Great Moments In Music Licensing

Every time I watch the Oscars, I'm reminded of the fact that even had I not strayed away from the ordained path of film production after college, my chances of having the opportunity to thank God, the Academy, the Russian woman who does my waxing and the teachers of America were pretty slim. Not only was I was an outstandingly terrible director, but I wanted more than anything in the whole world to be a music supervisor. In the world of film school, that's like aspiring to be a key grip. No one thinks it's a real job and, even if it is, no one has any idea what it means other than it probably won't get you invited to Harvey Weinstein's after-party.

The argument could be made that giving out Oscars for music supervision is akin to giving Grammys to DJs. Although, to be fair, P. Diddy won a Grammy for essentially re-purposing The Police. So let's not get on our high horse, entertainment industry. On the other hand, I can understand the backlash. Movie soundtracks have largely become marketing tools that are littered with throwaway tracks from the distributing label's roster or exercises in bargain bin licensing, having nothing to do with the movie at all (maybe some current single gets a shout-out in the closing credits). And then "The O.C." slinks into popular consciousness, plays a different Spoon song over every Important Scene, and huzzah! Music supervision is the cool with the kids! (Don't get me started on Garden State because I might roll my eyes so hard that I'll do permanent damage.)

When I was 14 and largely unconcerned with my future beyond the next issue of TV Guide, I remember watching the mini-series adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand and being deeply effected by a single scene involving the music of Crowded House. I made the decision right then that if picking music that went in movies was an actual job, then that was the job for me. My parents thought this was as viable a career choice as when I had announced I was going to join the Thundercats when I grew up.

And still, despite awards for Best Assistant Director (retired in 1937, to the outrage of coffee-fetchers everywhere) and Best Original Song By Randy Newman, the Academy is still unwilling to recognize that music supervision done right is an art. Maybe it will happen someday, through lobbying or Graeme Ravell holding a member of the Academy hostage. Maybe they'll call it the Zach Braff Memorial Award For Excellence In Making An iMix For A Motion Picture. Who knows. But in the meantime I’d like to share a few of my favorite moments in music supervision, since these strokes of genius are unlikely to receive any formal recognition anytime soon. Naturally, I'll begin at the beginning.

"Don't Dream It's Over" / The Stand


I had just finished plowing through all 1000+ pages of the novel a month or so before this aired. For those unaware, The Stand asks what would happen if all but 5% of the world's population were wiped out in a matter of days by a highly contagious disease. And then Satan showed up. I'm disappointed that I couldn't find the clip of the way the song was actually used in the movie - underscoring a montage of shots of empty streets, bodies left where they fell, the few survivors mourning their loves ones while fleeing The Evil. A haunting portrait of a realistic apocalypse. I challenge you to find anything half as effective involving any combination of Mischa Barton and Death Cab For Cutie.


"Down With The Sickness" / Dawn of the Dead


Pure genius, especially given that it's a movie about zombies. When I saw this in the theater, I actually clapped. And no one does that anymore, except maybe if Jeremy Piven gets punched in the face because who doesn't want to punch Jeremy Piven? At this point in the film, Ving Rhames, et al have set up shop quite comfortably in a suburban mall and are making the best of it, despite the frenzied mob of brain-eating undead that's amassed in the parking lot. It's an excellent exercise in irony on several levels, not least of which is using Richard Cheese's version of a laughably over dramatic Disturbed song. I’d like to point out that I spent some time on IMDB, trying to find and credit the music supervisor (who also had the stroke of good taste to use the Stereophonics’ “Have A Nice Day” during the opening credits), but no such luck. They have a credit for the “third assistant accountant,” though. Just saying.


