Jim
Aquino hosts
and produces A Fistful of Soundtracks
(anytime at Live365.com and Sundays 2-4PM on KZSC
88.1 FM in Santa Cruz), writes for Silicon Valley Community Newspapers
in San Jose and is so sick of writers who still use that overwrought cliché
"After Sept. 11, everything changed." First of all, not everything changed, and second,
they sound like that narrator on VH1's
Behind the Music ("After the overdose, everything changed...").
Write on
Here's
what I've been up to, work-wise: a couple of months ago, my employer,
Silicon Valley Community Newspapers (SVCN), asked me to start writing
for their new arts and entertainment section, Steppin' Out. I think the
best stories that I've done so far for Steppin' Out are the ones about
a recent decline in local community theater attendance, the Filipino folk
dance company Kaisahan of San Jose, Bay Area community theater actor/director
Will Huddleston and New York stage actress Daisy Eagan. The articles can be found here.
During
a recent late-night session of channel-surfing, I caught the final episode
of Bravo's reality series The
It Factor, which followed around struggling
New York actors on auditions, acting classes and sometimes really shitty
gigs. The It Factor was a breath of fresh air in the reality genre
because they didn't make the cast members eat buffalo testicles. Anyway,
I was intrigued by the episode's segments about Daisy Eagan, who won a
Tony for The Secret Garden when she was 11 (even though I never
really was a theater buff, I remember the hoopla over her Tony win). But
as Eagan got older, she couldn't find much work, and at one point during
the episode, she tearfully confessed to the camera that she wasn't sure
if she could take any more of the business. Later on — I'm not sure
if it was the following day or the following week — I found out that
there was a bit of a happy ending to her "arc": Eagan was going
to star in a play in Palo Alto, the same play she was about to audition
for in that final episode. I knew I had to interview her. I wanted to
know how she felt about being on The It Factor and how she got
into character for her latest play (one of the most memorable moments
on The It Factor showed Eagan at a bizarre cookie commercial audition,
trying to get into character and figuring out how to express cynicism
about eating a cookie). A pre-edit version of my Eagan piece can be checked
out here. The SVCN edit of the Eagan article can be found here.
I
also wanted to interview Eagan because in my writing career, I've occasionally
felt burnt out like she's sometimes been feeling in her acting career.
I think everything I do always leads to temporary burnout. I guess I'm
someone who gets easily bored with things. I've lately been getting antsy
about switching from journalism to screenwriting and comedy writing. Even
the radio program is another example of my tendency to become bored and
fidgety. On some weeks, I'm just not into it at all. That's why I don't
produce a new episode every week. That's why sometimes, for the KZSC incarnation
of Fistful, I'll just reach into my archives and broadcast past
episodes for a whole month. It's not a million-dollar radio franchise,
so there's no need to make it dominate my life.
Consider my ass retired
As
for film reviewing, which I've done for newspapers since the age of 16,
well, I got completely burnt out and haven't written a review since April.
I let my membership in the Online Film Critics Society lapse and decided
not to appeal for reinstatement. Two years ago, I would have said film
reviewing is something I want to pursue. Today, it's completely the opposite.
I
could never make it as a film reviewer because I can't grow enough facial
hair. Notice how all the critics have facial hair? Gene Shalit, Joel Siegel,
Leonard Maltin, Kenneth Turan, Andy Klein, Richard von Busack… They
all got facial hair, whereas I've got more hair on my ass than on my face.
I couldn't join the club, so one day, I just said to myself, "Forget
it."
Anyway,
seriously, I just grew tired of broadcasting my opinions out there for
the world to see — whenever I think of some of the reviews I've written
in the past, I just cringe — and I could never really fit in with
the other print and online reviewers. Except for folks like Elvis Mitchell, John Bloom, a.k.a. Joe Bob Briggs, the Onion
A.V. Club writers, a few of those reviewers
who write for alternative weeklies — like, for instance, von Busack
— and maybe sometimes Matt Zoller Seitz, I can't identify with or
relate to many of these reviewers.
