Ennio Morricone In His Own Words

 
Absolute Applications

Ennio Morricone In His Own Words
by Ennio Morricone and Alessandro De Rosa
Oxford University Press ISBN: 9780190681012

Just a brief review of a very valuable book in the annals of musical history, which I’m sure I won’t do anything like full justice to but, I hope it will give interested parties enough of a flavour to pursue this magnificent tome themselves.

I’ve been lucky enough to see Ennio Morricone conduct concerts of his works in London around five or six times in my life. They are always a treasured experience and each time I attended it just compelled me to re-explore his back catalogue of music. Alas, the great man died back in July so I won’t again have the pleasure of seeing him live ever again but, I guess I knew that anyway as his last concert tour, from a few years ago, was pretty much promoted as his farewell set of concerts.

This manuscript, Ennio Morricone In His Own words, a 2019 English translation of a 2016 book, is a wonderful exploration of the composer which is a transcription of conversations taking place between Morricone and a young composer/freelance musician named Alessandro De Rosa.

Now, I usually find “In their own words” style books to be either just a tonne of bite sized quotes organised under theme or as much about the author compiling things as it is about the subject. I’m delighted to say that neither case is true in relation to this tome. These are genuinely long transcriptions of conversations between the two men with De Rosa deliberately taking the back seat and asking the right kind of provocative questions to allow Morricone to do the lion’s share of the book... often while the two are playing chess. That’s something I learned from this book for a start... Morricone was a keen and evidently excellent chess player, even subscribing to several magazines and playing in the odd tournament. He mentions very early on in the book (possibly even on the first page) that he sees strong links between music and chess notation.

Now I’ve always found this amazing composer to be somewhat arrogant when I’ve read quotations by him in various programmes or articles over the years but, this book firmly dispels that idea (along with a lot of others). Rather than being arrogant, I gather that Morricone is merely shy (as am I and that’s often perceived as a certain aloofness in other people, although a certain ‘special’ lady friend of mine would not recognise that trait in me, for sure) and genuinely honest about himself and this can sometimes come across as an unfortunate attitude when taken out of context. Which is another reason why this book is so good. I realise that Morricone was a thoughtful man and although, as I said, honest... I sense a reluctance to tackle certain issues due to his respect for the wishes and beliefs of others.

And I learned some really interesting stuff such as, despite often being perceived as not finding value in his work with the great Sergio Leone, he regarded that relationship as very special and cherished their continual friendship both on and off the job. There’s a heartbreaking anecdote in here about when and how he heard that Leone was dead, when they were due to meet up again very soon.

One thing which I’ve been trying to find out for years was just what was the great rift, often alluded to on most writing about his work, that occurred between him and Bruno Nicolai (who made up quite a good team of composers, conducting each others works and also collaborating on compositions in Morricone’s early years). It turns out, if Morricone is to be believed and I’ve no reason not to, that Nicolai was a great friend and they didn’t have any kind of falling out at all, just decided to part ways to retain their own individual styles... or at least retain the public perception of it (if I am understanding correctly). Morricone goes on record that he misses him (Nicolai died in 1991 but he did some remarkable scores in his time).

And, of course, he talks a lot about music. The inspiration, the experimentation and the difference between what he calls applied music (music created to serve another medium such as film, theatre, ballet etc) and what he calls ‘absolute music’, which is technically free of the bounds of certain rules (and equally the special creativity which comes as part and parcel of those restrictions, I would say). I am very glad to see that he doesn’t (like many critics seem to adhere to, as a belief about music they don’t understand or get on with in the arena of film) see his applied music really as any way of lesser value than his other stuff. Indeed, his thorough experimentation with music as heard in both styles of composition and the fact that he imposes his own limits in his writing for both forms anyway, certainly shows the similarity of the DNA in terms of the fact that he was always writing for an audience... even if that audience was himself.

And, yeah, not too much more to say about Ennio Morricone In His Own Words. I said up front that this would be a brief review but the quality and thoroughness of the events, details and periods explored in these conversations is so rich and varied that, frankly, this is the closest thing you can get to a genuine autobiography by the man, I believe. As such, it’s a valuable addition to anybody interested in film music and, towards the end where the conversations get quite technical in terms of the art (it kinda lost me a little in the last fifth of the book because I have no musical training), I think it’s also has a lot of value for modern composers in relation to where Morricone’s own experiments with music took him. This one gets a big, solid recommendation from me and I was certainly as enlightened by the contents as I was entertained. A true window into the mind of one of the greatest composers of the 20th/21st century.

