Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Part I

oday begins the exclusive engagement of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis at the TIFF Bell Lighbox. Restored to over 2 hours in 2001, more missing footage recently appeared in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in the form of a 16mm reduction copy struck from a surviving 35mm nitrate print that once existed in a private collection and was donated to a government archive in the late sixties.

Now running 147 mins., fans and newbies can experience the film’s elaborate structure and subplots which were heavily altered after the film’s initial premiere in 1927. The transitions between crisp 35mm material, the 2001 material, and the 16mm blow-ups aren’t as fearsome as expected, particularly when one sees samples of the un-restored 16mm footage in a recent doc, Metropolis Refound.

It’s actually a testament to the brilliance of the restorers and the digital software used by the Murnau Institute that the worst artifacts and flaws were softened. The 16mm footage is slightly cropped – a flaw due to the smaller format and space requirement for an optical sound track on the side – but the changeover to the 16mm sources is less severe when the cuts occur between intertitles (consisting of white text on solid black background).

The new footage in the first third of the film mostly consists of missing shots and scene extensions that UFA probably removed after the premiere for reasons of pacing and (perceived) redundancy, whereas the remaning two-thirds are augmented by whole montages and scenes.

The most important additions for the 2010 edition include:

- The giant bust that scientist Rotwang keeps of his late lover whom city bigwig Joh Fredersen eventually married and spawned son Gustav. (The scene illustrates the rivalry between the two older men, and explains why Rotwang used the opportunity to build a robot to destroy Joh, Gustav, and the entire city.)

- Bureaucrat Josaphat also benefits from the added screen time with a whole subplot in which he agrees to help an undercover Gustav find a way to mediate a solution between the brutalized workers and his hard-line father, only to have the plans foiled by a slender henchman named the Thin Man.

- And more footage of the flooding of the workers' underground city at the end, including additional footage of children, and masses of vengeful workers swarming through streets as the good Maria shepherds their kids to the safety of a cathedral.

Still missing is a key scene where Joh overhears Rotwang telling the kidnapped Maria of his plans to destroy all of Metropolis, and the fight between the two men that gives Maria the chance to flee and rescue the kids.

All of the above material is particularly important if you’ve seen the film in one form or another, be it the ‘public domain’ editions of varying lengths, playback speeds and differing scores; the popular 1984 version where composer/producer Giorgio Moroder attempted to reconstruct the film’s original story structure with new music using popular rock groups and his own original score; or the 2001 restoration that was, until now, the most complete reconstruction of Lang’s cut, featuring a new recording of Gottfried Huppertz’ original 1927 orchestral score.

While Metropolis is a work of art, a visionary film that blends melodrama, sci-fi, socialist themes, stylish production design, bold special effects, raw sexual power, pulp mystery, corporate espionage, and unforgettable images of a future megacity, one can see why the film was cut down by UFA and foreign distributors wanting to modify the film for their native audiences.

They perpetrators were wrong, but  in UFA’s case, it most expensive production made by a brutally autocratic director during a terrible recession in Germany where money had lost its value, and the studio wanted a finished product from which they could recoup some needed (international) cash.

UFA’s trimming – if one assumes the 16mm footage represents their deletions – was for time issues, but it wasn’t wholly reckless and didn’t render the film incoherent. One can sense undercooked characters and wisps of missing subplots, but the film still contained Lang’s superb blend of melodrama, exotica, his obsession with mob behaviour, stark depiction of class struggles, and characters placed in dangerous traps and puzzle-room situations reminiscent of his pulp classic Spies / Spione (1928) and Testament of Dr. Mabuse  / Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (1933).

It is odd, however, that UFA’s editors felt the slow opening third should be left alone, but the grand finale – basically the money sequence typical of a disaster film – was heavily cut down - either for visual redundancy, or to hasten the heroes’ arrival to the church steps where the hand of a hallowed mediator (Gustav) fixes the disconnect between workers and autocrats. It's  a hopeful resolution coming from a director who worked his crews and actors mercilessly, and ultimately had to readjust his own behaviour and dictatorial style and demands on studios in order to maintain a career in Hollywood during WWII.

