Suitcase Orchestra
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The final step in making a film
is the music. I love music, but I have no musical education and need a lot of
help to find out exactly what I want for my film. I only know it when I hear
it.
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The claim can be made that music
has greater power than any other element in a film. It sometimes strikes me as
an altogether higher form of communication, a pure flow of feeling, so sudden
and immediate that at times it's as if a character ripped his heart out and
handed it to the audience. At the same time, music is so abstract that I never
know how to talk about it. And I have found out that most composers don't
really know how to talk about their art either, at least not to a layman like
me.
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John Klein had taken the job of a
stand-in in Cuckoo's Nest so he could hang out with me in Salem and San
Francisco. John knows about music. One day he brought me a record he liked. The
LP was recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra, even though its composer,
Jack Nitzsche, was now working mostly in pop music. He had scored the film
Performance, and John knew him personally.
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I liked Nitzsche's music a lot,
so in the editing room I played sections of his record with our scenes they
seemed to fit wonderfully. In fact, I even cut a few sequences to the strains
of Nitzsche's record. When I had the rough cut, I asked John to invite the
composer to a screening. I proudly played my selections from his record,
expecting him to be flattered, but Nitzsche got so furious that he nearly
stopped talking to me.
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"What is this! This is all
wrong! This is nonsense!" he screamed.
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I was close to panic. We had
deadlines and delivery schedules to meet. We were running out of time and now I
was afraid I had mortally offended Nitzsche and would wind up with some
by-the-numbers hack composing the score. Mercifully, John Klein was able to
smooth things over. Jack agreed to have new music by the deadline.
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He went away and worked, but he
didn't bother to give me any progress reports. Our recording date was fast
approaching, so I collected my courage, called Nitzsche, and gingerly asked him
what he would require in the way of studio musicians for the upcoming session.
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"I don't know yet," he
snarled.
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"Okay, fine, sure,
sorry," I said and hung up.
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We never got an answer about his
musician requirements, so to be safe we ordered a complete orchestra for our
recording date. The session was to take place at Fantasy Records, where we were
still polishing the final cut, so on the appointed day, from an upstairs
window, I watched Nitzsche arrive. He came in a cab, accompanied by an old man
lugging a huge suitcase.
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We got to the recording studio at
the same time. Jack strolled in, took one glance at the army of musicians
waiting for him there shook his head, and sent the entire orchestra home.
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"Jack, listen, are you sure
you don't need ANYBODY?" I asked.
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"Yes, I am," he said.
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"You want ALL these people
to go home?"
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"They can stay here, but I
don't need them."
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"Not even a drummer, or, I
don't know, a piano player?"
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"No."
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"Okay, Jack."
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While we talked, the old man
opened his suitcase and started pulling out glasses of different height,
thickness, and size and spreading them around the table in the recording
studio. "Oh, I do need something after all, Milos Nietzsche said suddenly.
"We'll need some water."
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We got a pail of water, and the
old man poured it into his glasses, carefully creating columns of different
heights. He then wiped off the table and was ready to go to work. He rubbed his
fingers around the rims of his glasses, coaxing strange, mournful sounds out of
the tap water and glass.
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The effect made your hair stand
on end. jack later added some more traditional passages as well as some music
of buzz saws and other imaginative instruments, but he recorded most of the
soundtrack that morning with only the old man and his suitcase orchestra. I
loved the music.
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Milos Forman, "Turnaround: A Memoir" (1993)
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