Welcome to the reveal for the latest Walrus in our series of Infinite Walrus. And here to host our awards ceremony is the most famous Walrus of all!
And here to gobble up these reveals are our favorites Walrus friends.
Incoming! The reveals for Category #1
Awesome. In for the reveal.
Coming in eighth for 1 point is @JohnnyTruant
So on one hand, no one knows what this movie is about. Roger Ebert gave the movie 3 out of 4 stars, but even he said he’d be lying if he said he “knew what the plot was about.”
But what it lacks in clarity of plot, it delivers completely on an emotional experience. I side with prolific film critics and teachers Tony Schirato and Jen Webb, who say that the movie is about the dual nature of capitalism. Yin and Yang (no not that one), Good and Evil, freedom vs exploitation.
I mention these to ground my experience of the track. The music starts with a sense of wonder that within two minutes turns into growing dread, then distress and impending catastrophe that just as quickly turns into melancholy, less a sense of wonder and more a hope that one might feel wonder again.
The track is deeply moving for a deeply moving film. It comes in eighth place and receives 1 point.
Noice.
Oh. Ouch!
Coming in seventh for 2 points is @skydiver8
A great song from a great movie. When it begins, I hear the subtle undertones, so low that I’m not sure whether the track is playing. I lean in—and then the drums and the violin announce themselves.
The track was initially written by Trevor Jones as part of an electronic score for the movie—wouldn’t that have been cool? But late in production, Michael Mann decided the film instead needed an orchestral score. Trevor rushed to rewrite the score and ended up bringing in Randy Eldman to help him complete the music in time.
That made the score ineligible for consideration at the 65th Academy Awards. I’m not sure if it would have won anyway. The other nominees were Basic Instinct (LOLLLLLL), Chaplin, Howard’s End, A River Runs Through It, and—the real competition—Aladdin.
Does Aladdin win if it’s up against Mohicans? I say probably, but it’s close. Disney was knee deep in their renaissance. It’s hard to remember the fervor of that time, but it was sort of assumed that if Disney put a score up for nomination, it was going to win.
The presenter for Best Original Score that year was Raúl Juliá, who has since achieved mythical status for his final role as M. Bison and the only good thing in the much-reviled film adaptation of Street Fighter. True cinephiles of course are familiar with his bigger body of work, but if you only know him through Street Fighter, it’s a treat to hear from the man himself during his final days.
The theme of Mohicans is called “Promontory” and is based on a Dougie MacLean song called “The Gael.” As soon as the song starts, you’ll hear hints of the score you know. If you’re just looking for the part that was directly adapted, skip to 2:12 (should be linked here).
The competition was simply too fierce, otherwise this one would easily have led the pack. It’s in no way a slight to say this comes in at seventh place for 2 points.
Coming in sixth place for 3 points is @seities
Do you hear the similarities to another brilliant film score? Don’t worry, you’ll get it on your own in 28 days or so.
This track is written by Marco Beltrami, who is primarily a horror composer, which at first felt weird to me, but horror composers are so good at mood and tone that this makes sense after all. That got me digging through my mental horror music catalog.
The dynamic, the chord progression, the arrangement, I’d swear it’s made from the same cloth as this.
That cloth would be famed composer Jerry Goldsmith.
In a 2001 interview, film composer Marco Beltrami (3:10 to Yuma, The Hurt Locker) stated, “Without Jerry, film music would probably be in a different place than it is now. I think he, more than any other composer bridged the gap between the old Hollywood scoring style and the modern film composer.”
Was it possible, I wondered, for Marco to share such similarities in his compositions because they were inspired by the same composer?
The theme for 28 Days Later was written by John Murphy, who has primarily worked with Guy Ritchie, Michael Mann (skydiver8 Last of the Mohicans connection ZOMG), and here we go—one soundtrack co-written with Jerry Goldsmith himself. Surely that’s enough to prove the connection—but it turns out it was “co-written” only because Murphy incorporated elements from Jerry Goldsmith’s score to the first Basic Instinct (ZOMG A SECOND SKYDIVER REVEAL CONNECTION?!).
