The audacity of Swope

The New York Times said blogging is passé, so I'm not going to blog anymore.

I'm kidding. Actually, I won't be posting stuff for a while (and haven't done so since February 28) because I'm busy working on not just one self-published print compilation of material from A Fistful of Soundtracks: The Blog but two.

When I allow myself some free time to surf the Web, one site I've been checking out lately is Trailers from Hell, which is run by one of my favorite underappreciated directors, Joe Dante (whose work for TV has been more interesting than his recent film work--I love Dante's anti-Bush Administration Masters of Horror episode "Homecoming"). At Trailers from Hell, Dante's filmmaker and screenwriter friends present trailers of their favorite films and discuss why those films are their favorites.

Trailers from Hell has been on fire lately with some nice commentary tracks about trailers for old films I like, so to keep this blog from looking like it's frozen in time, I've got Whole Wide World and Jolene director Dan Ireland's Trailers from Hell commentrak for the trailer for the 1969 advertising industry satire Putney Swope, which the site posted for Black History Month (the video also gives me an excuse to again post an Obamicon of Putney Swope that was made by me). Ireland's commentrak is followed by History of Violence film adaptation screenwriter Josh Olson's Trailers from Hell commentrak for the trailer for the late Peter Yates' entertaining 1972 adaptation of the Donald E. Westlake caper The Hot Rock. (The Putney Swope and Hot Rock trailers are particularly interesting because they don't contain voiceover narration, which makes them less like the voiceover-heavy and corny trailers of their era and more like the announcer-less and stylish trailers that are more common today and have influenced the CBS prime-time promo department to go announcer-less.)

Putney Swope is the story of an ad agency's token black employee (Arnold Johnson) who gains control of the business, revolutionizes the ad industry with frank and sexually explicit ads and winds up becoming as fatuous and corrupt as the stolid and whitebread Madison Avenue culture he initially fought against (he makes the mistake of getting high on his own supply: himself). Director Robert Downey's most famous flick appeals to my anti-authoritarian side, so I like it and will probably rewatch it when it turns up on cable again, even though the slo-mo titty-baring stewardess ad goes on way too long (it's nice to look at though), the film falls apart at the end and Downey's redubbing of his own lead actor sounds terrible. Johnson constantly bungled his lines, so Downey erased Johnson's voice from the soundtrack and inserted his own. He sounds less like an old black man and more like Cleavon Little when he pretended to take himself hostage and imitated a white thug in Blazing Saddles ("Hold it! Next man makes a move, the n----r gets it!"). The elder Downey's performance is an odd precursor to his actor son's portrayal of a movie star pretending to be black in Tropic Thunder.

I like to think of Putney Swope as a spinoff of Mad Men in which one of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce's rival businesses gets taken over by the militant friends of Hollis the elevator operator. I agree with Hammer to Nail that the film is dead-on about how "people will be cruel and craven no matter what side of the power dynamic they occupy," which makes it as relevant now as it was in 1969.

Trailers from Hell also did an entry on The Hot Rock, which contains an enjoyable Quincy Jones score that Jones considers one of his favorites and was sampled by Eminem in "Like Toy Soldiers," as well as cameo appearances by a then-under-construction World Trade Center and a young Christopher Guest. Afghanistan banana stand.

Back with another one of those Hot Rockin' beats

Featured during this month's A Fistful of Soundtracks mini-playlists is Quincy Jones' laid-back main title theme from the 1972 Donald E. Westlake adaptation The Hot Rock, a cue that's both supercool (like Jones' sampled-by-the-Pharcyde cover version of the Lovin' Spoonful's "Summer in the City") and an effective foreshadowing of how hapless Robert Redford's Dortmunder and his crew will be for much of the rest of the movie.

Long before his charttopping success as a producer for performers like Michael Jackson and James Ingram, the trumpeter/bandleader was a trailblazer as one of Hollywood's first African American film and TV composers (the original In the Heat of the Night, Ironside). I have an affinity for older caper movies like The Hot Rock and the funkdafied scores Jones wrote for several of those flicks. Every time a '60s or '70s Jones score is released on CD, like most recently, the score from another Westlake adaptation, 1968's The Split, it's an event at the Aquino castle. I wish more Jones scores got the same lavish treatment the Split score received from the Film Score Monthly label.


