whole. Similarly the C and D strains of Joplin’s ‘Solace – A Mexican Serenade’ and their conventional place following A and B (in an AABBACCDD form), when only C and D are heard in The Sting (again repeatedly: the D strain is heard once on its own, and twice preceded by C). As discussed in Chapter 3 (pp. 110–5), familiarity with a pre-existing piece’s structure can have implications for our experience of a film that deploys that structure, in that we may be able to predict upcoming narrative events based on our veridical expectations for the music. It is also true, though, that familiarity with a piece as it appears within a film can influence how we understand its original form. For one,

Post-existing music  149 David Huron writes of veridical surprise, which ‘occurs when events do not conform to a musical work (or specific musical pattern) that is familiar to the listener’ (ibid., p. 237). As examples throughout this book illustrate, alterations to musical material when films quote pre-existing pieces are common, of many sorts, and undertaken for various reasons. Moreover, films can introduce music to new audiences, present musical adaptations repeatedly, and themselves be repeatedly experienced and referenced elsewhere, so that an adapted version of a piece may be more familiar than the original. To elaborate on the relatively simple examples of structural alteration noted above, it is therefore possible that a listener might be surprised at the continuation of Strauss’s fanfare into a 30-minute work, or of the C and D strains of ‘Solace’ from A and B, if otherwise unprepared for these deviations from their expectations. 2001’s abbreviation of Zarathustra hits a particular sweet spot in its potential for causing veridical surprise: it is obvious enough to be perceived as a reworking when quotation and quoted text are compared, and yet in its musical and filmic presentation does not overtly signal its reworked status. Strauss’s opening works relatively well as a self-contained piece, with its journey away from and climactic return to the tonic, and, unlike ‘­Solace’, appears in exactly the same form each time it is heard in 2001. At the opposite extreme, consider the example of Roy Orbison’s ‘In Dreams’ in Blue Velvet (dir. David Lynch, 1986), one to which I will shortly return for other reasons. The reworked status of ‘In Dreams’ in its two appearances in the film is signalled musically, because the song is cut off abruptly midphrase on both occasions. That status is also signalled by other elements of the film, in the first instance because the music stops when a character pushes a button on the machine from which it is playing, and in the second because the musical cut (again to diegetic sound, this time emanating from a car’s stereo) coincides with a cut to another scene. And it is further signalled by the combination of the two appearances, in which the song starts from the same place – its beginning – but stops playing at different points. Blue Velvet is therefore unlikely to generate specific expectations for the conclusion of ‘In Dreams’, at least for listeners familiar with the conventions of Western films and popular songs.26 If surprise does occur, it is also not likely to lead to any lasting confusion. Upon Zarathustra’s unexpected continuation, for instance, even a listener without access to further information could refer to general experience of the practice of musical appropriation in order to understand the inconsistency. However, this does not mean that they will not still hear the music in light of its reworking in the film, on this and future occasions. Thanks to 2001 and other contexts, for example, I am personally much more familiar with Zarathustra’s opening that I am with the remainder of the piece, and this cannot help but affect how I listen to the whole work. When encountering a new performance of it in live or recorded form, I am more able to detect and appraise nuances of interpretation for the ‘sunrise’ than for other

150  Post-existing music sections, for which my focus inevitably shifts to details of the composition. I am therefore listening to different parts of the piece in different ways.27 Just as with the notion of music both abstract and otherwise coming to be understood in relation to certain images and ideas (whether prescribed or freely imagined) through use in film, the apparent challenges to structural understanding summarized here may be considered more problematic for certain pieces or genres than others. For instance, Wright (2016, p. 11, n. 15) points out that, ‘[i]n ragtime, the AB and CD pairings often operate independently enough that they may be excerpted in performance to form standalone pieces’, noting that The Sting’s presentation of ‘Solace’ exemplifies a relatively common practice (though the piece is ‘not explicitly a rag’), rather than opposing one. Clearly, such freedom to rearrange the composition is not so condoned in modern classical performance practice as it applies to a piece such as Zarathustra. Ideas of the sanctity of such music are not a given, though. Rather, they belong to specific cultures and historical moments, as Mina Yang (2006, pp. 11–12) notes with regard to modern ­Beethoven reception: One of the more notable uses of Für Elise involves garbage trucks in Taiwan, which signal their arrival with that famous opening snippet. Associating Beethoven with malodorous refuse would amount to nothing short of sacrilege for many, but such a judgment can be made only by prioritizing our own Western values about the sanctity of classical music over whatever views the Taiwanese hold about this music. Furthermore, it may be that Western attitudes are changing, not least because films have presented and adapted music of all kinds in all sorts of ways, levelling distinctions between ‘high’ and ‘low’. Additionally, those cinematic appropriations are today part of a broader culture of remixes, mashups, and other related practices. Quotation is a significant device within many modern musical traditions,28 for instance, while advances in technology have transformed both musical consumption – from a necessarily live and communal experience into an often solitary and increasingly portable interaction with recordings – and production.29 In fact, the lines between consumer and producer have also been blurred, as seen through the aforementioned phenomenon of user-created YouTube ‘music videos’ for Zarathustra. Various amateur ‘covers’ of Strauss’s opening can be found on the same service, including an a cappella version (Pushluschtae 2015). Should the present pluralist situation not be considered healthy in itself, it is important to note that any new modes of listening do not deny our returning to old ones, much as reinterpretations and recompositions do not replace originals (though they may call into question the very notion of an ‘original’). Certain uses of pre-existing music may even be considered instructional in relation to the established priorities of the traditions from which the music is taken, and not just in the sense of Jeremy Barham’s

Post-existing music  151 hopeful suggestion that, ‘in the face of the cinematically “compromised” and partitioned musical artwork, we may nevertheless be compelled all the more to contemplate the longed-for totality’ (2010, p. 43), true as that might in some cases be. In regard to Ken Russell’s biopic Mahler (1974), for one, Winters (2014, p. 123) suggests that the director takes the same old stones (Mahler’s symphonies) and rearranges them to make new buildings (a film’s soundtrack) that may make us hear the original works in different ways. Crucially, though, this is not being done carelessly or without reference to context . . . rather, he appears to recognise and foreground affinities between works. Winters argues that Russell even hints ‘at some new thematic affinities’ previously unremarked on in Mahler scholarship, through juxtaposing excerpts from different symphonies (ibid., p. 123). For Winters, however, the director’s most significant contribution to understandings of Mahler’s music lies in his suggestion, achieved through ‘freely crossing between discrete works’, ‘that the essence of Mahler . . . may reside more in the symphonies’ narrative content than in their individual formal design’ (ibid., p. 122). Less overtly musical films can offer similar enlightenment. Williamson (1993, p. 51) asserts that Kubrick’s use of only those 22 bars of Strauss acknowledged ‘their curiously self-contained nature’, a remark that hints at an educational role for 2001 despite Williamson’s dismissal of the film as a ‘meaningless Hollywood extravagance’ (ibid., p. 52). Even his critical suggestions that 2001 prompted ‘a tendency to inflation in performance’ of the piece, and an increasingly ‘glamorous’ orchestral sound opposed to the ‘transparency’ of earlier renditions, might also be spun more positively.30 These effects, which place film directly within traditions of musical performance, represent the choices of informed classical musicians apparently encouraged to understand a classical work in new ways – to avoid making judgement on the value of different interpretive trends – by a film.31 In the case of ‘In Dreams’ and its use in Blue Velvet, Orbison himself heard his very own music anew, though initially ‘aghast, truly shocked’ (in Kent 1989, p. 40). The revival of Orbison’s career in the late 1980s can be attributed in large part to the influence of Lynch’s film. Though the singer had continued to be active up to the time of Blue Velvet’s 1986 release, his last major chart success had been with ‘Oh, Pretty Woman’ in 1964. PostBlue Velvet, however, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, achieved success and fame as a member of the Traveling Wilburys in 1988, and had his biggest solo album success – albeit posthumously – with Mystery Girl in 1989. The first years of the 1990s then saw the releases of two films titled after Orbison songs: Pretty Woman (dir. Garry Marshall, 1990) and Only the Lonely (dir. Chris Columbus, 1991), the latter after 1960’s ‘Only the Lonely (Know the Way I Feel)’. Jeff Ayeroff of Virgin Records recalled that Blue Velvet was a significant factor in the company’s decision to sign

152  Post-existing music Orbison in 1987, because it ‘made Roy’s music current again’ (in Hilburn 1989). This sentiment was shared by Orbison, who later came to opine that the film ‘really succeeded in making my music contemporary again’, suggesting specifically that Blue Velvet ‘achieved this otherworldly quality that added a whole new dimension to “In Dreams”’ (in Kent 1989, p. 40). Orbison’s 1963 recording of ‘In Dreams’ is a favourite of Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), Blue Velvet’s sexually depraved criminal antagonist. Frank first watches on as Ben (Dean Stockwell), one of his associates, stages a peculiar lip-sync performance to the song, and later has it played again as he humiliates and beats Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan), the main character. For Peter Lehman, ‘[t]hese two scenes are unusually intense, even by the standards of this film, and they defy easy explanation’ (2003, p. 128). ‘Otherworldly’ is certainly a fair assessment of the scenes’ surreal qualities, then, but Lehman also argues that these are scenes of ‘perversity’, and that they ‘sparked the critical discourse of darkness that has come to occupy such a central place in interpreting Orbison’s music’ (ibid., p. 117). While the film contributed to a general revival of Orbison’s presence in popular culture, for at least some listeners it thus also encouraged new readings of ‘In Dreams’ and other songs. Lehman (ibid., p. 133) suggests particularly that the film drew attention to ‘something potentially disturbing in the Orbison persona’s sexuality’, in that a number of his songs recount ‘intense dreams and daydreams’ of possession, and point to a ‘stalking impulse [that] lurks within him in controllable form’, as is highlighted by Frank’s more extreme tendency to act upon ‘every perverse desire’.32 Orbison rerecorded ‘In Dreams’ in 1987, and released that new version with a music video featuring footage from Blue Velvet. Lynch acted as a ‘visual consultant’ for the video and also as co-producer on the recording session, for which he recalls merely that Roy said, ‘You know, David, in the old days there was a guy just like you that would talk to me before I sang, just like an actor and a director kind of thing. He’d remind me of why I wrote it and get me back in that space . . .’ And that was my small role in that. (Lynch in Lehman 2003, p. 115) Though the 1987 version’s arrangement is broadly the same as the original, there are subtle changes: piano takes a foregrounded role in the accompaniment, displacing the chordal electric guitar that thus moves to the background in the mix; the bass sound is more rounded, and reverb overall is greater; the drum kit is played with brushes rather than sticks; and Orbison’s delivery is slightly more subdued. Many of these differences could be attributed to developments in recording technology and to Orbison’s more mature voice and performance style, but it is tempting to hear the arguably less direct, less present sounds of the 1987 version reflecting the ‘otherworldly quality’ Orbison attributed to Blue Velvet, particularly

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given Lynch’s direct involvement. Similarly, that the 1989 album Mystery Girl later ‘self-­consciously develops, in a restrained and reflective mode, many motifs both in the music and the lyrics that have run throughout his [­Orbison’s] oeuvre’, including on songs ‘preoccupied with death’, according to Lehman (2003, p. 17), might be credited to Blue Velvet’s renewal of that oeuvre, in terms not just of helping (re)introduce it to an audience, but also of framing it in a particular way.34 The case of ‘In Dreams’ and Blue Velvet, like others considered in this chapter, illustrates the abilities of film to both bring music to new audiences and influence the manner in which that music is heard. The range of examples discussed here demonstrates that distinctions of musical style and genre have no great significance in regard to these effects, though it is true that certain specific outcomes can relate to the unique circumstances of the case. Notably, whereas films such as 2001 and The Sting can be seen to have taken authority away from their pre-existing music’s composers, and transferred it to their own filmmakers and audiences, Blue Velvet arguably renewed Orbison’s status as author of his music, even as it showcased and encouraged new readings of that music and so of Orbison himself. This is perhaps largely because Orbison was alive and working subsequent to Blue Velvet’s release, affording him opportunities to respond to the film – consciously or not, and musically or otherwise – not available to Strauss or Joplin. This is not to contradict the notion, stated above, that uses of pre-existing music situate that music as belonging to the world more than any individual, however. In this instance, it simply happened that Orbison himself was able to listen cinematically to ‘In Dreams’, and hear it, in its post-existence, no longer as his own. The broader lesson offered by uses of pre-existing music in film is that music – all music – belongs primarily not to its original authors, or in separate sections of the record store (some more ‘sophisticated’ or sacrosanct than others), but together in the imaginations of anyone willing to use it in their own lives, in whatever ways they choose.

Notes 1 Nattiez is concerned with score-based music in the Western classical tradition, in which he sees the score as the central, ‘neutral’ dimension of the musical work, and performances (such as Karajan’s of Zarathustra) primarily as esthesic acts. I am concerned with film and musical texts, including from traditions in which this concept of a ‘work’ does not apply (such as in Western popular music, where the principal form of a composition will often be a recording), and therefore use Nattiez’s terminology more broadly. Any text can be seen to have both poietic and esthesic dimensions. Where interpretation of a text takes the form of further production, such as in a performance of a Western classical composition, or a cover version of a popular song (and whether recorded or live), poietic and esthesic overlap. For example, Karajan’s performance is esthesic in relation to Strauss’s composition but poietic in relation to the distinct recorded text that it produced, which may further be approached esthesically itself. Any esthesic process can be influenced by the intertextual outlook of the interpreter.