The Huppertz score is what’s married to the 2001 and 2010 restorations, but when the film was slated for a Canadian premiere this year at Montreal’s Fantasia International Film Festival, a new score was commissioned, composed by Gabriel Thibaudeau, resident composer, conductor and pianist at the Cinematheque Quebecoise.

This past Tuesday and Wednesday, Metropolis was screened with a live performance (and the Toronto premiere) of Thibaudeau’s score with his orchestra. Unlike  Huppertz’ grand orchestral approach, Thibaudeau’s score is really intriguing because his focus is less on scope.

Using two chamber orchestras, Thibaudeau used a string quartet and keyboard to represent the rich upper class who control Metropolis and can engage is exotic leisure activities, and a brass quartet and organ for the underground workers who toil through marathon shifts.

The score is based around a 6-note theme which is cleverly worked into a love theme for Gustav and Maria (and quite reflective of the romanticism found in Lang’s work, notably Destiny), as well as a pseudo-flapper jazz variation for the nightclub where the robot Maria does her provocative dance, making nattily attired men drool like wolves.

There are minimalist musical figures, some striking aural effects of chords gliding between quartets, and the orchestra's percussionist uses kettle drums, chimes, and a standard drum kit to connects the two ‘classes’ of music, as well as underscore several tense montages – notably Rotwang chasing Maria through the catacombs to a dead end prior to her abduction.

Perhaps the only stage where the modernist material – dubbed “soundpainting” - is a bit heavy is around that 40 min. mark when the film’s measured pacing emphasizes the introduction of characters, conflicts, and subplots that are put into play.

Once the plotting shifts into full gear, Lang’s structure intercuts various story strands that converge in the 'disaster finale' involving raging mobs, the two Marias, and workers literally dancing ring-around-the-rosie after Metropolis' mechanical heart has been blown to bits.

Thibaudeau’s animated conducting reflects the classic tradition of live film music being in a state of flux: the performances sometimes veer into improv, and theme variations recur with subtle changes to remind an audience of what conflicts or emotions are in progress.

After the performance, Thibaudeau engaged in a brief audience Q&A, from which I’ve extracted a few highlights:

Audience: Tell us a little bit on who you came to write this score?

Thibaudeau: This score was commissioned by the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal. I received the commission in March, I received the film by mid-May, and so I had to write the score for the premiere of July 28.

By that time, I did 9 concerts in Italy, one week of touring in France, I moved, and I wrote the music for a play, so I must admit that tonight is my first break... so I’m quite happy to finish with you!

Audience: How many times have you seen the movie?

Thibaudeau: Well, many times. In fact [I’ve been] the pianist of La Cinematheque Quebecoise in Montreal for almost 25 years, so Metropolis was one of the first ones that I played on… Must be about 100 times... You have to imagine every day I was maybe looking at one part of the film, but [repeating and repeating] for hours and hours….

Audience: Will the score be available commercially, or can it only be heard through a performance?

Thibaudeau: Actually, performances, because there is already an original score that was written [for the film in 1927], and of course this is the score which is now available with the DVD. Who knows? Maybe here will be an alternate 'TIFF' track, but I’m quite sure that the people of the Murnau Stiftung will say ‘Nein, nein, nein, nein! Das is nicht richtig!’

Audience: How much were you influenced by the original score?

Thibaudeau: Not much… The [musical language] is really different. The original score is really a post-Wagnerian score with a huge symphony orchestra. [My approach] is really contemporary music, which has nothing to do with the Wagnerian era.

Audience: You mentioned Bach and his counterpoint styles were a major influence, but your music is certainly removed from the Baroque style, so could you tell people about some of your modern influences?

Thibaudeau: I really do enjoy Prokofiev, Stravinsky, and Ravel also, and there is this really great composer called Valentin Silvestrov who is from the Ukraine.








Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com

Suburban Tales II: Poltergeist (1982)

Just uploaded (finally) is my review essay on Steven Spielberg’s production of Poltergeist, the supernatural-ghost-story-horror-thriller released around June of 1982 to audiences probably wondering what kind of film lay beyond the arresting ad campaign that showed a little girl touching a big TV screen in a very dark living room.

The poster was in black & white, had very few words (“They’re here”), and didn’t feature the inflated head of whatever big name star heading the cast. The movie was actually marketed creatively, and somehow we’ve ruined the advances in graphic poster design and campaign art that began around the fifties when proponents and pioneers such as Saul Bass gave us a graphic representation of a film using a visual hook and/or tag line.

Had Alien (1979) been made today, Fox would never have used Ridley Scott’s brilliant trailer of a pulsing beat-cracking eggshell montage, nor the corresponding poster of an egg ready to sprout an evil green miasma, nor the tagline “In space no one can hear you scream.”

In 2010, the campaign for Poltergeist would probably show the star’s head looking afraid near a TV set, and ghosts swirling around the frightened little body of a child, whereas the home video campaign would just have the star’s big head – because apparently that’s all people care about. (‘Craig T. Nelson looks awfully stern around those ghosts. Looks like a must-see/can’t miss renter.’)

Director Tobe Hooper wanted unknowns because a star would’ve mucked up the plan to get audiences bonding with an Average American Family: two yuppie parents (one a confirmed pothead in Reagan “Say No to Drugs” era), their two daughters, a son, a dog, a dead bird named Tweety, and fish who would likely die soon from overfeeding.

The film made the news as the summer’s must-see shocker, and also started to raise questions about what exactly constitutes a PG film, since Poltergeist had at least one very gory sequence that somehow snuck past the MPAA censors. (Lore has it that the film’s shock sequences ran longer and gorier purposely to force the MPAA weasels to compromise on allowing some gore – a ploy Alfred Hitchcock successfully used by larding Psycho with provocative language guaranteed to force a compromise.)

I missed Poltergeist in theatres for reasons I just don’t know; I’ve no memory of the fuss that magnetically drew audiences into theatres, but my friend went, and by the time I started listening more attentively, it was too late. Luckily there was VHS, and when Poltergeist made it to home video, we watched on what else – the Poltergeist TV.

This is where I have to pause, because if you want to read the lengthy essay that tackles the film’s structure, characters, directorial authorship headache, home video versions, lack of new special features, transfer, and more importantly, its position as the best representation of Spielberg’s idyllic suburban lifestyle, you should read the piece which runs a bit more than the average review. Warner Home Video’s released a great Blu-ray edition in terms of transfer, sound, and presentation, but it still falls short of the extras fans have wanted for decades. (And yes, I address the lack of custom extras, since 2012 marks the film’s 30th anniversary, and there’s still time to assemble a great special edition before some people respire into the netherworld of upper suburbia. Ahem.)

Lastly, I’ve also added a review of the long-forgotten TV movie that followed in Poltergeist’s wake: Don’t Go to Sleep, which had child star Oliver Robins again playing a kid whose life is threatened by a malevolent spirit. If you remember some TV movie you saw as a kid in where a rolling pizza cutter is travelling towards Valerie Harper, this is the one.

Now let’s love on to an anecdotal tribute to the best TV ever made: that 27” Sony.

My affection for the film has actually wavered over the years for a few easy reasons: when the movie was new, it was great; after subsequently seeing several Spielberg films set in the suburbs, it seemed clichéd, and one got tired of seeing actors looking at bright blue lights in ridiculous maw-gaping wonderment.

Spielberg’s short-lived TV series Amazing Stories was awful, and that soured my interest in the producer/director’s wave of family-friendly Amblin’ productions. I was also a bit older than the key kiddie demographic, so it all seemed trite.

I watched the film on laserdisc, letterbox for the first time, and the reaction was more positive, but a bit ‘meh’ towards the movie as a whole: looks and sounds were awesome, but the story and sentimentality were creaky.