Well, I’m not sure if there’s anything to that particular theory, but it’s a great track, and the rabbit hole it led me down alone is worth sixth place 3 points.
Coming in fifth for 4 points is @cassette
Trent Reznor is a musical genius. This song hints at the brilliance he’d later foster as he stepped back from NIN and transitioned to his role as David Fincher’s whipping boy—I mean favored film composer.
You could have also selected “The Perfect Drug,” which though included on a NIN album was written by Reznor as a single for Lost Highway’s score. He’s gone on to say the song is fine but was written hastily for the movie and wouldn’t even crack his top 100 of his best-written songs. But if you ask me, the soundtrack to Lost Highway is a masterpiece, least of all this entry from cassette.
It wins fifth place for 4 points.
I’m in, and I’m still live!!
Great write ups RF
Hey, I’ll take it. I don’t really watch movies so this was a tough one for me. Love that Logan track, seities.
Coming in fourth place for 5 points is @SwankyWilder
Okay, this has been memed and parodied (often just using clips from the actual song!) so often that you could live under a rock and still know this song. But what gets lost in all of those jokes is that the song is actually magnificent.
It’s so good that it’s credited as being one of the first true disco songs. It won an Academy Award for Best Original Song—making Isaac Hayes the first African American to win that or any non-acting Oscar. The Academy actually tried to disqualify it, saying Hayes couldn’t win since he couldn’t play an instrument or “write” music—but no less than Quincy Jones intervened on his behalf.
Hit play. Do you hear the confidence? Even in the edited single version, it’s still over 90 seconds before the instrumental intro breaks and you hear Isaac’s voice.
The funny thing is that Hayes only agreed to write the song if the director would let him audition for the role of Shaft. The role went instead to Richard Roundtree, but Hayes wasn’t disappointed. He’d expected as much and considered it a fair deal. He’d been given an audition, not a guarantee.
Hayes would turn into another pop culture icon when he played the South Park character Chef, a role that ended all too soon when he went cuckoo over their Scientology episode. It honestly makes me need to separate the man from the music, but this track. This track.
Its magnificence earns fourth place for 5 points.
We are halfway through, so I will take a quick break and be back with the last half of the reveal.
Risky seems to have quite different taste than the usual suspects among competitors so should be fun to see some upsets and rustled feathers.
edit: although his refusal to berate the last-place finisher doesn’t bode well for rustle factor!
Coming in at third place for 6 points is @pyatnitski
Like other classics of that era, The Taking of Pelham 123 is known as much if not more for its soundtrack.
The track, like the movie, wastes no time jumping into action. The horns, the percussion, the bass, all work together to create a theme as tense and unpredictable as the movie. That’s in part because the composer figured out how to imbue the movie with the spirit of the book in a way film would otherwise struggle.
Writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, Michael Ordoña described the novel as being “told from more than 30 perspectives — keeping readers off balance because it is unknown which characters the writer might suddenly discard.” A movie would struggle with such a jumbled mishmash of points of view—while the Coens see the camera as the true eye the audience sees through, audiences are generally hoping for a clear main character to follow,. This is why the movie has presented leads of various shades through the three film adaptations.
But there to give the audience every overwhelming sense of instability and confusion and distress is the soundtrack.
The film did manage one other component that we all still recognize today. Screenwriter Peter Stone named the villain’s henchmen after colors in what Tarantino would homage in Reservoir Dogs: Mr. Blue, Mr. Green, Mr. Grey, and Mr. Brown. Those names served to fracture the audience’s sense of identity between characters, but it wouldn’t have worked if not for this centerpiece of the movie’s soundtrack.
This track earns third place for 6 points.
da feels
lol u silly
I think I’m shipping this cat btw
just too damned choice, my entry
Should I be thrashing people??? I believe I rustled someone in my last Walrus so bad that they put me on ignore 
lol no. You do you. I was selfishly hoping to see the forum’s resident nice guy throw some insults around but that is not a reason to do so!
TBH I was hoping you would say my pick was trash so I could say soundtracks in general are trash. But you didn’t so I won’t.
Your pick was not trash, but the movie might be.
Wait until you see this category’s Walrus!