SONG WRONGING: Songwriting in Film

SONG WRONGING – Songwriting in Film
By Richard Niles

I love movies. My stepfather and mother were screenwriters (60 films!). My father acted in films with Ida Lupino, Katherine Hepburn and Errol Flynn. I love songs too. My Dad was also a singer/songwriter. I have been a professional composer/songwriter for 45 years. So, I love movies and I love music.

Last night I saw a movie that had great actors and a nice story. But every ten minutes there was another pop song with acoustic guitar and a young winsome voice singing banal lyrics. The character is lonely, a pentatonic, plaintive piano plunks, and a young girl sings, “Feelin’ kinda lonely in my rooooom…”. Then the character is driving in their car to get somewhere. Sure enough, Martin guitars strum, bass and brushes bring it in the studio, and an adenoidal cowboy sings, “Drivin’ drivin’ drivin’, tryin’, to get to youuu…”. And so on.  All the way through the entire two hours of the damned film.

And with every song there is the predictable montage of images crossfading throughout the song. And we have to hear all four minutes of it, all the way to the bitter end with that Travis Picking guitar and the poignant, moaning harmonica.

Now I don’t mind a theme song over the credits of the film, especially with fab images of Bond bouncing around with a bevy of politically incorrect beauticians. And I think a nice song as the audience filters out of the theatre over the end titles is great. (Clive Griffin & Celine Dion warbling “When I Fall in Love” at the end of Sleepless in Seattle.)

But I feel insulted that I have to be told what to feel by a song, when the story, dialogue, images, and underscoring should be doing the job. This is bad film making. And I watch a lot of movies and TV series, and it is everywhere. Why are they doing it?

The first reason is that they run out of story. This is because of a lack of imagination by the writer and director. They haven’t got enough events in the story, and they obviously can’t think of any to add. They haven’t got enough dialogue and can’t write anything clever for the characters to say. You won’t find a lot of songs in Aaron Sorkin films. I mean, how hard can it be to write a movie? Every word they need is right there in the dictionary!

The next reason is that the story they have has enough holes in it to fill the Albert Hall. More and more films I see simply don’t make sense. You watch because it has a fabulous actor. But the discerning viewer is constantly wondering why the character does X. ‘But if they do X, Y will happen!’ Or we think, ‘But they did not have to do X at all, because Y happened ten minutes ago!’. There is an unavoidable nagging sensation that we are being conned by watching this drivel, and that the fabulous actor only did the part for the cash.

They already paid for a couple of top actors to put bums on seats and fill the couch during dinner time. And rather than coming up with a solid story and brilliant dialogue, they spend what little budget they have left on inexpensive ways to stuff their rather scrawny turkey. They shoot a lot of footage of driving and the sky and the expensive actor lying on a couch looking at a flickering candle. They may even shoot a few close ups of the actor’s face in half-light. Then they throw all this cheap footage in the relatively inexpensive editor’s lap and say, ‘OK, Stanley, we need another four-minute montage to go with this song.’

The song? Oh, that’s the least expensive part of all. Underscoring is more expensive. You have to hire an actual film composer who knows what they’re doing. But the songs they use are by unknown songwriters and singers. Film producers and directors receive hundreds of such ditties from publishers every week. And the writers, artists and publishers are so happy to be included in a film that the license to use it usually free. You might even say it’s going for a song.

Sorry for the bad jokes, but I’m upset. All the true magic of film is destroyed by this. Producers: Stop interrupting the narrative with these low-budget songs. It’s cheating the audience. Hire talented writers and directors who understand cinema and storytelling. And even though you have the money to become a producer, maybe spend a little time learning about the art of film making before you do it.

©2021Niles Smiles Music