Moviemaking, from the soundtrack up

FIRST we see an empty staircase. Then, a pair of dress shoes slowly click-clacks down the steps. Careful hands withdraw a record and place it on an antique phonograph. An obscured figure begins to compose what must surely be a suicide note. You can’t help but hold your breath. The movie is “Harold and Maude,” and director Hal Ashby has already done more with that frame than most other directors do in an entire movie. But Ashby has left his masterstroke for last.

We begin to hear the music of a Cat Stevens song, “Don’t Be Shy.” It’s optimistic, a love song to love itself, but in this context it’s a magical counterpoint. The whole addictive tone of “Harold and Maude” is created in that one moment. The movie is suddenly epic and funny and full of promise. This is what happens when music and movies come together. The right song at the right time is a powerful concoction that can make a sequence, or even an entire movie. It scratches at your soul. Many years after first seeing “Harold and Maude” in a San Diego theater, I still think about that sequence and that song a lot. Hal Ashby made it all look easy.

It’s not.

Music, and particularly songs, can be a finicky partner to motion pictures. After all, both are often attempting to tell a complete story, their way, without the help of the other. But just between you and me, right up through my own sixth film as a director, “Elizabethtown,” it’s been the prospect of those long afternoons and evenings in the editing room, coaxing that marriage between the right song and the right scene, that’s kept me going through the grueling parts of making a movie.

Often at 3 a.m., when lights aren’t working, or a production problem has erupted, I’ll drift back to that secret thrill -- well, it’s not so secret, actually. Soon I’ll have all this film in a room, along with my notebooks filled with music ideas, and the real fun will begin.

Often an idea for a movie will begin with a feeling, or a song. “Elizabethtown” (which opens Oct. 14) was no exception. I had been listening a lot to Ryan Adams, and Patty Griffin’s great album “1000 Kisses,” and was traveling with my wife, Nancy Wilson, and her band, Heart, on a tour in 2002. One morning I woke up on the tour bus to see those electric-blue landscapes of Kentucky, my father’s home state, and felt a wanderlust. I hadn’t been back since his funeral, years earlier, but suddenly I wanted off the bus. Soon I was, lost in Kentucky, driving in a rental car and listening to music I’d brought on CD mixes. I wasn’t looking for creative inspiration, and of course, that’s exactly when it arrived.

The entire story of “Elizabethtown” arrived quickly over the next couple of days, a tale of love and loss and the discovery of family roots in the aftermath of a very black turn of events in the life of a young shoe designer (Orlando Bloom). It was a story that would start with an ending, and end with a beginning and, I hoped, give a sense of what it was to be truly alive. I had been working on a different screenplay idea. Now, I was veering wildly down the Kentucky corridors and byways, making notes as I drove, feeling that rare inspiration.

“Elizabethtown’s” music arrived almost fully formed too. I knew quickly that the story, named after a town near my father’s birthplace of Stanton, Ky., would offer a chance to showcase a lot of new artists, writers like Jim James of My Morning Jacket, Josh Ritter and Kathleen Edwards, who are creating their own mini-movies in songs filled with deep resonance and imagery. I hoped with “Elizabethtown” that I could let the film breathe a little and take the time to let some of their music play. Much of what ended up in “Elizabethtown” was on those first CD mixes I listened to on the road, imagining the movie.

The movie itself contains a road trip and an elaborate mix-map that Kirsten Dunst’s character makes for Orlando Bloom’s. The map sends him on a trip across part of America, with her detailed instructions to visit specific places and listen to specific songs at specific times. We traveled across five states shooting the sequence, filming the scenes, using Eddie Hinton’s “Yeah Man” in Memphis and the gospel pioneer Washington Phillips to score a visit to Oklahoma City, and much more.

My friend Ivan had the job of playing tracks from my iTunes playlist of appropriate songs, gathered in the months of preproduction. Music filled many of our shooting days, and the set pumped with the feeling of a great American radio station playing everything from bootlegs to new music to obscure gems and back again. It was the emerging sound of “Elizabethtown.”

