Week 82: Movies and Music

Today I’m going to recommend a couple of movies about music that you may or may not have watched. I hadn’t watched either until recently and I’m glad I did. Both are available in Netflix.

The Great World of Sound

I wanted to catch this at the theater to support local filmmaking in North Carolina, but with the baby and all, it’s hard to get to the movie theater these days. Luckily the movie is now on dvd and available for home viewing.

This is a really good movie. It’s about a guy who gets a job as a talent scout with an artist management company called the Great World of Sound. It’s like the poor man’s version of American Idol. Martin and his partner Clarence get sent to towns where ads have been placed for auditions. They then audition the people and sign everyone who is willing to put a down payment to show their good faith and commitment to being part of the Great World of Sound team.

It’s an obvious shark operation, and in case you wouldn’t immediately jump to that conclusion, the first scene of the movie is of someone spray painting a regular black vinyl record in gold. From then on every time you see a gold record hanging on an office wall (and you see a lot of them in this movie) you know it’s just spray painted. Makes me wonder about all those gold records in the office of the Accountant to the Stars.

The interesting thing about this movie, however, is not the subtleties of the shark operation and how it cons people out of their money. The interesting thing is how people willingly participate even against their better instincts, and the arguments everyone makes to convince themselves and others that it is not a scam, or that even if it is, so what. And by everyone I mean from the top head shark to the musicians themselves who audition. And in an interesting production twist the movie was made by actually placing fake ads for auditions and having real performers audition as if it was a real audition and interacting with the two actors playing the talent scounts in a very seamless way. This is a twist which the movie website is not shy about communicating, and it puts a weird spin on the whole experience through a sort of self-referential trick, which puts the audience in the midst of a certain kind of shark scheme in and of itself.

It’s a grim salesmen movie, not as angry as Death of Salesman, not as bitter as Glenngary Glenn Ross. But the scary thing to me was that before it reminded me of either of those movies with which it has lots more in common, the only movie that kept running through my head while watching it was Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. The main character in GWS, Martin, has a detachment from himself that was eerily reminiscent of Henry. It is obvious to the viewer that they are part of a scam operation, yet Martin doesn’t seem to react to the very obvious clues. It is similar to the way an unsuspecting cast member in a horror movie doesn’t see that he is about to be chopped to bits by some monster with an axe and continues walking right into that dark basement. Even as Martin’s conscience begins telling him that he is part of a mean scam, he is unable to take himself out of it. Almost like his conscience is not really his own.

It’s a spooky kind of movie, Pat Healy and Kene Holliday do a great job as the tag team talent scouts, and the dialogue is very convincing, the “training” scenes especially almost had me sold on why it’s ok to take peoples money. It takes a lot of flunky college students paying tuition for the subsistence of the university out of which a few great minds will emerge, something like that was one of the arguments.

Hustle and Flow

The other movie I watched recently that really impressed me is Hustle and Flow. This movie came out in 2005 and I probably would’ve ignored it altogether, thinking it was another rappers and pimps movie, which it is. But man, this is an incredibly good movie. I would’ve given Terrence Howard the Oscar for best actor if I could. It’s a movie about a pimp, who in his 40s decides he wants to do something else with his life and decides to record a rap record.

But these are not the pimps and rappers you see in every video you ever saw, sporting gold chains and teeth and driving convertibles and yachts surrounded by dozens of bikini clad women. The only bling in this movie is the rollers that Djay (the main character) puts on his hair to curl it. He only has two woman working for him and one is his girlfriend who is pregnant with his child. He barely has enough money to buy equipment at the local pawn shop. It’s all sweat and tears for this pimp and his hos, but somehow the dream of making a record and how he inspires that dream into those around him makes their situation joyful, difficult but joyful.

The recording scenes are some of the best I’ve seen on film. A bunch of old crappy equipment, casio keyboards, taped up microphones, cassette recorders (even though they know that CDs are the standard, they can’t afford that technology), and yet the life they get from working on the project, and the excellent quality of the music they are making do not depend on the quality of the equipment.

On top of that Terrence Howard really gives an incredible performance. The language, his accent, his demeanor, everything is perfect. Apparently he spent a year living in Memphis with various pimps to prepare for the role. If he really did that then it totally paid off.

By the way, the music in both of these movies is outstanding.