The
ones whom I can't relate to fall into two categories. They're either these
overly perky, brainless, soundbite-spouting critics — those quote
whores that got skewered in that great Saturday Night Live sketch
a few years ago — or they're these arch, middlebrow old white male
farts with no sense of humor. These middlebrow white critics often champion
movies that don't deserve to be championed (like any of the Best Picture
Oscar winners of the past eight years) and scoff at less prestigious movies
that aren't as awful as they may have you believe. I thought the first
Ace Ventura was motherfricking hilarious. I thought parts of Pootie
Tang were funny and parts of Big Daddy were quite amusing.
Sure, Big Daddy's no Rushmore or Election, but Adam
Sandler's cracks about kids, the homeless and men who date women young
enough to be their great-granddaughters were actually pretty funny. Is
that why so many of these middle-aged critics didn't like Big Daddy?
Was it because in that scene that mocks Kristy Swanson's new 80-year-old
boyfriend, the movie was directly addressing them? Ashamed about
our inner Humbert Humbert, are we?
Now
Roger Ebert is an alright TV critic and is even better as a writer, but
his outrage over the scene in which Sandler and the kid cause rollerbladers
to fall down was just silly. Why do I use Big Daddy in my argument
about the tunnel vision of critics? Because it's a harmless, minor and
maybe even forgettable entertainment, and the critics, who at their worst,
like to make mountains out of molehills, treated it like it's the fall
of civilization. They focused their attention on that one little movie
that summer while ignoring far worse problems in cinema like racism and
studio corruption.
In
fact, what ignited my alienation from critics was their reaction to that
whole summer of 1999, in which they were infuriated by a nonstop barrage
of toilet humor-filled comedies like Big Daddy, Austin Powers:
The Spy Who Shagged Me, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
and American Pie — I like to call that spate of comedies the
Bowel Movement. In a review of Austin Powers in Goldmember,
Salon's Charles Taylor had a wonderful comment about critics who
take offense to toilet humor: "Why pay attention to snobs? Great
toilet humor is, of course, about our own ridiculousness and our own mortality,
about the way our bodies embarrass us at the most inopportune moments
and ultimately betray us. If you're not ready to acknowledge that, like
any other kind of humor, it can be done well (Chaucer, the Farrelly brothers)
or done badly (almost any comedy involving frat boys), then you're merely
using squeamishness and prissiness as the basis of aesthetic judgment."
I
don't think I could phrase that as well as Taylor can, but yeah, exactamundo.
Film
criticism is kind of like high school. The Paulettes are the drama geeks.
The articulate online critics are like Xander on Buffy and the
Jon Cryer character in Pretty in Pink — the eccentric, weirdly
dressed nice-guy loser. The not-so-articulate online critics are either
the stoner group or the kids who ride the short bus to school. The freelancers
are trying to figure out their sexual identity. The alternative weekly
reviewers are either goths, punkers, metalheads or — if they're black,
Latino or Asian — the turntablist crowd. The ones who get on TV and
radio and think they're hot shit are the jocks. The ones who get on TV
and radio but aren't so full of themselves are jocks too, but they play
the less popular sports (track, tennis, badminton). The quote whores are
the student council and yearbook clique — they're like that hyperactive
blonde in Grease whom everyone treats like something stuck to the
bottom of their shoe — while the aging middlebrow killjoys are the
clique that thinks they're so cool but are really uncool simply because
of their stuck-up, self-conscious attitude. I guess I was too much of
a class clown and a rebel to belong in any group. Well, now I don't have
to worry about all these groups and about getting my homework done and
which homerooms I'm supposed to go to and which quads I'm supposed to
avoid because I just dropped out.
