Cue & A

There's an interesting discussion over at Matt Zoller Seitz's House Next Door blog in which he asks readers if there are any film and TV score cues or existing songs from a movie that they often hear playing in their heads. The post is part of the "Filmmusic Blog-a-Thon" and it's a particularly fun read for me because I host a show about film and TV music.

MZS, a longtime New Yorker, said Bernard Herrmann's brilliant Taxi Driver score often plays in his head, not because he's psycho like Travis Bickle but because the score perfectly captures New York. One reader said he hears the RZA's Ghost Dog score (that brooding main theme that accompanies Forest Whitaker while he's driving is the perfect commuting music). Another guy said John Carpenter's Escape from New York theme underscores his endless hours of driving around in circles in L.A. and his desire to escape that city. (What about Carpenter's theme from his L.A. movie Assault on Precinct 13? Wouldn't that be more suitable music?)

Other interesting choices from the comments section: John Williams' "Planet Krypton" theme from Superman: The Movie, the "Zarathustra"-esque cue that was featured prominently in last year's Superman Returns teaser trailer; Gerald Fried's Star Trek fight music (which I'm sure was being hummed by a lot of gadget geeks while they battled each other for the first few iPhones on June 29); and Georges Delerue's lush "Thème de Camille" from Contempt, forever synonymous with visuals of Brigitte Bardot's sweet booty and Bardot lying on that white rug.

Do film and TV score cues ever get stuck in my head? Actually, they rarely do, but when I was a kid, Danny Elfman's Beetlejuice theme used to get stuck in rotation in my brain a lot. In fact, a classmate once caught me humming it and said, "Isn't that Beetlejuice?" Then a few summers later, I watched A Fistful of Dollars for the first time on TBS and Morricone's main title theme became the Theme That Wouldn't Leave.

Lately, if my brain does start shuffling movie or TV themes, it'll play either an instrumental from Cowboy Bebop or David Shire's main theme from one of my favorite movies, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, which is such an awesome theme I bought Mix Master Mike's "Suprize Packidge" remix as one of my ringtones because it samples the Pelham theme.

One side effect of loving that Pelham theme so much: whenever I hear someone say "Gesundheit," guess what starts playing in my head?