Jun 152009
In our recent Friday Flashback thread Townsman Mockcarr expressed amazement at the artistic success of Arthur in spite of its Christopher Cross soundtrack and the presence of Liza Minelli. I know EXACTLY what he’s talking about, and just last night, while watching an episode of the ’80s sitcom Family Ties I was reminded of this soundtrack-related subject. Arthur tops the list of good movies from the ’80s that need to have their soundtracks digitally replaced with music that’s not as jarring, don’t you think? What other quality movies and tv shows from the ’80s and other periods need to have their cheesy, outdated soundtrack music replaced?
“Author’s Theme.”
sheesh.
we can’t even speak our own language anymore.
hell in a handbasket, i tells ya!!
actually, the video’s introductory panel (which is where i’m getting this “author” shit from, for those of you unwilling to press play), doesn’t even have the apostrophe!
it says “Authors Theme.”
ha.
i gotta say, i spent all of 8th and 9th grade hearing my peers say “Arthur he does as he pleeeezes” to me. All told, as far as jr. high school ribbings go, that was fairly benevolent.
i was just watching something the other day, and couldn’t believe how outdated the soundtrack was. it was also from the 80s….but i’m brainfarting on it at the moment.
to me, the question here is, will movies like “Arthur” (or “Author” as the case may be) ever sound “classic” to the ears of future generations?
Tootsie — still a very funny movie. Those songs are atrocious.
I always thought Cross got a bad rap. I generally don’t like tenors, but his voice had this otherworldly quality, especially on Sailing, that worked for me. I liked his modest ambitions, making music that didn’t seem to try to be anything other than what it was, which was the sound of niceness. Look at how humble he is at the end of this video, thanking his competently unspectacular band profusely. There’s nothing wrong with pleasant music, as long as all music doesn’t stop there. Also I like his Look.
So, would you say it “takes you away to where you always heard it could be”?
—
Mine would be that even the best 80s horror movies, the handful that still hold up, are larded down with atrocious 3rd-rate hair metal.
Tootsie is definitely another one that’s at the top of my list. Maybe we can get Ted Turner to fund this project.
I have no idea what the lyrics are. I did just read that he once said in an interview that the song was based on being invited sailing by a friend as a teenager and enjoying the escape from the pressures of teenage life. He said that if the friend had invited him to go bowling, then the song would have been called Bowling. That’s the kind of modesty I like. I think he knew that his success was an extremely unlikely jackpot.
Speaking of unlikely successes, what was up with Dudley Moore? He was a serviceable straight man for Peter Cook’s odd genius, but he briefly became a real movie star, and unlike Cross he seemed to have believed his own press. I can’t imagine actually watching 10 or Arthur. Moore and Minelli in the same movie defines NFW for me.
What did Moore do that indicates he started believing his own press?
Biggie Steves, I’m not suggesting your wrong. Inquiring minds want to know.
I have two off the top of my head.
I recently watch “Trains, Planes and Automobiles” again and the sound track is dreadfully stuck in the 80’s.
Worse yet is “Ladyhawke”. It’s this flick with Mathew Broderick that is set in the time period with knights and so on. It’s actually not a bad film but the sound track is so total 80’s synth, prog like crap. It so disconnects the feel of the film’s time period and puts you knee deep into the 80’s. It makes it almost unwatchable.
AHA! i remembered:
it was “Falcon and the Snowman.” Not just the Bowie / Metheny co-lab, but the whole thing.
All this talk of “Sailing” means some of you definitely need to watch the early Yacht Rock episode where the secret origin behind “Sailing” is revealed. It’s a tragic story involving a blood feud with Hall & Oates, but I shall say no more.
Good call on that weird, incongruous Ladyhawke soundtrack, underthefloat. Was Alan Parsons involved in that?
I, for one, would at least be interested in watching yet another version of Blade Runner where the Vangelis score was replaced by, say, a Johnny Greenwood score. I’m not saying it would be better, but it would at least be interesting.
Was the Family Ties episode that helped spawn this topic one of the many that featured Billy Vera & The Beaters “At This Moment”? I remember that being inescapable the year it debuted as Alex P. Keaton’s Love Theme, and years later when I first heard the Remains’ excellent “Don’t Look Back” on the Nuggets set, I had a hard time believing that the same guy wrote both songs.
Nels Cline: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STvoZMkpRpY
Saturn, I can’t really remember how I arrived at this conclusion, because it’s 20+ years ago now. Dude was apparently a major Lothario in real life, and I think I thought he thought he had a future as a romantic leading man after a couple of hits, even though he was pushing 50 by then. He also seemed to overvalue his own music, which sounded like generic cocktail jazz to these rockist ears. My read on all this may well have been affected by my well-known distaste for short people.
Nels Cline is a really good answer to the other question. And I’m grateful to Oats for helping me realize we weren’t talking about Ibanez guitars.
Sat through Beverly Hills Cop on Comedy Central last weekend. The Axel F and other synth backgrounds are horrid and don’t fit with the movie..
Then there is “New Attitude” and “The Heat Is On” ….ugh!
Hey guys, sorry to go off topic but I know there are XTC fanatics here and I wanted to make sure they saw this Andy Patridge interview about Dukes of Stratosphear:
http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/entertainment_popmachine/2009/05/the-ever-melodic-adventurous-underappreciated-british-band-xtc-had-just-come-off-1984s-coolly-digital-low-selling-th.html?&obref=obnetwork
This song added a touch of class to any 80’s movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fWvub_WBho
Rumble Fish is an awesome movie with:
Matt Dillon
Diane Lane
Mickey Rourke
Dennis Hopper
Nicholas Cage
Chris Penn
Larry Fishburne
& Tom Waits
It was directed by Coppola when he was still really great. Unfortunately, Stewart Copeland was chosen to score this flick and it kinda ruins this otherwise perfect film (shot by Robbie Mueller)
Coppola re-released The Outsiders with additional footage and a new music track. His father had scored the original. In this newer version, he uses more 50s’songs. He is such a prick, he actually says in the commentary that he was waiting till his dad died to take out part of the old man’s score!
