Day: March 23, 2013

During a q & a last week with LACMA’s Elvis Mitchell, Phil Spector director-writer David Mamet said that over the last few years hummable motion picture soundtrack themes have either disappeared or are being heard a lot less. This hadn’t occured to me but maybe Mamet is right. It used to be that almost every significant or ambitious film had a musical theme as well as themes assigned to major characters.

I’m not saying that Gustavo Santaolalla‘s Brokeback Mountain score was the last Oscar-winner that had a simple hummable theme, but it’s the last one I recall. Did Mychael Danna‘s Life of Pi score, which won the Oscar last month, have a hummable theme or a character theme? Not that I remember. Were there any hummable themes in Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross‘s Social Network score? I don’t recall any but then it wasn’t that kind of movie. A hummable theme was built into John Williams‘ War Horse score, but my mind has expelled all memories of it. I certainly remembered the two themes that Williams composed for his 20 year-old Jurassic Park score when I saw the 3D version last week, but that was another time.

I don’t accept Mamet’s observation that movie themes are nearly extinct, but they’re certainly becoming more scarce. I think that’s fair to say at this point.

How would you like to be told on Monday that the government has seized 20% of your savings because the bankers have overplayed their hand and put the country in dutch and tough titty if you don’t like it? This is reportedly about to happen to everyone in Cyprus with secured savings totalling over $100,000.

It’s part of a plan by the Cyprus government to raise $5.8 billion that’s been required by European Union lenders before they reciprocate with a 10 billion Euro hand-over that will level things out for a bit.

“A cutoff of central bank financing and the absence of a bailout agreement could cause Cypriot banks to collapse,” says a 3.23 N.Y. Times report by Liz Alderman and James Kanter.

“It could also lead to a disorderly default on the government’s debt with unpredictable repercussions for the euro monetary union, despite the country’s tiny economy.”

It’s possible that a satisfactory deal won’t be struck, of course. One of the Times reporters asked government spokesman Christos Stylianides if Cyprus has a backup plan. Stylianides said if a solution isn’t found “we are doomed.”

The citizens of Cyprus are understandably enraged. Austerity measures are necessary, but you know what would calm things down among those who feel betrayed and ripped off? Look to Stanley Kubrick‘s Paths of Glory and the sacrificial execution of three French soldiers for their failure to take the ant hill. For their failure to play their financial cards in a responsible manner, three major Cypriot bankers should be chosen at random, lined up and shot by a firing squad.

Keep in mind that Colonel Andrea Stavrou, the character played by Anthony Quinn in The Guns of Navarone, was from Crete and only pretended to be “a poor fisherman from Cyprus.”

Yesterday afternoon I spoke with Ken Scott, director-writer of the French-language sperm-donor comedy Starbuck (Entertainment One, 3.22), and star Patrick Huard. I asked Scott about the genesis of the DreamWorks-produced remake, The Delivery Man, which he’s also directed and wrote and which stars Vince Vaughn in the Huard role. Touchstone will open The Delivery Man on 10.4.13.

(l.) Starbuck and Delivery Man director-writer Ken Scott; (r.) Starbuck star Patrick Huard.

Here‘s an mp3 containing Scott’s response, and here are excerpts: “We told DreamWorks — Stacey Snider, Steven Spielberg — that we felt we were ready to move forward and make the film, and not just have a development deal. For us ‘very fast’ would have meant shooting in the spring or summer of 2013, but things happened even faster than that. [And then] right away we got Vince Vaughn, he was ready to go so we shot the film in 2012 [i.e., last fall].

The Delivery Man, he said, is “the same story” as Starbuck “but a different film. I didn’t want to do it differently just for the sake of doing it differently. I wanted all the artists and actors in the movie to come from an authentic place. They’re not emulating something that has already been done. So it’s very difficult for me to say what the differences are.”

If I was eight or nine years old and my parents wanted to take me to a matinee of The Croods I’d say to them, “Look, no offense, but do you think you guys could maybe not patronize me to taking me to movies like this? Not all kids are easy lays who go nuts over CG neverlands. The corporate animated family realm is a prison as real and as tangible as Devil’s Island. This film is Avatar plus The Flintstones plus Oz The Great and Powerful, okay? And I just don’t want this stuff in my head.

Really. Please. I’d really rather spend time reading and surfing around and maybe hanging with Beanie and Binky. You guys wanna get some brunch, cool. I’ll be fine right here.

I admit I myself wasn’t very sophisticated about film when I was eight or nine but I knew the difference between really good, pretty good, blah old-person stuff and shit.

My general attitude is that sleep is fine and necessary in its place but don’t overdo it because…you know, stuff to do. The same losers who take extra-long showers tend to sleep longer than go-getters. (My late sister was like this. For her sleeping was the best part of the day.) I prefer sleeping for six hours and at the same time recognize that every three or four weeks the body will put its foot down and demand a nice long eight or even nine hours. Which is why I started late this morning, and that’s okay. I feel really great now.

At the same time I’ve never forgotten a line spoken by Thayer David in the old Journey to the Center of the Earth (’59) in which he described overnight sleeping sessions as “little slices of death.” I’ve always figured it’s better to stay up a little longer and wake up a little earlier because I’ve got a really long sleep coming. Then again I take afternoon cat naps, and I sometimes catch up during boring or awful movies.

If I wasn’t getting invited to free screenings I’d probably pay to see World War Z despite reports about it being a troubled mess. I’d figure a Class-A zombie-plague film with Brad Pitt would be cool for the first two acts at least, and that the third would probably be tolerable even though the guy they hired to fix the third-act problems is the guy who co-wrote effing Prometheus and co-wrote Cowboys and Aliens. Whoa…wait a minute.