In Contention

Tag: The Proposition

  • Nick Cave on film, music and committees

    I can’t think offhand of an upcoming film score that I’m more eager to hear than Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’ work for “The Road.” Their dark, elegiac score for “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” which wove together a panoply of Americana with a smattering of modern influences, was one of the great overlooked achievements of last year.

    Of course, “The Road” reunites Cave and Ellis with director John Hillcoat, with whom they collaborated on “The Proposition” — the fascinating Outback “Western” that Cave himself also scripted. “The Proposition”‘s score was another sonically dense, richly atmospheric affair, and I expect them to repeat the feat on “The Road.”

    All of which brings me to this interesting little interview with Cave, taken while he was recording for “The Road” in London. He’s long been one of the most articulate, intelligent guys in rock music, and he offers quite generous insight here into his deliciously strange creative process. There’s also this rather matter-of-fact perspective on working for film:

    The whole film business, everything is done by committee, it would seem. So what you feel about what you’ve created is highly irrelevant in the process of making a film. You hand something in and the worth of it is judged by people you’ve never even seen, so it’s mentally frustrating in that way, but at times it’s hugely enjoyable because the kind of agony of original creation, of having to think of the actual idea and the theme and what you’re going to write about and all that kind of stuff, which is really very difficult, the toughest part of songwriting for me, is not there. You’re simply supplied everything by what’s on the screen.

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  • The western keeps on truckin’

    It’s no real secret that yours truly is in the tank for the western genre.  Being brought up on the films of Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood tends to make an impact in a young man’s life.  I watch Charles Bronson square off with Henry Fonda on a daily basis.  I’m knee-deep in research on the genre for a grad school thesis.

    I dig it, okay?

    The resurgence of saddles and spurs on the big screen has been moving steadily through the industry.  I don’t think anyone expects a return to the 1950s, with pistol-toting heroes plastered on every television screen and nearly every silver screen across America, but I see these efforts taking on more introspective subject matter, perhaps giving way soon enough to the neo-western.  And it is, after all, time.

    Today I see that screen tests may have been revealed of Thomas Jane in the upcoming DC Comics adaptation “Jonah Hex”  The film is set to be directed by the team behind “Crank,” Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor.  This might be real, might not, since the duo is filming “Crank 2” in Los Angeles at the moment.  But I can’t say I’m loving it…seems quite amateurish.  Regardless, “Hex” is a hell of a property with some storylines that just sing, and seeing it on the big screen will do this western fanatic a lot of good.

    Meanwhile, of course, Ed Harris is set to release “Appaloosa” later this year, formerly under the New Line Cinema banner and now, presumably, as another in a long tradition of genre entries from Warner Bros. Pictures.  Harris stars along with Viggo Mortensen and Renee Zellweger.

    These efforts are coming on the heels of a tweak in the genre as of late, with the more abstract works of Cormac McCarthy making their way to the screen (“No Country for Old Men,” “The Road” and, soon, “Blood Meridian”) and David Milch showing in the sadly cancelled HBO series “Deadwood” that the genre could be taken to levels almost Shakespearean.  Meanwhile, a revamp of “The Lone Ranger” is looking like a go, with the team behind the “Pirates of the Caribbean” films hoping to bring an element of sensationalism into the mix.

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