Then maybe 15 years passed and for some reason this thing looked good. Actually, really good. And it’s not necessarily due to nostalgia, because I wasn’t fond of the eighties during the eighties and still ain’t (sort of).
I doubt it’s exactly nostalgia, but more of a shock at how well the film represents a chunk of eighties childhoods, because that was what the ‘burbs were like, circa 1982.

It’s still an ideal (read the film essay), but that lifestyle is what many families were adopting as both working parents had enough income to move out of their starter homes and upgrading to bigger houses with larger lawns, double-car driveways and garages, and new jobs in recently expanded suburbs that were a year ago farmer’s markets or grassy nothing.

This certainly was the norm in North York around 1970-1971 when nothing farmland existed beside Finch Avenue, Victoria Park Avenue, and Woodbine Avenue (which was soon flipped farther east because old Woodbine became the 404 highway. I used to ride my bike on the bumpy side of the trough where the new highway was being erected a stone’s throw from the new Fairview Mall.)

That corner pocket of what became Finch/Victoria Park was Poltergeist’s enclave of Cuesta Verde. It was (still is) a hilly suburban subdivision developed on what used to be a farm, and was rumored to be an old Indian burial ground. No idea where that last tidbit came from, but that’s what I remember hearing at an early age.

When we moved into the neighbourhood, the driveways hadn’t been paved, there was no park across the street, and the backyard was a great big dirt mound that would eventually get dredged to erect the next street. Beyond that street was the field that sloped towards what became the 404, and the field had a lone path cut by people heading out to the new North York Seneca College campus.

I once rode down the path excitedly until I realized I was flanked by tall dry grass beholding bugs that could sting. I had to peddle backwards because there was no room for a U-turn without irritating the insectoids and being killed before dinner.

About maybe 10 years later my best friend moved out and into the latest Cuesta Verde in Thornlea, and like the movie version, could only be accessed by car. Her father was the first person I knew who owned something called a Video Cassette Recorder, and this thing could record movies off TV for free, and you could keep them and watch them ad nausea. His device was a top-loader Betamax, and I think he got it around 1978 or 1979, and had the Jerrold cable box whose rows of push buttons generated TV stations beyond the 12 we got on my parents’ 1968 black & white Admiral set.

When her family moved to Thornlea, the new house clearly needed new gear, and my first visit was magical because there were these two great big beautiful Sony TVs. The main floor living room where my friend’s mom played Mahjong (my friend pronounced it with an extended “Maaaaaaa-jong” delay) had maybe a 14” of tubage, but the basement was the media room, and there sat a 27” Sony. It was big and beautiful, paneled in wood, and in typical suburban behaviour, even as an ex-neighbour, I wanted one, even though I was maybe 12.

Back on my old street, I had two neighbours who shared the same sloping driveway for their semi-detached homes. Both had Volkswagens. When one bought an Audi, the other eventually did the same and bought an Audi. When the next upgrade was a Mercedes 380 sedan, the other stopped, because that exceeded his economic status. End of the Do-Like-the-Jones Olympics.

When the neighbour in the house to the other side got a new TV, it was that big Sony, and when my dad heard that Ira has one, and Albert now had grabbed one on sale, my dad had to have one – even though we had just upgraded maybe a year earlier to a 14” RCA colour tube set + RCA top-loading VCR (which died a year into its extended warrantee, and was promptly replaced by a JVC front-loader – which still lives).

We hopped down to Mann’s (the stereo & TV emporium owned & operated by Ron Mann’s dad) and had to make a serious choice: that same Sony, knocked down from $2,000 to $1,500; or the model up, knocked down from $2,500 to $2,000.

$500 in, what, 1985 was a lot of money, so we (sorry, my dad) went for the first model, since the tubes were the same size, and had shared features.

Now, you can imagine the goofiness of socially moving between three households and seeing the same TV set. At Xmas and Easter dinners at Albert’s, there was the Sony. At movie weekends at Ira’s, there was the Sony, and at home in our own crude but wood-paneled leisure room, there was the Sony. This was part of the suburban ideal: you and your neighbours shared roughly the same toys, and it was a sign of progress, not greed, jealousy, or materialistic insanity.