154  Post-existing music 2 Some of the immediately post-Drive sales of ‘A Real Hero’ considered above might be attributable to word of mouth, and to listeners hearing the track because of its appearance on a chart, rather than within Drive itself. Drive could nonetheless still be credited as the initial prompt for sales of these kinds. 3 These visual aesthetics, like the turn-of-the-century rags, are somewhat anachronistic for a film set in 1936 Chicago. Bryan S. Wright (2016, p. 46) argues that the music’s ‘refreshing and new’ presentation in this unfamiliar context might also have been a factor in its subsequent success. 4 Hamlisch also won the other two musical Oscars – for ‘Original Dramatic Score’ and ‘Original Song’ – in the same year, for The Way We Were (dir. Sydney Pollack, 1973) and its title song (the latter co-written with Alan and Marilyn Bergman). 5 Waldo (1976, pp. 187–8): ‘As I write this it seems almost silly to recount how omnipresent the theme from The Sting, Joplin’s “The Entertainer”, was in 1974 and 1975.’ 6 In his study of the popular reception of Barber’s Adagio, Luke Howard (2007, p. 56) argues that ‘the number of people in the [decades after the 1970s] who associated the Adagio with the funerals of Roosevelt, [John F.] Kennedy, Albert Einstein, or Grace Kelly pales to insignificance beside the millions who have heard this music in the soundtracks to The Elephant Man, El Norte [dir. Gregory Nava, 1983], Platoon, Lorenzo’s Oil [dir. George Miller, 1992], Les Roseaux sauvage[s] [dir. André Téchiné, 1994], Crime of the Century [dir. Mark Rydell, 1996], Amélie or S1m0ne [dir. Andrew Niccol, 2002]’. 7 As Hans Keller (2006 [1949], p. 30) bluntly put it when writing of films’ uses of classical pieces in general, ‘[a] rose thrown into a midden . . . does not improve the latter’s smell, but rather starts to stink itself’. Whether particular pieces are ‘roses’, and the films that use them all ‘middens’, can at best only be a matter for case-by-case debate. 8 This is not a modern situation. Jeremy Barham has studied cinematic appropriations of Schumann’s ‘Träumerei’ (from the Kinderszenen, Op. 15, 1838), finding 19 in the years 1932–53 (14 of which are in cartoons). Barham suggests that even by 1940 this practice contributed to the piece, ‘at least partially, shifting in public perception from being a well-loved classic to becoming hackneyed and clichéd’ (2011a, p. 290). Yet Schumann himself referred to the pieces of the Kinderszenen as ‘“mere bagatelles” in comparison with other, more substantial works’, and Barham suggests that their creation was in part a compromise undertaken by a composer ‘compelled to confront the bourgeois marketplace with all its inherent restrictions and opportunities’, producing something ‘popular’ in order to afford himself the freedom to write those ‘other, more substantial works’ (ibid., pp. 280–1). 9 Howard (2007, pp. 63–4) notes specifically the use of Barber’s Agnus Dei – the composer’s own choral of arrangement of the Adagio – in a love scene in The Scarlet Letter (dir. Roland Joffé, 1995), which he argues ‘was largely regarded by critics and viewers as just another blatant misstep in a deeply flawed movie’. 10 Drive’s current relationship to ‘A Real Hero’ thus presents an example of the ideal suggested by Quentin Tarantino (in Romney and Wootton 1995, p. 131; emphasis original): ‘If a song in a movie is used really well, as far as I’m concerned, that movie owns that song, it can never be used again. And if it is used again. . . You know, they used ‘Be My Baby’ in Dirty Dancing [dir. Emile ­A rdolino, 1987] and it’s like, that’s Mean Streets’ [dir. Martin Scorsese, 1973] song, how dare you use “Be My Baby”. If you use a song in a movie and it’s right, then, you know, you’ve got a marriage. Every time you hear that song you’ll think of that movie.’

Post-existing music  155 11 Playing on my family’s first PC in the mid 1990s, I would become familiar with Joplin through MIDI renditions of rags on the soundtrack to the pool-­simulation game Virtual Pool (dev. Celeris, 1995). 12 Following performances in 1922, 1960, and 1963, Zarathustra was in fact not heard again until 1979. Since then, it has been given at least once every five years to the present day. The year 1968 itself is thus not to be taken as a point of instantaneous change, as the presentation of data in Table 4.1 might imply. 13 Williamson (1993, p. 109) labels Eine Alpensinfonie as another ‘showpiece for virtuoso orchestras’. That piece is also an exception in regard to its Proms appearances, receiving all 12 of its performances after 1968 (the first actually in 1982). 14 Paul A. Merkley (2007, p. 8) finds, based on archival research and interviews with production staff, that ‘Zarathustra was chosen for 2001 because it was a majestic fanfare of the approximate length that the director needed. Nietzsche was not the reason for this choice, and did not influence the film’s plot or even its implications. By the time Kubrick chose this music his shooting was complete.’ However, Kate McQuiston (2013, p. 157) points out that, while the director was evidently searching for a fanfare for his opening credits, ‘it is not clear whether Kubrick also planned to use the winning piece in subsequent moments; the connotations of Strauss’s work could have presented a good reason to do so’. 15 While Strauss gave later parts of Zarathustra subtitles corresponding to those in Nietzsche, the opening has no explicit title. Williamson (1993, p. 55) notes that it ‘is generally assumed to be identical with the book’s opening because of the printing of its first words as prologue to the tone poem’. 16 According to Williamson (ibid., p. 57), ‘most commentators have isolated the sunrise, illustrated in the trumpet calls and C major cadence of the first twenty-­ one bars, as indicative of the work’s feeling for nature, its relationship to landscape, though they have seldom felt the need to go further’. 17 Some evidence of this is provided by 2001’s placing of sixth in Sight & Sound’s most recent poll of critics on ‘the greatest films of all time’ (Sight & Sound 2012), while neither The Sting nor any film featuring Barber’s Adagio appear in the top 100. 18 Earlier in the same episode, a scene in which a weightless Homer eats crisps aboard a space shuttle is scored by The Blue Danube, recalling that piece’s use in 2001’s docking sequence. 19 If not understood to reference 2001, the Zoolander scene’s music might seem nonsensical. Its epic orchestral sound, building tension, and majestic climaxes have little obvious relation to two men acting like apes. Despite the autosonic quotation here being shortened to include only Strauss’s first two brass proclamations (with the second itself abbreviated through a clever edit), the music nonetheless resolves onto its tonic chord of C major, while by contrast there is no real resolution to the actions of the models. They fail to conquer the machine through either destruction or control, and the expectation generated by the music that something climactic will happen dissipates into nothing, the piece fading out almost apologetically on that final chord. There is incongruity here, which may in itself be funny (with music acting as the ‘straight man’, in terms suggested by Miguel Mera (2002, p. 98)), but nothing more. Arguably, in fact, the connection to 2001 is also not exploited particularly well. The music prompts us to draw an initial parallel to the apes of Kubrick’s film, and to notice a further, more specific correspondence in the action when one of the models picks up the ornamental bone. But the lack of resolution is still an issue, because while the cue lasts for about 50 seconds, the joke goes nowhere beyond these basic parallels. Had the iMac been destroyed with the bone – an action prevented by the second

156  Post-existing music

20

21

22

23

24

25

model – this achievement would have recalled the defeat of HAL 9000 later in 2001. Or, in mastering the iMac, the models could have been seen to evolve, as do the apes and then human race in 2001. Maybe their failure to do either is part of the joke: the thwarting of expectations is a common comic format, and here occurs in regard both to the action (where an expected climax does not transpire) and the music (for those who recognize that the piece does not reach its true climax, or even just that the C major–C minor–C major progression presented in Zoolander does not really go anywhere; Strauss’s full fanfare journeys away from the tonic in order to return triumphantly to it). But the setup in this case does not have a real payoff. On Wenders, though, Annette Davison (2004, p. 160; emphasis original) argues that the director ‘wants to avoid fixing the meanings of the songs with the image, which is why he frequently films his characters listening to records (Kings of the Road [1976], Wings of Desire [1987]), or jukeboxes (The American Friend [1977]), or attending live performances (Wings of Desire)’. Visuals are only part of the matter, however, and so any avoidance of particularly strong imagery in partnership with music does not fully solve the apparent problem: listeners may still recall Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ ‘The Carny’ as the song that Marion listens (and sings along internally) to in her caravan in Wings of Desire, for instance. Discussing cinematic appropriations of Schumann’s music, for instance, Jeremy Barham (2011a, p. 296) asks, ‘if film is “putting words into our mouths” by putting them into the “mouth” of the music, does this diminish the depth and latitude of our free-floating imaginations?’ Williamson (1993, p. 63) summarizes that Strauss ‘begins with a thread of Nietzschean narrative, from sunrise to the naive believers in religion, largely abandons it for hints and structural parallels in the central sections of the tone poem, but increasingly suggests a Nietzschean context from the mid-point of “Von de Wissenschaft” to the end’. The latter idea in the context of A Clockwork Orange is not Kubrick’s as such, but rather that of Anthony Burgess, the author of the novel on which the film is based. Horace B. English, in an article primarily discussing the addition of images to music in Fantasia (1940), expresses a similar idea in different terms: ‘Whoever joyfully responds to music for himself is “musical”; and he who merely parrots the stereotyped phrases of the critics without response of his own is truly the unmusical one’ (1942–3, p. 30). I quote here the same Bakhtin (1981 [1934/5], pp. 276–7) passage on dialogism at greater length: ‘The living utterance, having taken meaning and shape at a particular historical moment in a socially specific environment, cannot fail to brush up against thousands of living dialogic threads, woven by socio-ideological consciousness around the given object of an utterance; it cannot fail to become an active participant in social dialogue. After all, the utterance arises out of this dialogue as a continuation of it and as a rejoinder to it – it does not approach the object from the sidelines.’ In many ways, such possibilities are not all that new. Discussing cinematic appropriations of Schumann’s ‘Träumerei’ (from the Kinderszenen, Op. 15, 1838), Jeremy Barham (2011a, pp. 295–6) suggests that ‘film merely supplies sets of associations equivalent in kind to, though not necessarily precisely matching, the imaginative responses the composer considered a natural and legitimate part of the music-listening experience’. Winters (2014, p. 126) points out that the reactions of nineteenth-century audiences to symphonic music may have been ‘shaped by the dominant narrative forms of painting, novel, and play’, encouraged by encounters with both explicitly programmatic compositions and programmatic readings of others. Dean Duncan draws a broader analogy between film music

Post-existing music  157

26

27

28 29 30

31

and programme music, arguing that film, like a programme, can provide ‘common terms on which initiates and neophytes alike can meet’ in their musical understanding (2003, p. 121). Duncan further implicates piano transcriptions in nineteenth-century attempts to ‘democratize’ music, noting that these ‘brought inaccessible large-scale works into the parlor, some degree of high culture to those excluded from privilege’ (ibid., p. 118). The implications for musical reception of films’ formal adaptations of pre-existing pieces are considered in more detail below. Given that films might expose people not only to individual pieces but also to whole genres of music with which they would otherwise be unfamiliar, the idea of audience members lacking some music-stylistic competence is not necessarily far-fetched. A basic level of competence is actually what allows listeners to be surprised: those with no knowledge of relevant conventions are unlikely to compare different versions of a piece (consciously or unconsciously), for they will probably not identify the musical utterances in question as being related in that way. This is a form of what Theodor Adorno dubbed ‘atomistic listening’, whereby a listener’s greater focus (in some sense) is given to certain parts of a piece at the expense of others. Writing in 1941, Adorno worried that the audio quality of radio was not adequate for the presentation of symphonic music, the result being that ‘[t]he meaning of the music automatically shifts from the totality to the individual moments because their interrelation and articulation by dynamics and colors is no longer fully affected’ (2002 [1941], p. 262). Even if a whole piece is presented by a film, as by Adorno’s radio, other sounds (such as dialogue) can interfere with the music’s audibility, while we might also be distracted from the music (if we were ever listening to it in the first place) by the visuals or the progression of the plot. Much as if only certain excerpts were presented at all, then, we tend to listen to certain parts of the piece, and so are trained to listen out for those parts when hearing it again later on. This mode contrasts with Adorno’s ideal of ‘structural listening’ (1989 [1962], p. 5), in which audiences are able to comprehend the musical whole as they listen to a piece, relating individual parts to the broader structure conceived by the composer(s). See, for example, Williams (2013) on musical borrowing in hip-hop. For a general summary of technology’s effects on musical creation and consumption, see Katz (2010). Williamson (1993, p. 53) does not appeal explicitly to a notion of historical authenticity here, but does note that the performances he judges more positively were led by ‘conductors close to Strauss’s generation’. His suggestions find an echo in a recent Gramophone review of Gustavo Dudamel’s 2013 recording of the piece with the Berlin Philharmonic, which criticizes ‘Dudamel’s veritably Alan Partridgean unveiling of Strauss’s mountain sunrise. Trumpets trumpet unlikeable vainglorious triumphalism, while the deliberate tempo has more to do with a cinematic rather than a concert-hall experience’ (Clark 2014). That recording features celestial cover art, of course, and is even promoted by a YouTube trailer with the strapline ‘Landing September 2013’ (Deutsche Grammophon 2013). The art and choice of Strauss repertoire – Zarathustra is the headliner, Till Eulenspiegel and Don Juan the support – additionally reference Karajan’s aforementioned 1973 recording of the same repertoire with the same orchestra, perhaps interestingly given Dudamel’s then-potential candidacy for the position of the Philharmonic’s chief conductor. Williamson (1993, p. 53) does offer that the ‘tendency to inflation’ was perhaps ‘a general problem with recording in the age after Klemperer, Barbirolli and Karajan, where olympian wisdom could add anything up to five minutes to the

158  Post-existing music time of the Adagietto of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony’. His choice of that example is an odd one, though, given the Adagietto’s famous use in Death in Venice (dir. Luchino Visconti, 1971). Barham (2011b, pp. 268–9) argues that Visconti’s film ‘helped cement . . . a fashionable performance tradition depending on extreme slowness’, albeit one ‘that had begun during the post-war years in the concert hall, recording and other contexts’. 32 Orbison (in Kent 1989, p. 40) himself remarked in one interview that ‘[p]eople say how dark and melancholy my songs appear, but that’s a misnomer, I feel’. Clearly, not all other interpretations of his music focus on this ‘darkness’ either. As L ­ ehman (2013, p. 113) notes, Pretty Woman uses its namesake straightforwardly to accompany ‘the transformation scene, when the character played by Julia Roberts (a poor call girl) tries on stylish clothes in an upscale boutique, thus becoming the pretty woman of the title’. Whereas, in Lehman’s reading, ‘the song is not really about the pretty woman of the title but rather the intense sexual longing of its feverishly daydreaming male protagonist’. Despite its comedy elements, Only the Lonely gets closer to Lehman’s (ibid., p. 114) understanding of its titular Orbison song: ‘Both the ­ urthermore, song and the movie’s plot deal with the sexual desires of a lonely man. F [lead actor] John Candy’s obesity places him well outside the realm of conventional male leads, creating a parallel between the actor/character and the Orbison persona. Like Orbison himself, Candy and his character are odd and offbeat. Even the funeral home setting fits the emphasis on death in Orbison’s work.’ 33 The 1987 version of ‘In Dreams’ was released on the Virgin compilation In Dreams: The Greatest Hits (VGD 3514), the title of which also hints at the central position to which Blue Velvet elevated the song in Orbison’s catalogue. The other tracks on that album were actually recorded in 1985, pre-Blue Velvet, and handed to Virgin upon Orbison signing for the company. However, they had already had a small-scale release on The Great Roy Orbison: All-Time Greatest Hits, an album distributed on Skyline (SL 805) in Europe and Silver Eagle Records (SE-1046) in North America. The Great Roy Orbison also features a different, now rarely heard recording of ‘In Dreams’. Presumably, this version was recorded in 1985 along with the other tracks on the same album, and then replaced for Virgin’s In Dreams. It does have a markedly different sound to the rest of The Great Roy Orbison, though, for instance in featuring live strings as opposed to the synthesized instruments of other tracks, which may suggest it was recorded at another time. Whenever this was, that the ‘1985’ version is closer to the 1963 original than the 1987 version in its arrangement provides further evidence that Orbison’s conception of ‘In Dreams’ changed following Blue Velvet’s use of the song. 3 4 Orbison co-wrote five of ten tracks on Mystery Girl, while the others were written for him. In total, 14 other writers and co-writers are credited alongside O ­ rbison, as well as six producers. Arguably, therefore, the album presents a synthesis of perspectives on his artistic identity.

