ΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΟΓΡΑΦΟΣ: Soundtracks (article by Daniel DePrez) Cinemonkey magazine 1978 Κινηματογραφικά ΜΟΥΣΙΚΗ

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Soundtracks (article by Daniel DePrez) Cinemonkey magazine 1978 Κινηματογραφικά ΜΟΥΣΙΚΗ

Soundtracks

Music and films

Daniel DePrez

Cinemonkey magazine 1978

Κινηματογραφικά

ΜΟΥΣΙΚΗ

''Scoring" or "Licensed To Sync"

by Daniel DePrez

Robert Stigwood is not a director, actor, writer, or film expert, he is, however, the film producer who is the master of using rock to sell tickets.

With Saturday Night Fever, Grease, and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Stigwood is giving reinforcement galore to film executives who have decided to help ensure profits by "scoring" motion pictures with Top 20 hit songs written for the occasion.

The list of this year's movies set to hit songs is formidable, including Stigwood's Grease and Sgt. Pepper, FM, the re-released American Graffiti, Coming Home, Convoy, The Buddy Holly Story, T.G.I.F., and others. The artistic merits of this practice are debatable. What, then, are the financial benefits?

For the studio (Universal/MCA for American Graffiti) or producer (Robert Stigwood) who owns rights to a movie's soundtrack album, the benefits can be staggering. Stigwood's RSO Records has, in the Fever soundtrack, what might become the best-selling album of all time. Royalties on such an album swell an already considerable income from the film's box-office receipts.

Music publishing is the third source of income for the studio or producer from a hit-album-movie combination. BMI (Broadcast Music Inc., an organization which bills TV and radio stations for performance rights in behalf of music publishers) credits a "movie song" with eight cents per play on a large-audience AM radio station. A song not written for a movie played on the same station receives two and one-half cents per play for its publisher. Since the publisher royalties are the same for publisher and composer alike, the Robert Stigwood Organization (though its Casserole Music division) made as much from the airplay of the Bee Gees' Fever songs as did the Bee Gees themselves.

Saturday Night Fever did provide an income for composer David Shire. Shire, who wrote three incidental songs for the films soundtrack, made (quite probably) as much from royalties for three selections from a multimillion-selling soundtrack album as he made for his entire brilliant scores for The Conversation and Straight Time combined.

In the late fifties and throughout the sixties, a film was scored by a film composer and a "hit single" was tacked onto the picture, usually during the opening credits. The composer made a small amount in royalties in addition to the fee charged for scoring the film, and was glad to get it.

The songwriter was paid in number of ways, and always had his hit-song royalties to count on. He didn't try to score any films, and the composer didn't try to write any hit songs.

The composer, however, did sometimes write the film's hit song (usually the only vocal in the score, unlike today) in addition to his other work. Henry Mancini and John Barry are two examples. In the long run, Mancini and Barry have made more from the royalties from "Charade" and "Goldfinger," respectively, than from the films of the same name. It is important to note that each of the two songs is the title song from its respective picture, and no other hit singles came from either picture.

The hit single's duty was, at this time, to keep the film's name before the public. In exchange for his BMI or ASCAP checks, the songwriter gave the producers an assurance of many free plugs on radio and TV.

The ultimate in anomaly in this practise came, perhaps, from Irwin Allen. In both The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno, a typical film score was amended with a touching love song sung by Maureen McGovern. "There's Got To Be A Morning After" and "We May Never Love Like This Again" (which were sometimes labelled "Love Theme From The Poseidon Adventure" and "The Love Theme From The Towering Inferno,” respectively) related in no conceivable way (thankfully enough) to the carnage around them, both artistic and physical. Both won Oscars for composer Al Kasha, however, and sold singles for the parent company, 20th Century.

Films like Easy Rider and Strawberry Statement might be offered as examples of movies with popular songs as a score, but both "Born To Be Wild" (Easy Rider) and "Something In the Air" (Strawberry Statement) were written independently of the movie in which they appeared, and each became a hit without identification with these films. Easy Rider fell back on the Hollywood formula and tapped Roger McGuinn for "The Ballad of Easy Rider." The single went nowhere and the film made millions.

The album-supported movie also grows from the decline of the big studios in the late sixties. At this moment, 20th Century-Fox is the only major film studio not owned by a large conglomerate, and even 20th Century owns its own record company.

Finding themselves on constantly shifting sand, the film studios began to look to their extremely stable brothers and sisters in the record division for someone to lean on.

Use of pre-existing music (a la Easy Rider) is a painstaking but sometimes rewarding method of building a film out of hit records. In two of this summer’s more popular pictures, we see a remarkable contrast in the use of pre-existing music in a score, and the market strength of a well-scored film.

Coming Home and American Graffiti are both sixties period pieces. Songs of the era are heard almost constantly in both films. Graffiti's music was chosen by director George Lucas and Kim Fowley, a much-disliked L.A. music figure, who gave us B. Bumble and the Stingers, and the Runaways.

The songs in Coming Home were picked by producer Jerome Fiellman and director Hal Ashby, both well respected filmmakers. Graffiti's soundtrack consists almost entirely of songs which are two to seven years out-of-date. The songs in Coming Home are consistent with the film's place in time. The music in Graffiti works marvelously well, the music in Coming Home does not even come close.

American Graffiti is about the turning point in the lives of a generation. Lucas is saying that the sixties did not really begin until the death of JFK and the Beatles' invasion. The fifties music used in the film points up this "end-of-an-era" theme, and points as well to the turning point posed by the last day of summer.

The sensitive, masterful portrayals given by Jane Fonda and Jon Voight in Coming Home are constantly being buzz-bombed by the film's songs. If the Chambers Brothers' music is heard in the background for a few moments at a party, as in Shampoo, it adds an authentic flourish to the film. No law exists which states that one must always use every second of a song in a film, no matter how long and dull. When a love scene in bed must try to coexist with the cacophony of cowbells and cuckoos of "Time Has Come," one cannot use chronological accuracy as defense for the butchery which has taken place.

Tasteful selection has its more tangible rewards as well. In the original release alone, the American Graffiti soundtrack sold more copies than any Coming Home soundtrack can dream of selling.

In both the Coming Home/Amercan Graffiti selection method and the Saturday Night Fever/T.G.I.F. custom-written method, the same threat is posed. At a time when such excellent film composers as Pino Donaggio, Michael Small, David Shire, and others are working infrequently (and whose work appears on precious few albums), the temptation grows for producers to use top names from the Top 20 charts to write music for their films, and bring in money from three sources (box-office, albums, and publishing).

The final word in this matter of the tail wagging the dog might be the Frankie Valli hit single "Grease." The song (like many in the picture) does not come from the hit musical's score, but was written for the movie. The lyrics spend their time telling us what a great movie Grease is, without adding one iota to our knowledge of the characters, setting, etc. In a droning chant, the backup singers repeat the ad slogan ("Grease is the word") throughout the song. The single "Grease" is not a song, it is a marketing concept

Cinemonkey magazine, Fall 1978, pp. 52-53.