(Oh stop it. Let me go on.)

The Sony represented a key ingredient that was rampant in Poltergeist and the Spielbergian suburban ideal: people had the income to be current with the latest leisure gear and appliances that made life comfortable. Two cars, a leisure room that itself was a nascent form of the home theatre, a washer + dryer, dishwasher, and big rooms where each child could play in privacy until mom’s last call for dinner was genuine.

Through objects, jokes, and set décor, the neighbourhood dramatized in Poltergeist’s Cuesta Verde existed in California, Toronto, and everywhere else, and that’s one of the reasons burbanites probably have some affection for Spielberg’s films: they were a snapshot of the good life you could enjoy if you had working parents, a parent with a well-paying gig, or a mortgage (or vivid imagination spawned by childish envy).
It’s an ideal rooted in materialism, and most people are materialistic to some degree; it’s one’s economic situation and how it impacts one’s psychology, ego, latent mania for toys that determine whether one cherishes stuff, or stays sensible and saves hard-earned money instead of spending like a goofball- er, good consumer.

The Freeling family’s life in a neighbourhood still in transition is no different than any family who snagged their first home, moved in, and had to contend with roaring bulldozers, paving machines, and pounding sounds in the daytime as the next street down was erected.

This isn’t the same as moving into a new condo; the suburban home experience – semi-detached or fully – is unique, and in all honesty, I cherish my memories living in a car-centric development because my life in the ‘burbs wasn’t the Durham County experience. There were hydro towers nearby – but a good 10 mins. by car, so we were safe from Fried Brain Syndrome.

There were Tupperware parties on my street, craft sales in basements (I still have a rice-filled frog named Mary), my mother did batik and our plants were in hand-made clay pots that were often suspended in macramé holders created by Albert’s wife, BBQs between neighbours, and the odd invite to a cottage (the Audi-Mercedes neighbours had cottages).

The was the odd break-in, but there were no dead bodies under the foundation because at least in Toronto, homes in the seventies & onwards were built with basements, so they’d have found dead people and done something about it before continuing with the sewers and secret government stuff.

We didn’t have an evil Teague who developed the rolling streets of semi-detached homes; instead we had incompetent wiring by a major company that we smacked with a lawsuit (you do NOT connect aluminum wires to copper-rated sockets), baseboard heating that dried out your throat and overheated to dangerous levels. rotten windows the cheap builders installed that were breezy in winter and warped in summer, and a driveway built on clay that warped from the weight of parked cars.

Paradise. You know.

I saw Poltergeist on the Poltergeist TV, and I didn’t get the irony until years later when it hit me (why then?) that I had the Poltergeist TV. And my parents’ house may have resided on hallowed land. And the house had weird electrical oddities. And people’s voices sometimes fuzzed though the stereo and TV speakers when the power was off. And I almost got brained by my mother’s torpedo-tipped clay pot holder that for 10+ years was otherwise safely suspended from the ceiling until one day it decided it wanted freedom, seconds after I passed under it.

When I moved out of the house, the TV (which I affectionately dubbed Carol Anne) came with me, and she remained the main set until I upgraded to a freakin’ huge 36” JVC tube in 1999 for $1,600. Then Carol went into the bedroom.

I rented a disintegrating house for about 8 years that resembled the Fight Club House on rainy days (the ceiling actually collapsed once) and had Buffalo Bill’s basement from Silence of the Lambs (all unfinished, half-assed carpentry, and ducts lined with spiders I nicknamed Bruce because of their size and ability to procreate like rabbits).

In the dying house, Carol Anne was the TV that sat in the bedroom, and there was one night where I had a dream-within-a-dream: every time I closed my eyes I’d hear this incredible pounding, like a giant fist smacking the house from maybe the upper bedroom corner. (The force sounded so profound that the hits resonated from several places.)

Carol Anne was also integral to the finale of an unfinished short film of mine because the tube was so big and easy to photograph. That Sony model was indestructible, and every time it seemed to be on the verge of death, it snapped out of it.