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Post-existing music  161 Merkley, P. A. (2007) ‘“Stanley Hates This But I Like It!”: North vs. Kubrick on the Music for 2001: A Space Odyssey’, Journal of Film Music, 2(1), pp. 1–34. Moore, A. (2002) ‘Authenticity as Authentication’, Popular Music, 21(2), pp. 209–23. Nattiez, J.-J. (1990 [1987]) Music and Discourse: Toward a Semiology of Music. Translated from the original French by C. Abbate. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Nordern, E. (1970 [1968]) ‘Playboy Interview: Stanley Kubrick’, in Agel, J. (ed.) The Making of Kubrick’s 2001. New York: Signet, pp. 328–54. Opus 3 Artists (n.d.) ‘The Earth – An HD Odyssey’. Available at: www.opus3artists. com/artists/the-earth-an-hd-odyssey (accessed 26 March 2018). Pushluschtae (2015) Also sprach Zarathustra (acapella cover) – Pushluschtae. YouTube video. Available at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=stCHLcr-ZOQ (accessed 26 March 2018). Romney, J. and Wootton, A. (eds) (1995) Celluloid Jukebox: Popular Music and the Movies Since the 50s. London: British Film Institute. Sendra, T. (2014) ‘Electric Youth – Innerworld [review]’, AllMusic. Available at: www.allmusic.com/album/innerworld-mw0002695595 (accessed 26 March 2018). Serinus, J. V. (2007) ‘Klaus Heymann: A 20th-Anniversary Chat with the Founder of Naxos’, Stereophile.com, 29 December. Available at: www.stereophile.com/­ interviews/1207hey (accessed 26 March 2018). Sight & Sound contributors (2012) ‘The 50 Greatest Films of All Time’, Sight & Sound, September. Available at: www.bfi.org.uk/news/50-greatest-films-all-time (accessed 26 March 2018). Smith, A. (2009) Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth. London: Bloomsbury. Universal Studios (2005) ‘The Art of The Sting’, The Sting, dir. G. R. Hill, 1973. DVD, Universal Studios. Waldo, T. (1976) This Is Ragtime. New York: Hawthorne. Williams, J. (2013) Rhymin’ and Stealin’: Musical Borrowing in Hip-Hop. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Williamson, J. (1993) Strauss: Also sprach Zarathustra. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Winters, B. (2014) Music, Performance, and the Realities of Film: Shared Concert Experiences in Screen Fiction. Abingdon: Routledge. Wright, B. S. (2016) ‘The Ragtime Piano Revival in America: Its Origins, Institutions, and Community, 1940–2015’. PhD thesis. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh. Yang, M. (2006) ‘Für Elise, circa 2000: Postmodern Readings of Beethoven in Popular Contexts’, Popular Music and Society, 29(1), pp. 1–15.

Conclusion

This book’s central argument, introduced in its first pages, is that the pre-­ existing status – the pre-existingness, perhaps – of pre-existing music is crucial to what that music does in films, and how it does it. An obvious statement, surely, and yet one that had not to this point prompted a broad exploration of pre-existing music as a type of music heard in the cinema, at least without further divisions being drawn relating to more specific stylistic and other attributes of pieces of music and the films that use them. What, then, has this new perspective shown? The use of pre-existing music is, first of all, surrounded and conditioned by particular production contexts and considerations. Most notable of those discussed in Chapter 1, arguably, are copyright and licensing. These are not factors in all cases of such music’s use, but that filmmakers must attend to and abide by the relevant laws and processes is the rule rather than the exception, whether they hope to quote music by Beethoven or the Beatles. The use of pre-existing music is also viewed commercially and critically, by those in and around the film and music industries, as a distinct practice connected to distinct risks and possibilities. And, no matter the individual origins of pre-existing pieces, they afford a particular way of working with musical material, one in which figures other than a composer and potentially with no conventional musical training – principally, directors and music supervisors – may have control. Uses of pre-existing music, from the few notes of Medal of Honor: Underground (dev. DreamWorks Interactive, 2000) self-quoted by Michael ­Giacchino in Ratatouille (dir. Brad Bird, Jan Pinkava, 2007), to the lengthier quotations of ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’ heard in Die Hard: With a Vengeance (dir. John McTiernan, 1995), foreground specific intertextual knowledge and experience as key to the construction of meaning, as ­discussed in Chapter 2. For filmmakers and their audiences, the other texts and contexts to which the music is known to be connected direct understandings of its effect in any new situation. It is not that film music of other kinds cannot or does not work in this way, whether by design or interpretation; far from it. Pre-existing music inevitably does this foregrounding, though, and does it more, inviting deliberate, detailed interpretation based on that

Conclusion  163 intertextual knowledge to an extent simply not true of other kinds of scoring. And it does so not least because filmmakers and audiences are aware of this fact, and respond to each other’s awareness when they construct and interrogate films in intricate ways. Pre-existing music is often expected to be ‘clever’, but it is also commonly ambiguous, opening films up to readings that diverge strikingly from both authorial intention and each other. The explicitly intertextual nature of pre-existing music in film – the referentiality of a musical quotation, as Chapter 3 puts it – can be seen as its defining feature. Again, it is not that music of other types cannot have this quality; only that pre-existing music flaunts it. Referentiality has been central to such music’s distinctive performance of a variety of narrative functions and effects, whether establishing time periods in Forrest Gump (dir. Robert Zemeckis, 1994) or constructing unity of form and narrative in films such as I Am Sam (dir. Jessie Nelson, 2001) and The Five-Year Engagement (dir. Nicholas Stoller, 2012). Clearly, filmmakers who use pre-existing music are not necessarily any less creative than those who use other types of music. Even when the functions are commonplace to music in film, pre-­ existing music has been deployed to fulfil them in distinctive ways, often involving elaborate planning that belies any facile notion of a ‘copy and paste’ process. It is no wonder uses of such music account for some of the most often-­discussed musical moments in film history. The prominent use of pre-existing music in so many films from different eras and traditions, as demonstrated to some degree by the range of examples appearing throughout Chapter 3 and the rest of this book, moreover, underlines the significance of the practice within that history. Pre-existing music is, uniquely, music changed by its filmic appropriation; music with both a ‘before’ and ‘after’ in the public sphere. Chapter 4 is, in one sense, the exception in this book, as it deals not with pre-existing music as such, but rather with post-existing music. The focus is not on music as a functional element of film, in other words, but on the interactions with film through which our understandings of music can be changed. Yet, that change must be viewed as inherent to the practice of using pre-existing music; as a function or effect of the music’s use in a particular film context, just like the establishment of time period or construction of unity. Any such use may have this effect for at least some perceivers who encounter it, though in a number of cases a film’s influence is widely visible, as with Also sprach Zarathustra’s culturally conspicuous signification of ‘space’ following its appearances in 2001: A Space Odyssey (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1968). After so many uses of pre-existing music in film, these effects on musical reception are significant not only as an element of that practice and so of film history more broadly, but also in relation to music history, across styles and genres. Today, we live in a world of post-existing music. My introduction additionally promised other benefits of this study. First, that while attention was focused on the use of pre-existing music in narrative film, points made would be applicable to the use of such music in other

164 Conclusion types of film and screen media. Direct consideration will be briefly given to the latter here, given the more significant differences with narrative film. The academic study of music’s roles in media such as television and video games has, to a large extent, developed from that of film music as a starting point. Of course, each medium has particular attributes and circumstances that prompt it to deal with music in particular ways – on which more in a moment – but similar approaches to study are encouraged not least by ­explicit connections on the production side. These include crossover of franchises (think of James Bond or Star Wars video games, for instance, whether based on specific films or with novel storylines), personnel (including composers like Michael Giacchino, who has worked on games, television shows, and films), and individual elements (such as Giacchino’s aforementioned self-quotation, in Ratatouille, of a musical theme from his score to the video game Medal of Honor: Underground). In terms of reception, too, distinctions between media are not as clear as they may once have been: films, television shows, video games, and the myriad content on the web alike can all be experienced on the same device (a modern games console, for instance) in the same setting (the family living room, for example). If the idea of studying pre-existing or any kind of music only in film may not itself be problematic, given that films have formed and still form (if to a lessening extent) a relatively well-defined body of texts, to my mind such an investigation cannot now be undertaken without reference to the wider media environment. Many of the manners and effects of pre-existing music’s use in film outlined in this book can be easily identified elsewhere. When I discuss with students the appropriation and recontextualization of pre-existing songs – and specifically their lyrical content, as considered with reference to several examples in Chapters 2 and 3 of this book – I often point them away from the cinema and toward daytime television, for example. Specifically, I suggest they watch the BBC factual television series Homes Under the Hammer, which has run since 2003 and as of 2018 is in its 21st series with over 1,200 episodes made. Homes Under the Hammer follows the auction and renovation of domestic and commercial properties, each hour-long show following the same simple formula in which three different properties are shown in separate ‘before’ (introduction and auction) and ‘after’ (mid- or post-­renovation) segments spread across the programme to encourage audience retention. It is ‘the kind of low-engagement programming that suits any time and any mood’ (Carter 2016). And it is famed for its ‘[l]iteral music’ (Verdier 2015); its ‘legendary . . . obscure musical puns’ (Prior 2015) that occur multiple times in every episode. ­ ammer, Take an example from series 18, episode 60 of Homes Under the H which originally aired in the United Kingdom on 18 December 2014. In the second ‘before’ segment, as the buyer of the property is first shown onscreen, the instrumental introduction to Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Go Your Own Way’ plays.1 No lyrics are heard at this point, but the song is recognizable, and can draw to mind its lyrics for those who know them (and particularly,

Conclusion  165 here, for regular viewers of Homes Under the Hammer already familiar with the show’s tactics and so engaging a music-attentive strategy of viewing). We do not yet know anything about the buyer, but ‘Go Your Own Way’ might prompt us to guess that he has ‘gone his own way’ in some respect. Sure enough, we soon learn from the show’s presenter and off-screen narrator that he switched from a political career into self-employed property development, after which the song’s titular lyric sounds to affirm the significance of this change. ‘Is he going to go his own way here?’, asks the narrator in regard to the renovation at hand, to make the connection obvious for those who had not yet cottoned on. The song’s unheard and heard lyrics here work with and around the show’s script, reinforcing the presenter/narrator’s ideas and authority, and encouraging the audience into relatively active, investigative engagement with the programme. ‘Go Your Own Way’ also returns a few minutes after its initial appearance, acting as a cohering theme for the segment. Such uses of pre-existing pieces in multiple roles is something we might expect of a Stanley Kubrick or Martin Scorsese film (and was surely influenced by such films, even if indirectly), but here is mass produced for a potentially much wider audience. ‘Go Your Own Way’ would potentially be a costly song for a commercial filmmaker to license. Homes Under the Hammer, made solely for broadcast on BBC television, can use almost any pre-existing music its makers choose because of blanket licence agreements the BBC has with PRS for ­Music (representing publishing interests) and PPL (for sound recordings) (see BBC n.d.). Such blanket licences would be unattainable for film companies needing rights to cover theatrical, home-media, and televisual presentations across multiple territories.2 Another example of a difference arising from the particularities of television as a format concerns the potential effect of an appropriation on subsequent reception of the music. If employed as a title theme across multiple episodes of a long-running series, a pre-existing piece’s foregrounded association with that series can be cemented through greater repetition than could ever realistically occur in a film. The use of the finale from Rossini’s William Tell overture as opening and closing music for the early television (1949–57) (and, before that, radio (1933–54)) series of The Lone Ranger, for example, was instrumental in establishing arguably the strongest of all connections between a specific media property and a previously unrelated piece, at least for audiences in the United States.3 Video games can differ substantially from media texts of other types in their uses of music, because of their interactive nature. If video-game music is programmed to be somehow dynamic, in responding to actions and game states triggered either directly by a player or in connection with choices the player makes (such as entering a particular area), its structure and authorship can be complicated. In such cases, as Karen Collins (2008, p. 3) notes, ‘[w]hile [the gamer is] still, in a sense, the receiver of the end sound signal, they are also partly the transmitter of that signal, playing an active role in the triggering and timing of these audio events’. Each gameplay can be

166 Conclusion different, meaning that each player’s musical experience can be different, and will have been partially constructed by that player themselves. ­Dynamic uses of pre-existing music are perhaps most obvious in music games such as Guitar Hero (dev. Harmonix, 2005) and its sequels, in which gamers play virtual instruments (through inputs on real, instrument-shaped controllers) in renditions of particular tracks. These games generally ask players to strive for perfect recreations of the original recorded performances, however, and can therefore impose tight controls on a gamer’s musical creativity. Tim Summers (2016, p. 183) suggests that the Guitar Hero series, by muting notes that are not input correctly by the gamer (or substituting them for a ‘plunk’ sound), ‘rules out any creativity not in the original track: it cannot be heard at all’. One might argue, though, that the ability of the gamer to fail nonetheless furnishes them with a limited kind of musical agency over pre-existing tracks. A quest for perfection in Guitar Hero and similar music games will normally require several attempts at each individual track, and the potential for repetition here is multiplied by the game’s inclusion of varying difficulty levels. Recalling again points made in Chapter 4, that music’s repetition and also audibility (the latter, of course, similarly present in these music-focused games) are significant factors in a film’s ability to popularize that music with its audiences, it is no surprise that a survey of video gamers (Jacobs and Jacobs 2008) concluded that ‘playing Rock Band [dev. Harmonix, 2007] and Guitar Hero directly leads to music sales. Of those who played them, nearly one-third say they’ve purchased songs featured on these games.’4 Guitar Hero can thus help to create and cement musical canons in much the same way as a film such as 2001, though Summers builds on his observations regarding the limitations on musical creativity in these games to sound an additional note of warning. To fail deliberately at Guitar Hero would, of course, not be a normal mode of engagement with the game, and it is true that Guitar Hero establishes the original interpretation of a track (including, in some cases, portions that were originally improvised) firmly as the correct interpretation for those playing in a normal way. Summers thus labels Guitar Hero ‘an agent’ for the ‘cultural project of the historicization and canonization of popular music’, in which its role is that of ‘“fixing” popular music texts’ (2016, p. 184). Films that present adapted versions of pieces and, indeed, more novel recontextualizations (given that Guitar Hero situates its music in conventional performance scenarios) arguably push against this tide, obscuring notions of an ‘original’ even as they draw attention to particular musical texts. Music games may have a more one-way effect, but of course are only one type of video game; a broader study of pre-existing music in games might consider how the mechanics of different game types interact with and affect our understandings of pre-existing musical structures. Clearly, then, many of the issues discussed in this book pertain to uses of pre-existing music outside of narrative film. Some of my conclusions will be directly applicable to other media, while others will require modification.

