Akira Kurosawa’s Advice to Aspiring Filmmakers: Write, Write, Write and Read

in Film, Writing | September 26th, 2016

We should all learn from the best, and in the domain of cin­e­ma, that means study­ing under mas­ters like Aki­ra Kuro­sawa. Though now near­ly twen­ty years gone, the Japan­ese film­mak­er known as “the Emper­or” left behind not just one of the most impres­sive bod­ies of direc­to­r­i­al work in exis­tence — Rashomon, Sev­en Samu­rai, Throne of Blood, Ran, and much else besides — but a gen­er­ous quan­ti­ty of words. In addi­tion to the volu­mi­nous mate­ri­als relat­ed to the films them­selves, he wrote the book Some­thing Like an Auto­bi­og­ra­phy, gave in-depth inter­views, and offered film­mak­ing advice to estab­lished col­leagues and young aspi­rants alike.

“If you gen­uine­ly want to make films,” Kuro­sawa tells the next gen­er­a­tion of direc­tors in the clip above, “then write screen­plays. All you need to write a script is paper and a pen­cil. It’s only through writ­ing scripts that you learn specifics about the struc­ture of film and what cin­e­ma is.”

This brings to mind the sto­ry of how, long unable to find fund­ing for Kage­musha, he wrote and re-wrote its screen­play, then, still unable to go into pro­duc­tion, paint­ed the entire film, shot by shot. Such per­sis­tence requires no lit­tle strength of patience and dis­ci­pline, the very kind one builds through rig­or­ous writ­ing prac­tice. Kuro­sawa quotes Balzac: “The most essen­tial and nec­es­sary thing is the for­bear­ance to face the dull task of writ­ing one word at a time.”

Take it one word at a time: appar­ent­ly cre­ators as osten­si­bly dif­fer­ent as Balzac, Kuro­sawa, and Stephen King agree on how to han­dle the writ­ing process. And to write, Kuro­sawa adds, you must read. “Young peo­ple today don’t read books,” he says, echo­ing an oft-heard com­plaint. “It’s impor­tant that they at least do a cer­tain amount of read­ing. Unless you have a rich reserve with­in, you can’t cre­ate any­thing. Mem­o­ry is the source of your cre­ation. Whether it’s from read­ing or from your own real-life expe­ri­ence, you can’t cre­ate unless you have some­thing inside your­self.” Or, as Wern­er Her­zog more recent­ly put it: “Read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read… read, read… read.” But per Kuro­sawa, don’t for­get to write — and when the writ­ing gets tough, do any­thing but give up.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aki­ra Kurosawa’s List of His 100 Favorite Movies

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa & Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez Talk About Film­mak­ing (and Nuclear Bombs) in Six Hour Inter­view

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa to Ing­mar Bergman: “A Human Is Not Real­ly Capa­ble of Cre­at­ing Real­ly Good Works Until He Reach­es 80”

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa Paint­ed the Sto­ry­boards For Scenes in His Epic Films: Com­pare Can­vas to Cel­lu­loid

How Aki­ra Kuro­sawa Used Move­ment to Tell His Sto­ries: A Video Essay

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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An Animated David Lynch Explains Where He Gets His Ideas

in Film, Psychology | September 22nd, 2016

“Where do you get your ideas?” Every artist dreads hav­ing to answer that most com­mon of all ques­tions. Well, every artist with the excep­tion of David Lynch. The direc­tor of such mod­ern cin­e­mat­ic qua­si-night­mares as Eraser­head, Blue Vel­vet, and Mul­hol­land Dri­ve will glad­ly explain exact­ly where he gets his ideas: from his own con­scious­ness, “the TV in your mind.”

He’ll also glad­ly explain how he gets them by, not to mix the metaphor too much, using the folksy terms of fish­ing: “Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch lit­tle fish, you can stay in the shal­low water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deep­er.” And to bait the hook with? Why, bits of oth­er ideas. Those words come from his 2006 book Catch­ing the Big Fish: Med­i­ta­tion, Con­scious­ness, and Cre­ativ­i­ty, a slim vol­ume on this and that which gets into some detail about his use of Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion as a kind of fish­ing pole to reel those espe­cial­ly com­pelling ideas in from one’s con­scious­ness. 

