The Black Version is a group of improv performers who put an Afro-centric spin on mainstream movies; Leonardo DiCaprio sees environmental parallels between the 1820s when "The Revenant" is set and modern-day America; eligibility rules for the Oscars raise questions for the original score nominees.
Oscars 2016: The confusing rules to be nominated for Best Original Score
The Academy Awards contest for Best Original Score is a great field this year, with nominees Thomas Newman, Carter Burwell, Ennio Morricone, Johann Johannsson and John Williams. But the Academy’s eligibility rules are somewhat arcane, and questions have been raised about why Morricone’s score for “The Hateful Eight” is eligible, but the music for “The Revenant” is not.
In fact, it’s the second consecutive year that the score for a film by Alejandro G. Iñárritu was deemed ineligible. ("Birdman" composer Antonio Sanchez did recently win a Grammy for best score soundtrack for visual media.)
To sort through those questions, The Frame's John Horn spoke with Jim Fusilli, rock and pop music critic for the Wall Street Journal. He recently wrote the article "Nomination Frustrations at the Oscars."
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
You open your article by saying that the rules to even qualify in the Oscar running for Best Score is as perplexing to the public as it is for Academy members. You wrote that the Academy’s rule for its music award states that an original score is “written specifically for the motion picture by the submitting composer.” But it isn’t as simple as that, is it?
It hardly ever happens and it's particularly pronounced this year with Ennio Morricone's score for "The Hateful Eight."
Morricone had written some music from the 1982 John Carpenter film “The Thing," but some pieces ended up not being used. Either way, it does seem to violate the "written specifically for the motion picture" rule.
The rules are on the Oscars website. It states that the music has to be written for the work that's submitted. In Morricone and Tarantino's defense, one could say, Yes, the music was written in the past but it was never used, so therefore it is new music. But to the general filmgoer, what really matters is the music.
Let’s talk about “The Revenant.” It’s a beautiful score and yet it wasn’t nominated because of a confusing technicality. It had too many composers that were attached to the score?
Yeah, not all the music was written by a single composer. Ryuichi Sakamoto wrote most of it and two other composers added additional music and orchestrations. It's very much a Sakamoto piece of music and it's a shame for it to have been disqualified over what seems to me to be an application of the rule that isn't applied to everyone in the same way. This isn't to disparage the work of the other two composers (Alva Noto and Bryce Dessner), who are both excellent, but in the passage of time, this score will always be known as a Sakamoto score.
By the Academy’s standards, it would seem that the score for “Carol” by Carter Burwell is one of the few that’s unequivocally eligible. And yet, as you said in your Wall Street Journal piece, you think one of the things that makes it so effective is its stark contrast with the 1950s pop songs that appear in the film. This is kind of splitting hairs, but do you think the pop songs have something to do with the impact of the overall score in "Carol?"
You know, I thought that was the case in "Slumdog Millionaire."
With A.R. Rahman's music.
Correct, and I thought that the audience — and probably the Academy members — were so in love with the kind of Indian-pop music that was in that film that they tended to think of it as part of the score, which it is not. I love Carter Burwell's score for "Carol." I think it's so magnificently appropriate for the storytelling, but there are 23 pop songs in that movie and I wonder on balance is there more Burwell music than there is pre-recorded pop music? I'm not sure.
It also seems like even somebody like John Williams, who has written music for "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," is borrowing from himself. There are a lot of cues that are iconic "Star Wars" cues, and some critics argue that a lot of the score for the new film sounds a lot like his old score from the original trilogy.
I think you're right and I don't know how he could have avoided that. Mr. Williams has been very clever in nodding and hinting certain things through his use of music. He said he used about seven minutes of music he had written from his earlier films, but I just can't imagine that movie making as much sense as it does without his music. The emotion of the scene is carried by his music.
This whole conversation make me wonder what, exactly, is the Academy honoring in this category of Best Score? What is the point of this award?
Over the years, I've had the pleasure of spending time with most of the Oscar-nominated film composers and they all say, The sole purpose of the score is to amplify the film. I can't think of a composer who ever said to me, Yeah, when I was writing this film's score, I did want to clarify story and amplify character, but actually I was thinking about the CD that would come out afterwards. I just don't think those composers think in that way. I think their primary and, perhaps, sole function is to serve the film.
Improv group The Black Version pokes fun at racial stereotypes in Hollywood
When comedian Jordan Black started doing improv comedy in Los Angeles, he was often the only African-American performer on stage.
He dreamed about one day starting an all-black troupe, but first he had to solve the problem of meeting enough other black people that did improv.
Eventually, he teamed up with Daniele Gaither, Phil LaMarr, Gary Anthony Williams and Cedric Yarbrough to create "The Black Version." Directed by Karen Muruyama, the troupe launched in 2010 at the The Groundlings Theatre, performing sets during which audience members shouted out the names of iconic movies, and the cast performed, well, the black version of it.
If the concept sounds racist, the troupe is the first to admit to it. As Phil LaMarr told The Frame:
Our premise is essentially racist. And we go down from there. [laughter] Because the idea that there is a "black" version of a voice, a character, is not real. But we take those stereotypes that have been lain on us, and we lay them over the movies, and use that to explode the stereotypes into comedy. It's very politically incorrect. But there's something freeing both for us and for the audience in that way. Not in a Donald Trump-y kind of way, but you get to not be afraid to laugh at these things that are potentially tasteless. But in our hands, we take it so far that it becomes fun again.
