March Madness March of the Day: "March of the Beggars" from Duck, You Sucker by Ennio Morricone

In Sergio Leone's off-center 1971 western Duck, You Sucker (a.k.a. A Fistful of Dynamite, which was what American distributor United Artists called the film in their badly butchered version, and Giù La Testa, which is Italian for "Keep your head down"), Mexican peasant bandit Juan Miranda (Rod Steiger) and his extended family of--what else?--bandits are musically represented by goofball vocal effects that simulate belches and hunger noises.

Juan's hungry, particularly for money. "In Juan's mind, money equals religion," said Italian cinema historian Sir Christopher Frayling during Duck, You Sucker's 2007 MGM DVD commentary. So throughout the film, Ennio Morricone's comedic "March of the Beggars" theme features a chorale and church organ, like when the march receives its fullest, march-iest and most rapturous statement during the sequence where Juan and his crew break into the Banco Nacional de Mesa Verde with the help of explosives supplied by their new criminal accomplice, Irish revolutionary Sean Mallory (James Coburn).

Leone modeled the Duck, You Sucker bank set piece after a scene from Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times where The Tramp picks up a red flag that fell off a truck and as he waves at the truck to turn around and retrieve the flag, a crowd of protesting workers marches behind him and the police mistakes him for their leader and arrests him. Juan accidentally becomes a hero of the Mexican Revolution--Sean didn't tell him the bank was converted into a political prison and its stash was transferred to another location weeks before--after Juan unlocks the bank's vaults to find political prisoners instead of loot and winds up liberating those prisoners.

When Juan starts to shoot the vault doors open, Morricone's orchestra slips in Mozart's "A Little Night Music." I don't understand why there's a Mozart shout-out during a bank raid sequence, but who cares? It's Morricone... being Morricone.

"Rome, Italian Style" Track of the Day: Parodi/Fair, "James Bond Theme (GoldenEye Trailer Version)"

Song: "James Bond Theme (GoldenEye Trailer Version)" by Parodi/Fair
Released: 2002 (it was recorded in 1995)
Why's it part of the "Rome, Italian Style" playlist?: The "Rome, Italian Style" block focuses on how musicians outside the film and TV music world interpret '60s and '70s film and TV music. Former Arsenio Hall Show band keyboardist Starr Parodi and her husband Jeff Eden Fair, whose film and TV scoring work as a duo has included the mid-'90s United Artists logo music and the Lifetime cop show The Division, are hardly outsiders, but their arrangement of "The James Bond Theme" from 1962's Dr. No is my favorite cover of that theme that never appeared in a Bond film.

On this date in 1963, "The James Bond Theme" (composed by Monty Norman and arranged by John Barry) entered the American pop charts. It captured the danger and allure of Bond's universe so well that every Eon Productions Bond film since Dr. No has featured it, and every non-Eon Bond film that doesn't feature it is, musically, kind of dickless without it--like Never Say Never Again or The Rock, which I like to think of as a sequel to the Sean Connery 007 installments because Connery was clearly playing Bond again, despite being named "John Mason,"(*) a safe-enough name choice to keep the Ian Fleming estate's lawyers away.

(*) If one likes to think of the name Bond as a mantle that's assumed by many different male MI6 agents instead of Bond being the same orphaned bachelor (and later, widower) from 1962 to 2002 despite five different faces, heights and accents(**), then that was a great way to explain why MI6 replaced the anonymous Scotsman who assumed the Bond identity from 1962 to 1967 and then briefly again in 1971: the U.S. government imprisoned his arse.

(**) Maybe Bond is really a Time Lord. All those STDs he picked up must have caused him to regenerate four times.

In 1995, United Artists recruited Parodi and Fair to do an updated version of "The James Bond Theme" for the GoldenEye teaser trailer, months before filming was completed on Pierce Brosnan's first movie as 007, which was also the first movie in which Eon enlisted Martin Campbell, the New Zealand-born director of the classic British miniseries Edge of Darkness, to rescue the hit-or-miss 007 film series from one of many periods of creative (and this time, also legally related) doldrums.

"We were in a unique and exciting situation because we had been given the assignment of bringing the Bond theme into the 90's," recalled Parodi and Fair on their official site. "Fortunately we were given lots of artistic freedom because the picture of the GoldenEye Teaser was to be edited to our music arrangement. We wanted to give the theme a sense of mystery and tension that would break out with tons of energy that suits the action that Bond films deliver."

