Is Tom Waits really in this movie? I watched the whole fricken thing and couldn't figure out where he was. Maybe it wasn't the musician Tom Waits, but just some guy named Tom Waits.
Can anyone help me out?
"Style is self-plagiarism" -- Alfred Hitchcock
According to Tom Waits Acting Bio, he was the drunken bartender in Wolfen. I haven't seen the movie since it first came out so I don't remember the character. I happened on "Smoke" when it was ending and was totally taken with the song "Innocent when you dream" which I had never heard before - in fact, I had never heard of Tom Waits. I assume that the very gruff voice that he uses in "Innocent when you dream" is not natural because it sounds like an old black man. I note that he was born in 1949 which puts him at 55 now. But, what a song. I went straight to ITunes on my Mac and downloaded it immediately and play it all the time.
Running Fool
trust me, it is his natural voice!
"We learned more from a three minute record than we ever learned in school"
If you smoked and drank like Mr. Waits, your voice would also sound that way.
Actually, if you really want to hear a great song, my favorite is "Tom Traubert's Blues". Between that and Mr. Waits' performance in "Bram Stoker's Dracula", I've been hooked since before I was a teenager.
"Conservatives want live babies so they can grow up to be dead soldiers."
Waits rules. Faves include "Telephone Call From Istanbul", "Invitation To The Blues", "Black Market Baby"... The list is endless. The man can do no wrong.
And, yes, he was the bartender.
It´s the Guy in the Bar who is playing the Piano.
Tom Waits is the best.
If you watched the DVD you didn't get a chance to see Tom Waits. That particular scene with him playing the piano was cut from the DVD release of the film. I'm not sure about that bu I think it was due to copyright reasons.
The time index for that particular scene is 44:43 minutes into the film. Chapter 13.
'Wolfen' was just on Encore's 'Action' channel last week.
I know I've seen Wolfen before w/ Tom Waits in the bar scene, but for some reason the version last week didn't have it!?
I think Finney mentions that Tom's character owns the bar. The song he's playing is Jitterbug Boy I think. My Brother In Law got me into Tom Waits recently, I don't think there is anyone quite like him. Check out tracks like Potter's Field and 9th And Hennepin for some real noir monologues set to sleazey jazz, absolute genius. Not at all happy they chopped it out of the DVD, was considering buying that.
shareAh, Jitterbug Boy is an awesome song! All of the Small Change album is, and it's probably my fave of his 70'ies albums (In the 80'ies, Rain Dogs does it for me, Bone Machine in the nineties, and Blood Money in the new milennium). And yeah, thats his natual voice, although it didn't really kick in until before his third album.
I was lucky enough to catch the Wilson production of Woyzeck to which Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan wrote the music a few years back. Pure genious.
At the time they were made, songs were licensed for theatrical and TV runs of the film - no-one thought to license them for video formats. When video took off, a lot of composers would try to renegotiate, and to use a song that they'd probably only charged $1500 for originally, they'd suddenly want ten times that for the video release. Studios generally found it cheaper to change the songs on the soundtrack. But since Waits actually appears singing the song, there was no way they could do that, so they cut his entire cameo (it's only about 15-20 seconds). The scene was in the early TV prints, but the current TV master being used was remastered at the time the laserdisc was struck (the laser has the same cut), so is missing the scene even though there isn't a licensing problem with that bit for TV.
"Gentlemen, is this a great moment or a small one? I'm afraid I don't know."
Check out the album "HEARTATTACK & VINE" for some great Tom Waits material.
He's something else.
He may have had a larger role, since the original release was cut down from Wadleigh's 2 hour, 29 minute director's cut to about 2 hours.
The scene with the environmental terrorist is also different on the DVD release -- it's tighter and I'd argue, better.
Best Tom Waits song ever is "Hoist That Rag" from the "Real Gone" album.
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