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C's soundtracks

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Jeff

Jeff

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Why has RC kept such a tight rein on the music? In the film BROKEN HEART"S CLUB there are several references to Karen particularily. Much like Cher's, Liza's, Judy's, "target audience" Karen is revered as the ultimate diva. However, the music is simply referred to. Perhaps it's catalog integrity?

Jeff
 
Thought I'd reply to an old post that had never had a reply! Some of their tracks have appeared since 2004 (Top of the World in Shrek 4 and Dark Shadows) and they've appeared on the official soundtrack albums for these films. Superstar appears to have been on the soundtrack album for Tommy Boy too. But it's a pity more don't crop up (and in a non-comedy context). It certainly helps to reach a new audience. I've discovered a few 'new' artists from watching films.
 
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I've often wondered this myself. They had another artist (Mary Beth Maziarz) re-record Carpenters tracks for "The Broken Hearts Club." The only sort-of official thing they used was Shonen Knife's "Top of the World" from the tribute album.

The same thing happened in "Boys on the Side." Mary Louise Parker's character talks about singing Carpenters songs in talent shows when she was younger, and the Carpenters are referenced a few times. The only time you hear any Carpenters music is a second of Mary Louise singing a line or two of "Close to You" acapella, and Whoopi Godberg singing a verse and chorus of "Superstar" while she plays her new piano. They filled that soundtrack with female singers to echo the focus of the film. Karen's voice would have fit nicely in there.
 
This is only a guess and I'm probably wrong but maybe Richard has never allowed it for fear of how the movie (or where ever it's being placed in) does not do well and flops. How will it affect the image or brand?
 
djn said:
In the film BROKEN HEART"S CLUB there are several references to Karen particularily.
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Great question, Jeff! And I wasn't posting back in 2004 (might have been one of the dreaded "lurkers" back then), or I would have replied sooner... Glad that Graeme revisited this topic!
Anyway, I really enjoyed this film when it came out. Much was made in the plot of a main character's enjoyment (obsession) of the Carpenters. It would only have been natural to feature their music, not remakes by other artists, not sound-alikes (if that's even possible), but the real deal! This film was, by no means, a blockbuster, but it was a quaint, interesting film that presented the Carpenters in a revered light. How many of those have been produced?
 
Jamesj75 said:
Anyway, I really enjoyed this film when it came out. Much was made in the plot of a main character's enjoyment (obsession) of the Carpenters. It would only have been natural to feature their music, not remakes by other artists, not sound-alikes (if that's even possible), but the real deal! This film was, by no means, a blockbuster, but it was a quaint, interesting film that presented the Carpenters in a revered light. How many of those have been produced?
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I love this film. On the DVD commentary track someone (not sure if it was the director, producer or writer) addresses this issue. It all came down to money. Broken Hearts Club was an independent film shot on a shoestring budget. Even the "name" actors in it worked for below scale. They really wanted to (and tried to) license the original Carpenters tracks, but they simply couldn't afford them.
 
If that's the case, sorta puts itself in perspective with regard to royalties. If it cost so much for an original Carpenters tune to be in a movie or commercial than Richard or the record company really do lose out on big money from all the bootlegs that surface from other countries and then add in all the years it's taken place that can add up to a lot of royalties lost to the artist. I guess with a bigger budget film it might not seem as much to pay the license fee.

It would be interesting to know how much it costs for say the original song Close to You to be featured in a movie. $50m $100m I really have no idea.

For instance in Michael Landon's last TV movie Karen sang the opening line to Rainy Days it was really her voice so how much would something like that cost for only 1 verse?
 
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A source writes of the Movie:
THE HEARTBREAK KID (USA 1972):
"Charles Grodin at his finest.
Also a brilliant example of how to direct comedy (by Elaine May).
Lots of wide shots and long scenes .
Written by Neil Simon -
and, it’s got the Carpenters’ ‘Close To You’ as it’s theme song. "
 
The Carpenters' Top Of The World,
as seen in the Tim Burton Movie
Dark Shadows,
reportedly cost $500,000. (Five hundred Thousand Dollars)
to secure from Richard Carpenter.
( I will locate the reference).
 
Maybe it's just soley a matter of money, but why would Richard allow certain movies to use one of their songs that basically make fun of it? He doesn't always know how it'll be used but whenever a Carpenters song is used in a movie it's always used in a jokey way like in "Starsky and Hutch" or "Dark Shadows" and movies like that. "Tommy Boy" really does use Superstar for great comic effect, and isn't as mocking.

It doesn't personally bother me but you'd think Richard would be interested in seeing which context it will be used in.

I'm doing an experimental film that uses their music as the entire soundtrack, and it's done with a dramatic purpose. It can't play at any real film festivals but thank goodness for the Internet as a way to show it once it's done.
 
