David Arnold: The Qs and the As

Unless you're blind or have just been ignoring me (understandably), you'll have seen me wanging on about doing a Q&A with five-time James Bond film score composer David Arnold at London's Prince Charles cinema last week. The evening came and went without any major disasters (although I wore a waistcoat in an attempt to smarten myself up and promptly spilled olive oil down it just before the interview, and that shit does not budge) and Mr Arnold was in fine fettle, spilling a small amount of beans regarding his work on Casino Royale - a screening of which followed the Q&A - and other films.

If you weren't among the many millions of people who crowded into the 285-seat auditorium that evening, I've handily reproduced most of what Mr Arnold had to say below; I had to edit out all the bits where he went on at length about how much he loves The Incredible Suit because it got embarrassing.

Your score for Casino Royale is a lot more organic and less electronic than previous Bond scores… That's correct. So how did that decision come about? Was that you, or the producers or the director? It was me. I think with Die Another Day, someone said that some of the music was a bit over the top, and I was thinking, 'would that be for the scene where the guy who was a DNA-changed villain who became Korean – no, he became western, he was Korean – tried to kill James Bond with a space laser operated by a remote controlled arm-device while they were escaping from a melting ice palace?' That film had levels of extremity of all sorts of things in it, and the music has to react to what we're seeing. Really can't see why people found this silly When I read the Casino Royale script we hadn't cast Daniel, so it was really interesting reading the script and thinking 'I've got no idea who James Bond is going to be'. With Pierce, you kind of knew the inflections, you knew his mannerisms and the style and you could kind of picture the way it would be. I was on set while they were filming Casino Royale, and [my music] was largely informed by the way Daniel moved. He's a very physical, alpha male James Bond, not as eloquent and educated – you know, the idea of knowing which wine would go with what sort of fish – slightly less of that, more that you believe that if he hit you it would really hurt. And he wasn't James Bond yet: obviously he had the name but he hadn't become the character, so it was really doing away with the comic aspect of it and trying to make it a bit more muscular, as he was, and to make it a little more aggressive, but organic, because the refinements didn't come till later in the film. So you couldn't write the same kind of music for Daniel as you did for Pierce? Well you sort of can in a way because he's still James Bond. This is part of the problem with coming back to the series again and again, it's the same character in very similar situations: there's conflict that he has to resolve, you know there are going to be chases, you know there are going to be fights, you know there's going to be action and even though you have to believe he's in jeopardy, you know that at the end of the film he's not gonna die. So it's a matter of trying to take what people know and expect of the character, moving it on a little bit and introducing other aspects of it, as the films do. The Bond theme is hinted at throughout Casino Royale but doesn't appear in full until the end credits. Was it hard to resist sticking the Bond theme in? I've always said that a James Bond film without the James Bond theme is just an action movie; there's something you're missing at the heart of the character. With Casino Royale, Sony were quite worried about not having the Bond theme in the score because they were worried it'd be like watching Star Wars without the theme: there's an expectation that you want to hear it. But my argument was that he wasn't James Bond yet, so if you play any of that music when he's doing any of the things he's doing – you know, he makes a lot of mistakes in this film – then he becomes the Bond that we know, but he hasn't done that yet so you can't get ahead of the audience. So there were a few sequences in Casino Royale that tried to create a balance we thought would work: every time he acquires something of the Bond canon that we knew and recognised, I put in a hint of the Bond theme to start sowing the seeds of it as we go through. So when he wins the Aston Martin DB5 in the game of cards you hear it for the first time; when he tries on the tuxedo in the hotel room and we see him adjusting himself in the mirror, that's the second time, and so on until you get the iconic phrase right at the end of the movie. By that time you're so ready to hear it at full pelt, that's when we cut to black and shabam, it seems incredibly exciting. In terms of the theme songs, how much say would you or any composer have in the choice of song or singer? Ideally the composer of the film would be involved in the composition of the song, because I think the DNA of the score should be in the song and vice versa. That's not always possible though; there might be an artist that says "I've always wanted to do this, I've written a song and this is what it's going to be," and that happens more often than not. But they let me have a crack at a couple of them. The decision about who does the song is made between the producers, the director and the studio but the composer does get involved. It's a bit like casting: I think you should cast the singer as you would cast the character, so it always felt like if we had people who could almost be in the movie it would work. In trying to find someone for Daniel's James Bond, I was thinking about male singers: was there a contemporary Rod Stewart, Bruce Springsteen, Robert Plant? Singers with bollocks really, people like Paul Rogers, who sound the way that Daniel was, that James Bond is in Casino Royale. Chris Cornell has a very masculine voice but also an incredible gift for melody and words, so it was a really easy choice to make. Also writing the song with him was really easy and quick; we sort of wrote half a song each. We met up and talked about it and I'd got some ideas and he'd got some ideas so we sketched our ideas out, and two or three weeks later we played each other our ideas and kind of went from one to the other. It sort of became the song without having to do much else. It's quite odd; we'd both written one half of the same song. Would you consider doing another Shaken And Stirred album? Because there are plenty more Bond songs that could be covered there. Well there was a bunch of songs that I ended up not doing: I did Goldfinger with Skunk Anansie and I started talking to Debbie Harry about doing it as well, and I did You Only Live Twice with Björk but didn't use it because she wasn't happy with it, she didn’t think it was better than the original. There are a whole bunch more songs - I mean there's been another six since that album came out - but I think that's a record perhaps someone else should make, because I feel like I've done it. You must have written a load of potential themes that never saw the light of day – you started a song called I Will Return for Die Another Day… Sometimes you don't always know if you're going to get the gig actually writing the song, but I always start off by writing a song, because I like to have some sort