I overrode one friend’s orders about no chicken dance at his wedding through constant barrage to the DJ. My friend was unhappy, though I doubt he remembers it, and I doubt it anywhere approached “ruining his wedding”.
But still, I was younger and dumber and wish I hadn’t.
Beethoven’s Symphony #6 is forever in my brain as the music to listen to while being euthanized.
Father of the Bride was the first time I recall hearing this song as well. Watching this clip, I feel like I need to revisit this movie soon.
The second movement of Beethoven’s “Pathetique” sonata in the Coen Brothers’ The Man Who Wasn’t There works on so many levels for me. It’s a slow performance, somewhere between a plod and an amble. It picks up briefly in the middle, as if charged with something between interest and inspiration. Then it goes back to the slower speed. This resembles Billy Bob’s character’s life. He’s content enough to be a barber, content enough to exist in a passionless marriage. Then, for some reason, he gets mixed up with a business proposition, blackmail, murder, cover-ups, legal proceedings, something approaching lust for an underage girl, more death, and a death sentence…and then he’s content enough to go back to the slower speed. Equanimity. It’s also a piece frequently practiced by young Scarlett Johansson’s character in the film. She plays it well to my ears and Ed’s ears, but a true pianist dismisses it as passionless, and she accepts that too, with mental calmness, composure, and evenness of temper, especially in a difficult situation. Isn’t it kind of pathetic?
I also meant to write up this movie, especially where this song holds a montage together, for the 3x3 for Best Erections In A Movie from a while back. It might not be obvious, but on the DVD commentary, Billy Bob tells the Coens that as he sat on a couch, watching ScarJo practice, he had tented out his pants a little bit for the camera. “Ed’s got a boner,” he chortled. The Coens sighed and never did a DVD commentary again.
As xtien Murawski might quote, “I cut the hair.”
Here are a couple:
How about the intro to Rollerball?
Very innovative at the time (I think), but now it gets used sometimes when some sort of grudge match is coming together in a comedy.
Also, I think that if you are going to bring up Looney Toons, The Rabbit of Seville is another classic that may even be funnier than What’s Opera, Doc? (referenced as Kill the Wabbit! up above).
There’s no way now that I don’t think of Bad Santa whenever hearing or playing Chopin’s Nocturne in Eb:
And this one is forever associated for me with Solaris.
…and the sequence featuring this from It’s Such a Beautiful Day never fails to give me chills.
“It’s kind of a really nice day…”
Bach Suite No 3 will always remind me of Seven.
Fantasia is kinda cheating but:
Not a movie, but an old TV show called Star Stuff, which had one of my all time favorite classical pieces as its theme.
I feel like I might want to watch an episode now, because I recall at the time, I had no idea what the show was even supposed to be about. Some kid with a computer/radio thing, that maybe talked to some girl in space or something?
Kubrick has eternally contaminated Also Sprach Zarathustra/Sunrise, which saddens me a bit, but as it is probably the most apt use of pre-existing music in the history of movies, I can’t begrudge it too much.
Fortunately his contamination of The Blue Danube is less potent. In the right context I can listen to it and think of well-dressed Viennese dancers rather than spacecraft.
The Lone Ranger has pretty much smothered Rossini’s William Tell Overture, which is too bad. I’ve never even watched an episode of that damn show and I still can’t get away from that association.
Howard Hanson’s Romantic Symphony makes me think of Alien because of the bit they used at the climax (overwriting Jerry Goldsmith’s original score in a somewhat controversial move).
I’m happy to say that in most cases, for me, a movie’s contamination of a great piece of music doesn’t prove fatal. The music is usually strong enough to resist and overcome its association with what is typically a lesser work of art. Kubrick/2001, again, is the strongest exception to that in my experience. By contrast, Rossini’s La Gazza Ladra overture escapes A Clockwork Orange in a way that William Tell could not escape The Lone Ranger.
Holst’s The Planets, specifically “Mars, the Bringer of War” in The Right Stuff:
Oh my–I don’t know why this didn’t occur to me sooner: Zbigniew Preisner’s Lacrimosa, used in The Tree of Life.
I almost forgot this and it’s been our favorite rom com since it came out just before my wife and I got married: La Boheme from Moonstruck:
I’ll probably never disassociate Blue Danube from 2001.
For a long time, Rite of Spring was “the dinosaur fight song” in my head.
Similarly for other pieces used in Fantasia.
That’s original score, Brian. James Horner. Although I would bet that Orff’s Carmina Burana was on the temp soundtrack during editing and that Horner, like so many composers, was told to imitate it very closely indeed.
Is it really? My bad then.
P.S. I also love that track from Glory. Seriously stirring stuff.