Conclusion  167 It is, of course, in the areas of difference that the most interest lies, and for which this book’s establishment of points of reference may therefore prove most useful. However, my questioning of certain other, existing points of reference could also profitably be taken up elsewhere, even in relation to film alone. Most broadly, the distinction between interactive and noninteractive media forms was problematized, particularly in Chapter 2 and in terms also briefly cited above in relation to Homes Under the Hammer. In short, it was shown that the presence of pre-existing music in a film – ­conventionally, a noninteractive form – encourages perceivers to explore and investigate that film and its intertexts. This investigative mode of consumption involves understanding and engaging with the film’s material structure as a somewhat interactive, changeable form: one that may be paused, rewound, slowed down, and so on, but also combined in various ways with other texts within the perceiver’s overall experience (something that, more and more, occurs ­incidentally as well as deliberately, as when we absent-mindedly browse social media on our smartphones while watching a film). Chapter 4 ­additionally noted broader trends of the blurring of media production and consumption, in relation to YouTube specifically, and it is within this climate that studies claiming to examine or even hypothesize the reception of supposedly noninteractive or otherwise ‘closed-off’ forms must now operate. In this study of pre-existing music in film, that operation was unavoidable. Elsewhere, even in the relatively narrow area of screen-music studies, it will require devoted effort but result in scholarship that is more reflective of and relevant to modern culture. That studying audience engagements with instances of pre-existing music in film led me inevitably to the conclusion just stated provides some evidence to support my claim, again from this book’s introduction, that an understanding of pre-existing music’s use in film could be central to an understanding of film music more broadly. More such evidence comes from various other points in the book. The referentiality of pre-existing music discussed in Chapter 3, for example, was argued to have implications for ideas of how music can be placed relative to a film’s diegesis, and (along with the aforementioned notion of investigative consumption) of its ‘inaudibility’ to a film’s audience. As noted there, such ideas as they were once stated have already been questioned and refined, but attending to pre-existing music nonetheless provides new evidence to inform debates that are still ongoing. In relation to these and other observations of pre-existing music’s effects, moreover, it is important to recall once more that pre-existing music is not deployed and interpreted in manners completely alien to other film music. A visit to the John Williams Fan Network forum suggests that score enthusiasts in fact apply their investigative mode of consumption more commonly to original music, for instance. Chapter 2’s exploration of how the different identifications and situations of individual audience members affect their attention to musical quotations, with particular emphasis on score enthusiasts as an interpretive community, offers only a relatively small contribution to

168 Conclusion research on real film-music audiences, given the range of individuals, films, and soundtracks that could productively be subject to an audience-studies approach. The obvious potential for significant interpretive variation that is built in to uses of pre-existing music demanded such an approach,5 but the findings presented in this book point to the promise it may hold elsewhere. Again, full consideration of pre-existing music – a form of film music situated at the extremes of certain continua – may serve usefully to shift broader perspectives. This book has studied the use of pre-existing music as the most explicitly intertextual film-music practice. Conceived in a Kristevan sense as concerning relations not merely between texts, but also between texts and their culturally situated authors and audiences, the concept of intertextuality provides a frame for our understandings of a musical quotation’s centrifugal nature. Examples throughout the book have demonstrated that film-music production and consumption occur with reference to the producer and consumer’s own experience and outlook. This is true not only of uses of pre-­ existing music, though, but also of all music in all films. Hence, for instance, the great potential of audience-studies approaches, and also of access, where possible, to filmmakers and materials detailing their intentions (see Daubney 2016). Textual study also has much to reveal about how the forms of specific cues and scores relate to those of their various musical cousins, though, and how their effects might be conditioned by such intertextual relationships. In ‘original’ scores even relatively apparent relationships, such as in the case of Henry Jackman’s pastiche of ­Superman (dir. Richard ­Donner, 1978) in Kick-Ass (dir. Matthew Vaughn, 2010), discussed in this book’s introduction, remain understudied. So much film music relies on these relationships for easy signification, and yet so much film-music scholarship (not to mention other kinds of discussion) explores them only in surface detail.6 Better understandings of how all film music works will result from closer attention to such music’s intertextual nature, grounded more firmly in the ideas of Kristeva and others. Finally, however, we should not lose sight of the interest that pre-existing music’s use in narrative film holds in itself. Such music itself will, of course, continue to be used in future films, while many instances of its use already in circulation remain unexplored. There is no lack of material to feed ongoing study of this book’s specific topic. As existing case studies proved a valuable resource for me in developing the broader conclusions outlined here, so I hope that my conclusions will be applied, challenged, and developed in further close readings. To reiterate, pre-existing music is a significant feature of the soundscape of cinema. (To offer our own reworking in a book about such things, we might say that this music makes a real din in the films to which it has been reeled in.) It points outside of the cinema and into our personal and cultural histories, changing those histories as it does so. The numerous possibilities of its use have engaged filmmakers of all kinds, and fascinated audiences who have encountered their effects.

Conclusion  169 Unlikely partnerships have been forged, serving not only the films and their makers: the music has often been renewed and revived through its recontextualization. Clearly, the use of pre-existing music in narrative film is a crucial film-music practice, but, more than that, it is a crucial practice in the intertwined histories of film and music, and one that therefore demands our continued attention.

Notes 1 This is, incidentally, another of the songs used in Forrest Gump’s running montage (see Chapter 3, p. 81), where its lyrics are recontextualized to refer to Forrest ‘going his own way’ in choosing to spend three years running back and forth across the United States with no obvious motivation. 2 When other BBC shows such as Top Gear (2002–) are released on home-media formats, any pre-existing music used in a broadcast version of a programme is generally substituted for library music. The BBC’s blanket licences cover broadcast only. 3 The association of Rossini and Ranger has since been repeated in various films, most recently Disney’s big-budget The Lone Ranger (dir. Gore Verbinski, 2013). ‘An intellectual is someone who can listen to the William Tell overture without thinking of The Lone Ranger’, runs a joke universal enough to have been attributed to figures as disparate as Dan Rather and Billy Connolly, among others; the Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations plumps for ‘Anonymous’ (Brandreth 2013, p. 167). 4 A USA Today article contains illuminating sales figures for several tracks featured in games such as Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (dev. Neversoft, 2007). Digital sales of DragonForce’s 2006 song ‘Through the Fire and Flames’, for instance, rose ‘from fewer than 2,000 weekly to a high of 37,825 the week ending Dec. 30, a week when many who got the game as a holiday gift were playing it’ (Snider 2008). Research also suggests that music games encourage individuals to learn real instruments (The Telegraph 2008). 5 I must, however, thank the anonymous reviewer and the series editors for encouraging me to adopt this approach more thoroughly than I had initially planned. Lauren Anderson’s work (2011, 2012, 2016) was also an inspiration. 6 Jeremy Orosz (2015, pp. 300–1), for instance, has criticized a lack of ‘precision in describing how [John] Williams uses music from other sources . . . among writers of academic scholarship, print journalism, and “vernacular criticism” (Internet commentary). All too often we read that a Williams score “sounds like” or “was inspired by” another piece, without any mention of why or how this might be so.’ Orosz’s article as a whole constitutes an attempt to properly evaluate Williams’s use of practices such as pastiche.

References Anderson, L. (2011) ‘Dancing about Architecture? Talking about Popular Music in Film Soundtracks’, Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies, 8(1), pp. 188–215. Anderson, L. (2012) ‘“That’s How It’s Supposed to Make You Feel”: Talking with Audiences about “Both Sides Now” and Love Actually’, Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies, 9(2), pp. 206–38. Anderson, L. (2016) ‘Beyond Figures of the Audience: Towards a Cultural Understanding of the Film Music Audience’, Music, Sound, and the Moving Image, 10(1), pp. 25–51.

170 Conclusion BBC (n.d.) ‘Archive, Rights and Clearances’. Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ commissioning/tv/production/articles/archive-rights-clearances (accessed 26 March 2018). Brandreth, G. (ed.) (2013) Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations. 5th edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Carter, A. (2016) ‘Homes Under the Hammer: The Most Comforting Show on TV’, Den of Geek, 2 August. Available at: www.denofgeek.com/uk/tv/homes-underthe-hammer/42470/homes-under-the-hammer-the-most-comforting-show-on-tv (accessed 26 March 2018). Collins, K. (2008) Game Sound: An Introduction to the History, Theory, and Practice of Video Game Music and Sound Design. London: MIT Press. Daubney, K. (2016) ‘Studying Film Scores: Working in Archives and with Living Composers’, in Cooke, M. and Ford, F. (eds) The Cambridge Companion to Film Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 114–25. Jacobs, F. and Jacobs, P. (2008) ‘Rock-Based Video Games: They’re What Sells Music’, Jacobs Media. Available at: http://web.archive.org/web/20141010062636/ http://www.jacobsmedia.com/articles/tech4rockgames.asp (accessed 26 March 2018). Orosz, J. (2015) ‘John Williams: Paraphraser or Plagiarist?’, Journal of Musicological Research, 34(4), pp. 299–319. Prior, V. (2015) ‘15 Reasons Homes Under the Hammer Is the Best Show on TV’, Metro, 22 April. Available at: http://metro.co.uk/2015/04/22/15-reasons-homesunder-the-hammer-is-the-best-show-on-tv-5157505 (accessed 26 March 2018). Snider, M. (2008) ‘Bands’ Sales Are Feeling the Guitar Hero Effect’, USA Today, 14 February. Available at: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/2008-0214-guitar-hero-effect_N.htm (accessed 26 March 2018). Summers, T. (2016) Understanding Video Game Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. The Telegraph (2008) ‘Computer Games Inspire Children to Learn Musical Instruments’, 5 December. Available at: www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/3566594/ Computer-games-inspire-children-to-learn-musical-instruments.html (accessed 26 March 2018). Verdier, H. (2015) ‘Homes Under the Hammer: Brilliant Daytime TV – With Added Dion Dublin’, The Guardian, 26 March. Available at: www.theguardian.com/ tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2015/mar/26/homes-under-the-hammer-brilliantdaytime-­tv-with-added-dion-dublin (accessed 26 March 2018).

Referenced films, series and serials, and video games

Films 1941 (1979) Directed by Steven Spielberg. USA: Universal Pictures, Columbia ­Pictures Corporation, A-Team. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Directed by Stanley Kubrick. UK/USA: MetroGoldwyn-Mayer, Stanley Kubrick Productions. 300 (2006) Directed by Zack Snyder. USA: Warner Bros., Legendary Entertainment, Virtual Studios, Hollywood Gang Productions, Atmosphere Entertainment MM. Adventureland (2009) dir. Greg Mottola. USA: Miramax, Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, This Is That Productions. The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) Directed by Michael Curtiz, William Keighley. USA: Warner Bros. Almost Famous (2000) Directed by Cameron Crowe. USA: Columbia Pictures, DreamWorks Pictures, Vinyl Films. Amadeus (1984) Directed by Miloš Forman. USA/France/Czechoslovakia: AMLF, Saul Zaentz Company. Amélie [Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain] (2001) Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. France/Germany: Claudie Ossard Productions, Union Générale Cinématographique, Victoires Productions, Tapioca Films, France 3 Cinéma, MMC Independent, Sofica Sofinergie 5, Filmstiftung, Canal+. The American Friend [Der amerikanische Freund] (1977) Directed by Wim Wenders. West Germany/France: Bavaria Film, Filmverlag der Autoren, Les Films du Losange, Road Movies Filmproduktion, Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Wim Wenders Productions, Wim Wenders Stiftung. American Graffiti (1973) Directed by George Lucas. USA: Universal Pictures, ­Lucasfilm, Coppola Company. American Pie (1999) Directed by Paul Weitz, Chris Weitz. USA: Universal Pictures, Zide-Perry Productions, Newmarket Capital Group, Summit Entertainment. American Pie 2 (2001) Directed by J. B. Rogers. USA: LivePlanet, Universal Pictures, Zide-Perry Productions. Antz (1998) Directed by Eric Darnell, Tim Johnson. USA: DreamWorks, Pacific Data Images, DreamWorks Animation. Apocalypse Now (1979) Directed by Francis Ford Coppola. USA: Zoetrope Studios. The Artist (2011) Directed by Michel Hazanavicius. France/USA/Belgium: Studio 37 Orange, La Petite Reine, La Classe Américaine, JD Prod, France 3 Cinéma, Jouror Productions, uFilm.

172 Filmography Babe (1995) Directed by Chris Noonan. Australia/USA: Universal Pictures, Kennedy Miller Productions. Babe: Pig in the City (1998) Directed by George Miller. Australia: Kennedy Miller Productions. Bananas (1971) Directed by Woody Allen. USA: Jack Rollins & Charles H. Joffe Productions. Barry Lyndon (1975) Directed by Stanley Kubrick. UK/USA: Peregrine, Hawk Films, Warner Bros. Battle Beyond the Stars (1980) Directed by Jimmy T. Murakami. USA: New World Pictures. The Big Chill (1983) Directed by Lawrence Kasdan. USA: Columbia Pictures Corporation, Carson Productions, Delphi Films. The Birth of a Nation (1915) Directed by D. W. Griffith. USA: David W. Griffith Corporation, Epoch Producing Corporation. Blue Velvet (1986) Directed by David Lynch. USA: De Laurentiis Entertainment Group. The Bodyguard (1992) Directed by Mick Jackson. USA: Kasdan Pictures, Tig Productions, Warner Bros. Boogie Nights (1997) Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. USA: New Line Cinema, Lawrence Gordon Productions, Ghoulardi Film Company. Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004) Directed by Beeban Kidron. UK/France/ Germany/Ireland/USA: Universal Pictures, StudioCanal, Miramax, Working ­Title Films, Atlantic Television, Little Bird. Brief Encounter (1945) Directed by David Lean. UK: Cineguild. Cape Fear (1962) Directed by J. Lee Thompson. USA: Melville-Talbot Productions. Cape Fear (1991) Directed by Martin Scorsese. USA: Amblin Entertainment, Cappa Films, Tribeca Entertainment. Captain Blood (1935) Directed by Michael Curtiz. USA: Warner Bros., Cosmopolitan Productions. Carnegie Hall (1947) Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer. USA: Federal Films. Casablanca (1942) Directed by Michael Curtiz. USA: Warner Bros. Casino (1995) Directed by Martin Scorsese. France/USA: Universal Pictures, Syalis D.A., Legende Enterprises, De Fina-Cappa. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) Directed by Tim Burton. USA/UK/Australia: Warner Bros., Village Roadshow Pictures, Zanuck Company, Plan B Entertainment, Theobald Film Productions, Craig Miller Productions. Christine (1983) Directed by John Carpenter. USA: Columbia Pictures Corporation, Delphi Premier Productions, Polar Film. A Clockwork Orange (1971) Directed by Stanley Kubrick. UK/USA: Warner Bros., Hawk Films. Crime of the Century (1996) Directed by Mark Rydell. USA: Astoria Productions, Home Box Office. Dazed and Confused (1993) Directed by Richard Linklater. USA: Gramercy ­Pictures, Alphaville, Detour Filmproduction. Death in Venice [Morte a Venezia] (1971) Directed by Luchino Visconti. Italy/ France/USA: Alfa Cinematografica, Warner Bros. The Departed (2006) Directed by Martin Scorsese. USA/Hong Kong: Warner Bros., Plan B Entertainment, Initial Entertainment Group, Vertigo Entertainment, ­Media Asia Films.

