All language subtitles for 23 - The Power of Music

as I was growing up

music was a very important part of our lives

it wasn't a bookish culture I came from um

but there was great deal of music

records radio

eventually music everywhere

in the streets

through people's windows

in the summertime um

and as I started to put together

the impulse to tell a story

I found that very often

the music was something that created that moment of um

visualization

so to speak

and often the music that was being heard

or being played in the street or in the car radio

counterpointed to the scenes I was seeing around me

created the films

and eventually this all LED to my use of music

and who's at knocking

of particularly main streets

and eventually even Alice

isn't Liberty more and event

and eventually Raging Bull

into Goodfellas etc but

in an odd way

pulling on those scenes together

hearing that

everybody talking about movies at the time in 1950s

and my father

my uncle's talking about certain films

and then mentioning other stories that the

that are going on in the

in the family or in the street

and somebody would say something like oh

they could never make a movie of that

and that's what I wanted to do

so why not you know

so all this was coming together

and music was uh

so prominent and uh

almost like what you would call the sense memory

in a sense so um

it really begins with the music for me

and once I hear the music I mean

I really start to feel the story you know

sometimes a piece of music reflects a character for me

and I start to imagine scenes

it isn't that a

sit down and start them

and they start

they sort of come to you

while you're listening to the music

when I finally started making feature films

I knew that my movies would not have a proper score

they weren't meant to have that

in a way they weren't deserving of that

because those films

or the pictures that were made up to that time

around the world are

you know they were something that were unattainable

they were the guides

they were the

something we aspired to

couldn't really do something like them

you know even though you try

you know so the kind of films I was making

just didn't lend themselves to this kind of thinking

a kind of at times

not in more negative sometimes

in terms of Hollywood scores or traditional scores

sometimes they were coded

and the narratives were very different

they're different ways of

of um indicating emotions and characters in music in

in that tradition

and I was not from that tradition

I felt the only thing trying

the only thing that that um

the only thing that restricted us to a certain extent

was that at that time

we did not have the budgets to pay for licenses and

so we did want the films to be shown in theaters

if possible

um and so that became a bit of a problem

in terms of how much we could use

where we could get it

who would allow us to use it etc well

for example

the use of Ray Barretta's El Watuzi

and who's that knocking at my door

was a pivotal moment for me and

and trying to shape a film together

or you know

in Main Streets was where it all finally came together

where somehow

the producers

Jonathan Taplin

all of them somehow found a way to

in a very very low budget

able to pay for some licensing and music

including the Rolling Stones

Jumping Jack Flash

the scene was designed around that song

and rub a biscuit designed

be my baby by the ronettes

all this all the

all the scenes in the film were designed around

those particular pieces of music

and we were able to get

for the most part

some of the licensing done

and so um for me

that's how the movies

movies were made

there there

and even never thought of making a score for a film

or having a score created for a film at that time

um the music that I was using

was part of the world in which the characters live

they echo I would hear them echoing

through the hallways and the streets

and the windows and car radios

and it was like

a physical as well as mental architecture

of the world I was trying to create

and in a way

the music I chose

very carefully chose

and music that inspired me for certain scenes

and certain films

and the part of the spiritual life of the characters

this was not common practice in Hollywood film making

it really started later

um but there were certain pictures

in which it was a very important factor

for instance some

there was use of

of popular music in the early 30s

but not the actual recordings

the way they use now

the entire score

there is no score for this particular film

the only popular music

and that was The Public Enemy

the James Cagney

William Wellman film classic

which use the popular tune

I'm forever blowing bubbles as a key element

though it's not the original recordings

but all the music in that film comes from the source

or whether it's a band at a nightclub

or wreck it on a machine

there's no scoring the way we know

the way we know of it today

and then in the early 60s

it was the great Kenneth Anger film

Scorpio Rising

which was course of revelation to me and many others

um of course

that was not a feature film

it's what's termed as a not on guard film

and was made for the general public

um so when when

when I started to make my own films uh

the score for that film

freed me in a way and I was

I realized that

I would be able to use the music I was growing up with

the music that was around me all the time

whether it was standards

rock and roll

opera classical swing

