Jon Brion: new site, blue site

Started by neatahwanta, August 16, 2003, 02:42:08 PM

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

cowboykurtis

i just got back from seeing jon brion play at the hollywood amoeba music -- did any one catch the show? played some huckabees stuff, some pdl stuff, some covers -- good show all around
...your excuses are your own...

tpfkabi

i wish.
i wonder if the 5 songs on Huckabee's were going to be the EP he talked about in that interview.
the way he reprised some of the melodies at the end of the next to last track led me to this possibility.
he could easily do a Smile-ish type album.
i ordered Meaningless last night. i can't wait.
I am Torgo. I take care of the place while the Master is away.

ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ

Quote from: bigideasi picked up the I Heart Huckabee's soundtrack yesterday.
i think it feels more like an album than PDL's soundtrack.
maybe because it's all Brion.
so i like the PDL and IHH soundtracks.......will i like Eternal Sunshine's?
i believe there is one Brion 'singing' song......i wonder how that is.

i could've swore we talked about Meaningless on here......anyone have it?

Definitely get the ESoSM soundtrack.  I listen to it quite a bit.  The song he sings on it is called "The Strings That Tie To You" and it's awesome.
"As a matter of fact I only work with the feeling of something magical, something seemingly significant. And to keep it magical I don't want to know the story involved, I just want the hypnotic effect of it somehow seeming significant without knowing why." - Len Lye

cowboykurtis

the huckabees soundtrack is fucking wonderful -- second best to meaningless -- i believe you can find meaningless off the largo home page -- believe its largo-la.com
...your excuses are your own...

cowboykurtis

...your excuses are your own...

tpfkabi

yeah, i ordered it from there.
there are 2 minute clips to all of the songs.
its really odd how close he and Aimee Mann's phrasing/melodies are alike. i wonder who is more influence on the other.......or if its more of a mutual one.
i wish that Grays album wasn't out of print. it looks like it's wonderful.
I am Torgo. I take care of the place while the Master is away.

tpfkabi

originally posted by Bethie in the IHH thread......i thought it would be good here too for future reference.

Here's an interview with Jon about the soundtrack:

From the Aug 17-23 Hollywood Reporter:

"I began the soundtrack by creating what I would call typically good soundtrack music. (Director) David Russell's reaction was that he wanted more 'good' feeling in it -- more feeling, in general. David and I had a conversation about how disgustingly gratuitous song placement in the movies has become, and how most soundtrack music doesn't have a sense of song to it. It has gotten to the point where you really feel, as a viewer, that almost every song placement is really just a marketing scam.

I had been remembering some older film soundtracks that were iconographic and had a sense of song to them -- such as (1961's) 'Breakfast at Tiffany's'. David was open to the concept (of creating a tune-driven soundtrack). Then, just as a way of getting myself out of 'soundtrack guy' mode and into 'songwriter guy' mode, I began playing some melodies on the piano from some songs of mine. (Russell) exclaimed, 'what's that?' I told him it was something of mine that was never released. 'Can we play that to picture?', he asked. Boom -- instantly, we were both totally happy; it gave the film a sense of playfulness with an emotional undercurrent.

For the soundtrack, I used very intimate arrangements, not big orchestrations. Bells ended up being prominent. There are a zillion different types of bell sounds; glockenspiels, hand bells, hollies and bells off the Mighty Wurlitzer organ. Using that instrument felt special because it had actually been created for use in the movie theaters but, of course, stopped being used after sound came along. You can instantaneously make finished orchestra pieces! Other than bells, (the score) is a mostly acoustic guitar and acoustic piano-based soundtrack. There are also some brush drums and bass and old chamberlain -- which is a weird instrument I play now and then. Essentially, it is all very small, except for the Mighty Wurlitzer.

What was nice for me in working with David was that we tended to have the same emotional response to certain tensions in the film. When I saw tension in the film, I would write a song about it, and he would immediately relate the song to the tension. This made me happy because it meant each of us was thinking about the film in the same abstract way. The fact that an entire score such as this would be populated by unreleased songs sans lyrics via complete serendipity is interesting.