"Wise Up" / Magnolia


Generally I dislike Magnolia for being an overlong, indulgent, meandering mess (although it did paint a believable portrait of Tom Cruise as an insane cult leader - synergy!). However, I have to give Paul Thomas Anderson credit for the following: writing a screenplay inspired largely by the Aimee Mann songs he went on to use in the film and having the insane vision to employ this much-maligned technique of breaking the 4th wall. Just enough to emphasize the spectacularly relevant lyrics and connect each of the characters at a similar point in their individual downward spirals. I remember very few specifics from the film, but I've always thought of this scene as groundbreaking and a less than subtle example of what good supervision is supposed to achieve.


Opening Credits / Inside Man


I have an affection for Inside Man for two simple reasons: Clive Owen (who is hot) and the fact that it was both set and filmed two blocks from my apartment. The building that was used as Manhattan Trust Bank is now something called "Beaver Bar" - I don't even want to know - with a large yellow banner and a wry-looking cartoon beaver, enticing passers-by to "Come on in." I'll take a pass, thanks. But, really, one of the most excellent moments in the film happens in the first few frames: the remixed version of "Chaiyya Chaiyya" that plays over the opening credits captures both the uneasy multiculturalism of New York City as well as the impending cat-and-mouse between crook and cop. I half expected Spike to trot out some tired jam by Public Enemy. Happy surprises all around. And Clive Owen? Hot.

We should have that framed

Tracy is an only child. We commiserate about many things.

One day when I was in her living room, she pointed out, "We have a lot of pictures. Of me." This would prove to be an understatement akin to "Men In Black II is not a good movie" or "hot tar roofing is a bit messy." There are pictures of Tracy everywhere in her parents' house. I had never noticed it before, but of course as soon as she said it, it was all I saw. Tracy as a baby. Tracy at gymnastics. Tracy at the prom. Tracy at graduation. Tracy and the dog. If she wasn't standing next to me, I would have thought that Tracy had died in a tragic accident and her parents, overcome with grief, had turned their home into a shrine. It was a little JonBenet, to be honest.

I mean, I guess it makes sense. OK, well, maybe "sense" is overstating. But there's an expected amount of parental crazy that you put up with when you don't have any siblings to whom you can delegate it. You are simultaneously the most wonderful, special child in the whole word and the biggest fuck up. There is no little brother doing meth or older sister getting knocked up by her teaching assistant to which you can point and say, "Well, I might have cut 3rd period chem lab once or twice, but at least I'm not that bad." And there's no one else to distract them when they keep taking pictures of you. Some people have kitchens that are chicken-themed (this is true, I've been in one). The parents of one kid can have entire interior design schemes that are child-themed. It happens.

Except in my house. We had pictures of the cats (past and present), pictures of my aunt and uncle, and lots of ceramic animals on display. No one would ever come over and think that I had died in a terrible scooter accident and that my mother could only assuage her grief by surrounding herself with my image. Or that, you know, she had kids.

My living room only ever contained one picture of me. It was the 8x10 that came in package with my senior pictures. All of the packages of any school picture I've ever had included an 8x10. Why is that? At the time it was taken, my hair was too long, and I had recently been initiated into the cult of blond highlights, in the grand tradition of the Evans women. I am hugging a tree (not my idea), sort of smiling, and I look a little dazed. Dead in the eyes. You never look in pictures like you think you do in real life. So we framed it and put it in the living room, next to the ceramic fish. When I got my prom pictures back, I tried to frame the inevitable 8x10 and put it in the living room. Mom's response: "Jesus Christ, do we need to put the big one in a frame? Why do you keep getting the 8x10s?"

The last time I had a professional picture taken (not including the DMV) it was for my college graduation. I remember thinking precisely that at the time - this was the last time I would ever have a professional picture taken, unless I ever made Employee of the Month at the Costco I was sure I would end up working at. It was relief, really, since I never know what to wear for those things. They always tell you not to wear white, which isn't too hard when pretty much everything I've owned since 1994 has been in varying shades of black and brown. For picture day in my sophomore year of high school, I wore a Co-Ed Naked Volleyball t-shirt. It wasn't white, but I think they still ought to put that on the What Not To Wear list. Some people just don't know any better. Honestly, I have no idea what happened to my graduation pictures. I certainly don't have them, and I've never seen them hanging anywhere in Mom's house. It's probably for the best, since I look like a Stepford wife with the way they made me tilt my head.