A cou­ple of years after that, Lynch sat down with The Atlantic to talk about his spe­cial brand of cre­ativ­i­ty (as dis­tinct from his spe­cial brand of cof­fee, no doubt also a fuel for thought). They’ve just recent­ly ani­mat­ed his remarks to make the short video above, a visu­al­iza­tion of his idea-get­ting process­es, includ­ing day­dream­ing, trav­el­ing, and look­ing into a pud­dle in the gut­ter.

“I always say it’s like there’s a man in anoth­er room with the whole film togeth­er, but they’re in puz­zle parts,” says Lynch as hands chop a fish into frames of cel­lu­loid. “He’s flip­ping one piece at a time into me. At first it’s very abstract; I don’t have a clue. More pieces come, more ideas are caught. It starts form­ing a thing. And then one day, there it is. In a way, there’s no orig­i­nal ideas. It’s just the ideas that you caught.”

The ideas Lynch has caught have become, among oth­er things, some of the most mem­o­rable films of the late 20th cen­tu­ry — and, accord­ing to last mon­th’s BBC poll, the best film of the 21st cen­tu­ry so far. What’s more, he claims not to have suf­fered for them, illus­trat­ing his argu­ment of suf­fer­ing as anti­thet­i­cal to cre­ativ­i­ty with an imag­i­nary sce­nario of a diar­rhea-afflict­ed Van Gogh. As for what part of his con­scious­ness he fished that image out of, per­haps we’d rather not know.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Explains Where His Ideas Come From

Pat­ti Smith and David Lynch Talk About the Source of Their Ideas & Cre­ative Inspi­ra­tion

David Lynch Explains How Med­i­ta­tion Enhances Our Cre­ativ­i­ty

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Build Your Own Miniature Sets from Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Films: My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service & More

in Creativity, Film | September 22nd, 2016

In the Shin­to­ism from which Hayao Miyazaki’s films lib­er­al­ly draw, the worlds of nature and spir­it are not mutu­al­ly exclu­sive. “Shrine Shin­to,” write James Boyd and Tet­suya Nishimu­ra at The Jour­nal of Reli­gion and Film, “under­stands the whole of life, includ­ing both humans and nature, as cre­ative and life giv­ing. A gen­er­a­tive, imma­nent force har­mo­nious­ly per­vades the whole phe­nom­e­nal world.” But to expe­ri­ence this pow­er “requires an aes­thet­i­cal­ly pure and cheer­ful heart/mind, an emo­tion­al, men­tal and voli­tion­al con­di­tion that is not eas­i­ly attained.” In My Neigh­bor Totoro, for exam­ple, Miyaza­ki helps to induce this state in us with long slice-of-life pas­sages that move like gen­tle breezes through tall grass­es and trees. In the apoc­a­lyp­tic sci-fi Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind, the title char­ac­ter her­self takes on the task of har­mo­nious­ly rec­on­cil­ing man, nature, and mutant insect.

I would argue that Miyazaki’s films are not sole­ly enter­tain­ments, but means by which we can expe­ri­ence “an aes­thet­i­cal­ly pure and cheer­ful” heart and mind. And although he has retired, we can relive those films “over and over again,” as The Creator’s Project writes, not only by watch­ing them, but by build­ing minia­ture sets from them, as you see rep­re­sent­ed here. See My Neigh­bor Totoro’s old, rus­tic house in the for­est—where Sat­su­ki and Mei come to terms with their mother’s ill­ness while befriend­ing the local nature spirits—get assem­bled at the top of the post. And just above, see the town of Koriko from Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice take shape, a place that becomes trans­formed by mag­ic, just as Kiki does by her sor­ties into the for­est.

These kits, made by the Japan­ese paper craft com­pa­ny Sankei, are “ready to be assem­bled and glued togeth­er, cre­at­ing your own mini movie set,” The Creator’s Project notes. Pre­vi­ous mod­els include Totoro and his two small com­pan­ions, above, and the bak­ery from Kiki; anoth­er kit recre­ates the desert­ed mag­i­cal town Chi­hi­ro and her par­ents stum­ble upon in Spir­it­ed Away. The kits don’t come cheap—each one costs around $100—and they take time and skill to assem­ble, as you see in these videos. But like so many of the impor­tant acts in Miyazaki’s films—and like the act of watch­ing those films themselves—we might think of assem­bling these mod­els as rit­u­als of patience and devo­tion to aes­thet­ic habits of mind that slow us down and gen­tly nudge us to seek har­mo­ny and con­nec­tion.

