On this week's episode of the Way I explore Peter Fonda's directorial debut The Hired Hand (1971), a hallucinatory Western starring the aforementioned Fonda and the legendary Warren Oates, who gives one of his best ever performances. The two play best friends who give up their drifter ways to head back to Harry Colling's (Fonda) family ranch, which he had abandoned years ago. Although the story and acting are quite fine, it's the hypnotic cinematography and the haunting, hallucinatory film score composed by Bruce Langhorne that make the movie something special. The twisting, kaleidoscopic visuals coupled with the sparse score move the film along at a drifitng, stream-of-consciousness pace that is very striking. On the podcast, I play a mash-up of dialogue from the film played along side Langhorne's magnificent score.
The second half of the show is another western mash-up of dialogue of soundtrack and dialogue this time from Alex Cox's notorious 1987 cult western Straight to Hell. The film is almost the polar opposite of something like The Hired Hand. Gritty, plot-less, endlessly violent and noisy as hell, Straight to Hell was the result of director Alex Cox and his punk-rock buddies Joe Strummer, Elvis Costello, the Pogues, and others hanging out on old film sets in the desert in the south of Spain and shooting what has to be one of the most bizarre, yet entertaining movies I've ever seen. The soundtrack is excellent as well, think Ennio Morricone gone Punk. Major contributions from a group called Pray For Rain, who do soundtrack work exclusively, in particular for Cox's movies. The Pogues, Joe Strummer, Zander Schloss and Elvis Costello also contribute to the soundtrack as well. The mash-up was done improv, on the fly so the result is much like the movie, chaotic and noisy. Hope you enjoy it all the same though. The link to stream the episode is below, and you can right click and hit it "save as" to download as a .mp3.
The Way: September 13th, 2012
wasn't there a connection with gene clark on the hired hand-i know that his songs ended up in the american dreamer but i think those same songs[2]ended up there somewhere or on an lp somehow connected to this film,anyway that is great work by BL and warren oates was always very good and further down the page i'm a great fan of curt b. bought innocent face in the 70's and still coming across rare tracks by him is great. that laugh on this soundtrack sounded like the great jason robards but he's probably not in it lol
ReplyDeleteI have no knowledge of a Gene Clark involvement but that would be fascinating if that turned out to be the case. Yeah Bruce Langhorne did a fantastic job on this soundtrack, I'm surprised he didn't do more film score work after this. And that laugh during the film is from the great Warren Oates. One of the best character actors ever. Thanks for dropping a line and stopping by!
Delete-Casey