People in the movie are trying to come to grips with the fact that you have to accept things as they are. It was appropriate that the music have a sweetness, openness and intimacy to it. Here we are, having this sweet conversation about the raw deal that is being born -- and embracing both things whole-heartedly. It worked out because there was a sense of the question of how to be OK with just being a creature in this universe, without merely becoming apathetic."
I am Torgo. I take care of the place while the Master is away.

tpfkabi

from beingcharliekaufman.com

Texas Chainsaw Thursday, 28 October 2004

3rd Update: Jamie sends word to those of you in the USA, that Jon Brion will be on tonight's Late Late Show on CBS (guest host Jason Alexander). So will Rachel Bilson, whoever that is. Check local guides and what-not, cos I don't want you peeps to come cryin' to me if you don't get to see it. For those of you who haven't read the last couple of updates (do I have timing or what?), Brion did the score for Eternal Sunshine.

now if i can figure out about what time (central time zone) he will play so i don't have to stay up.
I am Torgo. I take care of the place while the Master is away.

mattress man

thanks for the tip!  Can't wait for him tonight.  I can share the Grays album on aim or slsk if you have either and I got some Brion demos/scattered live Largo stuff as well.  Thanks again.

MacGuffin

A Reluctant Musical Genius
Whether it’s making up songs on the spot Friday nights at Hollywood nightclub Largo or laboring for months on movie soundtracks, Jon Brion is ultimately just a hard-working ideas man. Source: FilmStew.com

There are few composers working today who have left as indelible a mark on modern cinema as Jon Brion.

Along with anchoring Friday nights at the Los Angeles club Largo for longer than anyone can remember, the 34-year-old Connecticut native has also been responsible for some of the movies’ oddest and most unique odysseys, including Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and I Heart Huckabees. Not that you would be able to immediately tell by listening to these respective scores; Brion’s oeuvre is defined by a distinctive lack of conceptual continuity beyond its consistent excellence.

And as the composer recently told FilmStew, that’s just the way he likes it.

“I have nothing,” Brion says of his approach to composing. “I have my gut, and I have my relationship with the given director, and that’s it.”

Brion, also a producer of such venerated performers as Fiona Apple, Rufus Wainwright and Aimee Mann, began his film career in 1996 thanks to a chance encounter with then-unproven director Paul Thomas Anderson. The result: a jazz-influenced score for Hard Eight.

While Brion acknowledges that he’s enjoyed innumerous opportunities working with some of the best people in show business, this particular strand of his music career came almost in spite of his own efforts. “I guess it’s pretty important to note that I’ve spent my entire career trying to avoid doing movies,” he explains, with now five significant credits attached to his composing resume. “That’s my first advice to anybody getting into the motion picture business: avoid doing them at all costs.”

“And then, when ones that are sort of so good that you can’t refuse them come up, do those,” he continues. “I mean, that’s pretty much all I’ve done. I’ve never actively sought movie work.”

However, Brion’s general resistance to working in the motion picture business has been consistently couched over the years by the chance to work with folks who are impossible to say no to. “When I get a phone call or somebody I know goes, ‘I’ve got a movie you might be interested in,’ I’m like, ‘I don’t want to do any movies. I want to make records. Leave me alone!’” he says with a chuckle. “[They reply,] ‘Oh, it’s these guys Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman,’ and I’m just like Goddammit! It’s like Al Pacino- they keep pulling me back.”

“I’m fortunate enough that whatever it is I’ve done for some other movie, someone sees it and calls up and wants to do something,” he says modestly. “If I know something they’ve done and actually had an emotional response to it - for instance, with Michel Gondry, when he called I hadn’t seen the first movie that he had done with Charlie, but I was a fanatical fan of his video work, and actually had collections of his videos on VHS tapes from years before.”

“An old girlfriend was in a video of his and that’s how he came to my attention almost ten years ago,” he remembers. “She said, ‘Oh my God. You’ve got to see this guy’s reel!’ It used to be this thing we had around the house and just watch for the pure joy of it, so he wasn’t yet sort of a known name.”

Brion’s partnership with Kaufman gave birth to the singular audiovisual experience Eternal Sunshine, which branded romance in melancholy and established both the filmmaker and composer’s names to folks who before might only have known each of them in passing. Like most composers, Brion typically joins a production once most of the shooting is already completed. But he has also enjoyed some very unique and fruitful collaborations during and even prior to the beginning of production.

“Most people remember they have to hire a composer once they have started editing the film,” Brion maintains. “It’s like, ‘Oh yeah, we should have some music on this,’ which I think is a pity, because if you really want it to be integrated with the film, you make your decisions earlier one.”

“A lot of the great stuff with Spielberg and John Williams [whom the director recently characterized at the Kennedy Center Awards as the most fortunate element of his movie career], I think there was a little more contact early in the process,” Brion observes. “I mean, with Close Encounters of the Third Kind, you had to; they had to know what their little melodic figure was going to be that’s used in communications, and because of it there’s a real beauty to how the music works in that film.”