via The Creator’s Project

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Simp­sons Pay Won­der­ful Trib­ute to the Ani­me of Hayao Miyaza­ki

Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Char­ac­ters Reimag­ined in the Style of 19th-Cen­tu­ry Wood­block Prints

Soft­ware Used by Hayao Miyazaki’s Ani­ma­tion Stu­dio Becomes Open Source & Free to Down­load

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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“Evil Mickey Mouse” Invades Japan in a 1934 Japanese Anime Propaganda Film

in Film | September 22nd, 2016

Before the Japan­ese fell com­plete­ly, one-hun­dred per­cent in love with any­thing and every­thing Dis­ney (I mean, seri­ous­ly, they love it), Mick­ey Mouse rep­re­sent­ed some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent: Pure Amer­i­can impe­ri­al­ist evil.

At least he does in this 1934 ani­mat­ed pro­pa­gan­da car­toon Omochabako series dai san wa: Ehon senkya-hyaku­san­ja-rokunen (Toy­box Series 3: Pic­ture Book 1936) by Komat­suza­wa Hajime. It’s a con­vo­lut­ed title, but pret­ty sim­ple in plot. An island of cute crit­ters (includ­ing one Felix the Cat clone) is attacked from the air by an army of Mick­ey Mous­es (Mick­ey Mice?) rid­ing bats and assist­ed by croc­o­diles and snakes that act like machine guns. The fright­ened crea­tures call on the heroes of Japan­ese sto­ry­books and folk leg­ends to help them, from Momo­taro (“Peach Boy”) and Kin­taro (“Gold­en Boy”) to Issun-boshi (“One Inch Boy”) and Benkei, a war­rior monk, to send Mick­ey pack­ing. The not-so-sub­tle mes­sage: Mick­ey Mouse may be your hero, Amer­i­ca, but our char­ac­ters are old­er, more numer­ous, and way more beloved. Our pop cul­ture is old­er than yours!

Iron­i­cal­ly, the film is ani­mat­ed in the style of Amer­i­can mas­ters Walt Dis­ney, Ub Iwerks, and Max Fleis­ch­er, with its boun­cy char­ac­ter loops and elas­tic meta­mor­phoses.

Though made in 1934, it is set in 1936, which might tie (accord­ing to this site) into the expi­ra­tion of a naval treaty between the Unit­ed States and Japan on that date. The Japan­ese attack on Pearl Har­bor was a full sev­en years off, but clear­ly ten­sions were run­ning high even then, as both the West and Japan had their eyes on Asia and the South Pacif­ic.

Also of note is the trope of char­ac­ters com­ing alive from a sto­ry­book, as this was a favorite sub­ject in sev­er­al Warn­er Bros. car­toons that would come out a few years lat­er (and which we’ve cov­ered.)

And final­ly to clar­i­fy Mickey’s fate at the end of the film: the old man with the box is a Rip Van Win­kle char­ac­ter, and in Japan­ese folk­lore he is made old by the con­tents of a box he’s been told not to open. Vio­lence is not van­quished with vio­lence at the end of this car­toon, but with mag­ic and deri­sive laugh­ter fol­lowed by a song. In the real world, things would not end so eas­i­ly.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Don­ald Duck’s Bad Nazi Dream and Four Oth­er Dis­ney Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons from World War II

Dr. Seuss’ World War II Pro­pa­gan­da Films: Your Job in Ger­many (1945) and Our Job in Japan (1946)

“The Duck­ta­tors”: Loony Tunes Turns Ani­ma­tion into Wartime Pro­pa­gan­da (1942)

 

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Ukulele Orchestra Performs Ennio Morricone’s Iconic Western Theme Song, “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.” And It’s Pretty Brilliant.

in Film, Music | September 21st, 2016

Last week, Josh Jones high­light­ed for you a free five-hour playlist fea­tur­ing Ennio Morricone’s Scores for Clas­sic West­ern Films. Even if you’re not deeply famil­iar with Morricone’s body of work, you’ve almost cer­tain­ly heard the theme to The Good, the Bad & the Ugly–the icon­ic 1966 Spaghet­ti west­ern direct­ed by Ser­gio Leone. Open­ing with the imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­able two-note melody that sounds like “the howl of a coy­ote,” the theme was orig­i­nal­ly record­ed with the help of the Unione Musicisti di Roma orches­tra.

