Movie music moments

Yet another of my summer reveries. Maybe because of "El Cantante," I started thinking about the use of songs in films. Now that every movie comes with a credit-to-credit soundtrack, we've forgotten that back in the day, using music, either scored or pop songs or incidental music, was more deliberate.

When it comes to using Latin music in films, Almodóvar is the master. He has always shown impeccable taste, from using musicians from La Movida in "Labyrinth of Passion," to the end-credit use of La Lupe's "Puro Teatro" in "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown," to the really weird merengue jailhouse number (with Los Hermanos Rosario) in "High Heels."

But I was thinking more about how Latin music can work in non-Latin films. My favorite example for this is Martin Scorcese's "Who's That Knocking at my Door" (1967) his first movie after graduating from NYU.

The movie is basically a trial run for Mean Streets, with a baby-faced Harvey Keitel as a guilt-plagued Catholic boy learning about girls and wise guys. In the middle of the movie, there is a scene that shows a house party. A lot of guys in suits smoking, drinking, checking out guns and fondling girls. There is no dialogue in the scene, just the tense, vaguely menacing beat of Ray Barretto's "El Watusi." The scene is scored to the song (though apparently, as in the clip below, he meant to score it to the Beach Boys' "I Get Around"; shut the sound off and play "El Watusi" to hear it as it appeared in the movie).

Aside from how well it works cinematically, I love this scene because it's a way of acknowledging that Latinos were around in NYC, they were important to the life of the city, and that a street-smart kid like Scorcese would have been hearing this stuff, dancing to it. Too many period movies, and movies period, pretend to take place in a U.S. that has no Latinos.

Another Latin music movie moment I love, even though it's pretty goofy, is the David Byrne-Celia Cruz duet "Loco de Amor" in Jonathan Demme's "Something Wild" (1986). The song, composed by Johnny Pacheco as a take-off on "Wild Thing," runs over the opening credits and to me really gives a sense of how important the Latin element was to the 80s downtown scene. Of course, David Byrne realized this more than most, but still, there was a lot of appreciation and communication happening that's never been properly documented.

I've never seen Wayne Wang's "Blue in the Face" (1995) (it's going on my Netflix queue as soon as I post) but I know that David Byrne's soundtrack has a few cool Latin songs, an original song called "Mi Barrio" by a house band called La Casa and an Astor Piazzolla number (his songs are very adaptable to almost any kind of movie).

A friend suggested a couple of other moments (which I haven't seen or no longer remember):

In "Armed and Dangerous" (1986), Eugene Levy and John Candy hit a party where Tito Puente's "Oye como va" is playing;

Weird, but true, "Kindergarden Cop" (1990) with Arnold. There's a chase
scene through a kind of market and you hear La Cocoband in the back, I dont
remember the track. its hillarious !

Caro diario (1993) I've seen scenes of this film, i didnt remember the title
but found it on IMDB. It has "Visa Para Un Sueño" including a crappy Italian
band doing a weak rendition of it. Its definitely interesting, though
bordering on weird.

If you have any other Latin music movie moments that impressed you, because the choice of song added something to the scene that went beyond shorthand for "we're in the barrio," let me know.

[Image of "Something Wild" soundtrack via Amazon]

Comments

[Kiko Jones]

Ah...I have fond memories of listening to rough mixes of La Casa's "Mi Barrio" in bandleader Angel Fernandez's home studio way back when...Btw, the song has a David Byrne/Luis Dias/Angel Fernandez writing credit.

[Jimmy]

great post. i tried your suggestion of listening to el watusi while muting the beach boys and gotta say i like the watusi version better. and while scorcese may say now he wanted to use the beach boy's tune, this baretto version totally foreshadows scorcese's use of "surfin' bird" in mean streets: crazy songs played against a party scene.

[caro]

Hey Jimmy, thanks for the comment. The guy who posted the clip says that Scorcese originally wanted to use the Beach Boys, but I'll have to check that info against my copy of "Scorcese on Scorcese."

[Kiko Jones]

Trust me, I know that it means absolutely nothing in the grand sense of what you ask in this post, but it felt good to hear Pacha Massive in the most recent episode of Entourage? Why? Because hearing the music of a buddy in a mainstream Hollywood production never gets old.