Filmography  173 The Devil’s Rejects (2005) Directed by Rob Zombie. USA/Germany: Lions Gate Films, Cinerenta, Cinelamda, Devil’s Rejects Inc., Entache Entertainment, Firm Films, Creep Entertainment International, Spectacle Entertainment Group. Die Another Day (2002) Directed by Lee Tamahori. UK/USA: Eon Productions, Danjaq, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, United Artists. Die Hard (1988) Directed by John McTiernan. USA: Twentieth Century Fox, Gordon Company, Silver Pictures. Die Hard 2 (1990) Directed by Renny Harlin. USA: Twentieth Century Fox, Gordon Company, Silver Pictures. Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995) Directed by John McTiernan. USA: Sinergi Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox. Dirty Dancing (1987) Directed by Emile Ardolino. USA: Great American Films Limited Partnership, Vestron Pictures. Do the Right Thing (1989) Directed by Spike Lee. USA: 40 Acres & A Mule Filmworks. Dr. Dolittle 2 (2001) Directed by Steve Carr. USA: Twentieth Century Fox, Davis Entertainment, Joseph M. Singer Entertainment. Dr. No (1962) Directed by Terence Young. UK: Eon Productions. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) ­Directed by Stanley Kubrick. USA/UK: Columbia Pictures Corporation, Hawk Films. Drive (2011) Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. USA: FilmDistrict, Bold Films, MadisonWellsMedia, Marc Platt Productions, Motel Movies. El Norte (1983) Directed by Gregory Nava. UK/USA: American Playhouse, Channel Four Films, Independent Productions, Island Alive, Public Broadcasting Service. The Elephant Man (1980) Directed by David Lynch. USA/UK: Brooksfilms. Elizabeth (1998) Directed by Shekhar Kapur. UK: PolyGram Filmed Entertainment, Working Title Films, Channel Four Films. Empire of the Sun (1987) Directed by Steven Spielberg. USA: Amblin Entertainment, Warner Bros. Equilibrium (2002) Directed by Kurt Wimmer. USA: Dimension Films, Blue Tulip Productions. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) Directed by Steven Spielberg. USA: Universal Pictures. Eyes Wide Shut (1999) Directed by Stanley Kubrick. UK/USA: Warner Bros., Stanley Kubrick Productions, Hobby Films, Pole Star. Fantasia (1940) Directed by James Algar, Samuel Armstrong, Ford Beebe Jr., Normal Ferguson, David Hand, Jim Handley, T. Hee, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske, Bill Roberts, Paul Satterfield, Ben Sharpsteen. USA: Walt Disney Productions. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) Directed by Terry Gilliam. USA: Fear and Loathing LLC, Rhino Films, Shark Productions, Summit Entertainment, Universal Pictures. The Five-Year Engagement (2012) Directed by Nicholas Stoller. USA/Japan: Universal Pictures, Relativity Media, Apatow Productions, Stoller Global Solutions, Dentsu. Forrest Gump (1994) Directed by Robert Zemeckis. USA: Paramount Pictures. Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) Directed by Mike Newell. UK: PolyGram Filmed Entertainment, Channel Four Films, Working Title Films. Full Metal Jacket (1987) Directed by Stanley Kubrick. UK/USA: Natant, Stanley Kubrick Productions, Warner Bros. Garden State (2004) Directed by Zach Braff. USA: Camelot Pictures, Jersey Films, Double Feature Films.

174 Filmography Ghost (1990) Directed by Jerry Zucker. USA: Paramount Pictures. Goodfellas (1990) Directed by Martin Scorsese. USA: Warner Bros. The Graduate (1967) Directed by Mike Nichols. USA: Lawrence Turman. Grease (1978) Directed by Randal Kleiser. USA: Paramount Pictures, Robert Stigwood Organization, Allan Carr Production. Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) Directed by James Gunn. USA: Marvel Studios, Marvel Enterprises, Moving Picture Company. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017) Directed by James Gunn. USA/New Zealand/ Canada: Marvel Studios, Walt Disney Pictures. Halloween (1978) Directed by John Carpenter. USA: Compass International Pictures, Falcon International Productions. Hanna (2011) Directed by Joe Wright. USA/UK/Germany: Focus Features, Holleran Company, Studio Babelsberg. Hannibal (2001) Directed by Ridley Scott. USA/UK: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Universal Pictures, Dino De Laurentiis Company, Scott Free Productions. The Hateful Eight (2015) Directed by Quentin Tarantino. USA: Double Feature Films, FilmColony. He Got Game (1998) Directed by Spike Lee. USA: Touchstone Pictures, 40 Acres & A Mule Filmworks. Herbie Fully Loaded (2005) Directed by Angela Robinson. USA: Walt Disney Pictures, Robert Simonds Productions. House of 1000 Corpses (2003) Directed by Rob Zombie. USA: Spectacle Entertainment Group, Universal Pictures. Hugo (2011) Directed by Martin Scorsese. USA: Paramount Pictures, GK Films, Infinitum Nihil. I Am Sam (2001) Directed by Jessie Nelson. USA: New Line Cinema, Avery Pix, Bedford Falls Company, Red Fish Blue Fish Films. The Incredibles (2004) Directed by Brad Bird. USA: Pixar Animation Studios, Walt Disney Pictures. Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994) Directed by Neil Jordan. USA: Geffen Pictures. The Iron Curtain (1948) Directed by William A. Wellman. USA: Twentieth Century Fox. Jaws (1975) Directed by Steven Spielberg. USA: Zanuck/Brown Productions, Universal Pictures. Jaws 2 (1978) Directed by Jeannot Szwarc. USA: Universal Pictures. Jerry Maguire (1996) Directed by Cameron Crowe. USA: TriStar Pictures, Gracie Films. Kick-Ass (2010) Directed by Matthew Vaughn. UK/USA: Marv Films, Plan B Entertainment. Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) Directed by Quentin Tarantino. USA/Japan: Miramax, A Band Apart, Super Cool ManChu. Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004) Directed by Quentin Tarantino. USA: Miramax, A Band Apart, Super Cool ManChu. King Kong (1933) Directed by Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack. USA: RKO Radio Pictures. Kings of the Road [Im Lauf der Zeit] (1976) Directed by Wim Wenders. Germany: Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Wim Wenders Productions, Wim Wenders Stiftung. Kings Row (1942) Directed by Sam Wood. USA: Warner Bros.

Filmography  175 The King’s Speech (2010) Directed by Tom Hooper. UK/USA/Australia: See-Saw Films, The Weinstein Company, UK Film Council, Bedlam Productions. Kundun (1997) Directed by Martin Scorsese. USA/Monaco: De Fina-Cappa, Dune Films, Refuge Productions, Touchstone Pictures. The Lone Ranger (2013) Directed by Gore Verbinski. USA: Walt Disney Pictures, Jerry Bruckheimer Films, Blind Wink Productions, Infinitum Nihil. Lorenzo’s Oil (1992) Directed by George Miller. USA: Universal Pictures, Kennedy Miller Productions. Love & Mercy (2014) Directed by Bill Pohlad. USA: River Road Entertainment, Battle Mountain Films. M (1931) Directed by Fritz Lang. Germany: Nero-Film AG. Magnolia (1999) Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. USA: Ghoulardi Film Company, New Line Cinema, Magnolia Project. Mahler (1974) Directed by Ken Russell. UK: Visual Programme Systems, Goodtimes Enterprises. Mamma Mia (2008) Directed by Phyllida Lloyd. USA/UK/Germany: Universal Pictures, Relativity Media, Littlestar, Playtone, Internationale Filmproduktion Richter. Marie Antoinette (2006) Directed by Sofia Coppola. USA/France/Japan: Columbia Pictures Corporation, Pricel, Tohokushinsha Film Corporation, American Zoetrope. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003) Directed by Peter Weir. USA: Twentieth Century Fox, Miramax, Universal Pictures, Samuel Goldwyn Films. Mean Streets (1973) Directed by Martin Scorsese. USA: Warner Bros., Taplin–Perry– Scorsese Productions. The Midnight Sun (1926) Directed by Dimitri Buchowetzki. USA: Universal Pictures. Monsters, Inc. (2001) Directed by Pete Docter. USA: Pixar Animation Studios, Walt Disney Pictures. Mystic River (2003) Directed by Clint Eastwood. USA/Australia: Warner Bros., Village Roadshow Pictures, NPV Entertainment, Malpaso Productions. Needful Things (1993) Directed by Fraser Clarke Heston. USA: Castle Rock Entertainment, New Line Cinema. Once Upon a Time in America (1984) Directed by Sergio Leone. Italy/USA: Ladd Company, Embassy International Pictures, Producers Sales Organization. Only the Lonely (1991) Directed by Chris Columbus. USA: Twentieth Century Fox, Hughes Entertainment. Persona (1966) Directed by Ingmar Bergman. Sweden: Svensk Filmindustri. Platoon (1986) Directed by Oliver Stone. USA: Hemdale. Pretty Woman (1990) Directed by Garry Marshall. USA: Touchstone Pictures, Silver Screen Partners IV. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) Directed by Billy Wilder. UK/USA: Mirisch Production Company, Mirisch Films, Sir Nigel Films, Phalanx Productions. Quadrophenia (1979) Directed by Franc Roddam. UK: The Who Films, Polytel. Raging Bull (1980) Directed by Martin Scorsese. USA: Chartoff-Winkler Productions. Rat Race (2001) Directed by Jerry Zucker. USA: Paramount Pictures, Alphaville Films, Fireworks Pictures, Zucker Productions. Ratatouille (2007) Directed by Brad Bird, Jan Pinkava. USA: Pixar Animation Studios, Walt Disney Pictures.

176 Filmography Reservoir Dogs (1992) Directed by Quentin Tarantino. USA: Live Entertainment, Dog Eat Dog Productions Inc. Rollerball (1975) Directed by Norman Jewison. UK/USA: Algonquin. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) Directed by Gareth Edwards. USA: Lucasfilm, Allison Shearmur Productions, Black Hangar Studios, Walt Disney Pictures. Les Roseaux sauvages (1994) Directed by André Téchiné. France: Ima Films, Les Films Alain Sarde, Canal+, IMA Productions, La Sept-Arte, Sociéte Française de Production, Centre National de la Cinématographie. The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) Directed by Wes Anderson. USA: Touchstone Pictures, American Empirical Pictures. Rumour Has It... (2005) Directed by Rob Reiner. USA/Germany/Australia: Warner Bros., Village Roadshow Pictures, Section Eight, Spring Creek Productions, Munich Hoffman-Media. San Andreas (2015) Directed by Brad Peyton. USA: Village Roadshow Pictures, New Line Cinema, RatPac-Dune Entertainment, Flynn Picture Company. Saturday Night Fever (1977) Directed by John Badham. USA: Robert Stigwood Organization. The Scarlet Letter (1995) Directed by Roland Joffé. USA: Allied Stars, Cinergi Pictures Entertainment, Hollywood Pictures, Lightmotive, Moving Pictures. Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015) Directed by Mark Burton, Richard Starzak. UK/ France: StudioCanal, Aardman Animations, Anton Capital Entertainment. Shine a Light (2008) Directed by Martin Scorsese. USA: Paramount Classics, Concert Productions International, Shangri-La Entertainment, Grand Entertainment (Row), Shine A Light. The Shining (1980) Directed by Stanley Kubrick. UK/USA: Warner Bros, Hawk Films, Peregrine, Producers Circle. Shutter Island (2010) Directed by Martin Scorsese. USA: Paramount Pictures, Phoenix Pictures, Sikelia Productions, Appian Way. The Silence of the Lambs (1991) Directed by Jonathan Demme. USA: Strong Heart/ Demme Production, Orion Pictures. S1m0ne (2002) Directed by Andrew Niccol. USA: New Line Cinema, Niccol Films. The Simpsons Movie (2007) Directed by David Silverman. USA: Twentieth Century Fox, Gracie Films, The Curiosity Company. Singin’ in the Rain (1952) Directed by Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly. USA: MetroGoldwyn-Mayer. Sleeping With the Enemy (1991) Directed by Joseph Ruben. USA: Twentieth Century Fox. The Social Network (2010) Directed by David Fincher. USA: Columbia Pictures, Relativity Media, Scott Rudin Productions, Michael De Luca Productions, Trigger Street Productions. Sorceress (1982) Directed by Jack Hill. USA/Mexico: Corporación Nacional Cinematográfica, New World Pictures. Space Raiders (1983) Directed by Howard R. Cohen. USA: Millennium. The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) Directed by Lewis Gilbert. UK: Eon Productions. Star Wars (1977) Directed by George Lucas. USA: Lucasfilm, Twentieth Century Fox. Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980) Directed by Irvin Kershner. USA: Lucasfilm. Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999) Directed by George Lucas. USA: Lucasfilm. The Sting (1973) Directed by George Roy Hill. USA: Zanuck/Brown Productions, Universal Pictures.