The duo succeeded. Their nifty, trip-hop-influenced take on "The James Bond Theme," which constantly changes tempos, announced so effectively to the world during the GoldenEye teaser trailer that Bond was back in action again. It recaptures the danger and allure of Bond's universe in a way that Marvin Hamlisch's fun(***) but not-as-alluring "Bond '77" cover from The Spy Who Loved Me doesn't. Maybe it's due to the trip-hop sound, which is better suited for 007 than the disco sound of "Bond '77" because trip-hop is so influenced by Barry's spy movie scores, and artists from that genre are so fond of sampling those scores too, which is what Parodi and Fair did with the original 1962 recording of "The James Bond Theme" in their teaser trailer music.

(***) It's mostly because of the cowbells.

In 2002, it was nice to finally be able to have on disc the teaser trailer music, which became a staple of MGM/UA's trailers and ads for the Brosnan films. The trailer music made its CD debut on the Best of Bond... James Bond compilation, which Capitol released to mark the film series' 40th anniversary. At that time, the series was stuck in yet another creative rut (Brosnan's films did well at the box office but were becoming increasingly slipshod, script-wise). It wasn't able to come out of this rut until Eon enlisted Campbell again to helm what ended up being the best--and least juvenile--Bond film in decades. Mr. Bond, you have a nasty habit of surviving.

"Rome, Italian Style" Track of the Day: Count Basie and His Orchestra, "007"

Song: "007" by Count Basie and His Orchestra
Released: 1966
Why's it part of the "Rome, Italian Style" playlist?: It's Basie's big-band cover of the recently deceased John Barry's "007," complete with the legendary jazz pianist's trademark "plink, plink, plink" at the end (although it's actually more of a "da-dee-dee, plink, plink"). Not to be confused with the much more famous "James Bond Theme" (which was written by Monty Norman and arranged by Barry), "007" is a secondary theme for the Bond character that Barry introduced in 1963's From Russia with Love, the first film in the Bond franchise that Barry scored from start to finish, or rather, from gunbarrel to final makeout session, presumably on a raft. This North by Northwest-style, stately-sounding action motif turned up frequently during the Sean Connery era of the series--the era when the Bond installments, particularly From Russia with Love, most closely resembled North by Northwest--and rarely appeared in the series again after Connery's departure. The Basie Orchestra's rendition of "007" is taken from Basie Meets Bond, an album in which the band made its debut on United Artists Records by recording a tie-in to United Artists' biggest cash cow at the time and covering its most signature themes, including, yes, "Underneath the Mango Tree."

Hear Basie get his plink on.

AFOS: "The Inmates Are Taking Over the Asylum" playlist

Airing this week on the Fistful of Soundtracks channel is the 2008 Fistful of Soundtracks: The Series episode "The Inmates Are Taking Over the Asylum" (WEB96), in which I compiled my favorite selections from scores to films that were distributed by United Artists, which turns 90 years old this May.

1. Elmer Bernstein, "The Street (Main Title)" (from Sweet Smell of Success), Crime Jazz: Music in the First Degree, Rhino
2. Adolph Deutsch, "Main Title - Theme from The Apartment," The Apartment, United Artists
3. Elmer Bernstein, "Main Title and Calvera," The Magnificent Seven, Rykodisc
4. Elmer Bernstein, "Main Title," The Great Escape: The Deluxe Edition, Varèse Sarabande
5. The London Studio Symphony Orchestra, "Theme from The Fugitive," The Fugitive, Silva Screen
6. John Barry, "Opening Titles," From Russia with Love, EMI
7. Henry Mancini, "The Pink Panther Theme," The Pink Panther, RCA
8. Ennio Morricone, "L'Estasi Dell'Oro," Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo, GDM
9. Quincy Jones, "Shag Bag, Hounds & Harvey" (from In the Heat of the Night), In the Heat of the Night/They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!, Rykodisc
10. Henry Mancini featuring the Party Poops, "The Party (vocal)," The Party, RCA
11. John Barry, "Midnight Cowboy," Midnight Cowboy, EMI-Manhattan
12. Al Kooper, "Love Theme," The Landlord, United Artists
13. Bobby Womack & Peace, "Across 110th Street," Across 110th Street, Rykodisc
14. Jack Sheldon, "The Long Goodbye," Fitzwilly/The Long Goodbye, Varèse Sarabande
15. David Shire, "End Title," The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Retrograde
16. Bill Conti, "The Final Bell," Rocky, EMI-Manhattan
17. The Gap Band, "I'm Gonna Git You Sucka," I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, Arista
18. Mellow, "Seek You," CQ, Emperor Norton

Repeats of A Fistful of Soundtracks: The Series air Monday night at midnight, Tuesday and Thursday at 4am, 10am, 3pm, 7pm and 11pm, Wednesday night at midnight, and Saturday and Sunday at 7am, 9am, 11am, 1pm, 3pm and 5pm.