Inspiring a character

IT can be a delicate process, finding the right musical world for a movie. Sometimes one or two songs will rise above the others early on to provide a clue. For “Elizabethtown,” it was a song by My Morning Jacket called “I Will Be There When You Die.” I also kept returning to a largely forgotten 1987 song by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, “It’ll All Work Out.” Something about Petty’s winsome vocal felt like “Elizabethtown.”

I played the song about a hundred times on that first road trip. And it soon became a theme for one of the central characters, a flight attendant who specialized in soothing nervous travelers, a chatty optimist named Claire. Claire, and her theme song, soon became the soul of the movie.

One of the most enjoyable parts of the casting process can be matching the music to an actor. On “Almost Famous,” I often played the Joni Mitchell song “People’s Parties” and asked actresses auditioning for the part of the groupie Penny Lane to imagine the song playing in their heads as they moved through a crowded dressing room making sure everybody had whatever they needed, from a kind word to a perfectly rolled joint.

Though Kate Hudson won the part, one of the actresses who soaked up music best in the audition was Kirsten Dunst. Several years later, she returned and, while waiting to audition for “Elizabethtown,” I played her “It’ll All Work Out.” She felt the song deeply, nodded quietly, and didn’t speak again until it was time to act the scenes. Her entrance in the finished movie, with the song playing, is an almost exact replica of her audition in that small room where she first tried Claire on as a character.

“It’ll All Work Out” worked out, but the musical lightning doesn’t always strike that quickly, or even at all. For every “Sound of Silence,” the Simon and Garfunkel song that ushered in the modern era of rock in cinema in Mike Nichols’ “The Graduate,” there are a thousand-and-one bombastic, too-literal or buzz-killing song selections that can ruin a movie.

The ‘80s were a particularly barren time for music in movies. Much of that decade was a “Footloose” hangover with soundtrack albums that began to resemble brazen marketing tools more than evocative souvenirs of the movie experience. Many “soundtracks” began to feature desperate attempts at hit songs that were sometimes not even in the movies themselves. Sacrilege! Songs on a soundtrack must appear in the movie! There, I’ve said it, and we can move on.

With the work of Quentin Tarantino and P.T. Anderson, the passionate use of records in film is on the rise again. Lately it’s been Wes Anderson who’s shown a mighty music lover’s soul with movies like “Rushmore” and “The Royal Tenenbaums.” “Tenenbaums,” in particular, even recalled the great touch of Hal Ashby with one amazing moment when Gwyneth Paltrow departs a bus to the broken majesty of Nico’s “These Days.”

And then there was his stellar usage of “Ruby Tuesday,” the very-cinematic Rolling Stones song many, present company included, had dreamed of using correctly. Anderson let his characters simply play the album and the previous song, “She Smiled Sweetly,” tracked into “Ruby Tuesday.” Quietly, with devastating results, the song simply appeared ... and played in its entirety. You can’t use a record in a movie more simply, or better, than that.

Definitive strains

AH, but it’s the perfect original song, written specifically for the movie, that remains the holy grail of music in film. Here are a few perfect original song marriages: “Moon River” in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” “Alfie” in “Alfie.” “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” One of the towering landmarks of modern music in film was a song that cannot be underestimated in its lasting effect, Fred Neil’s “Everybody’s Talkin’ ” in “Midnight Cowboy.” Harry Nilsson covered the song and gave it an extra coat of sadness and longing. While it technically wasn’t written for the film, “Everybody’s Talkin’ ” provides a strong lesson in how to write an original song with the specific boundaries of a specific movie.