Above, you can watch anoth­er orches­tra, The Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain, pay homage to Morricone’s clas­sic theme. Described by The Guardian as “a cultish British insti­tu­tion” known for its expert­ly played cov­ers of Kate Bush’s “Wuther­ing Heights” and Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” the Ukulele Orches­tra group scored its biggest hit with this per­for­mance. It’s an out­take from the DVD Anar­chy in the Ukulele, which you can pur­chase through The Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain’s web­site. Enjoy.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear 5 Hours of Ennio Morricone’s Scores for Clas­sic West­ern Films: From Ser­gio Leone’s Spaghet­ti West­erns to Tarantino’sThe Hate­ful Eight

George Har­ri­son Explains Why Every­one Should Play the Ukulele, With Words and Music

Jake Shimabukuro Plays “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” on the Uke

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Watch 222 Great Films in the Public Domain: Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, Buster Keaton & More

in Archives, Film | September 16th, 2016

Want to learn about film his­to­ry? You can take a class on the sub­ject, where you’ll like­ly need a copy of Kristin Thomp­son and David Bor­d­well’s stan­dard text Film His­to­ry: An Intro­duc­tion, and pos­si­bly the com­pan­ion book, Film Art: An Intro­duc­tion. These are phe­nom­e­nal resources writ­ten by two top-notch schol­ars who have spent their lives watch­ing and ana­lyz­ing films, and should you have the time and mon­ey to study their com­pre­hen­sive intro­duc­tions, by all means do so. But of course, there’s no sub­sti­tute for actu­al­ly watch­ing the hun­dreds of films they ref­er­ence, from the ear­ly days of the medi­um through its many re-visions and inno­va­tions in the 20th cen­tu­ry.

But why, ask Thomp­son and Bor­d­well, “should any­body care about old movies?” The obvi­ous answer is that they “offer intense artis­tic expe­ri­ences or pen­e­trat­ing visions of human life in oth­er times and places.” Anoth­er key schol­ar­ly the­sis these the­o­rists advance is that in study­ing nar­ra­tive film his­to­ry, we see the devel­op­ment of film (and lat­er, by exten­sion, tele­vi­sion, video games, and oth­er visu­al media) as an inter­na­tion­al visu­al language—one near­ly every­one on the plan­et learns to read from a very young age.

In films like The Great Train Rob­bery (1903) and the tech­ni­cal­ly ground­break­ing, if nar­ra­tive­ly deplorable, Birth of a Nation (1915), we see the cre­ation and refine­ment of cross-cut­ting as an essen­tial cin­e­mat­ic tech­nique used in every visu­al sto­ry­telling medi­um. In Georges Méliès’ bril­liant fan­tasies A Trip to the Moon (1902) and The Impos­si­ble Voy­age (1904), we see the joy­ful ori­gins of the spe­cial effects film. In Sergei Eisenstein’s Bat­tle­ship Potemkin (1925), we see mon­tage the­o­ry brought to life onscreen. And in the many films of Alfred Hitch­cock, we see the inge­nious cam­era and edit­ing moves that define hor­ror and sus­pense.

All of these films, and many hun­dreds more, are in the pub­lic domain and free to view online as many times as you like, whether you do so as part of a for­mal course of study or sim­ply for sheer enjoy­ment. Nathan Heigert at MUBI has com­piled a list of 222 “Pub­lic Domain Greats” that rep­re­sents a wide spec­trum of film his­to­ry, “from the silents of Grif­fith, Keaton and Chap­lin, to neglect­ed noirs and the low-bud­get bliss of Roger Cor­man, plus near­ly all of Hitchcock’s British films—all free for down­load or stream­ing (though, nat­u­ral­ly, not in Cri­te­ri­on qual­i­ty)” from the Inter­net Archive. Heigert’s item­ized list offers a tremen­dous range and breadth, and con­tains a great many of the essen­tial films ref­er­enced in most film his­to­ry texts.