New AFOS episode: "The Inmates Are Taking Over the Asylum"

This week, the United Artists 90th Anniversary Film Festival hits both the Castro Theatre in San Francisco and the Nuart Theatre in L.A., so the next episode of A Fistful of Soundtracks will feature my favorite selections from scores to films that were distributed by UA. "The studio without a studio" thrived during an era when rival studios couldn't keep up with their audiences--and the social changes of the period--and kept releasing dull and staid product. UA's smart and daring films during the Arthur Krim/Robert Benjamin regime and Krim and Benjamin's championing of filmmakers--they let them do their thing--are always worth celebrating. Oh yeah, and most of these flicks had terrific original music too.

"The Inmates Are Taking Over the Asylum" (WEB96) will begin streaming tomorrow (Thursday, May 1 at midnight, 4am, 10am, 3pm, 7pm and 11pm). I've included themes from some of UA's most popular releases (The Great Escape, 007), but I also wanted to fill most of the episode with music from cult classics (The Taking of Pelham One Two Three) or soundtrack albums that are out of print (The Long Goodbye).

Pelham, a thrilling caper movie with Walter Matthau at his sardonic best as a cynical transit cop who's the perfect disheveled hero for an even more disheveled New York, and The Long Goodbye, Robert Altman's clever reimagining of Philip Marlowe, are two '70s UA flicks I instantly fell in love with. I first caught Pelham on TCM a few years ago and discovered The Long Goodbye on DVD last year.

Pelham composer David Shire and Long Goodbye composer John Williams achieved so much with what little they had. Shire wrote each Pelham score cue under the 12-tone method of composition to evoke "organized chaos"--in other words, the funkiest film score not written by a black dude ever.

Williams' Long Goodbye score--one of the shortest he ever wrote--is equally off-kilter. It consists of nothing but different variations on the same melody. Wherever Elliott Gould's Marlowe goes, the Long Goodbye theme follows, whether it's as bar piano music or as a doorbell ring. I don't know exactly why Altman asked Williams to write the score like that. (Jaime J. Weinman says Williams' score is a spoof of the incessant pimping of movie title songs in the '60s and '70s--an issue that caused the previously stable working relationship between Alfred Hitchcock and the less pop-minded Bernard Herrmann to fall apart during the making of Torn Curtain. The Something Old, Nothing New blogger theorizes that Williams' score could also be an homage to Roy Webb's similarly structured score during Out of the Past.) But whatever the intentions were, the Long Goodbye score nicely reflects Marlowe's sense of displacement--he's a '40s guy in a '70s world.

Whereas UA was a '70s studio in a '50s Hollywood that struggled to keep up with the '60s.

Roman Coppola's CQ

WEB96 also covers UA's recent art-house phase, before Tom Cruise took over the company. One of my favorite films to emerge from UA's art-house years is Roman Coppola's CQ, a fun little film about filmmaking in the mold of Day for Night and Ed Wood. It contains a great loungey score by the French trio Mellow, which evoked the likes of Piero Umiliani, Piero Piccioni and Ennio Morricone during the cues for the movie-within-the-movie Codename: Dragonfly, a mash-up of Barbarella and Danger: Diabolik (the source of Angela Lindvall's sexy rolling-around-in-cash scene).

The '70s logo

A Half-Assed History of UA's Logos

I remember the first appearance of the '90s UA logo when I saw GoldenEye in 1995. The logo actually received cheers from GoldenEye's opening weekend audience--they were just so happy to see Bond again after a six-year absence.

The '90s logo

The sadly discontinued jingle was composed by Jeff Eden Fair and Starr Parodi.

The husband-and-wife duo recalled to SoundtrackNet that "We did that with a 90-piece orchestra at the Sony Scoring Stage... Our instructions were, 'We want something that represents the past, present, and future of United Artists.' So we started with classic orchestral instrumentation, moving to futuristic sounds and concepts at the end."

The '00s logo

Defamer's funny idea of what the UA watertower now looks like

Next AFOS episode: I'm taking a break after five consecutive eps. I don't know when I'll stream the next new ep.