THE SECOND ROB ZOMBIE STORY IN AS MANY DAYS
Even though I loathed Rob Zombie’s remake of Halloween and am 99% sure that Halloween II is going to suck just as bad, I did find this interview that the artist formerly known as Robert Bartleh Cummings* just did with Mr. Beaks at Ain’t It Cool News to be kind of interesting. Especially this part, where he talks about the use of music of his latest cinematic opus:
Beaks: One thing that made me happy was reading the soundtrack list. It’s pretty varied. “The Things We Do for Love” by 10cc wedged in there next to Bad Brains. Were these songs you knew you wanted to use, or did they occur to you further down the line.
Zombie: Some of them were songs I’d always wanted to use. Having songs in advance in your mind helps a lot. Like on THE DEVIL’S REJECTS, it helped a lot. It was nice to be able to find the spirt of the movie – and the spirit of REJECTS became The Allman Brothers, Terry Reid and, obviously, Lynyrd Skynyrd. It really helped set the tone. Whereas with HALLOWEEN… not so much. There wasn’t much outside of the Carpenter music that was meaningful. But on this one, there are certain songs that are: “Nights in White Satin” is one. I knew I was using that in advance, and shot it with the song already in the movie. It makes a big difference.
Beaks: Did you time the scene out in your head?
Zombie: Yeah, you just kind of write the scene knowing that’s what’s going to be playing. And it makes it that you can really conceive it, as opposed to saying, “Oh, we know some music will be playing there.” I don’t know if people can tell the difference, but it helps me when I’m shooting.
Beaks: Did you play music on set?Zombie: Well, there’s this scene where the girls go to this “Phantom Jam”. It’s a concert, and I didn’t want to have something where there’s a band playing, and all of the people are listening on headphones pretending to move to music. You always see that in movies, and you’re like, “Why is no one moving in time to the music?” It always looks really fake. So we decided to have a real concert and film it. It’s kind of like a Robert Altman movie, where you can kind of hear the dialogue overlapping, and the music’s blaring. But when you watch it, you go, “Wow! It looks like they snuck these actresses into an actual concert.” It’s so much more alive that way.
The thing is, Zombie always sounds like he knows what he’s talking about. But will it ever actually translate to a good movie?
Halloween II comes out August 28. Against my better judgement, I am going to get baked and go see it.
-AR
*Wow. White Cummings would have been such a better band name.