Filmography  177 Straight Outta Compton (2015) Directed by F. Gary Gray. USA: Universal Pictures, Legendary Entertainment, New Line Cinema, Cube Vision, Crucial Films, ­Broken Chair Flickz. Superman (1978) Directed by Richard Donner. USA/UK/Panama/Switzerland/ Canada: Dovemead, Film Export A.G., International Film Production. Symphony of Six Million (1932) Directed by Gregory La Cava. USA: RKO Radio Pictures. Taken 2 (2012) Directed by Olivier Megaton. France/USA: EuropaCorp, M6 Films, Grive Productions, Dune Entertainment, Canal+, M6, Ciné+. The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) Directed by Anthony Minghella. USA: Miramax, Paramount Pictures, Mirage Enterprises, Timnick Films. They Shall Have Music (1939) Directed by Archie Mayo. USA: The Samuel Goldwyn Company. The Thing (1982) Directed by John Carpenter. USA: Universal Pictures, Turman-­ Foster Company. Titanic (1997) Directed by James Cameron. USA: Twentieth Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Lightstorm Entertainment. Titus (1999) Directed by Julie Taymor. Italy/USA/UK: Clear Blue Sky Productions, Overseas FilmGroup, Urania Pictures, NDF International. Trading Places (1983) Directed by John Landis. USA: Cinema Group Ventures, Paramount Pictures. Vertigo (1958) Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. USA: Alfred J. Hitchcock Productions. WALL·E (2008) Directed by Andrew Stanton. USA: FortyFour Studios, Pixar Animation Studios, Walt Disney Pictures. The Way We Were (1973) Directed by Sydney Pollack. USA: Columbia Pictures Corporation, Rastar Productions. Wayne’s World (1992) Directed by Penelope Spheeris. USA: Paramount Pictures. Wayne’s World 2 (1993) Directed by Stephen Surjik. USA: Paramount Pictures. Wild Strawberries [Smultronstället] (1957) Directed by Ingmar Bergman. Sweden: Svensk Filmindustri. Wings of Desire [Der Himmel über Berlin] (1987) Directed by Wim Wenders. West Germany/France: Road Movies Filmproduktion, Argos Films, Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Wim Wenders Stiftung. The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) Directed by Martin Scorsese. USA: Red Granite Pictures, Appian Way, Sikelia Productions, EMJAG Productions. Zodiac (2007) Directed by David Fincher. USA: Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., Phoenix Pictures. Zoolander (2001) Directed by Ben Stiller. Germany/USA: Paramount Pictures, ­Village Roadshow Pictures, VH1, NPV Entertainment, Scott Rudin Productions, Red Hour, MFP Munich Film Partners GmbH & Company I. Produktions KG, Tenth Planet. Series and serials Alias (2001–6) Created by J. J. Abrams. USA: Touchstone Television, Bad Robot. ‘Deep Space Homer’ (1994) Directed by Carlos Baeza. The Simpsons (1989–) ­Created by James L. Brooks, Matt Groening, Sam Simon. USA: Gracie Films, Twentieth Century Fox. ‘The Fatigues’ (1996) Directed by Andy Ackerman. Seinfeld (1989–98) Created by Larry David, Jerry Seinfeld. USA: West-Shapiro, Castle Rock Entertainment.

178 Filmography Flash Gordon (1936) Directed by Frederick Stephani, Ray Taylor. USA: Universal Pictures Corporation. Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars (1938) Directed by Ford Beebe, Robert Hill. USA: Universal Pictures. Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940) Directed by Ford Beebe, Ray Taylor. USA: Universal Pictures. Homes Under the Hammer (2003–) Created by Melanie Eriksen. UK: Lion Television. ‘Lady Bouvier’s Lover’ (1994) Directed by Wes Archer. The Simpsons (1989–) ­Created by James L. Brooks, Matt Groening, Sam Simon. USA: Gracie Films, Twentieth Century Fox. Laverne & Shirley (1976–83) Created by Lowell Ganz, Garry Marshall, Mark Rothman. USA: Miller-Milkis Productions, Henderson Productions, Paramount Television. ‘Lisa’s Pony’ (1991) Directed by Carlos Baeza. The Simpsons (1989–) Created by James L. Brooks, Matt Groening, Sam Simon. USA: Gracie Films, Twentieth Century Fox. The Lone Ranger [radio] (1933–54) Created by Fran Striker, George W. Trendle. USA: WXYZ. The Lone Ranger [TV] (1949–57) Created by George W. Trendle, George W. George. USA: Apex Film Corp (1949–54), Wrather Productions (1954–7). Lost (2004–10) Created by J. J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber, Damon Lindelof. USA: Bad Robot, Touchstone Television (2006–7), ABC Studios (2007–10) ‘Strong Arms of the Ma’ (2003) Directed by Pete Michels. The Simpsons (1989–) Created by James L. Brooks, Matt Groening, Sam Simon. USA: Gracie Films, Twentieth Century Fox. Top Gear (2002–) Created by Jeremy Clarkson, Andy Wilman. UK: British Broadcasting Corporation. Video games Guitar Hero (2005) Developed by Harmonix. USA: RedOctane. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (2007) Developed by Neversoft. USA: Activision. Medal of Honor (1999) Developed by DreamWorks Interactive. USA: Electronic Arts. Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (2002) Developed by 2015, Inc. USA: Electronic Arts. Medal of Honor: Underground (2000) Developed by DreamWorks Interactive. USA: Electronic Arts. Rock Band (2007) Developed by Harmonix. USA: MTV Games, Electronic Arts. Virtual Pool (1995) Developed by Celeris. USA: Interplay.

Index

11 September 2001 140 1941 (1979 film) 5 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968 film): effect on reception of Also sprach Zarathustra 131–2, 142–51, 153, 163; overall musical strategy 34–5, 44n26, 116–18, 127nn37–8, 146; referenced by later contexts 143–5, 155nn18–19; use of Also sprach Zarathustra 1, 9–10, 40–1, 115–18, 143–4, 155n14 300 (2006 film) 16n18 Abbott, H. Porter 70, 103, 123n10 ABKCO Music & Records, Inc. 19 absolute music 146 Academy Awards 34, 44n25, 136, 154n4 Adagio for Strings (Barber) 37–8, 45n30, 137–41, 154n6 adaptation see musical adaptation Adorno, Theodor 137, 157n27 Adventureland (2009 film) 93, 94 Adventures of Robin Hood, The (1938 film) 32 ‘Afternoon Delight’ (Starland Vocal Band) 120–1 Alias (2001–06 television series) 82n7 Allen, Graham 15n11 Allen, Woody 35, 68–9 AllMusic (website) 141 allosonic quotation 10, 15n14; legalities of 19, 20, 27, 42n3; specific qualities of 10–11, 15n15, 38, 107, 126n32 Almost Famous (2000 film) 39 Alpensinfonie, Eine (Strauss) 155n13 Also sprach Zarathustra (Strauss): performance practice 151, 157nn30–1; post-2001 reception 131–2, 142–51, 153, 155n12, 157n30, 163; Strauss’s intentions and early reception 142,

143, 146–7, 155nn15–16, 156n22; use in other contexts 144–5, 155n19; use in 2001 1, 9–10, 40–1, 115–18, 143–4, 155n14 ‘Also sprach Zarathustra (2001)’ (Deodato) 144 Altman, Rick 58 Amadeus (1984 film) 30, 122n6, 132–3 Amazon 62, 85n26 ambiguity, of pre-existing music 70–3, 74–6, 77, 146–7, 163 Amélie (2001 film) 137, 154n6 American Federation of Musicians (AFM) 26–7 American Graffiti (1973 film) 23, 30, 123n12 American Pie (1999 film) 68 American Pie 2 (2001 film) 68 Anderson, Lauren 53, 54, 76, 81, 82n1, 132 Anderson, Paul Thomas 39, 120–1 Anderson, Wes 35, 43n10 ‘Ants Go Marching, The’ see ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’ Antz (1998 film) 81 Anwar, Tariq 85n32 Apocalypse Now (1979 film) 108–10, 111, 112–14, 126nn30–1, 126n33 Artist, The (2011 film) 33, 37, 44n24 audibility, of music: literal 23, 60–1, 135, 136, 157n27, 166; perceptual 58, 65, 84n17, 115, 121, 167 audiences: identities and situations of 53, 55, 57–65, 76, 79–80, 132, 167–8; study of 53, 55, 132, 167–8 Audissino, Emilio 83n8 Aufderheide, Patricia 25 auteurism 35–42, 45n33, 104–5, 116, 162 authenticity, of music 125n21, 138–9

180 Index authors, implied and real 103–5, 125n22, 125n24 autosonic quotation 10, 15n14; legalities of 19–20, 27, 42n3; specific qualities of 10–11, 15nn15–16, 35, 38, 93, 118, 126n30 Ayeroff, Jeff 151–2 ‘B’ films 25, 32, 34, 43n14 Babe (1995 film) 6, 9–11, 82n3 Babe: Pig in the City (1998 film) 6 Bach, J. S. 35, 36, 101, 124nn18–19 ‘Bad to the Bone’ (George Thorogood and the Destroyers) 138–9 Bakhtin, Mikhail 8, 147, 156n24 Bananas (1971 film) 68–9 Barber, Samuel 37, 45n30, 137–41, 154n6 Barham, Jeremy 40, 79, 150–1, 154n8, 156n21, 157n31 Barker, Martin 55, 58, 61, 70, 132 Barry Lyndon (1975 film) 38, 40 Barthes, Roland 73, 147 Bashwiner, David 106, 125n29 Bates, Tyler 16n18, 43n17 Battle Beyond the Stars (1980 film) 25, 43n13 Bazelon, Irwin 34–5 BBC 140, 144, 164–5, 169n2 ‘Be My Baby’ (The Ronettes) 154n10 Beatles, The 24–5, 43nn10–11, 119–20 Bedlam 26, 40 Beethoven, Ludwig van 77–81; see also specific works by Bergman, Ingmar 36 Berlin Philharmonic 24, 143, 157n30 Berlioz, Hector 102–3, 125n22 Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works 20–1, 42n2 Bernheimer, Martin 137 Bernstein, Elmer 38, 54, 82n3, 118–19 Biancorosso, Giorgio 14n4 Big Chill, The (1983 film) 104, 123n12, 125n25 Billboard (publication) 28, 67, 136, 144 biopics 30, 34, 132–3, 135, 151 Birdman (2014 film) 44n25 Birth of a Nation, The (1915 film) 109 blogs 53, 63, 72, 76, 77, 80 Blue Danube, The (Strauss II) 116, 117, 155n18 Blue Velvet (1986 film) 149, 151–3, 158n33 Boogie Nights (1997 film) 120–1

Booker, M. Keith 64–5 Bordwell, David 45n33 ‘Born to Be Wild’ (Steppenwolf) 138 Boston Society of Film Critics 34, 44n25 Bource, Ludovic 33, 37 Braff, Zach 22 Brahms, Johannes 77, 85n25, 118 Bribitzer-Stull, Matthew 127n39 ‘Brick House’ (Commodores) 101 Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004 film) 98–9 Brief Encounter (1945 film) 116, 120 Broder, Nathan 137 Brooks, Richard 100, 124n15 Brown, Kristi A. 110, 112, 114, 126n32, 127n36 Buhler, James 14n6, 31, 123n9 Burgess, Anthony 156n23 Bush, Richard H. 25, 27, 43n15, 133 canons, musical 137–9, 166 Cape Fear (1962 film) 38 Cape Fear (1991 film) 38 Captain Blood (1935 film) 82n3 Carey, Melissa 125n25 ‘Carny, The’ (Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds) 156n20 Carpenter, John 36, 138 Casablanca (1942 film) 32, 122n7 Casino (1995 film) 39 Cave, Nick 156n20 Cenciarelli, Carlo 36 Chakachas 121 Changing Tunes: The Use of Pre-existing Music in Film (2006 book) 3, 6–7, 9 characterization 98–103, 108–9, 124n19, 125n21 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005 film) 145 charts, musical 28, 135–6, 154n2 Chatman, Seymour 123n10 Christine (1983 film) 138 cinematic listening 148 cinephilia 62–3 classical Hollywood: studio system 25–7, 31–2, 36, 43n14; style 31–2, 115–16, 119, 121, 122n1 classical music, films’ use of 3; and didacticism 45; and post-film reception 132, 147, 150, 151, 154n7; and prestige 32, 34–5, 44n27; for specific genre associations 93–4, 101–2, 122n1, 124n19

Index  181 Clockwork Orange, A (1971 film) 34–5, 44n26, 71–2, 85nn24–5, 146–7, 156n23 coherence see unity; continuity collective intelligence 61, 63 College 134–5, 140–1, 154n2 Collins, Karen 165 commerce, film music and 26, 27–30, 43nn18–19, 133–9, 154n8, 166 Commodores 101 competences 149, 157n26 compilation albums 28–9, 43n19 compilation scores 35, 39, 44n26, 116 consumption see interpretation continuity 95, 106, 119, 127nn40–1 Cook, Nicholas 119n41 Cooke, Mervyn 26, 31, 34, 144 Copland, Aaron 32, 99–101, 116, 123n14, 124nn15–17 Coppola, Francis Ford 108–10, 111, 112–14, 126nn30–1, 126n33 copyright: implications for filmmakers’ creativity 18, 23–5, 43n10, 162, 165, 169n2; law 20–1, 42nn2–6, 42n8, 44n21; licensing fees 21–5, 31, 42n9; licence types 18–19, 22, 165; licensing process 19, 21–5, 41, 42n7, 43n10, 44n21; ownership 19, 21, 25–6, 31, 43n14, 138 Cormack, Mike 72–3, 85nn26–7 Corman, Roger 25 Coulthard, Lisa 40 cover art (music) 143, 144, 157n30 cover versions 19, 24, 28, 29, 119–20 credits 11, 21, 46n36, 54–5, 82n3 criticism, of pre-existing music’s use: regarding effects in film 33–5, 44n24, 45n28, 76–82, 154n9; regarding effects on music 33, 137–9, 146–8, 151, 154n7, 156n21, 157n30 Crow, David 72 Crowe, Cameron 39 D’Angelo, Mike 67, 68, 69 Davies, Terry 77, 107 Davison, Annette 156n20 Dazed and Confused (1993 film) 93, 94 Death in Venice (1971 film) 79, 86n34, 157n31 ‘Death of the Author’ (Barthes) 147 Decker, Todd 109, 114, 124n19, 126n33 ‘Deep Space Homer’ (1994 Simpsons episode) 144–5 Delerue, Georges 38, 45n30 Deodato 144

