A viewing 18 years overdue

In 1997, I bought the Lost Highway soundtrack.

In 2015, I finally saw Lost Highway.

There's a logical explanation for this, actually.

You see, Trent Reznor of the band Nine Inch Nails was the supervisor of this soundtrack, contributing two of his own songs ("The Perfect Drug," "Driver Down") and in all other ways overseeing its compilation. This included splicing in little bits of dialogue as he had done when assuming the same role on the soundtrack for Natural Born Killers three years earlier.

As that soundtrack had been a certified Experience with a capital E in its own right, independent from watching the movie, I had the same hopes for this one. So much so, in fact, that I never bothered to actually watch the movie.

Oh, I should probably also mention that Nine Inch Nails was my favorite band at the time. And continues to be today.

If the Lost Highway soundtrack had captivated me the way the Natural Born Killers soundtrack had captivated me, I might have prioritized a viewing before now. It didn't get to that level. I did listen to it a number of times, and acquired at least one new favorite song from it ("Eye" by Smashing Pumpkins), but it didn't transcend. And then I heard that no one liked the movie, and that was that.

Fast forward 18 years, and the BluRay is staring me in the face on a library shelf in Australia. This was undoubtedly not my only opportunity to watch it over the years, but I'm pretty sure it was the first time I had seen it in a free rental scenario. And so I decided it was finally time to check this long-delayed viewing off my list.

Yep, a pretty big disappointment after all.

Lost Highway is not without its moments. It definitely has some chilling bits in its first half, when Robert Blake is used most effectively, and he may just be the creepy weirdo breaking into the home of Bill Pullman and Patricia Arquette and sending them video tapes of themselves sleeping. Some of this stuff works on a basic visual level. But where it goes is decidedly unsatisfying after its mid-point shift, when Lynch (did I mention this was directed by David Lynch?) inexplicably saps all the atmosphere from the movie. He makes a futile attempt to restore the atmosphere in the last 20 minutes or so, but by then a viewer will have been legitimately bored to death.

I did feel a certain sense of deja vu watching it, a result of all these songs I'd heard before. And since I hadn't listened to the soundtrack in probably ten years, it wasn't like I was ticking off all the appearances of songs I was expecting -- they really did come at me like half-remembered fragments of dreams. As in "Oh yeah, that insane sax solo by Pullman's character is from this movie." But overall I found that the songs appeared in what seemed like pretty different contexts from what I was expecting, most notably the usage of "Eye," which just plays in the background while two characters are dancing, in a not-very-creepy scene.

The biggest disappointment, though, was the reminder of something I think I already knew, which was that "The Perfect Drug" -- the only actual Nine Inch Nails song on the soundtrack -- does not actually appear in the movie. ("Driver Down" is an instrumental that's credited to Reznor himself.) When I got to the end and it hadn't played, I thought we might get it over the credits, but that's just the reprise of David Bowie's "I'm Deranged."

Lost Highway itself was too deranged to be a mainstream film, but not deranged enough to be a really satisfying entry in the Lynch canon. Oh well, on to the next one.

As we have now stepped away from the era in which we regularly purchase whole soundtracks, I don't know if there will ever arise another Lost Highway scenario, where I buy the soundtrack without ever seeing the movie. I did buy Reznor's score to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo before I had seen it, but then I saw the movie just a couple days later. And now I don't even have blind faith in Reznor anymore, because the Dragon Tattoo score was such an over-long, self-indulgent affair that I didn't finally buy his score to Gone Girl until months after I'd seen it. I've only listened to that one all the way through twice, and don't envision a third listen any time soon. (Though just so you don't mistake this paragraph for being anti-Reznor, I'll close the paragraph by stating for the record that I absolutely love his Social Network score, and have listened to it all the way through at least ten times.)

I'm also now one step closer to completing David Lynch's feature filmography, though Wild at Heart and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me still elude me. I'm eager to correct at least the former of those omissions ... and also eager to see if the man ever gets off his butt and directs another feature. It's been nearly ten years since Inland Empire, Mr. Lynch.

Shitty movie, great soundtrack

Musically speaking, I would have been perfectly happy if we'd never progressed beyond the late 1990s.

That was when I discovered electronic music -- both the kind that makes you dance and the kind that provides great ambiance -- and it's the last time I was so enthralled by the discovery of a new musical genre.

My musical world was opened up at the hands of such acts as The Prodigy, The Chemical Brothers, Underworld, The Crystal Method and Daft Punk. And I was never the same.

And I think I may have one soundtrack from one shitty movie to thank for this turn of events.