of thematic material to base the score on. Sometimes if another artist is writing the song, like in Die Another Day, I didn't hear it until I'd almost finished writing the score, so you've really got no way of incorporating it. I thought what would be interesting is that at the end of every James Bond film it says "James Bond Will Return", so I thought, well, how about calling the song I Will Return, basically saying that exact same thing. How far did that song get? It got a verse and a chorus written. The melody of it is in the [Die Another Day] score, the verse melody, and the bridge melody is in [a cue called] Peaceful Fountains Of Desire. [Audience question] Do you think your music has influenced current action scores like John Barry's music influenced you? Well this isn't false modesty, but I think whenever music appears in a James Bond film it ends up appearing in other films because they're so popular and the music is still a big part of it. The thing I hear more often than not is the electronic aspect alongside orchestral stuff. What's interesting with the sound of John's scores is because they were recorded in smaller spaces, and they were generally just stereo, not surround, there's much less competition for earspace in those earlier films. If I go to a dubbing theatre where Bond films are dubbed now, there are 15 or 16 ProTools stations: that one's doing dialogue A, that's doing effects 1, effects 2 – there might be hundreds and hundreds of tracks. It's incredibly easy to make a film loud, and there is an awful lot of loud in a Bond movie, whether it's cars or gunshots or punches or helicopters or building sites. So the competition for actual aural space is quite high, and John's exist in a place where there wasn't as much sound and they just allowed the music to play more out front. The tendency to do that has changed now, and music is sometimes required to perhaps energise the scene more than it was in the older films. I've listened to some contemporary scores and obviously you can hear bits of John's work and now bits of mine, but I'm really interested to see what Tom [Newman]'s gonna do with Spectre. I'm fascinated with that, as I am with the film. I've always been a fan of them and it's really nice now to be able to sit back and watch one and not worry about, you know, 'why did I do that?' [Audience question] To what extent are you constrained by the 1960s style of the Bond theme? Well the Bond theme, I think, has endured dozens of interpretations: Marvin Hamlisch's disco version, Bill Conti's and Michael Kamen's, Éric Serra did it just on timps, so it's obviously a very sturdy piece of music. There's something about that recording that John Barry did with quite a small orchestra which is so swamped with atmosphere, there's something about the energy of it and the essential ferocity of it which is impossible to match. It would be weird to think you were constrained by it, I've never wanted it to sound like it was from the sixties. I don't think my scores sound like John's scores; I mean obviously there are stylistic nods, combinations of instruments that evoke the character. It's what John created, it's the blueprint of it. It was the same when I did Shaft: Isaac Hayes created a blueprint for that character and I didn't want to ignore it, but you just sort of move it on a little bit, so I was really happy to take advantage of the brilliance of that and add to it and move along. You don't want to feel like you're treading water stylistically, so sometimes that means people really don't like it and some people really do like it, but… just keep moving. Éric Serra's score for GoldenEye is, let’s say, quite unusual – do you ever watch the film and wish you'd done it? I wish I'd done all of them to be honest! But not that one in particular, no. I thought that was the boldest move that's ever been made in a Bond movie and I don't think you can criticise him for that. You can not like it, that's fine; I do like it, I think some of that stuff was electrifying, and I know the reaction to it was mixed. Being selfish I was quite pleased, because if he'd have carried on I wouldn't have got a look in! It's really not that bad. [Audience question] Did you change the music for the increased violence of the newer Bonds? The thing with Bonds is that you never see blood in bullet holes or anything, so even though it's violent you won't see bullets going in or out or blood splattering from people due to the violence because they want to keep it a 12 certificate. So perception of what's violent and what's shown are actually slightly different things. I think the job of a film score is to kind of hold your hand and take you through the experience and hopefully explain and help to guide the film as we would like you to perceive it. The sequence where Le Chiffre has his knotted rope and, er, works James Bond's - you know - that's very violent, but a lot of that was cut, and in fact the sound of contact, the 'thwack', was turned down by about half because when we screened it for the first time it was excruciating. In fact the censors wouldn't let us have it, they said we had to turn that down because it sounds horrific. There's no score in that sequence, so the sound of James Bond's bollocks being battered was turned down because we didn't want to offend anyone's sensibilities in that respect. OK, I've got a round of quick-fire questions to finish with. They're based largely on your own tweets, so I'll warn you now, you've only got yourself to blame. Is it based on my Twitter feed or is this when you asked people to send questions in on Twitter? Because someone said "What’s the circumference of a cat?", but they spelled "the" wrong so I'm not going to answer that. [Yep] No, I've had to cut all those for time. So here we go: an OBE or a lifetime's supply of Skips? [Long, thoughtful pause] Skips. Drums or a drum machine? Drums. Benedict Cumberbatch or Martin Freeman? That's cruel. I think Martin's the heart and Benedict's the brains of that combination, I think without either of them that show wouldn't work. Martin is the way into Sherlock and I think the audience wouldn't find their way in without him; I think he brings so much humanity to that, it's absolutely extraordinary. The pair of them are rock stars now, it's amazing. So I plead the fifth: both of them. They're both brilliant. CD or vinyl? Vinyl. Shaken or stirred? [Thoughtfully] Stirred. Apparently you’re not supposed to shake it. No, you're not, that would be terrible. Biscuits with chocolate content or biscuits encased in chocolate? Encased. There’s a whole VAT issue around that that's very frustrating. Jaffa cakes: cakes or biscuits? Oh, they're cakes. The clue's in the title. That's that settled then Éric Serra or Thomas Newman? Oh, that's rotten! That's professionally rotten. I love the pair of them. The slide whistle in The Man With The Golden Gun: genius or madness? Madness! Along with the double-taking pigeon. And finally: are you doing Independence Day 2? I haven't been asked, is the honest answer. But would I if they asked me? I'd really like to see the script, firstly. Would you not just say yes, if they phoned you up and said there's no script but will you do it? [Pause] Yeah. But they would have to phone me up and ask me, and as yet that hasn't happened. Well I'll tell them you'll do it. David Arnold, thank you very much!