It’s a tricky thing. Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan cracked the code with their Oscar-winning compositions for “Philadelphia” and “The Wonder Boys,” but many a rocker has stumbled on the path to similar glory. For an original motion picture song to truly work, it can’t be that obviously about the movie. The best original movie songs evoke the feeling of the movie more than the story. “Everybody’s talking at me / Can’t hear a word they’re sayin’ ” elevated and deepened its film partner, and delivered the bittersweet tone of “Midnight Cowboy.” Imagine if the song lyrics had been, “We’re hustlers, baby, trying to make it on the streets of New York.” The poetic quotient plummets. Suddenly, everybody starts looking a little less timeless.

For “Elizabethtown,” Jim James and My Morning Jacket hit the note with a song called “Where to Begin.” Against a scene when a family memorial moves into a backyard, it taps the woozy summer feeling of longing, and a tantalizing regret, with the line “... it’s the art of feeling naked ... in your clothes.” I can’t imagine the movie without it.

Sometimes the right song works in a different way than it was originally intended. For the soundtrack of “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” Jackson Browne penned a song called “Somebody’s Baby.” It was a romantic portrait of Stacy, the character played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, and it had a memorably poignant chorus. Somehow it didn’t fit anywhere in the movie. Late one night, playing DJ at home with a video rough cut, I tried the song on one completely incongruous and unromantic sequence involving an awkward episode of teenage sex. It worked, immediately. Perhaps too well. I’ve heard that Browne sometimes introduces it in concert like this: “Well, here’s a love song I wrote about a girl, and somehow it became an anthem for premature ejaculation.”

With “Say Anything,” there was one important scene with a boombox that needed a great record. In the sequence, Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) wants to remind his ex-girlfriend of their love by serenading her with “their” song, standing on a hillside and holding his stereo high above his head, pointing it into her bedroom. It was a moment of heartache and rebellion and heroism. No song worked.

Cusack was a huge fan of the Los Angeles ska-funk band Fishbone at the time, and it’s actually their “Bonin’ in the Boneyard” that he was playing as we filmed the scene. But blasting that song in the finished movie, Lloyd appeared to be a crazed Fishbone fan, forcing his musical taste on a sleeping girl.

Then I came upon a tape of songs from our wedding, nestled in the glove compartment of my car. Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” was one of the songs on the tape, and instantly, every word and note felt written for the elusive boombox scene. I raced into the editing room, and sure enough, the song worked. In fact, it really worked. But the movie had to be finished in days, and we needed to secure the rights to the song fast. Only one problem: Peter Gabriel did not allow his extremely personal composition to be used for movies.

Still, he agreed to look at a videotape of “Say Anything,” and a week later, I was given the message to call him. He didn’t waste a moment in turning me down in a slightly sad and resolute voice. “Thank you for letting me watch your film,” he added, “and I’m truly sorry that I can’t give you the approval to use the song.”

I was about hang up. For some reason, I couldn’t help blurting out the question hanging in the air: “But why?”

“Well,” he said wearily, “I just ... I didn’t feel it was right for when he took the overdose.”

“Wait. There’s no overdose in my movie.”

There was a pause. “Yours isn’t the John Belushi film? ‘Wired’?”

“No -- mine is called ‘Say Anything.’ ”

“Oh the teenage movie,” said Gabriel, cheering instantly. “I haven’t watched it yet!”

Several days later he gave us the OK. I think I’m still celebrating. The yearning in the song matched the defiance in Cusack’s face, saying all the things that Cusack, as Lloyd, needed to tell his ex-girlfriend, but couldn’t.

Antidote to angst

TINY DANCER” was one of my favorite songs as a young journalist in the ‘70s, and I’m probably proudest of the singalong scene we filmed in “Almost Famous” because I’d wanted to capture the inner fan that lurks within even the most hardened rockers. I’d often seen those moments on tour when a record appeared on the radio or in a restaurant and suddenly all the tensions could evaporate for the length of the right song. Fandom could break out for those three minutes and blatantly reveal the giddy love of music that powers most musicians, much more than sex or drugs ever did or could.