In traditional improv fashion, the cast encourages the audience to get involved. After a film is decided upon, the audience then has to pick the "black version" of the title. For instance, "Psycho" turned into "Cray Cray." "The Silence of the Lambs" translated to "Why You Eatin' People?" And "When Harry Met Sally?" That became "When Ray Ray Boned Keesha."
Occasionally, the troupe runs across a film that doesn't really work, like Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction." Jordan Black explained:
"Pulp Fiction" is a white version of black movies, of blaxpoitation films. So to me a lot of the stuff we were trying to do was like, Oh, this is black already. Everybody in that movie's just being a black dude.
Do they worry about running out of movies to parody. Jordan Black says he fields that question on a regular basis, but it's not something that concerns him. His show brings to light the fact that so many of the films that are considered "classic" or "iconic" can be made into black versions in the first place, meaning they started out otherwise. According to Gary Anthony Williams:
I think that's one of the poignant parts of this show. The movies we do are these huge movies that everyone knows, and [they're] stereotypically white. Many of them don't have a black person in a major role at all.
Not having major roles for actors of color is an issue that's in the cultural conversation, but for the members of "The Black Version," it's been fodder for their comedy for years.
Ultimately, the troupe's members say that performing this show is a way to remedy the lack of substantial acting roles for people of color in Hollywood. As Phil LaMarr says: "The wonderful thing about this show is we get to say more lines in this show than we do in most of the stuff we're hired to do."
And Gary Anthony Williams says that by creating their own monthly show, they aren't waiting around for a studio or a network to create roles for them. They're taking matters into their own hands.
This is exactly what we should be doing. Somebody black — Jordan Black — created this show that we are all in, that we're doing for ourselves if nobody else is going to do it for us. We're out there making it happen for ourselves and that's all you can do to make things change.
The actors also add that, as they go out for auditions this TV pilot season, they often meet fans of their improv show, so it elevates their profile in the industry and gives them a creative outlet to boot.
Hear the full, unedited interview here:
The Black Version performs every month at Largo. They will perform as part of The Frame's Academy Awards party at The Ace Hotel in Downtown L.A. on February 28. Get ticket info here.
Leonardo DiCaprio on the environmentalist undertones in 'The Revenant'
With the most nominations for this year's Academy Awards, “The Revenant” has undergone a lot of analysis. Some peg it as a modern Western, others see it as a critique of early American capitalism. However you read the film, there’s more to this telling of Hugh Glass’ epic survival story than a brutal bear attack.
“The Revenant” star Leonardo DiCaprio is the frontrunner to win the Best Actor trophy for his portrayal of the determined fur trapper. DiCaprio says the film resonates with him as a cautionary reminder of a time in history when frontiersmen were hastily exploiting nature for profit. A longtime environmentalist, DiCaprio draws comparisons between the misuse of natural resources in 1800s and modern day America.
DiCaprio appeared at an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences panel hosted by The Frame’s John Horn. The actor spoke about the difficult making of the frontier drama and why he sees an environmentalist theme beyond the film’s flurries of snow.
On the making of “The Revenant”
A lot of the time during the rehearsal process, we would work with all the different departments during the day, and it would almost be like doing theater during the day and live television for the last hour and a half of magic light. So we had to make sure that certain nuances were captured, certain beats were captured, certain emotional moments were captured — and we got to rehearse that during the day. It really gave you a great comfort because you knew that the cameraman was going to be there at the exact right moments for these beats. And you got to think about them in great detail.
What they were able to do certainly in some of these vast, incredibly beautiful action sequences is capture incredible intimacy with the characters and then weave seamlessly around to an unbelievable David Lean-style shot. You know, I’ve never quite seen anything cinematically like that.
On his character, Hugh Glass
From the onset, Hugh is always the outsider. He has a Native American son, but he is trying to disappear in the context of this environment in order to survive. And those are some of the things he’s trying to instill in his son. So he’s always within and without. He’s there, he’s an operative, he’s a scout, but he’s trying to remain detached from this whole wave of capitalism surging towards the wilderness. So he’s a survivor. Much like every character in this movie is a survivor — from Tom Hardy to the Arikara chief to the bear.
On the environmentalist themes in “The Revenant”
Historically, we look back at human nature and what we’ve done to other races, what we’ve done to the natural world. And we say, God, how ignorant we must have been, how shortsighted. And here we have this first wave, this first influx of capitalism out east. And of course, we carved up nature for our own comfort. But here we’re looking at the modern era and we think we’ve learned these lessons from the past.
I was doing a climate change documentary simultaneously to doing this film. And I got to go to the Canadian Tar Sands where swaths of forest the size of Florida were being cut down for what is one of the most destructive practices on Earth. We’re systematically doing this on a mechanized scale that has never been done in history.
Doing a film about climate change, studying climatic change around the world, having to relocate to the southern tip of Argentina just to find snow was the greatest irony. Here we are, a bunch of artists saying, Let’s go into nature and see what it tells us. Well, nature was f***ing telling us that the world is changing unlike ever before. 2015 was the hottest year in recorded history and these are unprecedented weather conditions happening all over the world. And it hit us right smack in the face. We had to shut down production multiple times — extreme weather patterns in both directions, the locals telling us that they’d never seen this in the history of their provence. So that’s what, ultimately, I’m going to be left with: the year 2015 where all the tipping points happened and we immersed ourselves in the natural world to hear it for ourselves.