On April 4, 1997, The Saint was released into theaters. I didn't see it at the time, only catching up with it a few years later on video. However, I did buy the soundtrack. For you, it may always be "see movie, then buy soundtrack," but it hasn't been for me. In fact, that year I also bought the soundtrack to a film I still, to this day, have not seen: David Lynch's Lost Highway. (See, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails was the musical supervisor, and I love everything Trent.) Anyway, buying the soundtrack before seeing the movie was no big deal to me.

I think I knew that a particular song -- "Dead Man Walking" by David Bowie -- was exclusively available on this soundtrack. Then when I scanned the rest of the tracks, and recognized a lot of band names (though didn't quite know who they were yet, as we shall explore), it was one of those incidents where the gears start whirring in your head, and suddenly you realize you are purchasing this CD -- it has met the necessary threshold for potential. (Kids, before ipods, adults used to buy things called "compact discs," or "cee-dees.")

I listened the hell out of that soundtrack, but like many albums we temporarily binge on, eventually you just kind of stop listening to it. Heck, today I've stopped listening to most everything. In fact, the only reason I ended up listening to the Saint soundtrack yesterday was that I wanted to take a long walk pushing my son in the stroller after work, but was already caught up on all my podcasts.

It was a gray day -- winter has come on fast in Southern California, though we're always just a few warm days away from an indian summer. And something about the grayness and melancholy of the day made a fragment of a song from the Saint soundtrack -- "Dream Within a Dream" by Dreadzone -- jump into my head. Since I feel like I can't think of anything I ever want to listen to these days, I love it when something jumps into my head, allowing the potential for instant gratification. There I was, carrying a device that contained thousands of songs, including this and the other 13 tracks on the Saint soundtrack.

So, I began listening.

But before I run through how amazing this album is -- chock full, truly -- I should repeat a little detail that has gone underexplored to this point: The Saint is a really terrible movie. I suppose it's nowhere near as goofy as some spy movies, but its very blandness makes it worse -- it's not even an interesting failure.

That doesn't matter. The Saint soundtrack has my undying love, but it's mutually exclusive from the movie. Not one of the songs even makes me think of a thing I might have remembered happening in the movie. It's a complete disconnect.

So yeah, I'm really glad I bought the soundtrack before seeing the movie -- other way around, and I probably wouldn't even have considered it.

Ready for a quick tour of the tracks?

1. "The Saint Theme" - Orbital. (It may actually just be called "The Saint," if I am to believe itunes.) This is a nice intro to the album, taking the original ditty from the TV show and giving it an electronic makeover. Works.

2. "6 Underground" - The Sneaker Pimps. An essential calling card of the trip hop genre. Funky and groovy and sultry and always fun to listen to. "1-2, 1-2 ..."

3. "Oil 1" - Moby. Until "Oil 1" -- which I thought for the longest time was just called "Oil" -- I don't think I had ever heard a Moby song before. Since then I've seen him live twice. "Oil 1" is not one of his best -- it's a driving kind of song, relentless, a bit more brutish than elegant. But it does the trick.

4. "Atom Bomb" - Fluke. "My baby's got an atom bomb ... 22 megatons ..." I had not heard of Fluke before (or since), but "Atom Bomb" has made it onto a half-dozen mixes I've made over the years. This song has a great bombast (no pun intended) to it. A lot of low-pitched synthesized wonderfulness and noises cascading upward and downward. An adrenaline boost.

5. "Roses Fade" - Luscious Jackson. A bit of a transitional song -- only 2:29 long, and kind of an anomaly for the album in terms of its style. But it's got its own driving personality, and hey, Luscious Jackson rocks.

6. "Setting Sun" - The Chemical Brothers. And here's the "big get," as far as I'm concerned -- especially in retrospect. As with Moby's "Oil 1," "Setting Sun" was also the first Chemical Brothers song on my radar, but this is a much bigger deal: I have gone on to buy at least six more Chemical Brothers albums, and they have settled comfortably among my top ten bands of all time. This is just the perfect song to initiate a prospective listener to Chemical Brothers, and because I wouldn't own their album "Dig Your Own Hole" for a couple more months (at which point things really took off in terms of my relationship with them), for the longest time I knew "Setting Sun" as a song that had no lyrics, because the version that appears here is instrumental. The "turn up the volume" noise in this song -- I don't know how else to describe it -- still makes my eyes roll back in their sockets. (In case it's not clear, that's a primeval expression of entrancement, not annoyance.)

7. "Pearl's Girl" - Underworld. And make way for the next home run from the next heavy hitter. Underworld is one of the absolute pioneers of this musical form, and "Pearl's Girl" showcases them at their most diverse, opening with a trippy, atmospheric beginning that quickens into a full-on dance tune, accompanied by the chanted, slightly reverbed vocals that are the trademark of Karl Hyde. And this delirious combination washes over you for 9 minutes and 37 seconds. I have not seen Underworld live -- unfortunately -- but they put out a new album earlier this year, and they still rock.