The Dixieland-style end title theme is the only cut from the Hot Rock soundtrack that's ever found its way to CD. Rhino added it to the "Gone Hollywood" portion of 2001's Q: The Musical Biography of Quincy Jones box set. Unfortunately, the rest of the soundtrack, which was released by the Atlantic-distributed Prophesy label, remains out of print and can only be found on various mp3 blogs. The Hot Rock score's absence on disc is odd because it was one of Jones' favorite film music projects. He was so pleased with the results of his score that he wanted all the major jazz musicians who collaborated with him to receive on-screen credit. The long list of musicians at the Hot Rock scoring sessions who received credit included saxman Gerry Mulligan, trumpeter Clark Terry and drummer Grady Tate, whose militaristic-sounding solo at the beginning of the main title theme was sampled in Eminem's "Like Toy Soldiers" in 2004 (six years before "Like Toy Soldiers," Jurassic 5 sampled "Hot Rock Theme," a loungy and more upbeat version of the movie's main theme that the Don Elliott Voices recorded specially for the Prophesy album, in "Improvise").

Jones' Hot Rock theme makes me want to go steal a diamond.

The long Khan: AFOS September 2009 segment playlists

Starting today at 8am, these September '09 playlists (intro'd by yours truly, of course) will air all through the month on the Fistful of Soundtracks channel. Until September 29, they'll be repeated every Tuesday and Thursday at 4am, 10am, 3pm, 7pm and 11pm and every Saturday and Sunday at 7am, 9am, 1pm, 3pm and 5pm.

"Eelmatic":
1. James Horner, "The Eels of Ceti Alpha V/Kirk in Space Shuttle," Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Retrograde/Film Score Monthly
2. James Horner, "Captain Terrell's Death," Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Retrograde/Film Score Monthly

"Promises, Promises":
3. Tom Jones, "Promise Her Anything" (from Promise Her Anything), Their Greatest Hits: Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck, Rebound
4. Klaus Badelt, "The Promise," The Promise, Superb

"Chase Those Crazy Beatheads Out of Town":
5. Barry De Vorzon, "Baseball Furies Chase," The Warriors, Spectrum
6. J.J. Johnson, "Willie Chase," Willie Dynamite, Hip-O Select/Geffen

"Harkness, Everybody, Harkness":
7. Ben Foster, "Here Comes Torchwood," Torchwood: Children of Earth, Silva Screen
8. Ben Foster, "Judgement Day," Torchwood: Children of Earth, Silva Screen

"Tarantino Raided My Soundtrack Cabinets":
9. Ennio Morricone, "Algiers November 1, 1954" (from Battle of Algiers), The Ennio Morricone Anthology: A Fistful of Film Music, Rhino
10. Giorgio Moroder & David Bowie, "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)," Cat People, MCA
11. Lalo Schifrin, "Tiger Tank," Kelly's Heroes, Film Score Monthly

"The Hottie and the Ostinati":
12. The Paramount Studio Orchestra, "Prelude and Rooftop," Vertigo, Varèse Sarabande
13. The Paramount Studio Orchestra, "The Streets," Vertigo, Varèse Sarabande

"Schnapps for Breakfast":
14. Bernard Herrmann, "Thank God for the Rain," Taxi Driver, Arista
15. Bernard Herrmann, "Getting Into Shape/Listen You Screwheads/Gun Play/Dear Father & Mother/The Card/Soap Opera," Taxi Driver, Arista

"R.I.P. Erich Kunzel":
16. Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, "Overture" (from The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad), The Great Fantasy Adventure Album, Telarc

"I Guess This Means That Alias/Alias Crossover's a Possibility Now":
17. Michael Giacchino, "On the Train," Alias: Season Two, Varèse Sarabande
18. Eric Rogers, "Spider-Woman," Sci-Fi's Greatest Hits Vol. 4: Defenders of Justice, TVT

"English as Language Second":
19. Ennio Morricone with Maurizio Graf, "Il Ritorno Di Ringo" (from The Return of Ringo), The Ennio Morricone Anthology: A Fistful of Film Music, Rhino
20. Guido & Maurizio De Angelis featuring Susi & Guy, "Driving All Around" (from Il Cittadino Si Rebella), Beretta 70: Roaring Themes from Thrilling Italian Policefilms 1971-80, Crippled Dick Hot Wax!
21. Seatbelts featuring Masayoshi Furukawa, "You Make Me Cool" (from the "Mushroom Samba" episode), Cowboy Bebop: No Disc, Victor
22. Seatbelts featuring Mai Yamane, "Want It All Back" (from the "Asteroid Blues," "Stray Dog Strut" and "Speak Like a Child" episodes), Cowboy Bebop: No Disc, Victor

"Westlake Ho":
23. Johnny Mandel, "Trackdown" (from Point Blank), Point Blank/The Outfit, Film Score Monthly
24. Quincy Jones, "Kifka Car Caper," The Split, Film Score Monthly
25. Quincy Jones, "Main Title," The Hot Rock, Prophecy
26. Jerry Fielding, "Office Scuffle/Kenilworth Heist/Casino Heist" (from The Outfit), Point Blank/The Outfit, Film Score Monthly

