Welcome back to Scoring For Films with Vito Lo Re and Fabrizio Campanelli. He expected "and..." No, no, no, no... You know that every now and then our family grows, and since today we have to talk about a serious topic... ...we've invited a dear guest and a dear friend, Massimo Privitera. Welcome. Director of colonnesonore.net which is the encyclopedia of film music in Italy.

...artificial intelligence... ask ChatGPT... We have Massimo Privitera! Because gentlemen, this man here on my right is a living encyclopedia of film music. He helps us dissect this peculiar thing: parody... because parody is a serious matter!

I'll talk about many famous composers who at some point in their lives said: let's keep being serious but in a different way: through parody. But still with the same compositional class they had for the more serious films. We're talking about composers of absolute caliber. Shall we name one? Elmer Bernstein Oscar-winning... "The Ten Commandments"; "The Magnificent Seven"...

the one who changed the way to write music for Westerns. But above all... "Airplane!" By the way, Vito, who has never been asked to make people laugh with music? And it's not easy. We could anticipate that it's very, very difficult to convey laughter with music. In fact, none of the intelligent composers ever took the "easy" way of being almost ridiculous when writing music.

On the contrary, the more serious it was, the more ridiculous it turned out to be. The mechanism is this: Writing something grotesque, with the intention of being funny, can result in not being comedic at all!... On the contrary, these composers did something extremely serious, dramatic, which on those images turned out to be truly comedic. Let's start with the first insert. Classic parody film par excellence, "Airplane!" And here already... it's a clear reference...

Obviously, the reference is to "Jaws" The irony and comedy develop with the iconic quotation but applied to another context. And Bernstein now shows us his classic stylistic signature. The piece is beautiful... Here we hear the main theme but then there's also the love theme that is beautiful, in the style of Miklós Rózsa, like Alex North... But we can already see that something's not right. Because this is where the ironic mechanism develops, right?

With imperfections. There's a point in this score where he inserts an epic choir that at some point grows into a crescendo that goes "buah!!!" And so the comedy here is developed by Bernstein in contrast with the images. How? By oversizing the music... almost excessively... compared to the imperfection we were talking about, because there's imperfection.

The pilot, the captain who walks by... He has the captain's aura, but something's off... The movements, the lines... Yes, because he's telling you a catastrophic movie, when actually it's not... because then nothing really happens: there are people getting out of cars, leaving their luggage... Incredibly dramatic music in front of a scene where people are walking, strolling, chatting...

So, let's move on to another example from a very famous movie like... Young Frankenstein with beautiful music by the late John Morris, who passed away a few years ago. To me, an absolute genius. If you scroll through his filmography, you'll see he made almost exclusively parodies... But there's also the case of one of the most dramatic films in the history of cinema, the masterpiece by David Lynch: The Elephant Man. But why did Lynch choose John Morris?

Morris is the historic collaborator of Mel Brooks... Young Frankenstein... Blazing Saddles... Spaceballs... Why did he call him? Because Lynch loved Young Frankenstein and its main theme...

David Lynch fell in love with that theme and asked for something similar, with the same instrumentation for "The Elephant Man." So this is a classic mechanism: when you want to make a parody out of serious music, you take the same structure, the same instrumentation, often the same key or the same chord progressions and maybe change the melody. Because unconsciously, even if you don't recognize the theme, listening to the parody will still bring you - even if you don't recognize the theme - to that world. So you create a reference scenario to which the listener immediately connects that you can either contrast with the image or this time make imperfect in the musical construction of that quotation or iconic reference. So banalize the melody or break the orchestration by making the use of some instruments improbable. That is, if you will, one of the few mechanisms you can use within musical construction. Because if there's no reference to play with, it's very difficult for the music to generate laughter and irony.

When it does so without an iconic reference in terms of language style, stylistic element... very clear, where does it do so? It does so in onomatopoeia, up to the limit of Mickey Mousing. In very rare cases, they have used Mickey Mousing... For example, in "The Three Amigos", all the scenes where they run, trip... there's never Mickey Mousing...

That complete, total symphonic euphoria is always there; even if they fall or bump into a pole or a cactus... No, it's very serious: the height of symphonic grandeur. Speaking of symphonic grandeur, we have a typical example also with an Oscar-winning composer Maurice Jarre, who in "Top Secret"... what does he do?.. He wrote a multitude of soundtracks for war movies. At this point, he could have even put a tap dance, a musical number...

No. He reprises himself from "Is Paris Burning?" also in the more serious westerns, "Viva Villa" and many others; listen to what's in the background... There's the entire brass section charging, exaggerating... In this case, how is the contrast communicated? With the over-excitement of the music, which has a speed that is excessive compared to the action. I thought that here, Maurice Jarre might have even turned off the screen...

It could be... It doesn't seem far-fetched. And obviously, this push on the accelerator also contrasts with what? With the absurd and misplaced physicality of the protagonists who are obviously the result of wonderful casting... The only point where it lowers is under the dialogue. We made a dedicated video that you can find up here.

Here it is, during the dialogue, of course, it stopped so as not to hinder the comprehensibility of what the actors were saying. Since we're on the topic of action. We have one of the most parodied movie genres in the history of cinema: the spy movie... 007. The apex or... The nadir...

we reach it with Johnny English. Here, in the moments where there are dialogues, the music either calms down or is significantly lowered. And here we have a peculiarity. The music is by a composer I really like, Edward Shearmur, A student of Michael Kamen, always somewhat overlooked: Highlander, Lethal Weapon, and Die Hard. Edward Shearmur writes a very serious soundtrack, quoting in some cases the classic Bond theme, using the same historical guitarist, Vic Flick. In fact, if you listen carefully, the guitar riff he plays is exactly that one.

So here we take the same ingredients and mix them under, obviously, the physicality of the protagonist, which is caricatured, grotesque, and thus the gap widens more and more between what it should be and what it actually is. This film is written by the same screenwriters as the 007 films with Daniel Craig. There’s a bit of revenge going on... Robbie Williams, the famous singer, performs the opening song. A beautiful song that had been rejected for the Bond movie with Craig, and they put it here! Revenge, sweet revenge!

So if we want to briefly sum up the parody... perhaps we can sum it up with what we said earlier: Creating a gap between what it should be and what it is. So the reference to what it should be is given by the iconic reference, the quotation, by what our brain expects from a certain type of music and instead what actually is: with the mistake, the imprecision, or the contradiction. So these elements are what allow the use of this mechanism on a broader scale, which sometimes produces truly interesting effects. Yes, often the exercise is: you take the original score, change only the theme, and then, starting from the result, you remove and change other things. The DNA remains inside, but there's something that doesn't fit...

and that element triggers the ridiculous mechanism. Yes, and one peculiar thing about all parody soundtracks is that: inside, there must be some reference. For example, "Jaws" in "Airplane!" but not only that. There is always the use of some anthem, the American anthem, the Russian anthem, the Chinese anthem... But what I've noticed - even in "The Naked Gun" series - is that some element from Broadway musicals emerges: Cole Porter... George Gershwin...

National anthems are deliberately a low blow... you see a Chinese person and under it, you hear the Chinese anthem... it's really a cheap shot that you would never do in a serious film, but in a film like this, it's perfect. For now, let's stop the parody discussion here. Massimo will be back next week in another video. Specifically, which one?

Wait until next Thursday and you'll find out. In the meantime, if you haven't done so yet, subscribe to the channel, leave a like - only if you enjoyed the video! - and we'll see you next Thursday. Bye.