Thanks to Oliver Holden-Rea for the top photo.

Ghastly self-promotional blog post disguised as public service announcement

In an unlikely and quite possibly ill-advised turn of events, I find myself in the position of preparing to conduct a Q&A session with five-time James Bond score composer David Arnold this weekend. This will be the second time I've done a Q&A, the first being memorable primarily because I got the guest's job title wrong and ended up looking like an amateur who knew nothing about the subject matter in question, which definitely might not have been the case.

In order, therefore, to avoid looking like a clueless dolt in front of one of my genuine heroes and a room full of people, it would be great if anyone out there has any Qs they would like me to pose to David Arnold for him to A. I ask this not because I can't be arsed to think of my own questions, but rather that crowdsourcing might result in fewer instances of me asking David Arnold why he is so great, why his scores are so great, why his shoes are so great and so on.

If you'd like to come along and thrust a Q at David Arnold yourself, then feel free, which conveniently brings me to the public service announcement part of this thinly-veiled advertisement for my own unique Q&A-hosting skills. (Oh, you want me to do a Q&A with all the Bond actors / Ryan Gosling / Kristen Wiig in a bathtub? I'm sure I can make myself available, just get in touch!) The venue for this meeting of minds is London's sexually devastating Prince Charles Cinema, and it will take place this Sunday, June 14th, just after 8pm. Through a miracle of planning synergy, the Q&A is followed by a screening of Casino Royale (the good one), for which Mr Arnold wrote some well good music, and some may say the film is an even better reason to buy a ticket than the Frost/Nixonesque episode which precedes it.

You can buy tickets for the screening and Q&A here, and you can post questions in the comments below if you like. Don't suggest anything that might compromise my integrity as a professional asker of questions because that integrity is pretty goddamn fragile as it is and I need every last shred of it.

BlogalongaBond / Quantum Of Solace: [Insert Lazy Bourne Pun Here]

Quantum Of Solace is not a great Bond film. There, I've said it. I've defended it for nearly four years, citing Daniel Craig's performance and David Arnold's score as its most outstanding features, but on fifth viewing it's now clear to me that - and I take no Amount Of Comfort from saying this - Quantum Of Solace is in fact Not Great.

One of the reasons many people seem to think it's Not Great is its weak villain, and it's fair to say that - as short French Bond baddies go - Mathieu Amalric's Dominic Greene is even less terrifying than Hervé Villechaize's Nick Nack from The Man With The Golden Gun. But to suggest that Quantum Of Solace has a weak villain is not true; in fact Bond faces two enemies besides Greene, and they're among the most formidable foes the series has ever seen.

The first was the Writers' Guild Of America strike of 2007-8, which struck at just the wrong time for Bond #22. Paul Haggis handed his Quantum Of Solace rewrite in just two hours before the strike began, and it shows. Several scenes and stretches of dialogue make little sense; it's taken me five viewings and some heavy use of the pause and rewind buttons just to decipher what's going on in the early scenes in Haiti between Bond, Camille, Greene, Mr Slate and the dead geologist*. It's the kind of thing that should have been tidied up with a script polish that never happened.

Meanwhile, moments of potential tenderness such as the deaths of Mathis and Agent Fields are bungled by confusing waffle: clearly set up as opportunities to explore Bond's psyche, these scenes end up raising more questions than they answer. Mathis, for example, who was arrested at the end of Casino Royale and later imprisoned and tortured, is revealed to have been innocent all along by a minor character in an easy-to-miss throwaway line. When, with his dying breath, he mutters something about "Mathis" being his cover name, confusion reigns. If anyone can fully explain exactly who the guy was or his precise role over two films (apart from Head Of Exposition: Poker Rules Dept. in Casino Royale) then, like Daniel Craig, I'm all ears.

The second agent of evil to attempt to destroy Bond is second unit director Dan Bradley.

He's still at it.

Fresh off the back of two hyper-kinetic Bourne films, Bradley came to Quantum Of Solace with the specific intention of editing Bond to death. Orchestrating several potentially terrific set-pieces as if they're happening inside a washing machine that's been pushed down a flight of stairs, Bradley is the diabolical mastermind of the incomprehensible action sequence. The blocking, shooting and cutting of the scene in which rogue MI6 agent Mitchell helps Mr White escape is so baffling that it's impossible to tell who's shooting who and who's running where; at one point it appears that M's been shot, only for her to reappear unhurt in the next scene without explanation. You have to literally watch it frame by frame to see that the bullet fired at her actually ricochets off Mr White's drip stand:

Bradley might argue that his style is intended to reflect the real confusion Bond himself might experience in that situation, and that as such, scenes like these lend Quantum Of Solace an air of cinéma vérité hitherto unseen in the canon. I would just argue that it's balls.

Thanks in no small part to these two nefarious villains, the film clumsily clatters through its brief running time (at 106 minutes, it's the shortest Bond film), always desperate to race to the next location or skip over another bit of bewildering dialogue. It all happens so quickly that Bond doesn't even get time to shag Camille, the poor bastard.

Fortunately, however, there's one thing at the axis of the Quantum Of Solace centrifuge which just about stops everything spinning out of control, and that's Daniel Wroughton Craig.

Yes, "Wroughton".

Having already kicked the doubters in the face with his performance in Casino Royale, Craig perfects his Bond in only his second film. Like Timothy Dalton, he doesn't attempt to emulate any of the previous occupants of 007's tux, instead creating a character so much his own that some complain that it barely resembles James Bond at all. That argument is clearly ridiculous; Craig's an actor, not an impersonator. Once you surround him with all the tropes of the series - the cars, the girls, the stunts, the music, the villains - he's free to do his own thing, safe in the knowledge that Bond will emerge around him, as happened with his predecessors. And it's hard to deny that, slimmed down from Casino Royale's hulking physique and beautifully clad in Tom Ford suits (far more appropriate than the Brioni clobber he sported in 2006), he absolutely looks the part.