"Say Si, Not Oui":
27. La-33, "La Pantera Mambo," La-33, Walboomers
28. The Wondermints, "The Party," Shots in the Dark, Donna

"Alley OOP":
29. Elliot Goldenthal, "Obligatory Car Chase," Demolition Man: The Original Orchestral Score, Varèse Sarabande
30. Hans Zimmer, "Show Me Your Firetruck" (from Backdraft), Passions & Achievements, Milan
31. Royal Scottish National Orchestra, "End Credits" (from First Knight), Hollywood '95, Varèse Sarabande

"There Are Never Possibilities":
32. James Horner, "Epilogue (original version)/End Title," Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Retrograde/Film Score Monthly

The Hunter gets captured by the geeks: The books I picked up at Comic-Con, part 2

Previously: The Middleman: The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse, Adrenaline and Bumperboy and the Loud, Loud Mountain.

My rundown of the graphic novels and TPBs I bought at Comic-Con concludes with two recent projects from IDW, which quickly became the comics publisher whose releases I've been looking forward to the most because of its ambitious reprints and high-quality revivals of properties like Star Trek and Doctor Who.

I picked up Classic G.I. Joe Volume 1 at the IDW booth because I was looking for a comic that veteran Marvel and DC letterer (and friend and mentor to several of us Secret Identities creators) Janice Chiang worked on and could sign for me at Comic-Con, and the TPB happened to contain an issue lettered by Janice. She then brought me over to another former Marvel letterer, Rick Parker, to have him sign the TPB because his work appeared in the collection too.

I never was an avid reader of Marvel's G.I. Joe comics, although I bought some issues of the mothership and a couple of its spinoffs when I was a kid. I was more familiar with the Sunbow animated series, which hasn't exactly aged well. Even when I watched G.I. Joe and Transformers back-to-back after school, I thought the animation on both those Sunbow shows sucked. The constantly choppy character movements made the crappy made-for-TV Popeye shorts from the '60s look like Richard Williams cartoons. Because the Sunbow series was essentially a 29-minute toy commercial (subtract one minute for the "Knowing is half the battle" PSA, which was devoted to giving safety tips or warnings about creepy guys in white vans instead of selling toys), most of G.I. Joe's episodes were forgettable and silly, except for one: the Steve Gerber-penned "There's No Place Like Springfield," an eerie two-part ep about Jack Nicholson's Shipwreck's awakening from a seven-year coma that was inspired by The Prisoner (Shipwreck's home address at "Number Six Village Drive" was a shout-out to that famously surreal show). The downbeat tone of the ep and the images of Shipwreck's wife, daughter and friends melting into grey goo blew my mind when I was a kid and scarred other kid viewers for life.

The Marvel comics were intended to sell toys too, but the writing in those comics tended to be much better than the writing on the cartoon, thanks to regular scripter and G.I. Joe action figure dossier writer Larry Hama, a real American hero, especially to Secret Identities contributors who dug that an Asian American was at the helm of Marvel's finest-written toy-based title (also the first comic ever advertised on TV). The Vietnam vet-turned-comics scripter's military expertise added authenticity and grit to the comics and kept them more grounded than the cartoon, where nobody died, Star Wars-style lasers replaced bullets and Cobra was about as dangerous and menacing as Colonel Klink and Sergeant Schultz. That's why the late Gerber's despair-filled "Springfield" was such a stunner back in 1985--the cartoon ditched its usually campy tone for once, added some much-needed menace to Cobra and incorporated a storyline from the comics, the Joes' discovery of a Cobra base disguised as an idyllic, all-American suburb called Springfield.

The standout 1983 G.I. Joe issue that introduced Hama's Springfield--a town that's as rotten-at-the-core as Matt Groening's Springfield--is included in Classic G.I. Joe Volume 1, which collects the first 10 issues of the original 1982-1994 Marvel comic, most of them drawn by '70s Incredible Hulk artist Herb Trimpe in the classic '60s/'70s Marvel style. My tastes in espionage comics lean towards the more adult Queen & Country and Sleeper, so I found the dialogue in these early '80s G.I. Joe issues to be on the hokey side. Despite the hokey one-liners, as the Topless Robot blog noted last year, the original comic still kicks its cartoon counterpart's ass. Scarlett--the lone female Joe in these earlier issues, before Hasbro added Cover Girl and Lady Jaye to the cast--gets a bunch of thrilling take-charge moments in the 1983 issue that Janice lettered, a Mike Vosburg-drawn story in which Scarlett is assigned to protect a diplomat who's being targeted by Cobra (another highlight of the TPB, as well as one of the few issues in the collection that didn't involve either Hama or Trimpe).