Old neighbour Albert eventually replaced his tube because it died, and it cost $800+ about 20-25 years ago, but the Sony set lived on.

Mine started to get a bit greenish until I moved out of a condo (magnetics from a steel support beam?), then it developed diagonal lines on the upper part of the tube display (which sort of stopped), and once in a while the contrast would blow out, emphasizing whites and greens on separate occasions. The oscillator would also squeal if the TV needed a nap.

Most of the time Carol Anne was fine, and there’s something to be said of a CRT tube made around 1984 that was rock solid for its first 20 years. Someone posted this message in a forum, titled “Why won’t my 20 year old tube TV die?”

Quote:

“We have a 20 year old Sony Trinitron 27” Tube TV in our living room and till this day, it just won’t die.”


It won’t die because they made them that good. The JVC that replaced the Sony is circa 1999, but the model is a good 6 years older than that, and it rated high on a consumers report because of its low maintenance issues.

Manufacturers don’t make singular TV models for 5-10 years; they get replaced by newer machines months later, and people upgrade a lot more often than in the past because there’s poor coordination between the various hardware manufacturers, the software makers, and the computer industry that’s now indistinguishable from the TV industry.

If I could, I’d actually tell you Carol Anne’s model number, but the manual and TV are in deep storage.
It’s so old, it’s off the Google radar.

Vintage Trinitron searches yield XBR and WEGA models. Type “Sony Poltergeist TV” and you get pictures of the poster and CD covers, but no model specs. The closest relative kinda looks like Carol Anne, but it’s not her, and not as old.

Right now the TV’s got boxes of my mother’s (prolific production of) homemade pottery, surrounded by boxes of videotapes, IKEA shelves, and records, but I know that if Carol Anne was rolled out, and her solid wood cabinet was dusted off, her tube Windexed clean, and the remote was refitted with batteries, she would make that familiar “Boomph!’ sound, and as the static snaked through the electrical architecture, a picture would appear from the blankness. The colours would be nice, the detail solid, and the sound in Sony’s faux simulated stereo clean and clear.

I have no intention of turning her into an aquarium. When she’s freed from storage, she’ll be a museum piece in the home, more better than a Poltergeist poster or cast picture signed by every actor.

Sony designed her with care, to the point that if you went on vacation, there was a master power switch under the contrast and colour adjustment knobs that disconnected the set from the AC feed for safety.

Who does that?

Naturally, like all antiques, Carol Anne would have to be plugged in for a day to warm up the circuit boards so she wouldn’t blow up, but think about it: a 31 year old TV model that probably still lives in spite of being stored in an inert locker. I’m pretty sure that if you turn the TV to channel 12 and let the white noise play for a while, you might hear TV People.

I just don’t want to think about the robust egg sacks of little baby Bruces under her cabinet, but if she’s a real Poltergeist TV, the Bruces are what’s been protecting her from vermin.

Madness?

Probably.

But that’s my Poltergeist story.









Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com

Suburban Tales I: Durham County

The wonderful world of the suburbs has gone through several subjective optics since the fifties, even though one could argue suburban life was present in the Little Rascals shorts of the thirties: the kids lived outside of the downtown core, had vast fields and newly developed areas to play around, not to mention older farms from where they could commandeer unused shacks and oddities to create a clubhouse and a new car.

There were also the Blondie films of the thirties and forties, which focused on the trials of Dagwood Bumstead’s life as married man, supporting his family with lots of humorous ups and downs.

It wasn’t until the fifties when the burgeoning culture of nuclear families in starter homes found further idyllic reflections on TV, both in TV series like Leave It To Beaver (1957-1963), as well as commercials where housewives in housework suits or flowing dresses vacuumed in style and felt proud to have shiny new streamlined appliances.

The commercial imagery was sexist to the core, but it represented an ideal: perfect homes, streets, driveways, lawns, gardens, and great neighbours with whom one could BBQ on weekends and knock back a few beers (when drinking on screen was no longer taboo in networks’ Standards & Practices rulebooks.