With his Bond having failed to save Vesper from drowning in a sinking lift, Craig has learned his lesson and rescues Quantum Of Solace from a similar fate simply by being completely ace in every scene. Observe the gusto with which he throws himself into the action scenes; how he convincingly fails to convince M that Vesper wasn't important to him; his impatience with M's chief of staff, Tanner (slight niggle: Ian Fleming wrote Tanner as Bond's only friend in MI6, and has never been satisfyingly portrayed as such in the films); the casual manner with which he waits for Mr Slate to bleed to death, or his nonchalant escape from MI6 agents in the La Paz hotel.

Craig is a magnetic presence on screen, and his ability to salvage a mediocre Bond film is the best reason to be jazzed about what he might do with a truly great one. And that's why it's impossible for me not to soil myself with excitement that at last, it's October 2012, and BlogalongaBond is about to end with an almighty bang.

David Arnold's score

 

David Arnold's fifth (and possibly final) score for a Bond film is far and away his best; it elevates an otherwise muddled and disappointing film into a thrilling experience by virtue of being absolutely fucking ace on every level. The score's menacing opening tones set up a mood that permeates the entire movie, while the subtlest hints of the Bond theme and the Casino Royale score laced throughout connect Quantum to its prequel. The title song may well be rubbs but check out its opening notes and compare them to Casino Royale's theme song: they're identical, but in a different key. They don't just throw this stuff together you know.

And finally: I don't even understand how this works.

Bond and Agent Fields are in a hotel room. They met about ten seconds ago.

BOND

I can't find the, um... the stationery.

Come and help me look.

I tried this line on a sexy lady working in WHSmith the other day and all I got was directions to the stationery.

BlogalongaBond will return with Skyfall

What the hell is BlogalongaBond? I'll tell you.

Further BlogalongaBondareading here

* As far as I can tell: Camille is a (possibly ex-) Bolivian Secret Service agent using Greene to get to General Medrano for personal reasons. At the same time, she tries to buy a report from a geologist to uncover Greene's dirty deeds. Greene finds out and kills the geologist, then pays assassin Mr Slate (using Quantum's tagged banknotes) to act as the geologist and set up a fake meeting with Camille at which he will kill her. Unfortunately for Mr Slate, Bond gets to him first and Bournes him to death in his hotel room before taking his place: that's why Camille thinks Bond's a geologist. Obvious really.

BlogalongaBond / Tomorrow Never Dies: The Pryce Is Wrong

From Russia With Love, The Man With The Golden Gun, Licence To Kill: all difficult second albums for Pierce Brosnan's predecessors, all improvements on their first efforts. As was by now customary, the actor playing James Bond had relaxed into the role, the writers understood his strengths and weaknesses and audiences knew what to expect. Nothing could possibly go wrong. Right?

Well. Let's be positive: Tomorrow Never Dies undeniably delivers some standout moments. The pre-titles "terrorists' supermarket" sequence is thrilling (although nobody seemed to take advantage of the BOGOF offer on Kalashnikovs and Bond totally failed to redeem his clubcard points on the way out), the set-pieces are fantastic, Brosnan is excellent and there are some mighty fine one-liners, not least of which is Moneypenny's award-winning "You always were a cunning linguist, James".

There are also a couple of relatively interesting Bond girls who are, for once, more than just somewhere for 007 to park his cock. Bond's former squeeze Paris Carver (Teri Hatcher) lends his character rare depth, suggesting an interesting history in a few tender and touching scenes. Most of her lines are razor-sharp critiques of Bond's inability to settle down, and are the kind of things GoldenEye's script should have been saying instead of all that floppy-fringed pouting into the sunset. Meanwhile, Michelle Yeoh's Wai Lin is a formidable ally, amusingly aloof and disinterested in our hero until the inevitable final-scene cock-parking. What's more, both actresses are only about ten years younger than Brosnan, which comes as some relief from the usual borderline kiddy-fiddling that goes on in these films.

Sadly, that's about it for the good stuff. Like You Only Live Twice and The Spy Who Loved Me, Tomorrow Never Dies races along with typical Bondian gusto, skipping over plot holes and underwritten characters so deftly that it's only when you check your pockets at the end that you realise your wallet's been nicked by an inane story, an embarrassingly weak villain and a director with a CV that includes Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot.

Despite director Roger Spottiswoode's previous indiscretions, it's hard to blame him for what makes Tomorrow Never Dies such a below average Bond film. Rushed into production by a recently-sold studio desperate to impress Wall Street with boffo Bond box office, the film started shooting before either the bad guy or one of the Bond girls had been cast and with a script that was changing daily.

The biggest casualty of this chaotic production was that everyone forgot to write a decent villain. Media mogul Elliot Carver looks like an ineffectual economics teacher who's accidentally come to work in his jim-jams and spends the entire film titting about his various HQs bashing away at a magic keyboard that can somehow make sense of the nonsense he's randomly hammering into it. He's so useless at villainy that he requires at least three henchmen (also rubbish) to do his various dirty work, and he's so cripplingly dull that it's actually hard to tell who has the most charisma between the character and his "action" figure.

Fully poseable!*
*Only one pose included: "Lacklustre"

Roger Ebert's mantra "Each film is only as good as its villain," applied so dramatically in Licence To Kill, is tragically forgotten here; even the writers acknowledge how ponderously yawnsome Carver is, having 007 continually treat him like the most boring guest at the party. Audience identification with Bond hits a new high when he almost fails to stay awake through one of Carver's rambling monologues, shooting a nearby flunky just to keep everyone (in the scene and the audience) from nodding off.

