British film director Edgar Wright was on BB6’s A Month of Matinees program this weekend (pre-taped) and discussed a few interesting soundtrack details about his upcoming film, “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World.”
Most of the details we already know. Months ago we revealed that Beck was contributing to the album’s soundtrack as well as Japanese artist Cornelius. In fact, we already know what modern musicians are making the music for the band’s in the film. Beck is making the music for Scott Pilgrim’s punkish-alt-country band, Sex Bob-Omb, Metric is creating the music for the evil synth rockers The Clash At Demonhead,0rchestral rockers, Broken Social Scene are doing the noise bursts for the band Crash and the Boys (and Vulture confirmed all these too, btw).
So there’s one more “musical” piece missing from the puzzle. Until now (tiny little spoilers ahead). In the “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World” screenplay that made the rounds more than a year ago, one of the climaxes of the film features Micheal Cera’s Scott Pilgrim character and the band Sex Bob-Omb in a musical showdown vs. the Japanese twins Kyle and Ken Katayanagi. The Katayangi twins basically play crazy synths that attack Pilgrim and he fights off with his bass guitar.
So it sounds like Cornelius will be doing the music for the Katayanagi twins and that makes sense.
“In the film there’s one scene where [Beck and Cornelius] playing at the same time, they’re actually sort of battling each other.”
So yes, this can only be the scene we just described. And we’re glad to hear it’s still in the film. The draft of “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World” we read was quite excellent, but we heard grumblings from several hardcore fans that were upset with the fact that the script veered off-book (in fact, it mostly takes its cues from Scott Pilgrim 1 & 2, but then becomes essentially an original work after that that’s very much in the spirit of Bryan O’ Malley’s graphic novels). We had heard rumors that the leaked screenplay had changed drastically, but Wright talking about this fairly major scene suggests otherwise (again, as it wasn’t in the original books).
Wright also reveals that in the show that Dan “The Automator” Nakamura of Handsome Boy Modeling School and the producer of the seminal Dr. Octagon, Dr. Octagonecologyst album in 1996 (among several other albums like the first Gorillaz record, Deltron 3000, etc.) will also be contributing music to the soundtrack. Wright also plays Frank Black’s 1993 song “I Hear Ramona Sing,” which he says “which is one of the first songs that I thought of when I adapted the comic books of Scott Pilgrim, ’cause the lead character’s name is Ramona” (editors note: it’s actually a song about the Ramones), but he doesn’t actually say the song will be included on the soundtrack (though he does say it in the context of his “final plug” for the film, so it could be in there, since it is so important to him).
As previously reported, Nigel Godrich, the producer for Radiohead and several Beck records is working with Wright to put together the ‘Scott Pilgrim’ soundtrack and recording all the new material featured in the film (from the previously mentioned bands, Beck, Broken Social, Cornelius and Metric). Chris Murphy from Canadian rockers Sloan acted as a musical coach for the live performance sequences.
Unless you’re living under a rock, you’ve already heard of the stellar “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World” cast which features Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Johnny Simmons, Alison Pill, Mark Webber,Jason Schwartzmann, Mae Whitman, Kieran Culkin, Aubrey Plaza, Brandon Routh, Anna Kendrick, Brie Larson, Chris Evans and Satya Bhabha.
The picture should be in theaters in the summer of 2010 (update: August 27 in the U.K, sometime in August for the U.S.). Btw, here’s all the songs Wright played on the BBC radio show if you’re interested).