Two full hours of digging into Shampoo with The Rewatchables‘ Bill Simmons and Sean Fennessey, joined by special guest visitor Cameron Crowe…excellent stuff.
A Cameron Crowe nugget (or “easter egg”, as he puts it) about the making of Shampoo, starting at 10:38: “Paul Simon was, like, the hottest guy around, at that time, as far as doing a song for a movie. So Warren Beatty was really looking for a song to end Shampoo with, but he’s also looking for a score from Paul Simon. I gather it was quite a dance to get the new song from Simon or the new score. But ultimately all Simon came up with was ‘doo-dah-dooo-yeaaahh-yeah-yeah”, which plays through the movie in every possible way. It’s very strange.
“So meanwhile, I guess, Beatty is dating or about to date Joni Mitchell, and he asks Joni for a song. And she writes a song called ‘Sweet Bird’, as in ‘Sweet Bird of Youth.’ And it kind of references the iconography of Beatty and Splender on the Grass….it’a seriously insightful song about the Beatty persona and the George Roundy character, and Beatty heard the song and he’s like ‘uhn-uh, nah-nah, no-no….great song but not great for this movie.
“And if you listen to the song, and think about what the power of a song would have been over the last scene, it’s not about the proverbial bumbling guy [whom Beatty was playing in Shampoo and whom he seemed to be actuality, socially and sexually and whatnot, back then]. The movie would have conveyed that this was a persona, under which was incredible insecurity and doubt, but Beatty was like ‘no, no…don’t need that song in the movie.’ I’d rather have Simon’s ‘doo-dee-dooooo.'”
Excerpt from hand-delivered letter to Joni Mitchell, posted on 4.15.15:
“Sweet Bird” lyrics (partial)
Out on some borderline
Some mark of in between
I lay down golden, in time
And woke up vanishing
Sweet bird, you are
Briefer than a falling star
All these vain promises on beauty jars
Somewhere with your wings on time
You must be laughing
Behind our eyes
Calendars of our lives
Circled with compromise
Sweet bird of time and change
You must be laughing
Up on your feathers laughing
Golden in time
Cities under the sand
Power, ideals and beauty
Fading in everyone’s hands
Simmons: “All the movies Beatty turned down…he turned down the Sundance kid, Michael Corleone, Gordon Gekko, Jack Horner…he turned down The Sting, The Great Gatsby, Superman, Splash, Big, Dave, Indecent Proposal, which I think would’ve been great…Kill Bill and Misery.”