Fear - The Autobiography by Dario Argento

Silver Tongued Devil

Fear - The Autobiography
(Limited Collectors Edition 0184/1000)
by Dario Argento
FAB Press
ISBN: 9781913051051

There are, of course, a number of books on Dario Argento that have tried... and sometimes succeeded... in doing justice to a director who, for me, is one of the most interesting Italian directors around (more so than, say, the wonderful Fellini, the impressive Antonioni or the sublime Bava). A couple of my favourites would be Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento by Maitland McDonagh (I have the old edition with the ‘Opera’ cover) and any one of numerous ‘just that little bit better than the previous one’ editions of Dario Argento - The Man, The Myth & The Magic (as it’s currently subtitled) by the great Alan Jones. This look at him, however, is a little different to previous books exploring this iconic, cinematic figure.

This time it’s the turn of Argento himself to tell his own story and I snapped up a copy of the first edition English translation of this tome put out by FAB Press last year... which is a beautiful, limited edition hardback with silver edged pages (Argento translates as Silver in English), its own cloth strip bookmark and a nice, silver embossed image of The Bird With The Crystal Plumage on the cover, beneath a dust flap depicting the writer/director himself. This edition also has, I’m pleased to say, the great man’s signature on a book plate inside... this is the second time I think I’ve got a book with his signature in it... the other was one of the Alan Jones' editions, which Jones also signed for me.

Now, if you’ve been reading my more ‘bookish’ reviews on here for a while, you’ll know I find autobiographies a bit of a hit and miss affair. The worst ones leave you with none of the questions about the work of the author explored at all whereas, the best ones will be so well written and breezy that they will just leave you wanting more. Which is, of course, somewhat of the same thing... but I’ll take the speedy, witty read any day and, thankfully, that’s just what we get with Mr. Argento’s biography.

One of the things I noticed right away is that, while it covers all the usual things about growing up and the major relationships of the central figure... it never stays anywhere for very long and, although it certainly isn’t jumping around like some of these kinds of books (far from it), it certainly goes through things at a fair pace. Starting with Argento’s childhood and telling of how he used to hob nob with the film stars as a young ‘un in his parent’s photographic studios... it runs right through to where he is now in life (or where he was a few years ago at any rate, when the Italian edition was first published).

One of the things which surprised me is that he does so in quite a candid fashion. For instance, after a lovely forward by Alan Jones, the book starts off with a written snapshot from 1977 with Argento in his hotel room, waiting to see how the new film he is working on, Suspiria, is going to turn out. He is not shy in admitting his suicidal tendencies and, as he goes to throw himself from the hotel window, he can’t get past the dresser which he’s had placed in front of said windows to stop exactly this thing from happening. After this teaser, he then starts from the beginning of his life and goes through until, roughly two thirds of the way through the book, he catches up to this point and passes it.

He’s also not shy in mentioning various things about his love life with a variety of women over the years. Some of them are left unnamed (including his latest lover) and some of the more high profile ones, like Daria Nicolodi, who starred in many of his movies and gave birth to his second daughter, Asia Argento, are also included in his quite honest assessment of the state of things. Saying that, it seems to me that he’s never disrespectful of them and he certainly gives Daria full credit for helping him write and research Suspiria. He also, finally, tells of the misunderstanding around the central casting of the lead actress in that film, which pushed them apart for some time.

I found out, or perhaps was reminded, that while a voracious reader as a child his real first loves were the tales of Edgar Allan Poe and these certainly infused his imagination in his later career, I suspect. I also discovered that we have the same favourite episode of The Twilight Zone in common, so that’s nice (Time Enough At Last).

One of the problems with autobiographies of famous people, at least as I’ve found, is the tendency to shy away from talking about their work. Thankfully, Argento doesn’t do that and, although I was very much wanting more from his priceless anecdotes, he does manage to touch upon one or two little gems from most of the films and TV series in which he’s had a hand. So you’ll hear in his own words how he and Bernardo Bertollucci (both yet to start their real careers) worked with another of my favourite Italian directors, Sergio Leone, to write Once Upon A Time In The West. You’ll learn stuff like how the aquarium of the producer of The Five Man Army (which Argento wrote) inspired one of the ideas that manifested in The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, how much he and Tony Musante didn’t ‘get on’ working on that movie... as well as how much he did ‘get on’ with Michael Brandon on Four Flies On Grey Velvet and with David Hemmings on Deep Red (Profondo Rosso).

