@schmergo / schmergo.tumblr.com
Zadok the priest shreds
I would love to see an actor winning a zillion awards for a deep and impactful portrayal of a troubled pop culture legend and then give the most simple answers to questions about their process, really demystify the whole thing.
Like, “So you filmed the most heartbreaking scene where his band mate dies in his arms. How did you access that pain?”
“I didn’t. I was just like, ‘Wow, that’s really sad.’ So I just thought about how I act when I’m really sad and then acted sadder than that.”
“The character you play has so much trauma and pain that shaped his music. Did you live in that mindset during filming? Or did you find a method to separate yourself from the character?”
“Yeah, it was pretty sad stuff. Sometimes I had a good cry on set at the end of the day. But it was never, like, hard to separate myself from the character because the neat thing is, he’s blonde and I’m not, so at the end of the day I’d just, like, take the wig off and I’m done, you know? Also, sometimes he wears glasses.”
“The character you play, of course, is famous for his distinctive accent. Did you stay in character during filming to perfect his unique speech patterns?”
“Nah, learning an accent is actually pretty easy with a good coach. Shoutout to Bart! Yeah, it was fun. Definitely didn’t talk like him in between filming. My family would have made fun of me.”
“Did you immerse yourself in his music and movies to really connect with his spirit? Did you find any special insight into his soul through his work?”
“I’m actually not a huge fan, to be honest. I obviously listened to his music on set and stuff because it was playing in the background during filming, and it did kinda grow on me. But really, I just listened to the director.”
“Critics are raving about your vulnerable, nuanced portrayal. What’s your secret?”
“I don’t know, act good? I guess years of practice? Great script, great director, great team working on the picture. Awesome cast. Yeah, I guess it all came together! It was a good time!”
If I were an extremely talented composer, I'd write a musical so dazzling, so emotionally moving, so technically beautiful that the industry would have no choice but to produce it. BUT I'd put in one song that's really bad as a joke. And I'd make it a song that's so essential to the plot and character development that you can't cut it. And it would be led by the show's least interesting and relevant supporting character (think, like, the love interest's mom or something), but it would be all about and sung to a MAIN character, who has to be onstage the entire time without singing anything. But it wouldn't be one of those songs you walk out of the theatre remembering, like an opening number, an act one finale, act 2 starter, 11'o clock number, or grand finale. It'd just be innocuously wedged midway through one of the acts and take WAY too long. After the show, audience members would kinda remember one part of the show dragged, but not really recall the details. But creative team members would AGONIZE over it! It'd be a totally different musical style from the rest of the score and require strange instruments. It would be difficult to sing, but not in a way that actually sounds technically impressive to an untrained ear, and written for a character who is otherwise an 'actor who sings' type. It would be extremely wordy and full of tongue twisters, making it easy to mess up. It would be written as a dance number with a long dance break, but keep changing tempos in a way that's hard to choreograph to. There would be a big costume and set change written into the dance break to keep them from cutting the dance break. The dance break music would sound nothing like the melody of the song. The repeated chorus would change a little in tune and lyrics each time. Each verse would have a different number of lines. I'd write orchestrations for brass instruments that keep clashing with the vocal harmonies, but only SLIGHTLY, and there would be an incongruous 'oompah' tuba throughout regardless of the tempo changes. The repeated chorus would be built around a figure of speech that sounds like it COULD be euphemism for something gross, but not necessarily. Oh, and the song would center around a character with a name that doesn't rhyme with anything (say, "Henry,") so the song would keep rhyming with itself or reaching for slant rhymes and forced nicknames not used elsewhere in the show. And I'd REALLY twist the knife in by using motifs from that number in the show's finale, but make them WORK somehow. Transform it into something beautiful, giving false hope that the song itself could be beautiful, too. (It cannot.) And through it all, I'd aim for a single goal: making members of every creative team to produce the show stand there with their hands on their hips and saying, "The number doesn't work." They'd gather together and try to figure out how to fix it. But I made it unfixable. I took every single loose end and tangled it into a Gordian knot, and there's no way to take it apart without taking apart the whole show! My cursed gift to the art world! My poisonous confection! My decadently stained masterpiece! Unfortunately, I cannot compose at all, so this would never happen.
People have said a LOT about some of the really cool, admirable things about the movie CODA, but I want to give a shout-out to one of my favorite random things they included: the infamously terrible yet uniquely intriguing song, "My Pal Foot Foot" by The Shaggs.
If you've never heard of The Shaggs, that's because... well, they kind of got famous by accident. Their story is kind of sad and mortifying, but also darkly funny. Basically, The Shaggs' music is what music would sound like if it was made by people who had never heard music in their lives (which maybe is why it appeals to Ruby in the movie CODA?) They're famous for being so inept that it's almost skillful and so strange in their approach to music that it almost expands the concept of what music could be.
