EDGAR WRIGHT CURATES - 'PHANTOM' IN LONDON 9/29
MEANWHILE, COHEED AND CAMBRIA PREMIERE THEATRICAL NEW SONG INFLUENCED BY 'PHANTOM'Genesis Cinema in London presents a day of films this Saturday (September 29th) curated by
Edgar Wright:
Top Secret!, Phantom Of The Paradise, After Hours, and
The Sentinel. Here's what Wright says about
Phantom Of The Paradise in the program's notes: “I will go to the grave with the firm opinion that of the two horror musicals distributed by Fox in the mid 70’s, this is the better movie, twice as good as
Rocky Horror.
Brian De Palma goes all out on his neo gothic Faustian music biz satire. Brilliantly played by
Bill Finley, Jessica Harper, Gerritt Graham and the marvelously evil
Paul Williams (who wrote the whole score), this is cinematic gold right down to the best end credits song ever.”
Of
Martin Scorsese's
After Hours, Wright notes: "Someone once wrote that ‘Edgar Wright must have learned everything he knows from the direction in
After Hours.’ That’s not totally true, but it isn’t too far off. This film is one that beguiled me as a teen and continues to dazzle. It’s amazing to see Scorcese at the peak of his powers direct the hell out of a small all-in-one-night comedy. Fun fact: 2nd camera assistant,
David Dunlap went on to be my Director Of Photography on
Shaun Of The Dead."
COHEED AND CAMBRIA - "OLD FLAMES" & "UNHEAVENLY CREATURES"
Meanwhile, Coheed and Cambria premiered a new song today. "Old Flames" is the fourth track to be released from the band's forthcoming album, Vaxis – Act I: The Unheavenly Creatures. Last month, the band's frontman Claudio Sanchez told Rolling Stone's Ryan Reed that Phantom Of The Paradise was an influence:
I have to ask about “Unheavenly Creatures,” the title track. I can’t think of another band that mixes prog, metal, hard-rock, power-pop and post-hardcore in that way. Do you recall how you put that one together?
I wrote two songs together, “Old Flames” and “Unheavenly Creatures.” I think a little bit of “Old Flames” inspired “Unheavenly Creatures.” I was inspired by this Brian De Palma movie Phantom of the Paradise. It’s basically a Seventies version of Phantom of the Opera, a movie musical. That makes sense. Several of these songs are super theatrical, like “Old Flames” and even “The Gutter.”
With “Old Flames,” I was trying to write something that sounded a bit more Fifties. I just sat behind my digital piano in my living room and constructed the opening piano sequence. I wrote it from there on piano — it wasn’t written on guitar. To me, it had a pretty powerful chorus. After writing that song, that put me in this mindset of writing that sort of material. I’d written “True Ugly” and “Black Sunday,” so I was in this Coheed pop idea. So when I started “Unheavenly Creatures,” I took out this Roland boutique one-oscillator synthesizer, the SH-01A — it’s a very easy-to-use synth that has a very fun sequencer on it. I just punched in a bunch of notes and created this very long sequence and played it back. It was just by chance. I was just trying to create something. Every now and then, I’d hit the wrong note and have to start over. It was fun to put together. When I played it back, it was like, “Oh, this is so magical to me!” And that’s how the chords started to come together. Those were the first two songs Atlas started to gravitate toward. He’s all about the record, but especially those two — with “Old Flames,” I played the chorus like three times, and he’s already singing it as I’m constructing it. I’m like, “Maybe I should go down this path.” He’s a kid! He doesn’t care about anything but whether it sounded good to him. Then I made my way into “Unheavenly Creatures,” and the same thing started to happen. I was like, “Are you telling me you want a production credit on this, son?” In a way, it was like entertainment for him. As I was constructing these songs that were a little more melodically friendly.