That's The Men In...

It seems pretty much right in step with the rest of Summer 1997 that one of the more interesting scores to come along won't get a CD release. However, if you've seen Men in Black, you should have a pretty good idea why there won't be a CD. This film moves—it squeezes more plot into 88 minutes (or whatever) than The Lost World got into its entire 2-hour-plus running time. What this means to Danny Elfman is a bunch of tiny cues that pop quickly in an out of the film, lest they plow right through story elements. On one hand this means it would be terrifically difficult to form a coherent album. Some of the longer cues that appear in the film are already several separate cues butted up against each other. For example, when Edgar jumps out of the morgue window, the original cue ends when he hits the ground. In the film it's segued directly into another bit of chase music. That's fine for the film where wild transitions can be effective, but it would get pretty manic on its own. On the other hand, it shows us the strength of Danny Elfman's technique. We always hear of the difficulty of composing long, drawn-out cues, but that's mostly because of the short time frames in which composers are asked to write. What's sometimes even more challenging is getting into a film gracefully, making an actual dramatic point and not just filling aural space, writing something musically intelligible, and getting out smoothly all within 30-35 seconds. (This is part of what makes Alf Clausen so indispensable to "The Simpsons," which has similar pacing.)

Over all, Men in Black is a pretty fun movie. I don't think it ever reached the action/comic frenzy it wanted to in its final act, but compared to the rest of the summer, it's brilliant. The thematic material Elfman chose to use is a great match for the film. It's pretty simple stuff—a chromatic bass line and a bunch of chords that slide from minor to diminished (i.e. a C minor chord then a C diminished chord). Play these things at home and the first thing you'll notice is how steeped in jazz/blues music it sounds. Half the appeal of this film is based on the idea that two guys who run around in Blues Brothers suits, carry all sorts of intergalactic secrets, and pack giant weapons must be really cool guys. This music is perfectly in sync with that thinking. What's "cooler" (retro or otherwise) than jazzy blues with a techno synth beat? It's also incredibly useful music throughout the body of the film because of its construction. If you have a film that really whizzes by with a ton of chase scenes and that uses jokey dialogue as part of its selling point, you need a way to musically reflect the pace without controlling or covering things. Elfman uses his jumpy bass lines (hopped up with his trademark percussion web) for all the motion, then lays these long brassy chords on top. Problem solved—you've got motion, you've got continuity, and none of it interferes with the picture. In fact, the attenuated chords make the film a lot more palatable by smoothing out the breakneck gait.

All that said, I think that maybe Elfman takes his thematic material a little far from its origins from time to time. I hardly ever got the feeling of specifically associating either the bass line or chordal aspects of the theme with the characters. I think that maybe if that opening dragonfly sequence had been scored with the theme, or at least some more bits of the theme, it would have clued the audience in a little earlier. Someone must have decided that that sequence should be scored more along the lines of busy underscore-type stuff rather than the exposition of musical materials which might have helped clarify things a little bit more. I'm not sure why. But, it's still a good score, and I recommend you check it out. And rest assured that in another half decade we'll all have the "MIB Suite" on Music for a Darkened Theater 3.

Three, Two, One...

And speaking of alien movies, also opening soon will be Contact. Robert Zemeckis' film is really rather good and contains some of the most impressive imagery I've seen in a long time—and geared towards a grown-up audience. There's a very discernible visual language in this film from all the wild pull-backs to the mixed media clips that represent both the alien's mode of communication and our modern society. Sticking the president into scenes with actors, however, is getting a bit hokey, post-Forest Gump. But I loved the fact that this film made use of an awareness of its own construction in its storytelling. It gave the audience some credit, which I appreciate.

Alan Silvestri is back as usual and though I didn't like this score, I do have to admit that Silvestri did try a couple of new things. I heard his music beginning to turn a corner; he's growing up a bit, both as a dramatist and as a composer. Good for him. Yet, composers always seem to attack these kind of grand cinema-style stories with the simplest of scores—a dash of piano, a soupcon of strings, maybe a trumpet solo, and a couple of upper woodwinds bantering back and forth. I think composers must turn to these devices when the story in a film already works very well on its own. After all, why try to be inventive musically when the story doesn't really need much music to begin with? To their credits, Zemeckis and Silvestri spotted this film very lightly—and that helped the film enormously. I'm not being sarcastic here, I really think they made intelligent choices in that regard.

What music there was basically fell along the lines of what's listed above. The piano theme sounds like a cross between Forest Gump music and that folk tune with the lyrics, "Can you bake a cherry pie, Billy boy, Billy boy?" (I can't remember that song's name.) There was one interesting synth patch darting around, but it was only used with John Hurt's over-the-top business tycoon, which hurt more than helped the scenes.

Well, we're out of space for this week. Check back next week and we'll finish up the discussion on Contact by looking at some alternative ways of scoring this kind of drama. The film should be in wide release soon, so feel free to send your opinions. I have a feeling that this is going to be a score a lot of people like, despite my personal feelings.

Final Note: Congratulations to Thomas Newman for being named one of Entertainment Weekly's 100 most creative people in the movies in the June 27/July 4 issue. His picture, however, has me terrified that Joel Schumacher is going to draw little bat ears on it and send it into Warner Brothers.

Contact opinions? MIB or anything else? DAdams1127@aol.com