What's more, Carver's grand plan to instigate World War III by pitting two super-powers against each other has already failed in at least two previous Bond films, and even in these Leveson Inquiry times the idea that a media magnate would commit mass murder in order to sell a few more papers is just stoopid. For him to then alert the authorities by publishing news of said murders before anyone else knows about it is so incompetent you can almost hear the embarrassed facepalms of seventeen previous Bond villains.

Of course the one mistake everyone makes in relation to Carver is his supposed similarity to a real-life insane media baron, who for the purposes of avoiding a lawsuit I shall call "Rooput Merdock". I've carefully investigated these apparent parallels, and while there is definitely some correlation between Carver and "Merdock", differences begin to emerge upon closer inspection:

ELLIOT CARVER	"ROOPUT MERDOCK"
Is a billionaire international media mogul intent on dominating the world's press both in print and on television	Is a billionaire international media mogul intent on dominating the world's press both in print and on television
Has close ties to British PM, according to head of MI6	Has close ties to British PM, according to everyone
Has an enemy called James	Has a son called James
Was attacked by a scary Chinese lady	Is married to a scary Chinese lady
Owns 24-hour news channel which tragically went off air on its first night	Owns 24-hour news channel which is tragically still on air
Wears pyjamas to work	Wears custard pies to Parliamentary committee hearings
Recalls quotes by William Randolph Hearst	Can't recall anything that happened while in charge of best-selling Sunday newspaper
Disposes of underlings when they've outlived their usefulness	Turns underlings into cyborgs and programmes them to take the fall when they've outlived their usefulness
Engineers war between UK and China in order to sell more newspapers	Bites the heads off live kittens and drinks their blood in order to remain alive
Is a fictional character	Is Satan

I'm glad I've been able to clear that up harmlessly and without any need for litigation. Moving swiftly on...

The title sequence

I know I mentioned Daniel Kleinman's title sequence last month, but get used to it because he made five fantastic ones and they're all getting their moment in the BlogalongaBond sun. This one is like swimming down a fibre optic cable with a bunch of sexy ladies and some guns and possibly some diamonds too although I'm not sure why. I'm probably also one of only four people on Earth who quite like Sheryl Crow's song; it's no 'Surrender' by kd lang, but on the plus side it's no 'All I Wanna Do' either, and for that we must be grateful.

David Arnold's music

'Hamburg Break Out'

Former interviewee and great friend of The Incredible Suit (great friends in the sense that we had an email conversation once, we don't hang out or chat or really know each other at all in fact) David Arnold's first Bond score is an absolute stonker, livening up the occasionally ropey action no end and enhancing the film exactly as a good score should. It's also ridiculously of its time, all techno and drum loops and phat beats or whatever that stuff's called. Not only that but the aforementioned end credits song 'Surrender', which he co-wrote with David McAlmont and Don Black, is the greatest Bond theme that never was.

The handcuffs

Tomorrow Never Dies was stunt legend Vic Armstrong's first Bond film as second unit director, and the stuff he delivers here is phenomenal. The film's set pieces have to be amazing to wipe out the tedium of the plot, and this one in particular does so with cock-waggling bravado. As close as Bond gets to a Jackie Chan film, the inventiveness of having the leads handcuffed sets up some insane action, and Brosnan does well to keep up with Michelle Yeoh's kung fu skillz.

And finally: Tomorrow Never Dies stars a young Julian Rhind-Tutt as a yeoman on the doomed HMS Devonshire. His character's name?

Unless of course wardrobe just forgot to take the actor's scribbled name tag off his costume.

BlogalongaBond will return with The World Is Not Enough

What the hell is BlogalongaBond? I'll tell you.

Further BlogalongaBondareading here


Thanks to The Shiznit, from whom I stole the subtitle for this post. It's OK, everyone steals their stuff. In fact they actively encourage it.

David Arnold, Psycho

Last Saturday saw me head into London with a spring in my step and a song in my heart to see legendary film score composer, The Incredible Suit interviewee and rocker of fine facial hair David Arnold talking about Bernard Herrmann's astonishing score for Psycho at the ICA as part of BAFTA's 'Behind The Mask' series of talks.

By the time Arnold took the stage there were only about 25 people in the audience, which I found surprising and infuriating. This is one of the world's greatest score composers talking about one of cinema's greatest scores in the middle of London, and there was probably a higher attendance at the "Government Cuts Are Brilliant, Stop Complaining" march round the corner in the St James's Park public toilets.

Anyway, Arnold spoke knowledgeably and passionately about the strings-only score, its monochrome sound matching Hitchcock's stark imagery; how the orchestra played with their strings muted for the whole score except for the shower scene to truly stab home the violence of Marion's murder; how Hitchcock originally asked Herrmann for a jazz score with silence during the shower scene, and - with specific reference to the driving scenes - how he believed it was "a score without any hope whatsoever".

Bernard Herrmann: Psycho (Suite)


After about ten minutes he introduced the film, the lights went down and Psycho began. Now, I wasn't expecting this. I was expecting some chat, some clips, some debate, but not an actual screening of the film. Looking at the ICA website, it's no wonder: the page I saw doesn't mention the film being shown at all. Maybe this is why there was hardly anyone there: advertise a rare screening of Psycho and people might stay and listen to the Q&A; advertise a Q&A with someone nobody's heard of and watch the takings spiral down the plughole.

Despite being mentally unprepared to watch Psycho - I actually contemplated leaving and coming back for the Q&A 109 minutes later - within five minutes I was totally engrossed in the film and still discovered new stuff even though I've seen it eight zillion times.