You’ll learn just how he got those intense colours on the actors faces in Suspiria, by shining light through velvet and just what things happened to him in real life to birth his ideas on movies like Tenebrae and Phenomena. I was spellbound as I read how he’d used lots of life size mannequins manipulated by neighbouring extras in the audience in Opera to keep the cost down, a story which reminded me of similar movie magic trickery used in both the chariot race in Ben Hur and the pod race in Star Wars - The Phantom Menace (cotton reels, if I remember the model I saw exhibited years ago correctly).

Above all, the book feels like it’s fresh and relatively unfiltered. He is, perhaps, a little less critical of his least successful films than I had suspected, given the candor which he shows in all the other aspects of his life but it doesn’t really harm the book at all. You just get a sense that it’s not that important to him... or, at least, to his public facing image. Ultimately, its a fun read, informative in the way he releases little nuggets of information about his work and also, I found out that he actually spent a day or two locked up in a jail cell (for something he didn’t do, I hasten to add). He even gives a little hope that there may be material enough left for a second book at some point (which would be nice). So, yeah, if you’re a fan of the work of Dario Argento and want to know a little more about the man behind the magic, a man who hugely popularised the Italian giallo movie in the wake of Mario Bava, then his autobiography, Fear, is something you should read as there are lots of little details about his life and work which you won’t easily find anywhere else. Definitely get this one onto your book shelves if you are of a mind to.

Foxy - My Life In Three Acts

Only Here For The Grier

Foxy - My Life In Three Acts
by Pam Grier and Andrea Cagan
Springboard ISBN: 978-0446548502

I first became aware of Pam Grier when I saw her in the films Foxy Brown and, my personal favourite of hers, Coffy. I later became aware of her in all kinds of films like Mars Attacks, Ghosts Of Mars and Tarantino’s Jackie Brown, loving the ‘strong woman’ type of character she portrayed in the majority of the films I’d seen her in. About a year ago I became aware that she’d written (with the help of Andrea Cagan) an autobiography, Foxy - My Life In Three Acts... so I managed to get a hold of a really good condition, ex-library copy of the now out of print hardback edition of her book.

Now as I’ve said before, some autobiographies are great and fascinating accounts of the writer’s life and, others... well, they aren’t all that. This one, as it happens, is absolutely all that and goes the extra mile too. It seems bizarre that one can find entertainment value in a series of anecdotes about a person’s life experiences, especially since Miss Grier has had her share of tough times over the years but, there you have it. This one blew me away and I couldn’t put the thing down. It’s fast paced, inordinately interesting and has a lot of unexpected surprises tucked within its pages.

I don’t know how easy it must have been for the writer to talk about the two rapes she suffered... once when she was six years old by a bunch of boys and another at the age of 18 in what I can only describe as... a bad date gone wrong... but it shows right from the outset that she’s not one to hide things away and mince words, that’s for sure.

The book is chaptered and then split into three sections (or acts, I guess) entitled The Early Years 1949-1970, ‘Fros and Freaks 1979-1989 and Finding The Balance 1990-present (where ‘the present’ is roughly ten years ago). And it’s filled with fascinating stuff and also demonstrates a good sense of humour when she refers to a car turning over on the motorway with her in it at the age of three as... her first stunt. Everybody in the car was just fine and without a scratch... apart from a goldfish being carried which was presumably thrown from its bowl.

I was surprised to hear that, between the ages roughly of about 6 and 8, because she was the daughter of an airbase father and so would be constantly moved around with the family, she came to live over here in the UK at Swindon for a couple of years. This would have been the early to mid-1950s when London and other places in England were still trying to recover from all the bomb damage of World War II. But she absolutely loved it over here by the sound of it. Where, in America, the whole family was segregated and treated like second class citizens because of the colour of their skin, here they were accepted and Pam’s education in those years is something she really seems to look on as some of the most valuable experiences of her life. Which is nice. I also smiled to myself when I learned her first movie at a cinema was Godzilla (the 1954 one so, my guess is she saw it about 1955 or ‘56 in its US version).