A few months ago, I was standing in my mother's kitchen while we were cleaning up Christmas dinner. On the side of the fridge, there was a large picture of me leaning over a pool table, lining up a shot. Not a particularly flattering angle. Cooper had taken a bunch of shots at Crash Mansion one night, as he's wont to do, and I had forwarded some of them to Mom. Not thinking, of course, that she was going to print them out and decorate the kitchen.

"Mom, why the hell do you have this hanging up?"

"Well," she said, handing me a dish towel, "you never send me any pictures."

Then I noticed something on the bulletin board. It was a picture of Tracy.

Just Saying: Geek Rock Edition

The new Fall Out Boy video was on VH1 this morning.

Hey, guys?

Barenaked Ladies called. They want their schtick back.

But you can keep the eyeliner.

The song remains the same

There are two things that keep me sane when it all seems to have gone wrong (again): Annie Lennox and writing it all down. The latter isn't terribly practical, at least not in a public forum. Who wants to be one of those people of dubious mental stability on the subway, scribbling in a little notebooks and looking balefully at their fellow passengers? I try to keep my level of overt instability down to a shout when possible. So in addition to being the more discreet and portable option for sanity maintenance, Annie Lennox is more eloquent than I am in matters of emotional exposition. And Scottish, which also counts for a lot.

Last night, as I was shuffling along yet another street on another night, surfing another wave of familiar melancholy, "Cold" came up on the playlist, the one I specifically engineered for walks such as this. Not exactly the Walk of Shame, more the Dramatic Stride of Pretending This Is Your Montage Sequence. It is very cold and I am sick and I felt well entitled to my flagrant wallowing.

This playlist which has so often gloriously exacerbated my dark moods has its genesis in a mix CD that I first made during my last year of high school. At first it was one volume and then two. I wore it out, I had to remake it. Sometimes a few of the selections changed, most made the transition. When I got my first iPod - the one that weighed 4 lbs and only had 15 minutes of battery life on a good day - the first playlist I made was comprised of those songs I felt were in it for the long haul. It even kept the same title as it's predecessor.

Quite obviously, the main advantage of a playlist over the mixtapes of yore is that playlists are infinitely fluid, adaptable. You can add and delete at your leisure without sacrificing $20 worth of blank CDs. Your number of tracks is limitless. Gone are the limitations of physical media! Nevertheless, this was one playlist to which I gave strict guidelines. It would be serving a highly specialized purpose, as it had in its original incarnation. It was the Navy SEALs of playlists. I've added things to it, but only after careful consideration - "How much this really make me want to cry deep, wrenching sobs of despair?" In reality, though, the same songs that I painstakingly burned on that mix CD almost a decade ago have served me well all this time.

But last night a strange thing happened as I began my shuffle of impending montage. Instead of settling into the comforting sit bath of self-imposed depression, I had a startling jolt of clarity. I had walked down a different street on a different night, surfing a different wave of righteous self-pity over a different mess. I listen to this same playlist each time that I go screeching into the brick wall of reality and begin to think that my best option is to hurl myself in front of the M6 bus, hope that reincarnation is real, and start over again. Hopefully not as a spider monkey or an Arquette.

Last night, the playlist got a little fed up with me.

"Don't be a silly twat," said Annie Lennox in her dulcet tones. "This too shall pass."

I'm not going to mess with Annie Lennox. She hasn't done me wrong yet.