8. "Out of My Mind" - Duran Duran. A mid-tempo angsty love song. Duran Duran will not be playing it in concert any time soon, but it's passable.

9. "Da Funk" - Daft Punk. If you are keeping track: Yes, that is Moby, Chemical Brothers, Underworld and Daft Punk, all on one album. And again (stop me if this sounds familiar) this was my first introduction to Daft Punk. (Great name, I've always thought.) "Da Funk" is truth in advertising -- it's funky and full of attitude, and taps your toes until your leg might fly off. This song was still surfacing on my mixes as recently as three years ago, when I made a mix for the guys who attended my bachelor party.

10. "Dead Man Walking" - David Bowie. Here was the prize, and it didn't disappoint. Consider how I've praised what's come already, and then realize that the only song I could actually vouch for was this one. It was the first time I'd heard the guy who sang "Let's Dance" and "Young Americans" reinvent himself as a master of the synthesizer, and I was hypnotized. Not only does this song drive big time, with a dynamite opening, but it also benefits from the extraordinary pathos of Bowie's voice -- unobtrusively.

11. "Polaroid Millennium" - Superior. A good mix maker knows when to start bringing down the tempo at the end of the album. With a great lead-in from the piano ending to "Dead Man Walking," "Polaroid Millennium" takes us into a melancholy epic of romantic yearning, with ethereal vocals that bring chills, and plaintive musical stylings that become operatic in the second half of the song. I know nothing about Superior except that they made at least one absolutely terrific, moving song.

12. "A Dream Within a Dream" - Dreadzone. The actual song I originally intended to listen to didn't come on until I was almost home, but there was still enough gray in the sky for me to wander away into my mind a little bit while listening. I like to think of both this track and the previous track as the kind of song that should be playing while you're riding in the backseat of a car after midnight, looking up into the twinkling lights of a city winding down for the night. No lyrics in this one, unless you count a few vaguely tribal vocalizations here and there -- just a stripped-down, beats-oriented odyssey of mood.

13. "In the Absence of Sun" - Duncan Sheik. Probably the weakest track on the album is not bad per se -- in fact, it's got some nice moments. But Sheik's voice hits a bit of a whiny register here and there -- actually, now that I'm relistening, he sounds a bit like Lenny Kravitz, but it works better for Lenny than it does for him. Anyway, this song is appropriately tender and quiet for the penultimate track on an album that's gently winding down.

14. "Before Today" - Everything But the Girl. "And I miss you, like the desert misses the rain." Remember that song? Yeah, that was Everything But the Girl, and this is the only other song I've heard by them. It's a solid final track and does everything a final track should do -- it just has that "last track" sound, remaining in the generally quiet, generally yearning realm of a funky ballad. It doesn't need to be quiet like a whisper, and there's actually a driving beat in part of the song -- but it's that same driving beat that occurs in that same car looking up at those same twinkling city lights.

So I realize that almost no one reading this will a) own the Saint soundtrack, b) care to own the Saint soundtrack, or c) possibly even like the bands I've been referencing. So this may have been a self-serving exercise. Hey, welcome to the blogosphere.

But reacquainting myself with the Saint soundtrack made me recognize that a good soundtrack also seems a bit of a lost art. I make this assertion with almost no confidence -- I think it's very likely that I've just stopped buying soundtracks, so I don't know how good they might still be. Then again, I've bought the soundtracks to The Social Network, Tron: Legacy and Hanna all within the last year, so maybe I do know what I'm talking about. (Or don't, because there are three examples of good soundtracks right there, contradicting my own claim that no one can do it anymore.)

But each of those soundtracks was composed by a single artist -- and if you really want to see the Saint soundtrack's influence on me proven in no uncertain terms, consider that the Tron: Legacy soundtrack/score was composed by Daft Punk, and the Hanna soundtrack/score was composed by the Chemical Brothers -- both artists I was introduced to via the Saint soundtrack. (And the Oscar-winning Social Network score was of course the work of Trent Reznor, also mentioned in this post.)

What I really miss was when a single album of music could introduce you to a dozen artists -- it was like one of the great mix tapes you've ever received, based loosely (sometimes very loosely) around the theme of a particular movie.

And if that movie is The Saint, it can give you the entire foundation for the next phase of your musical existence.

So why *was* The Saint such a shitty movie, anyway?

Eh, who even remembers?

Warning! This soundtrack listing contains spoilers!

And so does this post, so don't read any further if you don't want to know the ending of Man on Fire.

With every new Tony Scott film I see, the director's relentlessly jittery filmmaking style makes me more and more convinced he's a hack. Man on Fire was no different, and perhaps epitomized his approach as much as any film he's made other than the execrable Domino.

But I was never in it for the filmmaking with Man on Fire. I was in it for the soundtrack.