She doesn’t, like a lot of film-makers writing about their lives, give much specific detail about the actual making of her movies and, to be honest, most of them are not even mentioned... but she does have some nice anecdotes from some of them. So her early films with Corman and AIP where she was shipped out to the Philippines are something which, unlike certain other actors and actresses of the time, she viewed as valuable lessons because you couldn’t get that kind of education and experience out of a book. And talking about an education... she kind of fell into acting almost accidentally, it seemed. Her only interest in the opportunities that were thrown her way when she joined up with those AIP, low budget exploitation pictures was about saving the money for her college fund. She wanted to get more educated although, I have to say from her attitude and eloquence talking about how she learned to dissect things like classical music and jazz when she was around 7 years old, I’m not sure she was desperately in need of much extra educating.

The book also shatters some silly myths by revealing, for example, her strong friendship with Tamara Dobson (of the Cleopatra Jones movies), when the media were trying to turn them into rivals (as pretty much the two leading ladies of blaxploitation, is my guess). But even when she was shooting movies, in between jobs you’d find her working in a drug store or some such to just keep the money coming in for her college fund. Somewhere around the middle of the book, though, as she gets more and more successful and famous, the talk about the college fund stops although, as the book goes on, you realise she does appreciate the pursuit of a good education and she is always finding new things to learn about and enrich her life with.

The other thing you find out is about her various lovers over the years. In the span of the book, she has about five significant others. I’m not going to mention the last couple but there are some amazing things in the book about her first three, more famous ones.

Her first big love decided to take up the Muslim religion and revealed his new name to be Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Bruce Lee fans and basketball followers will surely know this tall guy). However, after attempting to study the religion in the interest that she could convert and become his wife... well, Pam didn’t exactly take to it and you can certainly see why (and if not she makes it crystal clear).

Second big love was the even more famous stand up comic Freddie Prinz, who I’d only heard of through his dying fairly young but he’s something of a comedy legend. Again, though, there seems to be a pattern of tragedy in the path of Mr. Grier’s love life at the time and they all, in one way or another, treated her quite badly (and certainly not just the famous ones in that respect, either).

Her third big relationship was Richard Pryor. There’s a gripping ‘three strikes and you’re out’ accounting of the final period of their relationship including Pam being diagnosed with some vaginal problems which turned out to be because Pryor had ingested so much cocaine by that point that his semen was impregnated with it. It’s entertaining but tragic when she recounts how performing oral sex on him would make her lips go numb for the amount of drug residue on him. I’m probably explaining that badly but, you know, read the damn book, it’s fantastic.

It tells a little bit about the lead in to working with directors like Tim Burton and the bizarre chance meeting with Quentin Tarantino which helped land her Jackie Brown (completely unexpectedly) and also the big, long period in her life when she was fighting off cancer (and was once again treated quite badly by a boyfriend because of it). Not to mention a good amount of time talking about a show she did for a while which I’ll now need to check out sometime called The L Word. And there’s always lightness mixed in with the darkness, like the time she was thrown out of a nightclub with John Lennon and a few others after Lennon started throwing punches around. There’s even a photo of the apology card he sent her the next day.

Perhaps my favourite story, though, is how her horse started galloping uncontrollably (she’s a pretty good rider) on the set in the Colosseum for the Corman movie The Arena. One of the many places she and the horse went hurtling destructively through was the set of a new Fellini movie being made at the same time. Fellini was delighted by the chance encounter to meet her (and she him, of course, she’s a pretty cool film appreciating lass too, it turns out) and they ended up spending that lunch period together.

Of course, that’s just my personal highlight gleaned from Pam’s rich and wonderful book. Other readers will have their own but, even though she never reaches all her dreams (romantically, at least), her epilogue leaves the reader with a certain sense that she has found some peace, optimism and enlightenment during the course of her life. Which is a good space to be in, I imagine. Honestly, I’ve got nothing bad to say whatsoever about Foxy - My Life In Three Acts. If you like the actress then you’ll surely want to read this as it’s both one of the breeziest but also one of the more substantial, in terms of the content it covers, of the celebrity autobiographies I’ve read over the course of my life. So glad I picked this one up. Absolutely brilliant and it turns out the paperback is still in print. Seriously worth investing some time in, if you haven’t done so already.

Face It

The Dagwood Stage

Face It
by Debbie Harry
Harper Collins ISBN: 9780008229429

I don’t read that many autobiographies. Not for any strange reason... it’s just that there are very few people I’d be interested in knowing more about and they’re usually the ones who don’t write autobiographies. However, when I found out that Debbie Harry, lead singer of the group Blondie (among other things), had just written a tome I was well on board and it went straight onto my Christmas list.