Most of the films on Heigert’s list can also be found in Open Culture’s col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More. That includes 16 films above that we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured with help­ful con­text on our site. So start watch­ing!

Note: You can find a list with links to all 222 films on Archive.org here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Stop-Motion Films: 39 Films, Span­ning 116 Years, Revis­it­ed in a 3‑Minute Video

Hol­ly­wood, Epic Doc­u­men­tary Chron­i­cles the Ear­ly His­to­ry of Cin­e­ma

A Trip to the Moon (and Five Oth­er Free Films) by Georges Méliès, the Father of Spe­cial Effects

The 5 Essen­tial Rules of Film Noir

Thomas Edi­son & His Trusty Kine­to­scope Cre­ate the First Movie Filmed In The US (c. 1889)

Free: British Pathé Puts Over 85,000 His­tor­i­cal Films on YouTube

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Watch Akira Kurosawa & Francis Ford Coppola in Japanese Whiskey Ads from 1979: The Inspiration for Lost in Translation

in Business, Film, Food & Drink | September 15th, 2016

Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la wasn’t the first or last West­ern celebri­ty to hawk booze in a Japan­ese com­mer­cial, but if you’re look­ing for the seed that sprout­ed into the fun­ni­est scene in his daugh­ter Sophi­a’s Lost in Trans­la­tion, here are the series of five ads in all their glo­ry, in which the direc­tor shares a glass with one of his idols, Aki­ra Kuro­sawa.

The year is 1979, and Cop­po­la is deep in post-pro­duc­tion for Apoc­a­lypse Now. While he is strug­gling with reels and reels from a trou­bled pro­duc­tion, Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, despite his stature in the world of cin­e­ma, is strug­gling with finances. His two films of the 1970s, Dodeskaden and Der­su Uza­la, had been flops, despite some crit­i­cal acclaim. At some point he had been so despon­dent won­der­ing if he’d ever direct again, he had attempt­ed sui­cide and was a heavy drinker.

But George Lucas and Cop­po­la, learn­ing of the direc­tor’s sad con­di­tion, con­vinced 20th Cen­tu­ry Fox to put up the mon­ey for Kage­musha: The Shad­ow War­rior, Kurosawa’s return to the samu­rai films of his clas­sic peri­od. At the same time, Cop­po­la agreed to be in a com­mer­cial for Sun­to­ry Whiskey along­side Kurosawa–who had shot some ads for them in 1976–just to get the direc­tor some more mon­ey. (Kurosawa’s fee was $30,000. And Cop­po­la didn’t drink.)

For Sun­to­ry, the old­est dis­till­ing com­pa­ny in Japan, this meet­ing of East and West was a metaphor for their desire to break into the West­ern whiskey mar­ket. Using Amer­i­can celebri­ties like Sam­my Davis Jr. estab­lished authen­tic­i­ty in the mind of the Japan­ese con­sumer, but this was a new lev­el of pres­tige.

The series of ads above also show glimpses of Kuro­sawa in the midst of film­ing Kage­musha, shoot­ing epic bat­tles fea­tur­ing samu­rai on horse­back. The voice over is unsur­pris­ing­ly (for this sophis­ti­cat­ed mar­ket) pre­ten­tious:

“The world’s gaze is fixed on these two men right now as on nobody else. There’s no stronger friend­ship than that between these two men.” (The impact of that trans­la­tion, you could say, is lost.)

Unlike Bill Murray’s char­ac­ter in Sophia Cop­po­la’s film, Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la real­ly didn’t have to do much except show up, but no doubt the expe­ri­ence was re-told many times to his daugh­ter over the years. And after the come­back of Kage­musha, Kuro­sawa went on to direct one of his best films, the King Lear-inspired Ran.

We’ll raise a glass to that.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Best Japan­ese Com­mer­cial Ever? James Brown Sells Miso Soup

David Lynch Directs a Mini-Sea­son of Twin Peaks in the Form of Japan­ese Cof­fee Com­mer­cials

David Bowie Sells Ice Cream, Sake, Coke & Water: Watch His TV Com­mer­cials from the 1960s Through 2013

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Hear 9 Hours of Ennio Morricone’s Scores for Classic Western Films: From Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns to Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight

in Film, Music | September 14th, 2016

What goes into the mak­ing of a great film score? And how does a director/composer team like David Lynch and Ange­lo Badala­men­ti, or Ser­gio Leone and Ennio Mor­ri­cone, form such a per­fect part­ner­ship? Sev­er­al days ago, we brought you video of Badale­men­ti in a spir­it­ed, detailed recre­ation of how he and Lynch com­posed the unfor­get­table Twin Peaks’ themes, with­out which, I’d argue, there may have been no Twin Peaks.