Can’t imagine Blade Runner without Vangelis
Ladeyhawke is in my Netflix que.
Saw Arthur at the drive in with my stoned folks.
Good call on that weird, incongruous Ladyhawke soundtrack, underthefloat. Was Alan Parsons involved in that?
Thanks. You know I think your right about Parsons but I’m not certain….
And another OT link to an interview…
http://popdose.com/the-popdose-interview-andy-partridge/
Has anyone seen the ‘version’ of Fritz Lang’s immortal Metropolis that came out in the 80s? Not only does it have a completely inappropriate Moroder soundtrack, but some evil prick overlayed the beautiful B&W with garish tinting. Burn in hell.
I know Pere Ubu has been performing a live movie soundtrack, but I can’t find quickly what it was. The Day the Earth Stood Still maybe? Pet Shop Boys were doing the same thing with Battleship Potemkin. That was recorded, but never released domestically. I wonder how that will hold up.
Since the consensus here is that all 80s music is bad, I think the question should be, what film from the 80s with a soundtrack of 80s music was successful? If the action is set in the 80s, is that ok? The larger question is how is it possible to succeed with a soundtrack that doesn’t match the era portrayed in the film?
Good questions, BigSteve. There are some ’80s movies with ’80s music that hold up, I’m sure. I can’t remember all the details, but there was a movie called Liquid Sky that had a lot of “futuristic” ’80s club music that was wholly appropriate to the movie and would probably sound just as fine today. I didn’t *love* the movie or the music, but it wasn’t because of the music. The music fit and gave the movie a lot of its personality. Same goes for Risky Business. That Tangerine Dream stuff held my attention more than Tom Cruise in his tighty-whiteys and as much as his pouting co-star and her pointy nipples. I did not like that movie, but the music was fine.
American Psycho used ’80s music effectively and as part of its story. I liked that movie a lot, and the soundtrack was just right. That horrible Marie Antionette movie would have been a lot worse if not for the use of anachronistic new wave pop tunes from the early ’80s.
Chariots of Fire is another one that worked fine with ’80s-era music that couldn’t have been composed in the era in which the film is set.
Other ’80s movies that are fine with its ’80s music are Ghostbusters I and II.
I’ve been trying to think whether there are movies from other decades that could use this digital replacement method. Maybe Alan Rudolph’s Welcome to LA, with it’s poor man’s Randy Newman character warbling throughout? I like that movie, but some of the songs seem really outdated and not up to par with the film.
not all 80s music is bad. ‘repo man’ man has a good soundtrack.
i also think ‘sixteen candles,’ the ‘breakfast club,’ and ‘pretty in pink’ are successful soundtrack uses of 80s music (but not ‘st. elmo’s fire,’ if we’re talking other brat pack films.
Hoosiers suffers from, that’s right, cheesey 80s synth music during the basketball scenes. Incongruous to the rest of the movie.
Woodstock.
My local green grocer has a special iPod selection for this kind of music: he calls it Yacht-rock. You know what he means.
Flash Gordon has an amazing totaly 80’s sndtrk by the one and only Queen!
If anything, I would give more movies the Flash Gordon soundtrack.
Strangely, the synth-heavy 80s soundtrack to my fave movie “Local Hero” — by Mark Knopfler, an artist I don’t even like — is great, and wholly appropriate.
Everything about Ferris Beuller’s day off was strange and alien to me. I guess because it felt so suburban and everyone had a ton of money. Subsequently, the stiff 80’s soundtrack fit perfectly.
Shawnkilroy, I’ve never seen that movie. I’ve been afraid to see it for all the reasons you state – and then some: I couldn’t stand young Matthew Broderick in War Games, and I don’t think I saw another movie with him until that one where he’s a high school principal or something, with Reese Witherspoon. That movie was good. I’ve since toyed with trying Ferris Bueller’s Day Off with my boys.
I remember a party scene in the 80s movie Valley Girl that had a Jam song playing in background, and I almost crapped my pants. The music in that one didn’t bother me too much, and there was a Plimsouls cameo.
The trouble with Broderick is he’s not really annoying enough to hate properly. You have to save that kind of thing for guys like Pauly Shore and Adam Sandler.
I can’t imagine recommending Ferris Bueller’s Day Off to anyone. This is probably a generational thing, but that film has been so absorbed into pop culture that, though it’s generally inoffensive, I’m so thoroughly sick of it the film makes me kind of angry.
However, the other Broderick movie Mr. Mod mentioned, Election is one of the truly brilliant satires of the last ten-or-so years. An almost perfect film.
Speaking of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off being absorbed into pop culture, the “Bueller? Anyone?” catchphrase is so ubiquitous, especially on the internet, that I occasionally use it and I’ve never even seen the film (and have no intention of doing so).
This suggests a thread about rock albums we all reference in conversation, yet have never actually heard. I for one make fun of Rick Wakeman’s “Journey to the Center Of the Earth” all the time, yet I’ve never actually heard it. I don’t really have to, do I?
Thought of another movie that needs a new soundtrack: A Fish Called Wanda.
Great one, Oats!!!
Just leave Weird Science alone!