When Arnold returned he talked, amongst other things, about his belief that 'temp tracks' - temporary scores laid down during a film's production to help sell it to the financiers and distributors - stifle creativity because the composer is then asked to mimic the temp track rather than come up with something groundbreaking (like Herrmann's Psycho score), and how his own music for Changing Lanes ended up being licenced for Man On Fire because of its use as a temp track in the making of the latter film, much to the annoyance of Man On Fire composer Harry Gregson-Williams.

Obviously I asked Arnold (again) if he would be scoring Bond 23, and if SlashFilm had been there you'd have seen this headline on their site yesterday:

So that was my Saturday. How was yours?

Paul

What happens when two massive sci-fi geeks write a film about two massive sci-fi geeks that's aimed squarely at massive sci-fi geeks and is packed to the sprockets with massive sci-fi geekery? In the case of Paul, the answer is a big bag of nerdy funballs which scores higher on the ROFLometer than any other comedy from the last few years. Especially if you're a massive sci-fi geek.

In all honesty, the thought of another comedy from the director of Superbad and Adventureland, both of which failed to withdraw anything other than boredom from my emotion bank, combined with the prospect of Seth Rogen freewheeling his way through another tediously unfunny performance (cf. The Green Hornet) filled me with overwhelming ambivalence. But the fact that it's written by and stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, the two most-difficult-not-to-like people in British film, plus the casting of god amongst men Jason Bateman, was enough to make me semi-aroused.

Pegg and Frost's script - essentially a guffaw-laden love letter to Star Wars, E.T., Close Encounters, Aliens and a million other life-shaping movies - squeezes in so many references to the films they adore that it's occasionally in danger of disappearing up its own thermal exhaust port. Thankfully there are more than enough LOLs and action to back up the nerding, and by the time the perfectly-located climax comes around you're prepared to forgive the odd shoe-horning in of yet another Star Wars gag.

Unavoidably a few jokes fall flat - why obscure 1992 melodrama Lorenzo's Oil is targeted for a major pun rather than another geek touchstone is a mystery - and Greg Mottola's direction fails him in a couple of crucial but annoyingly bodged scenes towards the end, but these are easy to forgive when the rest of the film is more fun than an unsolicited anal probing.

Obligatory gush over David Arnold score: It's fantastic.

This Is BBC Bond

Because the BBC spends all its money on people like Bruce Forsyth rather than on trumpeting the amazing stuff buried inside its unfeasibly brilliant website, it falls to me to tell the world about the online Archive - specifically, the James Bond Collection.

The BBC Archive collects broadcasts from its 90 year history about various subjects and dumps them in a dusty corner of the internet for obsessive nerds to pore over at their leisure. The James Bond Collection is obviously its most exciting feature, the kind of thing that would give your basic Bond fan a week-long erection. I'm an advanced Bond fan so it only provided me with four or five days of uninterrupted tumescence but that was quite enough thank you very much.

There are currently fifteen separate radio and TV clips from between 1958 and 2008 in this collection, totalling over five hours of Bondeliciousness. And it's not the same old guff you've already seen on the DVDs - there are clips here even the most socially unstable geek (hello) probably hasn't seen before. Here are just some of the treats within:

Film '79: On Location With Moonraker (BBC1, 1979)

Pillow-faced legend Barry Norman presents his report from Brazil on the production of Moonraker. Bazza's film opens with some fantastically politically incorrect close ups of bikini-clad tits for no reason whatsoever, before he spends far too long asking Roger Moore if this will be his final Bond (he went on to make three more), attempts to get interview blood from a stony Cubby Broccoli and awkwardly over-compliments Bond girl Lois Chiles. You could do that in the 1970s and still be a national treasure.

Time Out: The Guns Of James Bond (BBC2, 1964)

None other than Sean Connery introduces this historically interesting but actually quite tedious piece in which luxuriantly-moustachioed gun nut expert Geoffrey Boothroyd goes on at great length and in worrying detail about Bond's choice of shooter before blowing holes in a defenceless tin of tomato juice. Worth watching just to see Boothroyd point out the errors in Connery's bizarrely inaccurate introduction, and to boggle at Sir Sean's insistence on pronouncing 'Fleming' as 'Flemmen'.

Back Row: David Arnold (Radio 4, 2003)

I nearly popped a sprocket when I discovered this. First off, The Incredible Suit interviewee and hero Joe Cornish interviews The Incredible Suit interviewee and hero David Arnold, who demonstrates his encyclopaedic knowledge of Bond music history and explains his approach to scoring Die Another Day. Then the show asks a selection of experts what the next step in the franchise should be - Cornish proposes a micro-scooter chase through Bluewater shopping centre while Mark Gatiss suggests calling the next Bond girl Mahogany Wasp or Kingdom Come. Fascinating, funny and a genuinely exciting find.


All of which would be flambasmic enough but the BBC Archive has bags more stuff like this on just about every subject in the known universe. So the next time some whining imbecile complains about the licence fee, sit them in front of a computer, go to www.bbc.co.uk/archive and smash their face repeatedly into the keyboard until they get the P key jammed in their eye.

Saturday Playlist #14: David Arnold

You should by now have a pretty good idea of what David Arnold has done and how I feel about it. If not, may I recommend you start reading The Incredible Suit from Day 1 and do not leave your computer until you arrive back at this post. If that sounds like your idea of a slow and painful death, I suppose you could just read this non-award-winning interview I did with him in October.

Arnold is severely under-represented on Spotify, especially in the Bond department, so it falls to YouTube to provide some of his best work. Consider these Bonus Tracks, or incentives to download Spotify and get with the programme if you haven't already you pathetic specimen.

"Backseat Driver" from Tomorrow Never Dies


"Hovercraft Chase" from Die Another Day


"Time To Get Out" from Quantum Of Solace


So now that you've scrolled straight past those without playing them (yeah, I'm watching you), it's time to...