Papa's got a brand new mailbag (insert JBs guitar lick
here)
Alright,
enough with the high school metaphors. Because of the amount of e-mail
I received last month, I'm going to do another listener request show,
"I've Got Mail Again." Here's another peek into my mailbag:
From: "Sarah
Branson" <sbranson@... >
Subject: hello and thanks
Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2002 09:41:30 -0500
Hi
Jim-
Thank you so much for sharing your fabulous program online. I'm a web
writing intern at an ad agency in Minneapolis, and Fistful of Soundtracks
keeps my brain awake and entertained when the afternoons get sleepy. The
Funk Soul Fratello program is a personal favorite, especially the Ennio
Morricone theme from Grand Slam. That strange flatulent instrument and
the "la-la-la" chorus... Sheer goofy bliss.
Some
things I'd love to hear on Fistful:
Carl Stalling's cartoon music
Martin Huebler & Seigfried Schwab, especially the Vampyros Lesbos
soundtrack
Puttin' On The Ritz from Young Frankenstein
Jim-Henson era Muppet songs, John Denver not included.
Thank
you again. Please keep up the great work, and happy anniversary to you
and your show.
Sarah B.
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Date:
Mon, 05 Aug 2002 18:06:54 +0100
Subject: LOVE "Fistful"!
From: "Michael Russell" <mrussell@... >
Just discovered it via iTunes. It's as if I was given a cool drink of
water
that also magically validated my love of movie music. Some requests, yo:
"The
Asteroid Field." - Empire Strikes Back
"Les
Modernes" - title theme from "The Moderns" by Mark Isham
"Stealing
the Enterprise" from ST III by Horner
"The
Mecha World" from A.I.
"The
Catamaran Race" and "Finding the 'Orca'" from Jaws 2
That's
it. Keep up the significant work. (And quit playing "Undercover
Brother"! It gets less funny with each repeat listen!)
Mike
Russell
Oregon, USA
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Date:
Wed, 07 Aug 2002 10:33:23 -0700
Subject: requests
From: "vanessa ynda" <vynda@... >
Hi Jim,
Love
the show! Listen around the clock as I work.
My
requests are: the Midnight Cowboy theme-song, anything from the KIDS soundtrack(I
like the Pray for Rain stuff also the Circle Jerks covering Iggy Pops
"I want to be your Dog"), and anything from The END OF VIOLENCE
soundtrack.
Thanks!
Vanessa
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From:
LeonardM@...
Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2002 11:59:02 EDT
Hi Jim, how about THE SUMMER OF '42, GLADIATOR, TITANIC, GRAND CANYON,
FINAL FANTASY, THE LAST EMPEROR, BRAVEHEART, DANCES WITH WOLVES, to name
just a few. Just surfed for the first time. Great music. Keep mit coming.
Regards LEN MORRIS in BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND
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From:
LeonardM@...
Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2002 12:23:27 EDT
Hi again, am listening and knocked out by the fantastic music you are
playing. You are obviously an expert film buff. I go at least twice a
week to the movies. I get in free as i know a lot of projectionists and
get to see them before the public and in private. I love the movies!!!!
Thanks for such a wide choice of film music. Regards LEN MORRIS in BIRMINGHAM,
ENGLAND.
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Date:
Wed, 07 Aug 2002 16:56:54 -0600
From: "James E. Shearer" <jshearer@... >
Subject: cool site
Dear Jim,
Just
found your site today and I'm really enjoying it. As a professional
musician and teacher I'm always looking for great new music sites I can
pass along to my students. Great job! Keep up the good work. Your site
is going to become a regular on my computer.
Jim
Shearer
NMSU Music Dep't
Las Cruces, NM
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Date:
Thu, 08 Aug 2002 16:45:29 +0100
Subject: Top IM Chanel
From: "Tony Billows" <tony@... >
Top Chanel, but what size shed do you broadcast from!!
Can
we request the E.T Theme Tune.
PS.
There are four of us listening from sunny England, to your show every
day. Please put a shout out for the highlight boys in our underground
lair.
Huh, Huh, Huh, Huh.
This
email has been scanned with anti-virus software
and delivered from an email server via a stealth firewall
supplied and configured to ;-
Highlight Digital Imaging and Print by ;-
Woodview Systems Ltd (wvsystems@... )
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Date:
Fri, 09 Aug 2002 11:04:17 -0500
From: "Laurin Marchand" <xm@... >
Hey!! This is Laurin in Houston, Texas. I LOVE your show. We listen to
you all day here at GLS Imaging.