Derek and the Dominos 38 Desplat, Alexandre 77, 85n32, 106 Dexy’s Midnight Runners 120 dialogism 147, 156n24 Die Hard (1988 film) 71–2, 76, 85nn24–5 Die Hard 2 (1990 film) 75, 85n31 Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995 film) 71–6, 78–9, 81, 85nn25–6, 162 diegesis, music’s relationship to 9, 94–8, 98–9, 122nn6–7, 123nn8–10, 123nn12–13, 167 diegetic reveal 68–9, 125n27 Dies Irae 102, 125n20 Dion, Celine 28 directors see auteurism Dirty Dancing (1987 film) 154n10 Disney 26, 29, 169n3 distraction 33, 54, 73, 84n17, 157n27 Django Unchained (2012 film) 45n33 documentary film 25 Don Juan (Strauss) 157n30 Donovan 96 Doobie Brothers 93, 94–5, 97, 123n11 Douridas, Chris 22, 42n7, 43n10, 46n37 downloading (music) 28, 35, 134–5 Dr. Dolittle 2 (2001 film) 138 Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964 film) 71–2, 74, 85n29, 104 DragonForce 169n4 Drive (2011 film) 134–5, 140–1, 154n2 Dubowsky, Jack Curtis 118 Dudamel, Gustavo 157n30 Duncan, Dean 3, 156n25 Dyer, Richard 7, 15n10 dynamic music 165–6 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982 film) 103–4, 125nn23–4 Easter eggs 57, 65–6, 67, 83n16 Eastwood, Clint 36 Eddy, Duane 93, 94–5 Electric Youth 134–5, 140–1, 154n2 Elephant Man, The (1980 film) 137, 140, 144, 154n6 Elgar, Edward 54, 77–8, 94, 118 elitism 63, 64, 156n25 Elizabeth (1998 film) 94, 123n13 ELO 29, 121 emulation 15n10, 45n30 English, Horace B. 156n23 ‘Entertainer, The’ (Joplin) 136, 137, 141, 154n5

182 Index Equilibrium (2002 film) 24 esthesis 52–3, 131–2, 153n1 expectations: for film narrative 5, 44n24, 66–9, 110–15, 155n19; for musical structure 105, 110–15, 126n34, 148–9, 155n19 Eyes Wide Shut (1999 film) 74, 104, 117–8, 125nn26–7 fair use 20, 42n4 familiarity see knowledge; recognition Fantasia (1940 film) 156n23 Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (Vaughan Williams) 78 ‘Fatigues, The’ (1996 Seinfeld episode) 141 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998 film) 18, 23, 42n1 fictional music 122n3 fidelity 94–6, 122n4 Film Score Monthly (website) 57–8 Filmtracks (website) 59, 83n9 Finlandia (Sibelius) 85n31 Fish, Stanley 58 Five-Year Engagement, The (2012 film) 120, 163 Flash Gordon (1936–40 serials) 25–6, 133 Fleetwood Mac 39, 164–5 formalism 146 Forrest Gump (1994 film) 93, 94–8, 116, 122n7, 163, 169n1 forum (online) see knowledge community Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994 film) 28 franchise music 5–6, 14nn6–8 functions, of music in film 2, 9, 13, 59, 92, 163; see also characterization; continuity; referentiality; setting; unity Für Elise (Beethoven) 150 Gabbard, Krin 100, 124n15 Garden State (2004 film) 22 Garner, Ken 40 ‘Gayane’s Adagio’ (Khachaturian) 117 genre see musical genre and style Ghost (1990 film) 28 Giacchino, Michael: career 164; fans of 56, 57, 59, 62, 65–6, 83nn14–15; selfquotation in Ratatouille 55–66 passim 70, 83n10, 83nn15–16, 104, 162; selfquotations in other contexts 55–6, 57, 58, 65–6, 82n5, 83n15; study of 83n8; track names 82n7

Gilliam, Terry 18, 23, 42n1 ‘Gimme Shelter’ (Rolling Stones) 39 Glass, Philip 38 ‘Go Your Own Way’ (Fleetwood Mac) 164–5 Godard, Jean-Luc 36 Gold, Ernest 33, 84n17 ‘Golden Age’ Hollywood see classical Hollywood Goldenthal, Elliot 16n18 Goodfellas (1990 film) 38, 39, 98 Goodman, Nelson 15n14 Gorbman, Claudia: on classicalHollywood film music 115, 116, 119, 121, 122n1; on diegesis 95, 97, 122nn6–7, 123n9; on Kubrick 40, 74, 104, 117–18; on mélomanes 40 Graduate, The (1967 film) 66–70, 84nn19–21, 84n23 Gramophone (publication) 157n30 Graybill, Mark S. 84n21 Grieg, Edvard 110, 112, 113, 114–15, 126n32, 127nn35–6 Grossberg, Lawrence 138 Guardians of the Galaxy (2014 film) 28, 29, 43nn17–18 Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017 film) 28, 43nn17–18 Guild of Music Supervisors 46n38 Guitar Hero (2005 video game) 166, 169n4 Halfyard, Janet K. 101 Hamlisch, Marvin 34, 136, 154n4 Hanna (2011 film) 114–15, 127n35 Hannan, Michael 125n25 Hannibal (2001 film) 101 Hanoch-Roe, Galia 146–7 Harlan, Jan 38, 40–1 Harrison, George 24, 43n10 Hateful Eight, The (2015 film) 40, 45n34 Hazanavicius, Michel 33, 37, 44n24 He Got Game (1998 film) 99–101, 116, 123n14, 124n15, 124n17 Heldt, Guido 98–9, 125n24, 125n27 Herbie Fully Loaded (2005 film) 138 Herrmann, Bernard 33, 37, 38, 44nn23–24 Heymann, Klaus 139 High, Joel C. 23, 42n9 hip-hop 10, 19–20, 43n12 Holden, Anthony 138, 139, 141 Holst, Gustav 144

Index  183 home-media viewing 14n5, 55, 62, 83nn11–12, 167 Homes Under the Hammer (2003–television series) 164–5, 167 Hooper, Tom 77, 85n32, 105–6; see also King’s Speech, The Horner, James 25 Horowitz, Joseph 132–3 ‘Hound Dog’ (Elvis Presley) 94 House of 1000 Corpses (2003 film) 100 Houston Symphony 144 Houston, Whitney 28, 29 Howard, Luke 45n30, 140, 154n6 Hubbert, Julie 35, 39, 44n26, 46n36, 116 Hubbs, Nadine 123n14 Hugo (2011 film) 8 humour 66, 68–9, 84n18, 155n19 ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man’ (Donovan) 96 Huron, David 110, 114, 126n34, 149 Hutcheon, Linda 66 I Am Sam (2001 film) 24–5, 43nn10–11, 119–20, 163 ‘I Will Always Love You’ (Whitney Houston) 28, 29 imitation 7, 11, 54; see also emulation; parody; pastiche implied author see authors ‘In Dreams’ (Roy Orbison) 149, 151–3, 158n33 ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’ (Grieg) 110, 112, 113, 114–15, 126n32, 127nn35–6 inaudibility see audibility incongruity 66, 68–9, 84n18, 100–1, 155n19 Incredibles, The (2004 film) 55–6, 58, 82n5 IndieWire (website) 141 Innerworld (Electric Youth) 141 intention, of filmmakers: criticism of 76–82; evidence of 62, 70; limiting factors 18; relationship to interpretation 12, 52, 64–70, 70–6, 81–2, 163 interactivity 62, 79, 165–6, 167 internal diegetic music 98–9 internet 62–4, 79, 83n13 interpretation, of post-existing music see musical reception interpretation, of pre-existing music in film: communal 58, 61, 63–4; as creative process 52, 58, 73; critical

76–82; internet and 62–4, 83n13; investigative 60–3, 65, 69, 121, 167; investment and 61–2, 64, 79; personal 53, 55, 81; relationship to intention 12, 52, 64–70, 70–6, 81–2, 85n28, 163; skills 64; contexts and strategies of 55, 56–59, 60–3, 70, 73, 82n6, 83nn10–12, 165; variation in 12, 52–4, 55, 64–5, 82, 163; see also recognition interpretive communities 58, 65, 85n24, 167; see also score enthusiasts intertextuality 8–9, 11, 15n11, 32, 163, 168; poietic and esthesic 52, 58, 132, 153n1 investigative consumption 60–3, 65, 69, 121, 167 investment, of audiences 61–2, 64, 79, 132 Iron Curtain, The 20–1 ‘It Keeps You Runnin’’ (Doobie Brothers) 95–7 ‘It’s All Forgotten Now’ (Ray Noble) 104 ‘Jackie Wilson Said (I’m in Heaven When You Smile)’ (Dexy’s Midnight Runners) 120 Jackman, Henry 7–8, 168 James Bond (franchise) 6, 14n8, 99 Jaszi, Peter 25 Jaws (1975 film) 5, 14n4 Jaws 2 (1978 film) 5 jazz 10, 98, 101, 139 Jenkins, Henry 57, 61, 63 Jerry Maguire (1996 film) 39 ‘Jet Song’ (Bernstein) 102–3 John Williams Fan Network (JWFAN) (website) 57–63 passim 167 Joplin, Scott: and The Sting 136–7, 139, 141–2, 148–9, 150, 153; and Virtual Pool 155n11 Jullier, Laurent 62–3, 64, 79 ‘Jungle Fever’ (Chakachas) 121 Kalinak, Kathryn 45n32, 124n17 Kamen, Michael 71–2, 85n25; see also Die Hard films Karajan, Herbert von 10, 24, 131, 143, 157nn30–1 Karlin, Fred 37 Kassabian, Anahid 53 Kaun, Bernhard 133 Keller, Hans 45n28, 154n7 Kermode, Mark 93 Khachaturian, Aram 20, 117

184 Index Kick-Ass (2010 film) 7–8, 11, 14n9, 168 Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003 film) 35, 40 Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004 film) 35, 40 Kinderszenen (Schumann) 154n8, 156n25 King’s Speech, The (2010 film): Beethoven’s nationality and 77–81, 105–6; music by other composers in 77, 125n28; and musical attributes of Beethoven, Symphony No. 7 85n32, 105–7, 108, 114, 116, 125nn28–9 Kings Row (1942 film) 13n1 Kirkpatrick, David 30 Klein, Bethany 23, 46n36 Klein, Michael L. 52, 131–2 knowledge communities 57, 61–2, 63–4, 80 knowledge, musical: activation of 12, 121, 82n6; impact on film interpretation 3–4, 12, 52–4, 58, 73, 81–2, 162–3; sources and circulation of 57–64; types and degrees of 52–4, 64–5, 73, 80–2, 98, 132; see also musical reception Konzett, Matthias 34 Korngold, Erich Wolfgang 4, 13n1, 32, 82n3 Kristeva, Julia 8–9, 168 Kubrick, Stanley: as auteur 35, 38, 40–1, 104, 116, 127n38; influence on other filmmakers 35, 71–2, 165; musical style and techniques 35, 44n27, 116–18, 125n27, 146–7; see also specific films by Kundun (1997 film) 38 Lacasse, Serge 10, 15n14 ‘Lady Bouvier’s Lover’ (1994 Simpsons episode) 84n23 ‘Land of 1000 Dances’ (Wilson Pickett) 94 Lang, Fritz 114–15, 127n36 ‘Layla’ (Derek and the Dominos) 38 Lee, Spike 99–101, 116, 123n14, 124n15, 124n17 Lehman, Peter 152–3, 158n32 Leinsdorf, Erich 126n30 leitmotifs 127n39 Lemonheads, The 68, 69, 84n21 Leone, Sergio 5 Lerner, Neil 124nn15–16 Leveratto, Jean-Marc 62–3, 64, 79 Lévy, Pierre 61 Lewis, Hannah 31 library music 6

licensing see copyright Ligeti, György 40, 116, 117–18, 145 ‘Lisa’s Pony’ (1991 Simpsons episode) 145 listening, modes of 126n34, 148, 157n27 ‘Livin’ Thing’ (ELO) 121 London Symphony Orchestra 107 Lone Ranger, The (franchise) 165, 169n3 Long, Michael 148 Lost (2004–10 television series) 55–7, 58, 65, 83n15 Love & Mercy (2014 film) 34 ‘Love is All Around’ (Wet Wet Wet) 28 ‘Lovin’ You’ (Minnie Riperton) 98–9 Lucas, George 13n1, 23, 123n12 Lynch, David 35, 149, 152–3 Lynn, Vera 85n29 Lynyrd Skynyrd 97, 123n11 lyrics: adaptation of 23; as commentary 95, 104, 121, 125nn25–6, 164–5, 169n1; unheard 72, 74–6, 81, 85n29, 104 M (1931 film) 114–15, 127n36 Macdonald, Dwight 45 MacDowell, James 109, 110 ‘Magic Carpet Ride’ (Bedlam) 26, 40 Magnolia (1999 film) 39 Mahler (1974 film) 151 Mahler, Gustav 79, 86nn33–4, 148, 151, 157n31 Mann, Aimee 39 Marie Antoinette (2006 film) 93–4 Marriage of Figaro, The (Mozart) 54, 118–19, 125n28, 127n39 Marshall, Robert L. 133 Marvel 29 Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003 film) 123n13 MCA 26 McCarthy, Todd 44n24 McLachlan, Sarah 24 McQuiston, Kate 3, 41, 155n14 McTiernan, John 71–6, 81, 85n24–6, 162 Mean Streets (1973 film) 23, 35, 39, 43n9, 154n10 Medal of Honor (1999 video game) 55–6, 65, 82n5, 83n15 Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (2002 video game) 58–9 Medal of Honor: Underground (2000 video game) 55–62, 63, 65–6, 68, 70, 164 Meier, Leslie M. 23, 46n36