The Shaggs were a bunch of sisters whose strict dad, Austin Wiggin, kind of forced them into becoming a band. When he was young, his mother had read his palm and predicted he'd marry a strawberry blonde woman, have two kids after she died, and and that his daughters would form a popular music group. Because the first two predictions came true, he dedicated his life to making the third happen. He forced the girls to practice instruments constantly and write and perform music, but they had very little actual training or education in music, resulting in a truly bizarre sound. (Imagine handing a kid a guitar and saying, "Now play with this for several hours a day" unsupervised.)
Wiggin made the girls perform Saturday night gigs at the town hall (the locals did NOT enjoy them) and spent his life savings on getting an album of the girls' music recorded. The album became a weird cult favorite over the decades because it just sounds so ALIEN. The music is somehow both really bad and yet fascinating in its originality. I found out about the Shaggs from a compilation of outsider music called "Songs in the Key of Z," which seems an apt title.In a strange way, Austin Wiggin's mom's prediction came true, it just took several decades. How many amateur teen groups have their music featured in an Oscar-winning movie?
When I was a little kid, I used to get nervous when my dad would play Christmas music on his car radio and the Bruce Springsteen cover of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” would come on because at one point, he asks a member of his band if he’s hoping Santa will bring him a new saxophone.... and my dad is a saxophonist, like, that’s his full-time job. So I’d always be like, “This is too personal. How does he know?”
Thanks to my neighbors, I couldn’t have done it without you
I don’t know, it just popped into my head
Some say that the Greeks coined the term 'barbarian' because foreigners who didn't speak Greek sounded like they were saying 'bar bar bar.'
Theory: what if the first 'barbarians' that the Greeks happened upon were simply the Beach Boys in a brief yet dramatic time slip, performing their hit tune "Barbara Ann." Sample lyrics: "Bar bar bar, bar, Barbara Ann. Bar bar bar, bar Barbara Ann..."
It wouldn't be TERRIBLY improbable. After all, they get around.
When I was a little kid, my favorite song was "La Bamba" for some reason, despite knowing zero Spanish. Every time I heard that song, I would just get up and DANCE. I thought that was a "me" thing, but the other day, I went to the pumpkin patch, where they have a stage with live music and little speakers all around the farm piping it in, and the band was playing that song and little kids were just going APE. I saw two girls standing on top of a mountain of hay rocking out. One kid was standing on top of a fake train doing the Floss dance. Apparently, that song won the 'Kids Choice Award' in the 1980's. It DOES SOMETHING to small children.
So I have a theory that that's the song that the Pied Piper of Hamelin played to lead the children into the mountainside.
I kind of might want to go to that Mumford & Sons concert because I imagine that the audience is a bunch of prospectors square-dancing
Reality is difficult enough to keep a vague hold on WITHOUT businesses and radio stations choosing to play songs about the WRONG day of the week.
I hear "Manic Monday" on the radio in the office, I hear "It's Friday, I'm In Love" at the coffee shop... time is meaningless. Four days skipped in less than an hour. Despite knowing yesterday was Tuesday, Tuesday has ceased to exist. All of the emails I sent yesterday vanish from my 'sent' folder. I had plans for Thursday. Did they occur without me, or did they never happen?
Time stalls around me as The Cure croons, "Saturday wait, and Sunday always comes too late." Babies are born, grow old, and die as I wait for my tea. I open my phone to pass the time. The first thing I see is an article about the Beatles. NICE TRY. The last thing I need now is "Eight Days a Week."
Hello, welcome to the first day of police sketch artist school. Your first assignment: create a composite of ‘Old Flat-Top’ from Come Together by the Beatles
Time to GET CRAZY in my office now that my coworkers have gone home!
our brilliant discovery: Hallelujah/ Uptown Funk
I have a theory involving Meat Loaf. The singer, not the food. So, Meat Loaf's music video for "I'd Do Anything For Love" is clearly based on Phantom of the Opera and Beauty and the Beast, with him in scary prosthetics, Gothic sets, enchanted mirrors, etc. Anyway, near the end of the music video, he smashes up a bunch of mirrors and escapes his enchanted lair.
Well, the thing is, that doesn't happen in the original stage musical of Phantom of the Opera, but it DOES happen in the 2004 movie starring Gerard Butler. That's right. I'm 99% positive that Meat Loaf copied Phantom of the Opera, and then Phantom of the Opera copied Meat Loaf. That, or Meat Loaf IS the Phantom of the Opera.