I have a request. Would you please play something from William
Shakespear's Romeo and Juliet soundtrack. It's chock full of great
tracks. Thanks Jim!! We'll be listening.
-Laurin-
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From:
"Aliya" <chocochoco@... >
Subject: great show but....
Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 17:45:19 -0400
Hey!
Loved the show with the airplane comments with effects. Funny!
I just discovered your show on Live365.com.
I don't know what it is but the sound difference between your voice and
the music is very different in volume...
so when I have it up... the machine gun sounds get really loud... like
my neighbor knocked on my door.
Anyway, not REALLY complaining but maybe you can adjust the sound to match
the DJ part.
A new fan,
Jessie Pink
P.S. John Barry rules!!!!
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Jim
here: Glad you liked the air travel episode. And I've noticed the volume
difference between my voice and the music also. It's due to the fact that
when stereo sound is converted into mono MP3s, the sound quality decreases,
so the tracks that were recorded by the CD producers at really low volumes
suffer the most (like John Barry's Body Heat theme, for instance).
If the Internet radio sound quality were better, there wouldn't be this
flaw.
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Date:
Wed, 14 Aug 2002 16:06:53 +0100
Subject: What was that?
From: "John Dorrington" <jdorrington@... >
Hi jim,
Listening
to your great station at around 3.50 pm my time (check the time of
email for your time) and missed the name of the great piece playing -
sort
of a palms waving in the air sound. I think it was the one before the
Alien
piece (...?). Can you tell me its name and the movie please?
Cheers
and many thanks
JPD
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Jim
here: The tune is "Lujon," by Henry Mancini. It was originally
released on the album Mr. Lucky Goes Latin, one of two albums of
music from the 1959 TV series Mr. Lucky. The tune can be found
on the Sexy Beast soundtrack.
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Date:
Mon, 19 Aug 2002 10:51:50 -0400
Subject: Great radio show
From: "whitehouse family" <casablanca@... >
Hey man!
I
have tuned in a few times on my iTunes streaming radio, but today I decided
to tune in for longer. I must say that, as a fan of film scores, your
broadcast is a true joy to listen to. I agree with your statement that
soundtracks are highly underappreciated. However, I have been able to
get a few of my friends hooked.
Just
one tiny suggestion. Some streaming radio stations are able to display
the title of the song being played. This is great if I want to download
the song, but miss the title when you say it. This is a minor suggestion,
and not intended to criticize.
Keep
up the good work!
Cameron
W
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Date:
Mon, 19 Aug 2002 17:02:29 -0700
Subject: Special request. . .
From: "Sherazada Kent: Release Print Info Pages" <infopages@...
>
Hey Jim,
Your
show rocks! Love the heavy quantities of Cowboy Bebop (and appreciate
that you play more than Tank! on loop, although I do love that song),
and
the old-style radio stories you did for Halloween. Are you doing that
again
this year?
I
work a lot of late nights, and your show is the perfect thing to listen
to
while I compile massive piles of e-mails and faxes from film festivals
and
funders into chewy bite-sized morsels of informative goodness for Release
Print magazine (shameless plug for Film Arts Foundation!).
Anyway,
my request: Do you have the theme to Hellbound: Hellraiser 2? That
creepy music-box/dying carnival type music? It would make my year to know
someone actually has that piece.
If
not, anything from Run Lola Run?
Thanks,
and keep up the great work!
Salud,
--
Sherezada Kent
Information Pages Editor
Film Arts Foundation
346 Ninth St., Second Floor
San Francisco, CA 94103
ipages@...
www.filmarts.org
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Date:
Wed, 21 Aug 2002 16:20:29 -0600
From: "Lesley Irby" <lesley@... >
Great show!
I
am here in Boulder Colorado and listen to you while I work my fingers
to the bone.
Could
you play some music from the Pink Panther movies.......please.
