Soundtrack: Hans Zimmer Vs. Radiohead
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Nevermind the fact that bands and artists have often struggled when it came to composing for film (even though loads of artists are trying to break into scoring). Everyone always seems to have a band in mind as the ideal soundtrack providers or composers for their favorite film. The more ambitious and weird the film, the stronger the opinion, and the more obvious the choice of artist seems to be for each person.
For example, when we saw Transformers we had to wonder how that movie didn't feature Daft Punk, Simian Mobile Disco and the Klaxons. A more than fair question. What if one of these artists (or a collective of them) actually scored the film? It would be the most talked about soundtrack around and might even get people to start buying soundtracks again. OK, maybe not, but the point is that it's fun to think about what the results would be if your favorite band scored your favorite movie, label & studio politics aside. You could have another Bee Gees "Saturday Night Fever" on your hands, which is awesome. Here are some of our personal "what if" musings on some projects that might have been taken to the next level if only:
KRAFTWERK scored Tron (1982)
PRIMUS scored Raising Arizona (1987)
BAT FOR LASHES scored Pan's Labyrinth (2006)
AMADOU & MARIAM scored Tsotsi (2005)
ERLEND OYE scored A Scanner Darkly (2006)
SONIC YOUTH scored Less Than Zero (1987)
NINE INCH NAILS scored Fight Club (1999)
GUNS N ROSES scored Predator (1987)
MORRISSEY scored American Psycho (2000)
TALKING HEADS scored LA Story (1991)
THE CURE scored The Matrix (1999)
We tried sticking to bands relevant to the year the movie was released, but open up the doors of any artist working on any film from any era, and you suddenly have Radiohead scoring Blade Runner, which would be so cool that the universe would implode due to it not being able to contain that much coolness.
The other factor to consider, of course, is actually how important the score was in the above movies, and how the score helped make these movies some of our favorite films of all time (Vangelis scoring Blade Runner, for example). We would whole heartedly agree, and perhaps we’re more wishing that movie leaned more toward that artist's sound rather than use their actual score. It would be an experiment that would probably fail more often than succeed. But the few that worked would be well worth it. Case in point: this splendid video a fan put together using footage from the 1996 French documenatry "Microcosmos" to Radiohead's "All I Need".