Suburban life is a very, very broad subject which some might hard to believe. It’s loathed by townies because it’s out in the middle of nowhere - or as friends David & Mike would call it, ‘a far away yonder’ known colloquially as Bumblefuck, because you haphazardly bumbled into some insular pocket that begged the question: ‘Why the hell would anyone want to live here? And how the hell do we get outta here?!?!?!’

Green fascists hate the ‘burbs because it’s based around a car culture that goes against the more logical city/small town scheme of work/shops/homes being within 5-10 mins. walking distance, and being walkable.

You could bike in the ‘burbs (as I did to spend $1 on 4 specific snacks my mother never bought: chocolate bar + gum + chips + more chocolate), but depending on the development scheme, you probably required a car to get anything, as was dramatized in the Steven Spielberg’s eighties suburban fantasies E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and Poltergeist (1982).

(I’ll have reviews of the three Poltergeist films later this week, since Warner Home Video recently released the first film on Blu-ray.)

Burbanites (of which I was one, and still am, due to a quirk of genetics, if not a warped spirituality) tend to be split along black and white lines: they either hated the experience and fled, or they retain a fondness for the environment that to them wasn’t evil at all, and remains a great place to raise families and/or retire with a big yard for roasting meat, fish and sausages. My memories are really, really good, but I’ll save that blather for the Poltergeist column.

The suburbs have never gotten their due in film and TV because the people who live there are portrayed as buffoons (The ‘Burbs), slapstick morons (Neighbors), or catty bitches (Desperate Housewives). In Viva (2007), set in the sleazy psychedelic late sixties/early seventies, the perfect lifestyle masks sexually repressed characters who sometimes delve into some swapping and ‘escorting’ – a bit of experimentation while Money Earning Husband is away for the day or out of town on ‘business.’

None of the clichés or off-beat portraits are wrong; they just represent a satirical poke at the ‘burbs where the characters never feel real.

Perhaps that’s what made the first season of Durham County such a striking shocker. It’s set in a suburb outside of Toronto, and the incipient malaise from past demons, potential health risks, and dysfunctional families are kept shuttered behind immaculately maintained monster homes / snout mansions – the ugly, ersatz chic budget estates that pepper areas outside of the older suburbs (which during the fifties and sixties included modest 2-level homes and bungalows, and in the seventies largely consisted of semi-detailed homes with big yards).

Durham may not represent the weirdness of my suburban childhood, but it’s plausible because the characters are utterly ordinary. A burnt out cop, a cancer mom, unhappy children, an ex-teen hockey star, and yoga mom. The dramatic events are compressed and the unraveling of repressed rage unfurls like a tight soap opera, but the unhappiness of the Sweeney family is more believable than the Klopeks of The ‘Burbs (much as I like them), or the stupid characters that deserve far worse fates in Disturbia (2007).
         
Season 3 of Durham County is already underway – it debuted Oct. 25 on HBO Canada – but prior Seasons 1 and 2 are readily available in Canada as a 2-pack from Anchor Bay Entertainment Canada / Muse International). (Well Go USA has released Season 1 in the U.S., and Season 2 streets Nov. 23rd.)

For the first part of this peek at the ‘burbs, we have interviews with series writer/producer Janis Lundman, writer/producer/director Adrienne Mitchell, and Seasons 2 and 3 composer Peter Chapman.
        

Mark R. Hasan, Editor

KQEK.com

Christopher Young Talks Psycho

No, no, no. Esteemed composer Christopher Young hasn’t experienced a psychotic snap. He talks about Psycho. No idea where you got such a silly idea.

The final slice of Rue Morgue’s 3-part Q&A with composers well-versed in the nuances of horror film scoring is up & running, and it’s the transcript of my discussion with Young based around 3 questions.
What I love about Young is that he’s a film music fan, an educator, a passionate artist, and gracious about his own work. If I had to be stuck on an island and could only choose music by 5 composers, my picks would 99.9%  be Young, Jerry Goldsmith, Bernard Herrmann, Oliver Nelson, and Hugo Friedhofer.