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Date:
Tue, 27 Aug 2002 13:24:23 -0400
From: "David Yuenger" <david@... >
Subject: hi
I just discovered this site! I am so excited about it. I have always
been moved by this kind of music. It does my soul good. It takes me away
to a place that I love to visit. I dont know how to see whats playing
at
a particular time. I am not an expert in the field of soundtracks, but
I
know when I hear one if I need to add it to my library of music or not.
Is there a way for me to access a file that will show me what is
currently playing? Again, I am so excited that I found this and I look
forward to many hours of soundtrack enjoyment!!
Thank
You
David Yuenger
Winston-Salem, North Carolina
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Jim
here: If you're listening through Live365's Real Media Player, you should
be able to know what's playing. If you're listening through iTunes, well...
I don't own a Mac, so I can't really help you out. Sorry. But anyway,
if there's a tune that you want information about, feel free to ask. I'm
glad you're enjoying the station. Thank you.
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Date:
Tue, 27 Aug 2002 15:15:20 -0400
From: "David Yuenger" <david@... >
Subject: Re: hi
Thanks for responding so quickly. I sent you an email prematurely. As
I
listened more I heard that you state what has been playing and what is
about to play. Thanks for the station. It is wonderful!
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Date:
Tue, 27 Aug 2002 11:05:09 -0500
Subject: Bernard Hermann
From: "Jarrod" <jarrod.holt@... >
Hey Jim, great radio!
How
about some Bernard Hermmann? like "Vertigo?"
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Date:
Thu, 29 Aug 2002 03:14:19 -0400
Subject: Rocky?
From: "Chuck" <chuck@... >
hey Jim?
How
about some music from the "Rocky" Movies.
Thanks
chuck
in East Lansing, mi
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Date:
Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 12:26:42 -0300
Subject: Make Way for the Bad Guy!
From: "Jay Silver" <spectacle1@... >
Hey there,
I've
only recently started listening to you show and even though I know that
Make Way for the Bad Guy was recorded a long time ago, I need to pitch
in.
Where's
the Godzilla theme?!?
That's
it. I'm done. Love the show.
(Can
you tell me where that sound clip "Who put this thing together? Me
-
that's who!" came from?)
-j
-
Jay
Silver
Spectacle
Design
5600 Sackville Street
Suite 220
PO Box 36042
Halifax, NS B3J 3S9
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Jim
here: That "Who put this thing together?" clip is from Scarface,
and so is the "Make Way for the Bad Guy" title.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Date:
Thu, 29 Aug 2002 17:53:38 +0100
Subject: cool show
From: "Danny Munnerley" <danny@... >
Jim,
Were
listening here in Manchester, England. Trying to inspire our Media
students into producing something as original as "fistfull".
Keep up the
good work, when these web stations are available from every radio, you
will
be laughing all the way to the bank. Good on ya...
Danny
Mindspan
PS:
If you get chance to look at http://www.eskayproductions.co.uk/ it's a
student film we made in 2000/1, it has an original score written for it
by a
couple of local musicians. Although last years film 2001/2 is much better.
Both are mixed in Dolby 5:1
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From:
"barbara j. holzmann" <barbados8@... >
Subject: we love your 5 years of fistful!
Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 18:22:01 -0500
hiya jim,
i'm a soundtrack girl too.
my favorite soundtrack, that i do not own yet, is joe versus the volcano--
any of those instrumental tracks or even the cowboy song... breaks my
heart every time.
could you please play something for me and my gang at work?
cheers
my sweets,
barbara holzmann
chicago, il
Jim
Aquino
September 2, 2002
©
2002 Jim Aquino
See
previous "Intros"
August
2002: Forgotten music video hotties and recent episodes of Fistful
on Live365
July
2002: Listener requests and favorite summertime TV shows, and also,
another peek into the Fistful mailbag
June
2002: Fistful's fifth anniversary
May
2002: Spider-Man, "Fistful Internacional Month"
and Cowboy Bebop
April
2002: Streaming, an April Fools prank, Room 222, Chuck Jones
and Billy Wilder
|