Specifically, I was geeked to see the movie -- well, geeked enough to see it six years later -- because of the Nine Inch Nails song that played in the trailer: "The Mark Has Been Made," from The Fragile. I already devoted a post to the use of my favorite band in the movies -- you can read it here. I neglected to mention Man on Fire in that post, probably because the rest of the movie did not look good enough to compel an actual screening. But I knew I would eventually see it. This must be the weekend for that, as I said the same thing about Running With Scissors yesterday.

I soon found out that there were at least snippets from a couple other Nine Inch Nails songs in the movie, but it was a different song that compelled me to go to IMDB to check out the soundtrack listing. Namely, there was an ethereal choral song in the first act that sounded to me like it was sung by Lisa Gerrard, an Australian singer whose songs sound kind of like the forlorn hymns I might associate with Ireland. I became aware of Gerrard's talents through another film, Henry Poole Is Here, where she sung a song that moved me so much, I bought it on itunes shortly afterward.

Now, most people would probably wait until the movie was over. But we film buffs are notorious for needing our curiosity to be satisfied immediately. Especially if I'm watching a movie by myself, and movie-watching etiquette doesn't enter into it, I'll pause to look up what other movies a certain character was in, etc. And just so I didn't forget to do it later on, I thought I'd check immediately to see if that was, in fact, Lisa Gerrard's voice.

I did find her name in the soundtrack listing. The name of the song she sings in the movie? "Creasy Dies."

I should probably tell you at this point that John W. Creasy is the character Denzel Washington plays in the movie.

So there I was, about 30 minutes into an interminable 146-minute running time, and I already knew the ending.

Not that this was some great surprise. Everything about the movie was setting it up to be a redemption tale of Creasy's character, for the "sins God would never forgive him for," which he mentions in the beginning (but are never elaborated on in the script). In movies like this, where a Charles Bronson type systematically kills every scumbug who had anything to do with some motivating atrocity, he's going to die smiling in the third act, having achieved some measure of vengeance or accomplished some heroic goal.

But did I really need the soundtrack listing to ruin it for me?

I never would have thought I needed to exercise the same type of caution with soundtrack listings as I do with DVD chapters. If I want to find where I was in the movie, I don't like to use the chapter menu, because often times, the very chapter names they choose will reveal some key plot element. If I'm watching The Crying Game for the first time, and am returning to it after a brief interruption, I really don't want to stumble across a chapter called "Dil's Penis," now do I?

What really gets me about naming that Lisa Gerrard song "Creasy Dies" is that the same song plays like four times in the movie, and only during the last time does the life actually snuff out of Washington's character. So not only is the song title an inexcusable spoiler, but it's too specific for the way the song is actually used in the film.

So yeah, that was the one reason I didn't like Man on Fire. (Please note my sarcasm.)

Before we leave the oh-so-interesting topic of Man on Fire's soundtrack behind, I thought I'd mention a couple other interesting things about it. IMDB lists no fewer than six Nine Inch Nails songs, when in fact I could only identify two. ("The Mark Has Been Made," like "Creasy Dies," was played about four different times.)

Then there was the fact that there seem to have been uncredited thefts from the soundtracks of other movies. IMDB mentions three uncredited songs from Changing Lanes, four uncredited songs from Abandon, and one from Against All Odds, oddly enough.

Matching up the songs

Make way for my second straight post inspired by a film's closing credits ...

As I was watching American Teen last night, I heard a song I liked over the closing credits -- a song I liked well enough to investigate an itunes purchase. (You know, I'd only investigate. Don't want that 99 cents to go to waste in this economy.)

But when it came time to credit the songs they'd used in the film, I couldn't for the life of me match it up. Often times the songs will be listed in the order they appeared in the film, so if you want to know what's playing right now, you just need to wait until the last song listed. Except that doesn't always work either. What if the credits had two songs? Or more?

You might have a little luck if you think you're hearing a certain band, and the credits can either confirm or deny it. But what if you've never heard the band before?

American Teen was particularly difficult, as there were clips of varying lengths of at least 78 different songs in that movie. (I didn't count.)

Here's what I'd like to see: a DVD released with a special feature that allows you to watch the movie in the format perfected by the seminal 1990s VH1 creation, Pop Up Video. If you selected this feature from the features menu, a little graphic would come up on the screen anytime a song was playing, telling you what it is and who's responsible. Instead of the director's commentary, it would be the musician's commentary. Of sorts.

Yeah it would get a little annoying sometimes. "Duh, I know this is 'The Happy Birthday Song' by Unknown." But like any marginally useful feature, it would have its time and place.

If you know what that song was that was playing at the beginning of the credits of American Teen, let me know. It's probably something I will be embarrassed I thought I liked, on second hearing. But why don't you let me be the judge of that.