Which Young scores I’d take is a different matter, but they would have to include his horror work, as well as Jennifer 8, Copycat, and Hider in the House, because they’re marinated in pure melancholy. (Hider is a gem, and I don’t’ want to see the film because my own mind has conjured a drama more vivid than the cinematic tale of Gary Busey playing a sleazy Bad Ronald.)

Also of note is a post-Halloween treat (thanks, Pete!) originally spotted by io8.com, where you too can listen to a special mix of themes from John Carpenter films. The hour-long program was created by former Carpenter ‘associate’ and co-composer Alan Howarth for Resident Advisor.

I’ll have a list of sampled films in the next blog. The downloadable file is worth checking out for music written when Carpenter’s film output was far more creative and fun than his weak TV (Pro Life) and rare film work of late.

Lastly, Tadlow Music, who brought us crisp digital re-recordings of the full scores to Mikos Rozsa’s El Cid (later reissued via Silva Screen), and more recently Maurice Jarre’s Lawrence of Arabia, have announced their 2-CD set for Basil Poledouris’ Conan the Barbarian. The label has posted a YouTube video of a snippet from the recording session to tease us before the set is released, uhm, today!         

Mark R. Hasan, Editor

KQEK.com

More TV Music, Please

Back in late August, Film Score Monthly released a 5-disc set of music from a diverse group of TV series, spanning 1962-1976, although most really fall between 1969-1976, which is perfectly fine because there’s a lot of great music that hasn’t been heard in probably 40+ years.

Johnny (John) Williams, Leonard Rosenman, and George Duning have whole scores from their sixties work, and within the jazz idiom (as well as some fusion writing) there’s music by Dave Grusin, Don Ellis, and John Parker, plus lengthy suites of music by Gil Melle, whose jazz orchestra score for The Organization (1971) was recently released by Intrada.

Grusin’s music for Assignment: Vienna is fabulous, and I’ve never heard of John Parker before, but his music, based around Grusin’s series theme, is equally strong. There’s also Jerry Fielding in a lighter state of mind, and Lalo Schifrin’s music from Gene Roddenberry’s Earth II pilot which ran forever on syndicated TV stations because it had stars you kind of remember from something but whose names always evaded you.
The big gem for myself is Don Ellis’s music from The Deadly Tower, a 1975 TV movie starring Kurt Russell which is actually out on DVD, but only via the Warner Archives branch (read: rather pricey, U.S.-only, on-demand DVD-R).

I know FSM will have a follow-up set when the right combo of material falls into place, but the quality of this music ought to be a signal to other labels that a lot of really good TV music remains unreleased.
Since we’re still talking jazz, the world would be a better place if the scores for Starsky & Hutch appeared on CD. Lalo Schifrin’s title theme is all-tension, and the composer also contributed a number of scores before other luminaries took over, including Tom Scott, J.J. Johnson, and Shorty Rogers.
And since we’re still on the topic of jazz in TV, here’s an impossible request for anyone with similar sensibilities: Private Eye, the 1987 stillborn series created by former Starsky & Hutch writer/Miami Vice creator Anthony Yerkovich.

Pilot movie and series theme: Joe Jackson and a big jazz band.

Series episodes: Shorty Rogers.

And wouldn’t it be grand if Universal, who finally released The Six Million Dollar Man on DVD (albeit via an exclusive Time Life deal that ends in October of 2011), allowed someone like, oh, Intrada to release a big fat delicious set of music?

Why, you ask? Because the series theme and signature themes were composed by Oliver Nelson, a massively talented arranger, composer, producer, and superb soprano sax player in his own right.

If you’ve never heard of Nelson, Google his name, because he was associated with some of the finest musicians on the planet in jazz. Check out a few sound samples, because he was brilliant, and one could always tell when he was the arranger of an album, be it Stanley Turrentine’s Blue Note work, or Gato Barbieri’s score for The Last Tango in Paris.
  
I know some soundtrack label producer just noticed a light bulb glowing above their head…





Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com