Things that happened, Part 2

... from Friday, October 23, 1998

Barbara called this afternoon around 3pm. I guess I was in lecture; I certainly wasn't home. She told my mother that she hadn't called sooner because she was having "family problems" (i.e. she's fighting with her mother again - like no one else does this) even though I would "probably think that's crap." She knows me too well. Apparently she wasn't having family problems last weekend when she went out with Alyssa and Colleen. Or when she called James on Monday. Jesus Christ, at least try and think of a decent excuse. I was mauled by wolves, for instance.

I wonder sometimes about these people I call my friends. But why dwell on it?

Today was probably the first I can remember in a long while where I didn't work on my film. I guess I decided to give myself a break after finishing the visual aspect of it. On Monday I need to get the voice over in there as soon as I can sneak into the multimedia lab.

It was an absolutely beautiful day. I think Fridays should always entail nice weather. There should be some kind of mandate. There's something about fresh, warm sunshine and a cloudless sky that makes you feel like that whole week was worth it. Because of that I think the painfully overcrowded subway (due to the victory parade for the Yankees) didn't make me as homicidal as it might have.

This is something I'm going to work at from now on. I'll do some existential housecleaning and try focusing on the positive things in my life. Dare I say that I'm giving optimism a chance? Maybe. You never know you don't like it until you try it.

On the other hand, since I seem to be doing pretty well in my liberal arts-centered classes, I can't help but think that I'm only kidding myself with this film major. As much as I kept telling everyone that, if it didn't work out, I wouldn't feel as though I failed - yeah, that's a lie. I could never admit that I had not only made a bad choice but that I was also unable to live with it. I have this thing about permanence. If I'm going to wrangle enough courage to do something drastic, it's going to damn well be a lasting arrangement. I could never see myself switching majors (much less changing schools - I did that enough in grammar school), getting a new job, admitting that I was wrong. If I make a bad choice, I'm going to stick with it. That's probably not a terribly productive way of thinking, but, hey - tenacity has got to be worth something, right?

Although, at the moment, I'm enjoying myself well enough in my film classes. Whether I like it enough to make a living at it is still up for debate. Maybe I'm trying to convince myself that I do just to save face. Nah. I wouldn't sit through my hellish Language of Film recitation on sheer principle alone.

The only other notable thing today was that I fainted during my blood test. I'm not at all ashamed of this. To the contrary, I seem to find these kinds of weak moments as possessing their own brand of glory. I'm not totally sure why it happened; I've had these sort of tests for more than five years and never had a problem. It's certainly not my favorite thing, but it's nothing worth passing out over. Regina, the nurse, asked me if it was "my first faint" (like when people talk about your first period or your first date - some kind of initiation into adulthood?). No, actually, it was my second faint. There was that little incident in the emergency room two years ago. I'm quite the veteran when it comes to unceremoniously collapsing after needles are involved. So Regina actually pronounced me "a fainter," brought me a Coke, and told me to have my blood taken lying down from now on. Oh, indeed, I sure will.

After that I went to McDonald's and ordered myself a Deluxe Big Breakfast. I'm such a medical hypocrite.

Just Saying: Tuesday Edition

I thought of this last night: When the people who bought my grandparents' house decide to landscape the backyard, I hope they're prepared for the assortment of dead pets they're going to find.

There are at least 3 cats, a skunk and a couple of hamsters. Although one of the cats had a headstone. Maybe that will tip them off.

Am I the only one who finds it a little strange that after you've had your pet put down, the vet actually gives it back to you in a shopping bag? Kind of a weak consolation prize, in the grand scheme of things.

Hopefully the new owners won't give us our cats back in a shopping bag after they finish putting in their pool. I'm sure they smell quite bad by now.

Dear eBay Customers:

First of all, I'd like to thank you for providing me with a fairly healthy source of extra income these last few years. I really appreciate it, since I doubt I would be able to fund my wine habit without you. However, some of you are really causing me to question whether you really ought to be a) using the Internet or b) committing any acts of retail whatsoever. So let's go over a few simple guidelines which will hopefully make any further transactions less irritating for me.

Stop asking me if the J. Crew skirt I was good enough to fully document with actual photos of the actual item with the actual tag attached is "authentic." Seriously, people. Please don't even tell me there exists a place to get knock-off J. Crew because that's just really sad. I know there's a place to buy knock-off Louis Vuitton, Chanel and (God help me) Juicy Couture - it's called Canal Street. I also know there's a place to buy knock-off Banana Republic - it's called The Gap. However, if there is a place where one can obtain J. Crue, I have no idea where that is - nor do I want to find out because I'm sure that it's a sign of the collapse of modern society. If you're really that concerned about the authenticity of your argyle sweaters or hideous horse-print satin skirts, I suggest you purchase them at full price from your local J. Crew retailer.

Another note on authenticity: the fact that you're getting on your moral high horse in the first place is a little laughable, no? I'm well aware that eBay perpetuates a culture whereby anyone who's selling anything is automatically assumed to be an unscrupulous child rapist who robs graves when not ripping off any wide-eyed innocent foolish enough to bid on his or her items. But let's be real and admit that both sides of the transaction are inherently shady. You buyers are certainly not without your own coating of sleaze. If it matters that much to you, just bid on those pants, then take them over to your nearest Club Monaco and ask a friendly salesperson to verify that they're genuine Club Monaco sweatshop product. Oh, right, because then you'd have to admit that you bought them off eBay in the first place, you stinking hypocrite. So shut up.

Hey. You see that section that says "shipping costs"? Cool, ok. You see where it says "Worldwide shipping cost: $15.00"? Right, right. I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but The World pretty much encompasses the whole planet. All of it. Not just the nice parts where we go on vacation. So that probably answers your question as to how much I charge to ship to Uzbekistan or Taiwan or wherever the hell you live that's not America without you having to email me, right? Oh. I guess not.

No, I don't have it in another size. Because I'm not one of those people who buys things in 4 different sizes with the intention of eventually getting started on that diet of organic swiss chard and Xantrex 3 so I can fit into them. And then selling them on eBay when I realize I'm still never going to be a size 6. Just because you do that doesn't mean I do.

Asking for the measurement of the waistband, cuff or other completely ludicrious part of the garment is only going to piss me off. I'm giving you all the measurements you need, folks. And, really, let's be frank: you know whether a size Large is going to fit you or not. So don't waste my time. I would say don't waste yours, but I don't think your time is all that valuable to begin with.

Be aware of what a cheap, nitpicking assclown you look like when you try to haggle over shipping. I'm only charging you $8.00 for overnight shipping within these United States, unlike most of my fellow sellers who will gouge you $25.00 to send your stuff via presorted standard mail. And I don't care if you'd rather me drop it off in an unmarked plastic bag next to the service entrance at Burger King so your mentally challenged brother can pick it up on his Razor scooter, or whatever other ridiculous "alternate method" of goods exchange you would prefer. Do you call up customer service at Victoria's Secret and try to negotiate with them or do you just happily bend over and pay $13.50 for them to mail you the ill-fitting bras you ordered? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Once we've completed a sale - I have my money, you have whatever piece of shit that I didn't want anymore - don't email me and ask me to leave you feedback. That pretty much ensures that I won't. Or, even less pleasant, I will leave negative feedback which states that you came to my house, stole the item, pistol-whipped my grandmother and pissed in my houseplants. So don't push it. Increasing your feedback rating isn't going to make you any less of a waste of space.

So I hope that going forward we can avoid these annoying little bumps in the road on our way to a successful transaction.

Oh, before I forget: I'd also like to send a special hello out to that lying bitch who bought two pairs of shoes, broke the heel off one of them, filed a bogus complaint with Pay Pal and ripped me off for $157. Don't forget that I have your home address.

Hi, I'm Paul Weller

Are you in a band? You might as well quit now.

No, I mean it. Just give it up, you're embarrassing yourself. I'm telling you this for your own good.

By the way, anyone got a fag?