MovieChat Forums > Variety (1985) Discussion > music pinched from pscho ?

music pinched from pscho ?


While I fell asleep several time watching this movie
I still noticed some pieces of Psychomusic by Bernard Herrmann in Variety.
Correct or was I just dreaming ?

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I've not seen Variety yet, nor heard John Lurie's score, but it's described by Andrew Bartlett - in his review of the Down by Law/Variety soundtrack CD at Amazon - as follows:

If John Lurie's music is most aptly described as "fake jazz" (his own description), then there are few better places to experience its fakeness than here. No matter how that sounds, it's a compliment. Lurie's earliest lineups of his Lounge Lizards featured Arto Lindsay in a deconstructive, crunching mode, and the octet that plays the roughly 19 minutes of music for Jim Jarmusch's cult classic Down by Law features not only Lindsay but also his successor, Marc Ribot, among others. They play 13 atmospheric vignettes (again, in 19 minutes!), always forcing the ear back onto the nuggets, as if Lurie is tugging at you to acknowledge that a) his is a strong, idiosyncratic ear for the meeting of auditory and visual elements; and b) his is a music built out of cells like this, which in future versions of the Lounge Lizards have served as the brick and mortar of his additive compositional techniques. Yes, there's too little music from Down by Law, but you do also get nearly 18 minutes of music from Betty Gordon's Variety, this time played with straighter rhythms, albeit ones with titles like "Porno Booth" and "Garter Belt." The band on the latter film's music is Lurie's after-Lindsay outfit, with his brother Evan on piano. The music is stylized without being overstuffed and aptly sultry and noirish. If anyone had doubts about Lurie's manifold talents, this set from 1987 should confirm that he's been on similar aesthetic roads to his late-1990s bands for many years. For more confirmation from the film-meets-Lurie world, check out Stranger than Paradise.

The lion and the calf shall lie down together, but the calf won't get much sleep.

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The lion and the calf shall lie down together, but the calf won't get much sleep.

what's that from?

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It's a Woody Allen quote, from his 1976 book Without Feathers:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Without-Feathers-Woody-Allen/dp/0345336976/ref =sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1222362556&sr=1-1

The lion and the calf shall lie down together, but the calf won't get much sleep.

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thanks

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I heard no Bernard Herrmann PSYCHO styled music in this film. Perhaps the jazzy theme might be reminiscent of Herrmann's score for TAXI DRIVER.

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