Our features on the music of Wes Anderson – and the music that doesn’t appear on the soundtrack CD’s – end with 2004’s “The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou” (Earlier this week we looked at “Bottle Rocket,” “Rushmore” and “The Royal Tenenbaums“)
Liner Notes: One of the many interesting stories for this film is the use of Sven Libaek‘s instrumental music. Anderson became aware of Libaek because Australian actor Noah Taylor (who played the troupe’s physicist/music composer Vladimir Walodorsky) gave the director the soundtrack CD for the 1974 Australian oceanography film, “Inner Space,” which the Norwegian Libaek composed (and William Shatner narrated) with a note that said he should use the music in the film. Anderson not only did that, but he and music supervisor Randall Poster also acquired the entire body of Libaek’s work and used them as half the voice of Taylor’s characters music compositions (the other half were the Casio-esque temp pieces that Mark Mothersbaugh composed).
According to the DVD commentary track when Anderson first thought of the Casio-esque music in the film, he thought of the ’70s proto-electro duo Suicide. Anderson actually wrote some of the scripts while on the couch of Mothersbaugh L.A. studio while the composer and he would work on the film’s tone and tenor.
Who the shit is Kingsley Zissou – Extra Credit Trivia: The score cue “Let Me Tell You About My Boat” by Mothersbaugh contains the melody of “Scrapping & Yelling” (from the “Royal Tenenbaums” soundtrack) played backward (a “musical palindrome” Mbaugh calls is).
Esteban Was Eaten! – The Brazilian Connection: The other notable thing about the ‘Life Aquatic’ score is the 11 David Bowie compositions that were interpreted by Brazilian singer Seu Jorge. who acts like a Greek chorus lead who comments on the movie’s action. Many of Jorge’s Bowie renditions were used on the soundtrack CD, but not all of them made the cut. Interestingly, Anderson never knew if the covers Jorge was recording were entirely faithful interpretations of Bowie’s lyrics and it turns out they weren’t.
“I looked to the [characters] in the film and to my life, and I created the songs,” Jorge told MTV of his tweaked-lyrical Portuguese-language versions. In fact, when Anderson first asked Jorge to reinterpret the songs, the singer said it wasn’t a problem, but then quickly bought the CD’s as he had never heard those particular Bowie songs before. “It’s a different culture in Brazil,” he said. “We only know ‘Let’s Dance.’ ”
“I thought it would be funny for someone to sing to the crew. And why not David Bowie songs? Then I made it an international ”Benetton” crew, and it turned out one actor was also a pop star in Brazil. So it snowballed,” Anderson told EW in May 2005. In the aforementioned MTV interview, Anderson said he had tried to use some Bowie tracks in “Rushmore” but he couldn’t make them fit.
Can you hear the Jack Whales singing? A year later an entire album of Jorge’s ‘Aquatic’ Bowie covers were released including the lesser-known “When I Live My Dream” from the David Bowie/Deram Anthology years (pre-Space Oddity; an era that Bowie would mostly have his fans forget – some Bowie covers entirely cut from the film were also included on said CD including the iTunes only “Space Oddity” bonus track).
Hey Intern, Get Me A Campari – Movie Music: Most of the notable songs from the film were used on the soundtrack minus Sigur Rós‘ “Starálfur” which was played at the film’s climax when the crew encounters the Jaguar Shark that ate their beloved Esteban (Seymour Cassell). Personally, the Joan Baez/Ennio Morricone track “Here’s To You” (originally from the 1971 film “Sacco e Vanzetti“) and the use of Scott Walker’s “30th Century Man” is our favorite musical moments in the film.
Flotsam & Jetsam Miscellaneousness Classical Influences: For “Rushmore” Anderson and Mothersbaugh looked to Vivaldi, For ‘Royal T’s’ it was French Impressionism and Ravel and for ‘Aquatic’ it was Bach.
The Rushmore connection: Noah Taylor’s character in “Flirting,” an early ’90s Australian film with him and Nicole Kidman, was originally the type of character that Wes Anderson wanted “Rushmore’s” Max Fischer to be like – lithe and pasty white. They rethought the character when they met the shorter and slightly bulkier Jason Schwartzman. The wrestling referee in “Rushmore’s name is Wally Wolodorksy, Taylor’s character’s last name in ‘Aquatic’ is also Wolodorsky.
Val and Ron Taylor, the married duo behind the “Inner Space” series, were the world’s leading shark observers and were used extensively by Steven Spielberg for “Jaws.”
Trailers: Aside from “Bottle Rocket” – where Wes was still finding his cinematic voice – all Anderson trailers thus far used music from the film whence it came, but the ‘Life Aquatic’ trailer jumped this tradition using New Order‘s “Ceremony” (also used in “Marie Antoinette,” watch scene here) and Bowie‘s “Starman” (which is only in the film via Seu Jorge’s acoustic version). The film also didn’t use any Rolling Stones songs, so maybe breaking (some of) the Anderson rules and conventions was part of the idea (though let’s face it, not many were broken here).
New Order – “Ceremony”
Steely Dan: Though Steely Dan had ironically not produced any recent work of discernible quality, it did not stop them from writing their “open letter to Wes Anderson,” admonishing him for what they perceived to be his successive dip in quality since “Bottle Rocket.” (The complaint was written around the time “The Darjeeling Limited” was first announced) The letter was generally observed as nothing more than a desperate attempt at attention.
Fat Lies: Entertainment Weekly reported that a boxset of Anderson’s soundtracks was to be released around the same time the ‘Life Aquatic’ DVD was released, but this obviously never happened.
The Final Word: “[Wes] is the mastermind behind the song choice of his films. He takes such care that, I think that’s why he soundtracks get such a critical response,” Mothersbaugh said.
*Further pieces of trivia and references that we researched are here.