This is in fact the way Brion worked with Paul Thomas Anderson on Punch-Drunk Love. At the same time, he confesses that even the most elaborate collaborations sometimes generate ideas that seem anathema to his own creative process.

“ What always happens is you have the themes for the character and then the director goes, ‘Yeah, I don’t like that piece of music for that moment; can we take this piece and put it over there?’” he explains. “Suddenly it’s like, ‘Well, that’s the theme for the opposite character.’ It just becomes, ‘There’s no poetic interaction here,’ and I give up on it.”

Despite these occasional obstacles, Brion has always flourished by working with filmmakers who fly in the face of convention to create something new. “The people I’m attracted to are trying to break up cinematic clichés in general, so why should we be beholden to the leitmotif idea in general?” he suggests.

While Brion’s reputation as a musical mad-hatter opens him up to some tough demands from collaborators, he loves the idea of delivering music that others might look at as not always appropriate for the on-screen moments being accompanied. It’s the kind of philosophy that endears him to fellow iconoclasts such as Anderson.

“Paul’s working process for every movie changes,” Brion reveals. “He does not have a hard and fast way that he does this. Even though he has a crew of people he trusts and generally works with, he is changing the very concept of how he approaches making movies every time, and there’s a lot of that in how I’ve made records.”

Nevertheless, Brion admits that each and every project he’s worked on has proved significantly taxing, no matter how familiar he was with the director or his other collaborators. “Every one is a challenge,” he confesses. “Many of the musical decisions that get made in the movies aren’t even ones I necessarily agreed with. I tried to make it work as well as I could, and then it was mixed the way they wanted it mixed.”

“I consider the things I don’t like acceptable losses,” adds Brion. “But because I allow myself to be collaborative with directors, I’ve finally realized that because I can offer up options on the spot, they pretty much do with me what they do with actors and editors.”

Even though this doesn’t necessarily always create better options, it can provide some mightily useful creative context. “Fifty takes in, it’s like, ‘You know, that second take you did was pretty great,’” he says with a laugh. “It’s always exhausting.”

“I haven’t done a movie where I wasn’t absolutely just a quivering mass of flesh that couldn’t remember its own name at the end,” he continues. “If I was a quivering mass of flesh on the ground for a picture that’s just an average picture, I’d kill myself. That would be terrible. It would be an awful life.”

Having helped shape the sound of many progressive alternative musicians during the 1990’s, Brion can now look back on undeniably the signature year of his evolving sideline career as a movie soundtrack auteur. Although he does not yet know exactly how he will follow I Heart Huckabees and Eternal Sunshine, he looks forward to the relative simplicity of the cinema art form.

“You look at it and go, ‘Okay, here’s this guy who’s talking about this stuff he really cares about,’” he explains. “I feel like, ‘Okay, I’ve got your back, motherf*cker.”

“If you want to put your foot forward and talk about this subject matter, then a lot of people as just a knee jerk reaction will go, ‘Oh, you’re totally pretentious.’ And I’m like, ‘I got your back, and I’m on for the f*cking ride. If you’re going to put your heart on the f*cking table, I’m with you.”
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

Stefen

Wheres the guy that has all Brion material on soulseek? I know there is someone here who has a folder titled genius and inside it contains everything Jon Brion has ever done. Hook me up, add me to your userlist. Anyone, hook me up with some Brion tracks! Please, preferabbly vocal tracks. Soulseek has nothing (not since they changed to that new version that gives download privledges only if you donate over $100)
Falling in love is the greatest joy in life. Followed closely by sneaking into a gated community late at night and firing a gun into the air.

tpfkabi

$100. what are you talking about?

if you didn't know, the 2 disc Huckabees DVD has 2 performances by JB, a music video for Knock Yourself Out and a doc on him scoring parts of the film.
I am Torgo. I take care of the place while the Master is away.

Jeremy Blackman

Quote from: MacGuffinI'm like, 'I don't want to do any movies. I want to make records. Leave me alone!'" he says with a chuckle.
But his movies are a hundred times better than his "records"... :yabbse-undecided: ...

Stefen

You are trying to stir up shit eh? But it wont work, cause your username is Jeremy Blackman, which really can't be taken seriously.
Falling in love is the greatest joy in life. Followed closely by sneaking into a gated community late at night and firing a gun into the air.

pete

jon brion played with david garza, the greatest rock musician ever.
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton