Popular Music and the New Auteur: Visionary Filmmakers after MTV

276 Pages·2013·2.57 MB·English

by  Arved Ashby

Popular Music and the New Auteur:
Visionary Filmmakers after MTV
Arved Ashby
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Popular music and the new auteur : visionary filmmakers after
MTV / edited by Arved Ashby.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–19–982733–6 (hardcover : alk. paper)—ISBN 978–
0–19–982735–0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Motion picture music—History and criticism. 2. Popular music
in motion pictures.
I. Ashby, Arved Mark.
ML2075.P65 2013
ML2075.P65 2013
781.5'42—dc23
2013007164
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Contents
Acknowledgments
Contributors
Popular Music and the New Auteur
Introduction
Part One Music and Cinematic Time
Chapter 1 “Without Music, I Would Be Lost”
Chapter 2 Lost in Transition
Part Two Music and the Image
Chapter 3 A Musical Tour of the Bizarre
Chapter 4 Songs of Delusion
Part Three Music as Instrument of Irony and Authenticity
Chapter 5 O Brother, Where Chart Thou?
Chapter 6 You’ve Heard This One Before
Chapter 7 Wes Anderson, Ironist and Auteur
Bibliography
Index
(p.vii) Acknowledgments
This book originated with a session on auteurs’ use of popular music that I
proposed in 2005 for the Chicago meeting of the Society for American Music.
Julie Hubbert and Jeff Smith gave early versions of their Scorsese and Coen
brothers essays, and it was their provocative ideas on those music-cinematic
stylists that inspired a larger project. Because of Julie and Jeff’s knowledge and
eager advice, not to mention the extraordinary patience they showed while the
volume slowly came together, this project is as much theirs as anyone’s.
Others urged the project to fruition by suggesting additional topics and
contributors. Wonderful counsel was given by such authorities—among them
Anahid Kassabian, David Butler, Graham Lock, and Krin Gabbard—that the
final authors have not only managed to survey a wealth of recent cinematic
creativity, they’ve brought a remarkable variety of perspectives to their task.
All of us are very much indebted to our acquisitions editor Norm Hirschy, who
was ever attentive with his wise and enthusiastic guidance, and ever encouraging
from the first moment I mentioned the book’s topic to him. I still have no idea
how Norm can answer e-mails so fast, so wittily, and in such urbane prose.
Assistant Editor Lisbeth Redfield and Kate Nunn, our project manager, were
both helpful and firm in ushering the volume through production. We also owe a
great deal to the anonymous reviewers commissioned by Oxford University
Press, particularly the two initial readers who did so much to help focus the
book.
The book also owes a debt to the students in a film music seminar that I led at
Ohio State University in autumn 2008, the enrollees including Joe Nebistinsky,
Andrew Martin, Alison Furlong, and Zhichun Lin. They were astute critics, and
my own contributions to this volume would have been poorer without their
input. (p.viii)