jazz anything

when I was growing up

I remember loving the music from the Hollywood films

uh you know

I admitted they could tell you

Dimitri Tianmpkin did something

I love Nicolas Schwartz's music

David Braxton uh

his scores were extraordinary

especially for force of Evil

um the 50s Elma Bernstein scores were remarkable

also for the breath of his work um

whether you know

his first two scores were man With the Golden Arm and

um the Ten Commandments

I think it was in the same year

memorable and as I used to say

is sort of his music and habits

the film in a way

and I do love traditional scores

and I did wind up

I did end up working with many

myself myself

my own films

but the traditional scores were

tended to have a uniformity to them

as I said they

they were locked into certain thematic codes

um nowadays of course

a different kind of uniformity

pop songs lyrics

and sometimes they actually

just literally echo the emotions of the characters

or whatever

in the comment

right on the action

or ironic comment on the action um

which is something else entirely

but by the time I finished king of comedy again

there was no traditional score in king of comedy

um and what I found was

through a series of circumstances

I found myself starting all over again in a way

make movies

and I wound up making a um

an independent film in New York called after hours

and I found there that

that needed a score

and I felt at that point in time

I could experiment

would actually working um um

with the new composers

Howard Shore

and I thought it was a beautiful score

so Howard was the one

that really began a series of films for me

Howard and was able to work with Elma Bernstein

so they were the ones actually

who created the

the score which one

relates to straight narrative film

they were the ones who created first for me

when we finally did work with scores

a score like one that Howard sure did for the departed

which was electric guitar and a tango rhythm

they work in counterpoint

with the popular songs in the soundtrack

and the tango itself

of course is a sense of danger

it becomes a kind of dance of death

between these two characters

played by Leo and Matt

leading parallel false lives and slowly converging

different kind of example again here

this was scoring

not using the score

the score for Shutter Island

which made up of pieces of modernist composers

and that film

I wanted a sense of

otherness of constant intrusions

which sort of echoed the inner experience

of this character

played by Leo DiCaprio

and something that could have

couldn't have happened with a really a composer

I felt somebody once point out so much

as if you hear the music seeping through the walls

like a coming out of a waking dream

that was the idea

I didn't want one voice

but many different ones

and you never knew which voice was gonna come at you

we kept going back to music

couple of Getty

which most filmmakers know from Kubrick um

and this kind of score also starts with him

this is the opposite of the score for Taxi Driver

where I was lucky enough to work with Bernard Herman

there the music is a singular voice

growing from deep within

the tension between Travis and the world around him

the city of New York and 1970s

when I told people that I wanted to ask Herman

to compose the score for Taxi Driver

and by the way

it turned out to be

sadly as very last score

they weren't quite sure what I was

what I was getting at um

but I knew that I wanted something that would be

kind of at odds with the rhythm of the city

in the way it was being depicted

it was Travis's rhythm you see

that's the thing

I don't want to use popular music

because he didn't listen to music

so it had to come from inside of him

something that was obsessive

that was coiled and sort of ready to strike and explode

you know it's all happening inside

he doesn't let the outside world in

doesn't let the music in

there is one piece of popular music

Jackson Brown

too late for the sky

but he's watching television with that

it's coming off the TV

the rest of it is the score of course

by Bernard Herman

by the time we did Last Temptation of Christ

the score again was somewhat experimental

with the Peter Gabriel

after that was Good fellas

which again was the popular music

or music of the source music so to speak

I was very disappointed when I Learned

as a starting to make my first films

that playing back music on the set

and having the actress talk over it

ruins the soundtrack of the actors

but it kept the energy going

and I figured

well that you know

we could loop some of that

I don't want to do that

because I wanted the energy of the actress

plus the music

and so over the years

we've been finding ways to try to play with that

sometimes um

and I've done it often

the case for example

of Goodfellas when

the last section of Layla is heard

I would play that back on the set to design

I would play that back on the set

for the pace of the camera tracking

and the sense of the whole

quality the spirit of the film at that point

and this helped with the crew

would help with the actors

and made something very special

I would do things sometimes

and use music that would not be used in the film

but I like the feeling of it for camera moves

like the lantern from

Satanic Majesty's request by the stones

playing that back on set sometimes

so primarily though

if I do play it back on set

it's in the film

and it creates a great atmosphere on the set