Like­wise, with­out the music of Mor­ri­cone behind them, Leone’s spare, styl­ish, hard-boiled-yet-com­ic west­erns may nev­er have spear­head­ed the almost clas­si­cal genre of the “Spaghet­ti West­ern,” known just as often for its music as for its visu­al lan­guage.

What does Mor­ri­cone have to say about this? Pre­cious lit­tle. Or so dis­cov­ered Steely Dan’s Don­ald Fagen when he inter­viewed Mor­ri­cone for Pre­miere mag­a­zine in August of 1989. Fagen is well known for his obses­sive knowl­edge of cul­ture high and low and his hip, the­o­ret­i­cal bent. Mor­ri­cone, we learn, works more intu­itive­ly. But the results are the same. We may equal­ly find our­selves hum­ming the refrain to “Peg” as the theme to The Good, the Bad & the Ugly.

And we may find our­selves plea­sur­ably ana­lyz­ing “Peg”’s iron­ic rede­ploy­ment of soft rock tropes, just as we may approach Morricone’s inim­itable style as crit­i­cal the­o­rists, as Fagen does when he asks the ques­tion below. Like­ly the most lead­ing ques­tion in all of music jour­nal­ism (with the excep­tion of this Bri­an Eno inter­view):

But isn’t it true that the Leone films, with their ele­va­tion of myth­ic struc­tures, their com­ic book visu­al style and extreme irony, are now per­ceived as sig­nal­ing an aes­thet­ic trans­mu­ta­tion by a gen­er­a­tion of artists and film­mak­ers? And isn’t it also true that your music for those films reflect­ed and abet­ted Leone’s vision by draw­ing on the same eerie cat­a­log of gen­res — Hol­ly­wood west­ern, Japan­ese samu­rai, Amer­i­can pop, and Ital­ian Opera? That your scores func­tioned both “inside” the film as a nar­ra­tive voice and “out­side” the film as the com­men­tary of a wink­ing jester? Put it all togeth­er and does­n’t it spell “post­mod­ern,” in the sense that there has been a grotesque encroach­ment of the devices of art and, in fact, an estab­lish­ment of a new nar­ra­tive plane found­ed on the devices them­selves? Isn’t that what’s attract­ing low­er Man­hat­tan?

Mor­ri­cone: [shrugs]

Fagen quick­ly adapts, switch­es to rapid-fire ques­tions to which Mor­ri­cone gives a breezy one-word answer. “Bel­lis­si­mo!” He’s a very busy man. He does­n’t live in the same world as those La Dolce Vita peo­ple, a “small group of peo­ple who got up at 11 P.M. and lived at night.” He wakes up at 5 in the morn­ing. Mor­ri­cone needn’t indulge us with sto­ries or bore us with the­o­ret­i­cal pos­es. His last words to Fagen, “I have always want­ed to com­pose,” tell us what we need to know about him. Every­thing else is in the music.

Hear that music above in a five-hour playlist of some of Mor­ri­cone best-known scores from his sto­ried past—The Good, the Bad & the Ugly, A Fist­ful of Dol­lars, For a Few Dol­lars More, Once Upon a Time in the West, and non-Leone west­ern, The Mer­ce­nary.

And Mor­ri­cone’s still speak­ing through his west­ern scores, as he did just recent­ly in the work of anoth­er chat­ty, obses­sive, heav­i­ly ref­er­en­tial admirer—Quentin Taran­ti­no’s The Hate­ful Eight, also in the playlist above. Bel­lis­si­mo!

If you need Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware, down­load it here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists His 20 Favorite Spaghet­ti West­erns, Start­ing with The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

The Clas­si­cal Music in Stan­ley Kubrick’s Films: Lis­ten to a Free, 4 Hour Playlist

A Playlist of 172 Songs from Wes Ander­son Sound­tracks: From Bot­tle Rock­et to The Grand Budapest Hotel

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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