Motion Picture Soundtracks

Motion picture soundtrack. Original sountrack, abbreviated OST. We're all familiar with them. The use of music as dressing for some lame summer blockbuster. I used to have many, since my primary interest in music in my younger days came from the incessant flow of movies my family dragged me to.

From where I'm sitting, there's two different approaches to the movie soundtrack. One is to view the music as its own unique and potent force that accentuates the events on screen (see above). The other is to treat the music as something to hold the attention of the viewer during a drawn-out, ridiculous, overly-expensive and just plain dumb car chase. Unfortunately, the latter approach seems to be the predominate method used by Hollywood. So many soundtracks are merely mixtapes of songs that didn't quite make it to "b-side" quality level. Rubbish that even the artist didn't know what to do with and was most likely glad to have sold to someone.

However, some soundtracks are damn good stuff. Tom Waits has done at least two complete soundtracks: One from the Heart and Night On Earth. I recently acquired the remastered edition of the One from the Heart soundtrack, and it was quite good. I wouldn't call it his best work, but it was nice. I am dying to get my paws on Night On Earth, but that is a bit rare and difficult to get ahold of. It's also one of the few Waits albums I don't have (hint to anyone that sees it and wants to get me a Christmas gift early). But alas, I digress.

The afore-mentioned One from the Heart soundtrack had an interesting approach behind it. Francis Ford Coppola told Tom Waits to write and record the music, then he'd make a movie around it. The movie went on to be a flop, but the soundtrack stood up against the forces of time. It has never been out of print (except the remastered version, which seems to be currently unavailable for the most part). An interesting aftershock of the pairing of Waits and Coppola has been in Waits making the occasional role in Coppola's movies (see Bram Stoker's Dracula for Waits turning the character Renfield on his head and making the character his own for all time).

Wendy Carlos blew many minds with the soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange. The relatively new art of the synthesizer keyboard lent a powerful futuristic feel to the film. While not a movie, Mark Snow's music for The X-Files TV series enhanced the ambiance of the paranormal and extraordinary. Hum the theme in a supermarket and everyone will know what you're humming.

The only point I'm trying to make here is that motion pictures, as a conglomerate artform, should treat the music featured in them with more respect than they currently do. The movie is a mix of theater, music, writing, and technology. All too often, the creators of the average movie treat the art as so much filler, giving technology the center stage. Bad acting combined with bad music and bad writing equals the formula for bland trash that will be swept aside and forgotten by the end of the season.

But I suppose only true artists give a damn about making a work such as a movie more than the sum of its parts. A memorable work is made of more than CGI explosions and sound effects.