The scene worked, I thought, even as we were shooting it, because the actors threw themselves completely into that display of unabashed love of rock. (Except, of course, Noah Taylor, who disliked the song enormously but can be seen gamely struggling through the exercise.) Some criticized the scene as a product of rose-colored vision. But in the years since the movie’s release, it’s been the most grizzled and unsentimental musicians who sought me out most strenuously to say, “That scene happened to us.” And then, in a quieter voice, “Don’t ever write this, but we once sang along to ... (insert guilty-pleasure pop classic).”

The right record can also alter the atmosphere during the making of a movie, often in immeasurable ways. Starting with “Jerry Maguire,” I developed a habit of playing music on the set to create a mood. Such is the power of music that it can color almost any situation. Sometimes I’ll play the song in a quiet moment to remind the actor of the tone of the sequence, even during their performance. Jeff Wexler, our sound mixer, was horrified when I first did it. Over time, we’ve worked out a delicate dance where our film audio tracks are always usable later. It’s a dance we’ve come to love.

Tom Cruise acted many of his scenes as Jerry Maguire with the actual music playing, from the Who’s “Magic Bus” to Bruce Springsteen’s “Secret Garden.” Cruise compared it to the job of an athlete. Each song was the equivalent of being passed the emotional football. “Play whatever you want,” he’d say, “I’ll run with it.” This method doesn’t work for everybody, or at least not at first. Intoxicated with opportunity, on my first day working with Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lester Bangs in “Almost Famous,” I surprised him by playing Iggy and the Stooges at full volume in the middle of his second take. He looked at me as if his concentration had been shattered to pieces, which of course it had.

“What was that?” Hoffman asked in a measured voice.

“I was playing the music that you’re listening to in the scene,” I explained. Many faces were now looking at me, staring. “Yeah, I know,” said Hoffman patiently. “I was already acting it.”

We soon found our language together. Sometimes we worked with music in the take, sometimes we didn’t. Hoffman, of course, brings his own audio stimulus. In between each take, he’d slip on headphones and listen to the voice of Bangs himself.

Mining musicians’ sensibility

FOR “Elizabethtown,” I wanted to cast as many musicians as possible. There’s something about music lovers, and musicians, that can seep onto the screen and even give a movie an extra jolt of lyricism. Loudon Wainwright III and Patty Griffin both play family members to Orlando Bloom’s Drew. And members of My Morning Jacket make up the band fronted by Drew’s cousin, Jessie, played by Paul Schneider. Schneider, who is also a musician, plays a singing drummer. Even Bloom is a big music fan and would often request the music of Jeff Buckley or John Martyn to set the tone for a scene. The music in the movie functions like a character, and a secret guide, a voice whispering in the viewer’s ear.

I think I knew “Elizabethtown” would be a very musical endeavor on the first day. The first scene was a funeral discussion set in a graveyard, and to say the scene was lacking life would be more than a bad pun. One of the actors had developed a memory problem, another was twitching from nervousness. Something had to be done. I leaned over to Ivan. “Play ‘Don’t Be Shy,’ ” I told him.

A moment later, out of our set speakers crackled that time-honored Cat Stevens song. Suddenly tensions began to ease. The soft irony of the record smoothed the nervousness -- poetry was in the air again. Jeff Wexler had been a production assistant on “Harold and Maude.” He slipped over to me and nodded his head. “Somewhere Hal Ashby is smiling,” he said, and though only the two of us knew the reference, the mood of our movie was almost immediately recaptured with this small tribute to a great moment in movie music history. Our scene was finished shortly afterward.

Nothing ever beats the power of the human voice in a movie, speaking words that matter, but the right music can sure be a powerful ally.

The right song at the right time.

I looked around the cemetery, the green hillsides shimmering with layers of light. “Don’t be shy ... just let your feelings roll on by.... “ All around me, equipment was being packed up. “Elizabethtown” had just begun, and there was a whiff of magic in the air. An elderly man, an extra in the funeral scene, came over to me. “I like that you play music when you’re making your movie,” he said. “What else you got?”

Contact Cameron Crowe at calendar.letters@latimes.com.