It’s funny... I was never much into pop music when I was a kid (Is it still called pop music and does Blondie’s US punk variant aesthetic apply here to pop?). I was... and still am, I guess... someone who prefers to listen to a good movie score. So I never really ‘followed’ Blondie when they were at the absolute height of their powers in the late 1970s... but their music was a frequent backdrop on all the radio stations and television shows when I was in my teens and something must have seeped in because, after I discovered pop music had more to offer than what was at face value, sometime in the mid-1980s, Blondie was one of the first groups (after The Beatles, Kate Bush and Simon & Garfunkel) who I decided to check out. Like a gazillion other people, I bought the old vinyl LP (and a little later, the CD) called The Best Of Blondie and it was, as far as I could tell, absolutely filled to the brim with some amazingly strong and melodic songs. There literally wasn’t a bad one on there (although, I admit it took me a while to get into Atomic) and seemed to me like a collection of fairly sophisticated songs. It wasn’t long before I explored some of their other albums and my favourite one, with also the best cover art, would have to be their Autoamerican album. I used to listen to that one a lot.

So here I am, having just finished Ms. Harry’s new book Face It and, as I’d kinda expected actually, it charmed the pants off me. This is a, more or less, chronological take on her life from childhood to the present but the structure, while certainly there, is a little looser and more flexible than some other autobiographies I’ve read. Debbie will think nothing of making a quick deviation here and there, jumping backwards and forwards in time to suddenly cover something which she feels needs to be... or maybe it would be more fun being... grouped together thematically with something else.

She seems to have lead an interesting life and the book is not, I’m happy to say, just a series of behind the scenes anecdotes to various concerts and recording sessions... these are here too but they take the form of ‘easy to swallow’ asides and it’s all gleefully mixed into the potpourri of her life in a way that is both jarring and complimentary 'both' at the same time. There are also little interpenetrating sections where various pieces of ‘fan art’ is showcased with introductory commentary by her and this, apparently, is where the title of this book comes in... since they mostly all depict her face.

Some of the movies she’s made such as Videodrome and Union City get a respectable amount of ink while others are sometimes just whispered in passing as she cruises past little pockets of her life which, as she says in her last chapter, leaves the audience... or readers, I guess... wanting more. I would have certainly liked to have learned something more about the making of a wonderful film she’s in called My Life Without Me so, if she writes a second volume of this anytime soon, I’ll be first in line.

So, yeah, the book is full of amazing facts and interesting attitudes to events that have happened to her in her time. For instance, the way she seems to take a rape/assault coupled with a robbery in her stride is perhaps a little telling of how comfortable and confident she is in her skin... many people would not be able to do that as seemingly lightly as she does here. There’s also a lovely moment where she reveals that she slept with actor Harry Dean Stanton a couple of times. The first word that sprang to mind when I read that little reveal was... “Legend!” Although I’m not sure if I meant that in regard to Debbie H or Harry D. On reflection... I think it pretty much meant both of them, to be honest.

There’s also the quirky and sometimes quite informative and intelligent side to her personae given room to thrive here too. For example, one chapter starts off with her explaining what she believes the phenomenon of ‘coincidence’ is actually about. Another chapter might concentrate almost totally on the usefulness of having thumbs... opposable ones at that. And, of course, sometimes what’s left almost unsaid in the book is what lingers most in the memory but, of course, as above... leave them wanting more.

Ultimately, this was a real breeze to read and, in places, quite thought provoking too. I got the feeling that the writer herself thought she was being a little too dark in places and has tried to compensate for that but, honestly, I think it’s a much lighter, fluffier book than she realises and, of course, that also makes it a very entertaining and most welcome tome to sit and ponder. Alas, my favourite song of hers, the one I always play first when I revisit her music... Here’s Looking At You... doesn’t seem to get a mention but that’s okay, the spirit of her vocals seemed to me infused into the pages so I didn’t really miss it as the writer sprayed her initials across the pavement, so to speak.

So yeah, Face It is a great read, something I’d definitely recommend to fans of Blondie and outsiders such as myself, who don’t have any idea of what its like to live in the ‘New York scene’ of various decades and who can, at least, get a flavour of what it was like there. I really enjoyed this little peek into Debbie’s world and all I can say is, I hope she gets the time and motivation to bring out a second volume some day. I’d definitely like to know a little more.