#robert zemeckis

I am married to a musician and I hear lots and lots of music, new and old. There are fifty hours of Later with Jools Holland on my DVR right now.

But I am still not familiar with your favorite band, so when I read song titles in your description lines, I don’t know what you’re talking about. And even if I did, it doesn’t convey any information to me. The odds on me being exactly on your wavelength about that music, supposing I do know it, are worse than a superfecta.

Unless you are making your own film, everything about movie music is someone else’s job.

Example:

I was at a screening of Flight, and there was a Q & A with Robert Zemeckis, and a woman said, “I was wondering about your choice to not have a musical score. How did you make that choice?” and he said, “Well, there was a score, and we labored over it, but the fact that you didn’t notice it means we did it really well.”

I’m assuming she wasn’t talking about “Sympathy for the Devil”, but I am damn sure John Gatins didn’t put that in the script.*

Anyway. Music just doesn’t translate very well to the page.  If you have to describe it, do it in a conceptual way so it will mean roughly the same thing to both of us.

Exception:

The only time I’ve ever seen a specific song title achieve something positive was in a comedy, and it worked like a punchline.

*on an unrelated note:  John Gatins was there, too. The script for Flight had been around for…I can’t remember, seven years? And one day the phone rings out of the blue, and it’s “Denzel is interested in making your movie.” So, there’s that.

The Making of What Lies Beneath (2000)