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO

SATURDAY PLAYLIST #14:

DAVID ARNOLD

Concert For Care: A Photographic Odyssey

Last week I took five minutes out from all the LFFery that's been going on recently to go to the Concert For CARE at the Albert Hall. It was put together by David Arnold as an excuse to a) get a load of film music composers together to have their work blasted out by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and b) raise a ton of cash for relief agency CARE International. But you know all that because you've read my penetrating interview with David Arnold, haven't you?

The evening was big bags of fun despite the fact that I only recognised about three tunes all night. It turns out there are severe gaps in my movie music knowledge that need attending to post haste, not least of which is John Powell-shaped. He's all kinds of ace.

Anyway if you couldn't make it you'll be pleased to know that I took some award-winning photos to illustrate the evening, and I think you'll agree that professional photojournalism like this is almost enough to make you feel like you were sitting in the royal box drinking Moët et Chandon and eating caviar like I was (I wasn't).

He introduced the event and spoke about CARE International so we didn't all think we were just there to have a good time. It's entirely possible that in this photo he's the other bloke next to the bloke he might be.

He played piano on his own scores for Love, Actually and World Trade Center. I couldn't hear him due to the proximity of the 78-piece orchestra.

They were there as ambassadors for CARE International. He barely got a word in. You can tell who wears the trousers in that house.

They sang 'Tonight You Belong To Me' from The Jerk

and accompanied themselves on ukelele and kazoo.

David Arnold has a surprisingly nice singing voice.

He introduced his own score from There Will Be Blood in the manner of someone not used to performing in front of enormous crowds.

Which is odd when you think about it.

He finished the first half with a suite from How To Train Your

Dragon, which was so bombastic that it caused the

old lady in the box next to me to wake up.

Nobody in the entire Royal Albert Hall thought he was funnier than he did.

One of two composeresses to perform, she revealed that American History X director Tony Kaye was in the audience, which caused everybody to look for him even though nobody knows what he looks like.

He played the piano on a piece from The Piano. See what he did there?

That's how Matt Lucas described himself before you start writing to me in green ink. He sang 'Smile' from Modern Times and was one thousand times funnier than Jimmy Carr.

At long last the orchestra banged out some Bond before finishing with music from Independence Day, which the couple on the other side of me argued all the way through because one of them thought it was from Jurassic Park. I was all like, "HELLO, does that even LOOK like John Williams?"

I don't know, some people.

So there you go. All you need now to really feel like you were there is to go to the off licence and pay four times more than you need to for a bottle of wine.

Final plug for charidee: CARE International

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An Exclusive Interview With Filmy Musicy Man David Arnold!

Regular viewers of The Incredible Suit will know of my borderline psychotic obsession with James Bond, film scores and James Bond film scores. It caused no small tremor in my basement, then, when David Arnold, composer of the last five Bond films, agreed to an interview with these very words:

Arnold is also responsible for chuffing ace music from the likes of Stargate, Independence Day and Hot Fuzz, as well as TV series Little Britain and Sherlock. However he's currently focussed on the upcoming Concert For CARE at the Albert Hall on October 18th (tickets still available!), an evening of movie tunes which he's organised, starring the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and composers including John Powell (the Bourne films), John Ottman (X-Men 2, Superman Returns) and Rachel Portman (Chocolat, Never Let Me Go). All proceeds from the concert go to aid organisation CARE International, for whom Arnold is an ambassador.

So without further waffle, here's what I asked him and, for the sake of completeness, I've also included his answers:

Hello David. You told me I was forbidden from introducing you with “The name’s Arnold, David Arnold”, you big spoilsport. How would you rather be introduced? Can you introduce me with “The name’s Arnold, David Arnold”? Er... OK. Let’s just skip the introduction and start with the personal stuff. You’re listed on Wikipedia under “Notable Lutonians”, along with silky-voiced ‘80s pop legend Paul Young and cricketing chap Monty Panesar. What do the three of you chat about when you’re hanging out in Wardown Park? We talk about where to get the next litre of Diamond White from, then Young starts a fight with Panesar, and while they’re at it I twoc the remaining McDonald’s that we previously rescued from the bins. It’s all over in seconds and we’re all back to normal, singing Wherever I Lay My Hat, throwing balls and writing film scores. What a lovely image. I follow you on Twitter, and you appear to have an unhealthy obsession with The X Factor. What does a witty, intelligent, handsome, talented gentleman such as yourself see in the most satanic form of televised evil, like, ever? I only do a bit of X Factor commentary when the show’s on. It’s not unhealthy. I am unhealthy but the Twitter / X Factor axis is not. I find that utterly mindless TV does me the world of good when I’ve been concentrating for unnatural amounts of time on something serious that has consequences should I not deliver what and when I am meant to. You’ve worked with some proper legends like Bjork, Saint Jarvis of Cocker and, erm, Chris Cornell. Is all this celeb-mixing just another day’s work for you or do you sometimes have to try hard not to do an accidental excited wee when meeting the likes of Shirley Bassey? I get excited at the idea of it, but the reality is usually very different, as it’s then down to me to do the gig. Most of the people I’ve worked with have been lovely and some of them have become friends regardless of work. I’m not starstruck but would admit to struggling if someone said Stevie Wonder wants to work with me. For the record, I didn’t wee anywhere near Shirley Bassey. Well that’s a relief. Your Stargate music is one of the most used pieces of movie trailer music. Does that make you swell with pride or is it a bit annoying? After all, you didn’t write it with Chicken Little in mind, did you? It’s never annoying to hear something I’ve written and recorded being used for purposes other than that for which it was created - within reason of course: I wouldn’t be thrilled if a political party used it for a recruitment drive. But I love the idea of music finding its way into other areas of life and reaching people’s ears that it may not otherwise. Where do you keep the Grammy you won for Independence Day, and why haven’t you won a BAFTA or an Oscar? Are people stupid? My Grammy is in storage, as I moved earlier in the year. At least I hope it is. Now I’m going to have to check. I’ve been nominated for BAFTAs but not Academy awards, probably because the films I do aren’t really Oscar sorts of movies, and also because I may not be any good. In my experience, most people are stupid and I include myself in that. The trick is to know when you are so you can avoid being stupid again later. I must try and remember that. You scored all the Brosnan Bonds apart from GoldenEye. Have you ever been tempted to do your own score for it and play it while watching the film with the sound off? The idea of scoring older Bonds is unfathomable. I think they’re all best left well alone, and every time we make one I, and the whole crew, spend our time trying to make the next one better. What you’re basically saying is “That’s a stupid question”, and I think you’re probably right. I suppose the next best thing is the GoldenEye game you’re writing the music for. How does writing music for a video game differ from a film score? I did that with my friend Kevin Kiner, who did all the heavy lifting on that show. He’s a very talented composer and I think the credit reads ‘Themes by David Arnold, music by Kevin Kiner’. I produced the title song, which is the old Tina Turner song sung by someone else. I’m not sure I’m allowed to say who it was yet so I won’t. Game scoring is all about writing to mood and not to picture, finding different ways of saying sad, happy, excited, dangerous etc, so they can be triggered by various things that happen during gameplay. I didn’t bother writing a theme for Bond growing wings and turning into chocolate as I knew it wasn’t going to be in the game. Which will be a big disappointment for all those expecting that very thing to happen. I’m far too old to play computer games, but I’m looking forward to hearing the GoldenEye game music. Will it be released commercially? I don’t think so, but stranger things have happened. I’m still playing that computer game where you get the computers to write “bollocks” over and over again in Currys. How browned off were you when Sheryl Crow’s song was chosen for the Tomorrow Never Dies opening titles while your (and Don Black’s) infinitely better song Surrender, sung by k.d. lang, was consigned to the end credits? Because I tell you what, I was incandescent. At that stage I was immensely grateful that they used Surrender as the closing titles. I’m more glass half full. Although I do like the idea of the glass being the right size in the first place. Are you scoring the next Bond film? Do you have the foggiest idea when it might get made? The wait is driving me potty. I never assume anything where movies are concerned. I have been talking to the producers about it, and they know how committed I am to the series and how much I care about it. We’ve done well together so far and I’ll do it as long as they keep asking me to. As far as when it’ll be made, that all depends on MGM sorting out their business situation, so all we can do is wait. I doubt if it would go on too much longer though. Let’s hope not. You’re currently working on the new Narnia film, The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader. Don’t be offended but I probably won’t see it, so what other projects have you got “in the pipeline”, as I think I’m supposed to say? I actually have a pipeline outside my studio and am constantly checking what’s in it. Aside from a build up of fat from restaurants and some discarded baby wipes, I can see that Made In Dagenham is coming out this week, which I scored and wrote the end title song for with Billy Bragg and which is sung by Sandie Shaw. The GoldenEye game is out in November, and Morning Glory with Harrison Ford and Diane Keaton is out in November in the US and January here. Right now I’m starting the Simon Pegg / Nick Frost alien-road-trip-comedy Paul, which is very funny. I finish that mid-December, then I am powered down and my prime directive re-programmed. So this Concert For CARE looks a bit good. How did you get involved with the charity and how did the idea for a concert come about? A few years ago I went to a fundraising event for CARE and there was a woman there talking about her experience in Rwanda at the time of the genocide. It’s the sort of detail that derails your idea of what life and people are all about. I talked to them about getting involved and they asked me to be an ambassador for them. I said yes and travelled to Rwanda to see for myself what’s going on and the work they’re doing, not only there but all over the world. My instinct was to grab a bag of clothes and stay there to help, but I knew I could make more difference by fundraising and awareness raising at home. It’s bound to raise oodles of cash already, but with this interview you have the chance to reach literally tens of people and convince them to buy a ticket. So what can they expect on the night and how will the money raised help the charity? Last year’s event at Brixton was a rock and roll one, this year at the Albert Hall it will be a little more polite. My friends from Film Musicland, where all the composers live, have all jumped on board. I would urge everyone to visit concertforcare.com to see what’s going on and come along and have a great night. It’ll be unique and hopefully really good. I don’t preach and we’ll only have a very short presentation about CARE at the beginning. CARE doesn’t spend money on advertising or mailouts - only 10% of money raised is used in admin, so you know you’re supporting someone in need rather than paying for someone to be behind a desk. Also they employ locally where possible, so the money raised can go straight to the area where it’s needed. That’s an impressive roster of composers appearing on the night. Was it a challenge to get them all in one place at the same time? Not really; there’s no touring, TV, press or other stuff with film composers. We pretty much know where we’ll be and when most of the time, so it’s a little simpler to corral them. Right, well I’ll be there so please make sure they’re all as corralled as possible. Most importantly, and because The Incredible Suit viewers demand to know (I imagine): What’s your favourite colour? The recently discovered colour equivalent of that umami flavour you find in avocados and Chinese takeaways. They haven’t got a name for it yet. I thought you’d say that. Before we finish could you just say something nice about my blog that I can pretend you casually dropped into conversation? I love The Incredible Suit so much that I actually have serious pain in my kidneys and blood is coming out, which I don’t think is right is it? It doesn’t matter, I just want to impress folk. Anyway, thanks for your time and the best of luck with Concert For CARE. Feel free to join me for an ice cream in the interval, although you’ll have to pay, the prices are extortionate at the Albert Hall. I have spat in all the ice creams which is why they’re so expensive as they’re now collectors’ items. Eurgh.

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