Here is Tim Burton, regarding Dark Shadows,
"Burton also talks about how the film’s soundtrack of period pop was just as significant as the costume and set design."
“Setting it in 1972 was important,” he says, “We just went through all the music of that year and just doing that research, it reminded me of being…I must have been quite ill that year of ’72. I just remember being sick and having a fever and hearing all that kind of music on AM radio over and over again. That’s why it was so strange. It felt strange at the time and it still feels strange. That’s the weird thing about that. The quality of music, the kind of going through everything from really kind of cheesy pop to really kind of hardcore stuff, it was a weird year for music.”
Source:
http://www.thecinemasource.com/blog/interviews/tim-burton-interview-for-dark-shadows/
Here is the trailer for the film:
http://www.ew.com/article/2012/03/15/dark-shadows-trailer-johnny-depp-laughs
 
Chris-An Ordinary Fool said:
I never saw the movie, did they play the entire track or just a verse? For the entire song that seems kinda cheap but for a verse or 2 might be about right.
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Chris, they played "Top of the World" in its entirety (save for a bar of the ending instrumental) in Dark Shadows. And it was a pivotal scene in the film, as the family wanted to return their home, business, and family to their former glories. The positive, hopeful vibes of "Top of the World" were expressed in this scene, which also features Carpenters on a TV screen and Barnabas Collins shocked by Karen's presence in a box...

 
Chris-An Ordinary Fool said:
I guess with a bigger budget film it might not seem as much to pay the license fee.

It would be interesting to know how much it costs for say the original song Close to You to be featured in a movie. $50m $100m I really have no idea.

For instance in Michael Landon's last TV movie Karen sang the opening line to Rainy Days it was really her voice so how much would something like that cost for only 1 verse?
Click to expand...

I don't know how much it would cost to license a major hit for a full length motion picture, but I have a personal example I can share for some perspective. I produced a short promotional video for my work a few years back. It was for internal use only to be shown only once to about 7,000 employees at a company event. My VP wanted to use a favorite song of his as the background music for the video so I worked through our legal department to try and license it. It was a somewhat obscure techno song that he had on a dance music compilation and was not by any mainstream or well-known artist or writer.

The cost to license the recording to use in this video would have been $10,000. We ended up going another direction. (That was half my budget for the entire video!)

So, just based on that, I can see where licensing a well-known song by a major artist for a for-profit (box office, home video, etc.) motion picture that could potentially be seen by thousands (if not millions) of people would be extremely pricey. $500K - $1M a pop would not be surprising.
 
Thanks James for the link, I actually watched that for the first time while on my break at work and didn't have time to reply but thanks for the link. It was a bit odd for me to hear this song being played in a movie like this only because I've associated so many memories of this song over the years and none of it includes a "dark shadows" feel. :laugh:

However still cool that a Carpenters tune was used in any movie. I wonder what made them choose that film concert footage of Karen.

Thanks too Actorman for your info on costs for licensing music that helped me understand it a bit more.
 
I thought it was a rare funny moment (and not in the mocking way I half-expected) in a surprisingly unfunny movie. (It seemed to me they couldn't figure out if they wanted to be a campy movie or a horror movie ... and the compromise didn't really work for me. Very surprising, since Tim Burton is usually so good at this.) The scene marks Barnabas' first sighting of a TV, and he can't figure out how a miniaturized Karen Carpenter got in there. I loved his line, “Reveal yourself, tiny sorceress!” I always wondered if that was meant as a bit of a double-entendre, though the concert footage they used is from just before Karen's struggles with anorexia nervosa began.
 
byline said:
I thought it was a rare funny moment (and not in the mocking way I half-expected) in a surprisingly unfunny movie. (It seemed to me they couldn't figure out if they wanted to be a campy movie or a horror movie ... and the compromise didn't really work for me. Very surprising, since Tim Burton is usually so good at this.) The scene marks Barnabas' first sighting of a TV, and he can't figure out how a miniaturized Karen Carpenter got in there. I loved his line, “Reveal yourself, tiny sorceress!” I always wondered if that was meant as a bit of a double-entendre, though the concert footage they used is from just before Karen's struggles with anorexia nervosa began.
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It's actually "tiny songstress". It's odd that they used that footage because I think the movie is set in America but that was from Belgium in 1974, so it wouldn't have aired in America.
 
Ah, you are right! Sorry, I misremembered that line. I suspect they chose the song first, then used video footage to which they could get the rights. It might have been that they couldn't secure rights to anything similar that aired in the U.S. And frankly, unless you're a diehard Carpenters fan like us, most viewers probably wouldn't have known the difference.
 
byline said:
I thought it was a rare funny moment (and not in the mocking way I half-expected) in a surprisingly unfunny movie. (It seemed to me they couldn't figure out if they wanted to be a campy movie or a horror movie ... and the compromise didn't really work for me. Very surprising, since Tim Burton is usually so good at this.)
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I was a big fan of "Dark Shadows," the TV show. I was disappointed in the film because it was such a departure from the TV show. As you say, Byline, the camp and attempted humor just didn't work, nor did it appease fans of the original TV show. I, too, was worried about the use of the word "tiny" because it could be interpreted as a misguided, black-humor slam about Karen's anorexia nervosa, and that is certainly not funny. Still, I was very pleased that a Carpenters' standard (a #1 song at that), in its entirety (including video of the Carpenters), was used in a mainstream film.
 
byline said:
Ah, you are right! Sorry, I misremembered that line. I suspect they chose the song first, then used video footage to which they could get the rights. It might have been that they couldn't secure rights to anything similar that aired in the U.S. And frankly, unless you're a diehard Carpenters fan like us, most viewers probably wouldn't have known the difference.
Click to expand...

Oh, don't apologize! And your probably right about getting the US rights and that overseas was easier and that non fans wouldn't have known the difference in years of when it was performed. If you find that footage on YouTube all the comments talk about its use in Dark Shadows.
 
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