Popular Music and the New Auteur: Visionary Filmmakers after MTV Arved Ashby Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 © Oxford University Press 2013 © Oxford University Press 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Popular music and the new auteur : visionary filmmakers after MTV / edited by Arved Ashby. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–19–982733–6 (hardcover : alk. paper)—ISBN 978– 0–19–982735–0 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Motion picture music—History and criticism. 2. Popular music in motion pictures. I. Ashby, Arved Mark. ML2075.P65 2013 ML2075.P65 2013 781.5'42—dc23 2013007164 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Contents Acknowledgments Contributors Popular Music and the New Auteur Introduction Part One Music and Cinematic Time Chapter 1 “Without Music, I Would Be Lost” Chapter 2 Lost in Transition Part Two Music and the Image Chapter 3 A Musical Tour of the Bizarre Chapter 4 Songs of Delusion Part Three Music as Instrument of Irony and Authenticity Chapter 5 O Brother, Where Chart Thou? Chapter 6 You’ve Heard This One Before Chapter 7 Wes Anderson, Ironist and Auteur Bibliography Index (p.vii) Acknowledgments This book originated with a session on auteurs’ use of popular music that I proposed in 2005 for the Chicago meeting of the Society for American Music. Julie Hubbert and Jeff Smith gave early versions of their Scorsese and Coen brothers essays, and it was their provocative ideas on those music-cinematic stylists that inspired a larger project. Because of Julie and Jeff’s knowledge and eager advice, not to mention the extraordinary patience they showed while the volume slowly came together, this project is as much theirs as anyone’s. Others urged the project to fruition by suggesting additional topics and contributors. Wonderful counsel was given by such authorities—among them Anahid Kassabian, David Butler, Graham Lock, and Krin Gabbard—that the final authors have not only managed to survey a wealth of recent cinematic creativity, they’ve brought a remarkable variety of perspectives to their task. All of us are very much indebted to our acquisitions editor Norm Hirschy, who was ever attentive with his wise and enthusiastic guidance, and ever encouraging from the first moment I mentioned the book’s topic to him. I still have no idea how Norm can answer e-mails so fast, so wittily, and in such urbane prose. Assistant Editor Lisbeth Redfield and Kate Nunn, our project manager, were both helpful and firm in ushering the volume through production. We also owe a great deal to the anonymous reviewers commissioned by Oxford University Press, particularly the two initial readers who did so much to help focus the book. The book also owes a debt to the students in a film music seminar that I led at Ohio State University in autumn 2008, the enrollees including Joe Nebistinsky, Andrew Martin, Alison Furlong, and Zhichun Lin. They were astute critics, and my own contributions to this volume would have been poorer without their input. (p.viii)