Index  185 mélomanes 40–1; see also auteurism Mera, Miguel 155n19 Merkley, Paul A. 34, 117, 127n38, 155n14 MGM 31, 32, 34 Midcult 45n28 Midnight Sun, The (1926 film) 133 Minghella, Anthony 101, 124n19 mockups 37 monologism 147, 156n24 Monsters, Inc. (2001 film) 118 Moore, Allan 138 Morricone, Ennio 5, 40, 45n34 Morrison, Van 120 Mothersbaugh, Mark 43n10 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 54, 77, 118–19, 122n6, 125n28, 132–3 ‘Mrs. Robinson’ (The Lemonheads) 68, 69 ‘Mrs. Robinson’ (Simon & Garfunkel) 67–9 Mugtwaine 57–9, 61, 62, 63, 65 Murch, Walter 109, 126nn30–1 music supervisors 5, 21, 41–2, 42n7, 46nn35–8, 162 music video 145–6, 148, 150, 152 Musica ricercata (Ligeti) 117–18 musical adaptation: effects in film 16n17, 105, 107–14, 118–19, 126n34, 127n35, 127nn39–41; effects on post-film reception 148–51, 157n27, 166; theory and practicalities 9–11, 15n16, 23, 38, 105, 110 musical genre and style: and authorial signatures 39–40; and definition of pre-existing music 3, 4, 162; and filmmusic functions 2, 3, 54, 93, 100–1, 116; and post-film reception 150, 153, 157n26, 163; and prestige 34–5, 44n26, 116; and recognition of pre-existing music 54–5 musical reception, films’ effects on 131–3, 147–8, 153, 163; audience size 133–9, 142–3, 151–2, 154n6; compared to other screen media 165–6; composers’ authority 147, 153; factors affecting 133, 135–6, 140–5, 148–9, 156n20, 157n26; listening practices 148, 149–51, 157n27; musical canons 137–9, 154n7; performance practices 151, 157nn30–1; semantic interpretation 140–5, 145–8, 152–3, 156n21; similarities to pre-film

effects 154n8, 156n25; structural interpretation 148–51 musical structure: effects in film 53, 92, 105–15, 116–18, 119, 125n29, 127nn40–1; post-film reception of 148–51, 157n27, 166 musical work-concept 52, 153n1 musicals 2 ‘My Heart Will Go On’ (Celine Dion) 28, 30 Myaskovsky, Nikolai 20 Mystery Girl (Roy Orbison) 151, 153, 158n34 NASA 144 Nattiez, Jean-Jacques 52, 58, 73, 131–2, 153n1 Naxos 139 Needful Things (1993 film) 110, 112, 113, 126n32, 127n36 Nelson, Jessie 24–5, 119–20, 163 Nelson, Willie 93, 94–5 NeoGAF (website) 59, 63 Neumeyer, David 45 New Hollywood 35–6, 44n26 Nichols, Mike 66–9 Nietzsche, Friedrich 132, 142, 143, 146, 148, 155nn14–15, 156n22 Night_Trekker 59–60, 63, 65, 83nn10–11, 83n14 ‘Nimrod’ (Elgar) 78, 94 ‘Nobody Does It Better’ (Carly Simon) 99 nondiegetic music 31 see also diegesis North, Alex 41 Novak, Kim 33, 44n24 Odin, Roger 83n12 ‘On the Nature of Daylight’ (Richter) 10, 15n16 ‘On the Road Again’ (Willie Nelson) 95 on-scene and off-scene diegetic music 96, 123n8 on-screen and off-screen diegetic music 94, 96, 123n8 Once Upon a Time in America (1984 film) 5 Only the Lonely (1991 film) 30, 151, 158n32 ‘Only the Lonely (Know the Way I Feel)’ (Roy Orbison) 30, 151, 158n32 opera 3, 13n1, 118 Orbison, Roy 30, 149, 151–3, 158nn32–4

186 Index original film music: aesthetic value 31–4, 44n25, 44n27; and commerce 28, 29, 43n16, 43n20; and film production 5, 31–2, 36–7, 38, 43n14, 110; and interpretation 3–4, 13n2, 167; intertextuality and 8, 32, 168; referentiality and 96, 101, 106, 121; relationship to diegesis 96, 122n7 Orosz, Jeremy 169n6 OST see soundtrack release Paramount 28, 30 parody 14n9, 20, 66–70 pastiche 7, 11, 14n9, 168 Patterson, David 116–17 Peer Gynt (Grieg) 110, 112, 113, 114–15, 126n32, 127nn35–6 perceivers see audiences perception see interpretation Perlmutter, Michael 23 Phillips, Sam 85n30 Piano Concerto No. 2 (Rachmaninoff) 54, 116 Pickett, Wilson 94 Piekut, Benjamin 15n16 Pixar 65 plagiarism 16n18 Planets, The (Holst) 144 Platoon (1986 film) 37–8, 45n30, 137–8, 139, 140–1, 144 Platte, Nathan 41 playlists 29, 43n19 poiesis 52–3, 131–2, 153n1 Pollack, Howard 123n14 PolyGram 28 Pomp & Circumstance (Elgar) 54 popular music 3, 35, 93–4, 100–1, 102, 166 post-existing music see musical reception Poster, Randall 41, 43n10, 84n17 Powrie, Phil 3, 6–7, 7–8 PPL 165 Presley, Elvis 93, 94, 147 ‘prestige’ films 31–2, 34–5 Pretty Woman (1990 film) 30, 151, 158n32 Previn, André 46n36 Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, The (1970 film) 105 programme music 102–3, 142, 146, 156n25 Prokofiev, Sergei 20 Proms, The 140, 142, 155n13

Proulx, Ron 23 PRS for Music 165 Psycho (1960 film) 44n23 psychoanalysis 115 Public Enemy 100 publishers 21–3, 26, 27, 139, 165 Quadrophenia (1979 film) 93, 94 quotation (practice) 9–12, 15n12, 15n15, 16n18, 105, 131; see also allosonic quotation; autosonic quotation Rachmaninoff, Sergei 54, 116 Raging Bull (1980 film) 39 ragtime 135–7, 139, 141–2, 150 Rat Race (2001 film) 110, 112, 113, 126n32, 127n36 Ratatouille (2007 film) 55–68 passim 70, 83n10, 83nn15–16, 162, 164 reading see interpretation ‘Real Hero, A’ (College and Electric Youth) 134–5, 140–1, 154n2 ‘Rebel-’Rouser’ (Duane Eddy) 94–5 reception see musical reception recognition, of pre-existing music: familiarity and 53–4, 55, 56, 58–61, 63, 67; implications for modes of viewing 54, 73, 82n2, 84n17; other factors affecting 11, 54–58, 60–4, 67; role in recognition of broader references 66–7, 70 record labels 21–3, 26, 27, 139, 165 recording technology 31, 35, 150, 152 Reddit 84n23 referentiality 13, 92, 106, 121, 163, 167; and characterization 98–103, 108–9; and coherence 115–16, 119–21; and diegesis 94–8, 98–9, 123n10; and implied/real authors 103–5, 125n27; and incongruity 100–1; and musical/ filmic structure and expectations 105, 110–15, 126n34, 127n40; and setting time/place 93–4 Renoir, Jean 36 repeat viewings 4, 13n2, 14n4, 62, 149 Requiem (Ligeti) 116, 145 Reservoir Dogs (1992 film) 1, 9–10, 15n13, 26, 100, 124n17 reuse fees 26–7 Richter, Max 10, 15n16 ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ (Wagner) 108–10, 111, 112–14, 126nn30–1, 126n33 Rifkin, Joshua 136, 141

Index  187 Righteous Brothers, The 28 Riperton, Minnie 98–9 Robertson, Robbie 10, 15n16, 41 Rock Band (2007 video game) 166 Rollerball (1975 film) 35, 44n26, 46n36, 116 Rolling Stones, The 18, 19, 23, 39, 42n9 Romanticism 4, 32, 122n1 Ronettes, The 42n9, 154n10 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 137, 140, 154n6 Rosenman, Leonard 38, 40 Ross, Alex 33, 44n24 Ross, Atticus 34 Rossini, Gioachino 165, 169n3 Rósza, Miklós 105 Roust, Colin 41 Royal Tenenbaums, The (2001 film) 35, 43n10 Rumour Has It… (2005 film) 68 Russell, Ken 151 Saint-Saëns, Camille 6, 10–11, 82n3 San Andreas (2015 film) 83n9 Sánchez, Antonio 44n25 Scarlet Letter, The (1995 film) 154n9 Schuller, Gunther 136, 141 Schumann, Robert 154n8, 156n21 score enthusiasts 58–64, 167 Scorsese, Martin 23, 98, 145–6, 165; as auteur 35, 38–40, 41; see also specific films by Seinfeld (1989–98 television series) 141 self-quotations see Giacchino, Michael; Williams, John setting, time and place 7, 93–4, 99, 122nn2, 122n5, 122n7; see also diegesis Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015 film) 138 Shazam 62, 64 Shining, The (1980 film) 40, 104 Shore, Howard 8 Shostakovich, Dmitri 20, 35, 125n27 Shutter Island (2010 film) 10, 15n16 Sibelius, Jean 85n31 Sight & Sound (publication) 155n17 Silence of the Lambs, The (1991 film) 101 silent film 1, 2, 31, 41, 45n32, 74 Sill, Joel 93, 97–8 Silvestri, Alan 37, 96, 122n7 Simon & Garfunkel 22, 67–9 Simon, Carly 99 Simpsons Movie, The (2007 film) 144 Simpsons, The 84n23, 141, 144–5

simultaneous media use 62, 73, 83n12, 167 ‘Sing, Sing, Sing’ (Louis Prima) 118 ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ (Freed, Brown) 71 singles 28, 29, 134–5 Sinyard, Neil 79, 86nn33–4 Sleeping With the Enemy (1991 film) 101–3, 104, 125nn21–2 smartphones 55, 62, 83n12, 167 Smith, Andrew 144 Smith, Jeff: on commerce 22, 27, 30, 43n14; on diegesis 95–6, 122n6, 123n9; on film-music functions and interpretation 14n8, 53, 93, 95–6, 120–1 ‘Solace – A Mexican Serenade’ (Joplin) 148–9, 150 Solti, Georg 109, 126n30 Sony 24, 26 soundtrack release (OST): as commercial product 22, 28–9, 45n33; as listening experience 59, 85n26; role in interpretation 4, 59, 60–1 source music 23, 94–8, 104, 123n9 Space Raiders (1983 film) 25, 43n13 Spielberg, Steven 5, 103 Stack Exchange (website) 72–3, 75 Stainforth, Gordon 40 Stanyek, Jason 15n16 Star Wars (1977 film) 4, 7, 13n1, 15n10, 122n3 Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999 film) 125n23 Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980 film) 103 Starland Vocal Band 120–1 Stealers Wheel 1, 9–10, 15n13, 100, 124n17 Steiner, Max 4, 31–2, 82n2 Steppenwolf 26, 138 Stilwell, Robynn 3, 6–7, 85n24, 96 Sting, The (1973 film): critical and commercial success 34, 136–7; effect on Joplin reception 135–7, 139, 141–2, 148–9, 150, 153 Stone, Oliver 35, 37–8, 137–8, 141; see also Platoon Stothart, Herbert 32, 44n27, 45n32 Straight Outta Compton (2015 film) 19–20, 30 ‘Strangers in the Night’ (Kaempfert, Singleton, Snyder) 74, 104, 125nn25–6 strategies of viewing see interpretation

188 Index Strauss II, Johann 116, 117, 155n18 Strauss, Richard 4, 122n1, 142, 155n13; see also Also sprach Zarathustra streaming (music) 28, 29, 35, 59, 134–5 ‘Strong Arms of the Ma’ (2003 Simpsons episode) 141 ‘Stuck in the Middle with You’ (Stealers Wheel) 1, 9–10, 15n13, 100, 124n17 studio system see classical Hollywood Suite for Variety Orchestra (Shostakovich) 125n27 Summers, Tim 166 Superman (1978 film) 7–8, 11, 15n9, 168 Surjik, Stephen 66–70, 84n20 ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ (Lynyrd Skynyrd) 97 ‘Sweet Thing’ (Van Morrison) 120 ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ (Rolling Stones) 18, 19, 23, 42n1 Symphonie fantastique (Berlioz) 102–3, 125n22 Symphony No. 1 (Brahms) 85n25 Symphony No. 3 (Saint-Saëns) 6, 10–11, 82n3 Symphony No. 5 (Mahler) 79, 86n33, 148, 157n31 Symphony No. 7 (Beethoven) 77–81, 85n32, 105–7, 108, 114, 125nn28–9 Symphony No. 9 (Beethoven) 24, 71, 85n25, 146–7 Symphony No. 9 (Mahler) 86n34 Taken 2 (2012 film) 141 Talented Mr. Ripley, The (1999 film) 101, 124n19 Talk Classical (website) 80 Tarantino, Quentin 26, 35, 36, 40, 45nn33–4, 154n10; see also specific films by Tarkovsky, Andrei 36 television 2, 5, 55, 164–5 temp track 37–8, 45n30, 71, 85n32, 118 themes, musical 5, 117–19, 127n39, 165 ‘This Bitter Earth’ (Dinah Washington) 10, 15n16 Thorogood, George 138–9 ‘Through the Fire and Flames’ (DragonForce) 169n4 Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche (Strauss) 142, 157n30 Titanic (1997 film) 28, 30 Titus (1999 film) 16n18

Top Gear (2002– television series) 169n2 Trading Places (1983 film) 54, 82n3, 118–19, 127nn39–40 trailers 23 ‘Träumerei’ (Schumann) 154n8, 156n25 TRON: Legacy (2010 film) 43n20 Twentieth Century Fox 20 ‘Unchained Melody’ (The Righteous Brothers) 28 unity 5, 32, 44n26, 115–21, 163 Universal 25, 27 van Deursen, Alexander 83n13 van Dijk, Jan 83n13 Vandaele, Jeroen 66, 69, 84n18 Vaughan Williams, Ralph 78 Vertigo (1958 film) 33, 37, 44n24 video games 2, 5, 14n6, 164, 165–6 Vienna Philharmonic 10, 109, 126n30, 131 viewers see audiences viewing see interpretation Virgin Records 151–2, 158n33 Virtual Pool (1995 video game) 155n11 Visconti, Luchino 36, 79, 86n34, 157n31 Wagner, Richard 4, 13n1, 109, 122n1, 127n39; see also ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ Wainwright, Rufus 24 Waldo, Terry 136–7, 141–2, 154n5 Walker, Elsie 16n17 WALL·E (2008 film) 145 Warner Bros. 16n18, 26 Washington, Dinah 10, 15n16 Wayne’s World (1992 film) 84n19 Wayne’s World 2 (1993 film) 66–70, 84n20 ‘We’ll Meet Again’ (Vera Lynn) 85n29 Wenders, Wim 145–6, 156n20 Wentz, Brooke 21, 41 West Side Story (Bernstein) 102 Westlake, Nigel 6, 9–11, 82n3 Wet Wet Wet 28 ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’ 70–6, 81, 85nn25–6, 85nn29–30, 162 Wiebe Taylor, Laura 100 Wierzbicki, James 36, 41 William Tell (Rossini) 165, 169n3 Williams, John: fictional music 122n3; imitation of 7–8, 11, 14n9; selfquotations 5, 103–4, 125n23; study of

Index  189 83n8, 169n6; style and influences 4, 7, 13n1, 15n10, 169n6 Williamson, John 142–3, 151, 155n13, 155nn15–16, 156n22, 157nn30–31 Wilson, Alexandra 93–4, 122n2, 123n13 Wimmer, Kurt 24 Wings of Desire (1987 film) 156n20 Winters, Ben: on films’ effects on musical reception 133, 148, 151, 156n25; on Korngold 82n3; on Trading Places 118, 127n40 Wolf of Wall Street, The (2013 film) 41 work-for-hire 25 WQXR 80 Wright, Bryan S. 137, 139, 141, 150, 154n3

Wright, John 71 Wright, Rayburn 37 X-Ray (Amazon) 62, 64 Yang, Mina 150 ‘Yoda’s Theme’ (Williams) 103–4, 125n23 Young, Glenn 78, 79–80, 86n35 YouTube 27, 62, 148, 150, 167 Zardoz (1974 film) 44n26 Zodiac (2007 film) 96, 122n5 Zombie, Rob 100–1 Zoolander (2001 film) 145, 155n19