Martin Scorsese - 0, Three 6 Mafia - 1
A newsletter in which I discuss the chaotic but perfect use of music in the films of Marty S
The final days of 2020 are here. I, for one, am impressed that we as a society have made it through the continuous tumult this year has brought. See picture below for conclusive evidence that satanic forces are indeed at work here.
This last stretch of December is always a strange time, but I sort of live for it’s predictable chaos. Christmas is over, and this year I’m pretending New Year’s Eve is just any other melancholy evening where my parents convince me to watch a mediocre movie made before 1995. See previous newsletter for my controversial thoughts on Citizen Kane. There’s nothing for me to “do”, per say, so that frees up a lot of extra space and time for me to be random. I’ve eaten a grilled cheese for lunch for the past four days, and I may just eat one again today. Yesterday, I didn’t want to wait in the long line at the grocery store, so I went home and looked at my phone while sitting down instead. It was boring and ultimately, gave me a headache.
So what’s on my mind this week? It’s not the episode of The Sopranos I’ve inexplicably seen six times where White Rabbit plays (I could write a dissertation on the use of this song in tv shows – It would be called “From Handmaid’s Tale to Dash and Lily – How Jefferson Airplane Has Transcended both Time and Space”), or the two movies from the George Clooney mini marathon I held for myself last week (The Descendants and Michael Clayton, both remarkable).
No - it could only be the thing that I think about at least 4 times per week; the thing that keeps both Jordan Belfort and me up at night; that is, the needle drop of Everlong in The Wolf of Wall Street.
It wasn’t until a fairly recent rewatch that I noticed this jarring song choice in the middle of the film. Martin Scorsese, say it with me, makes choices. I do not know enough about filmmaking to comment on his directorial style with any authority, but I have always found the music choices in his movies to be fascinating. The man has used Gimme Shelter in three different movies, set in three different decades. That is, literally, the definition of chaotic good. According to Wikipedia, a character with chaotic good “acts as his conscience directs him with little regard for what others expect of him.” Fred and George Weasley are shaking in their little wizard boots.
A quick google of the key terms “Everlong, Wolf of Wall Street” will lead you to articles (loosely defined) with titles such as, “20 Strange Soundtrack Choices” or “Wolf of Wall Street’s use of Foo Fighters…really?!”
They will tell you something that doesn’t matter but also matters a lot. Everlong, released in 1997, on an album I don’t care about, is a song that I like, in a way that I can’t tell is ironic or real. The Wolf of Wall Street, released in 2013, is a film that I love and appreciate. I’m not fucking leaving, etc. The scene in question is right after Jordan Belfort marries Margot Robbie’s character - which happened irl around 1991. If we’re thinking of the universe the movie is set in as the same one that we currently live in, then this song did not exist at the time the scene is taking place. Now, I’m sure we can point to many, many instances of continuity errors like this, whether they are artistic choices or otherwise. But - this movie is based on a book, which is based on somebody’s real life. Ergo, it is real life! So I don’t buy the obvious artistic choice claim that say, Cat People by David Bowie playing in Inglorious Basterds has.
Play along with me for a second here. The way I see it, there are three scenarios as to how Everlong ended up in this movie.
1. Marty S didn’t know about this timeline error
2. Marty S knew but didn’t care
3. Marty S both knew and cared but he thought the song was so perfect, so important to this movie and its narrative flow, that he put it in anyway.
Truly all three scenarios make me so happy.
My Scorsese fascination can be traced back to an exact moment in my childhood, way before I’d seen any of his violent and drug riddled masterpieces.
The year was 2006. Jon Stewart was hosting the Academy Awards. Crash was about to win best picture, and even as an 11-year-old I found this unacceptable. I would not see Brokeback Mountain until a few years later, but the consensus now is that the film was robbed (I concur, and Heath Ledger remains my number one celebrity crush based on looks, general vibe, and 10 Things I Hate About You).
The best original song category comes up, and who wins but Memphis rap group Three 6 Mafia, for a song entitled “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp.” Wild times, getting wilder still. They give an enthusiastic speech to the general amusement of all the movie stars who seem sort of mad about everything.
Then, it happens. Jon Stewart utters the following words -
“For those of you who are keeping score at home, I just want to make something very clear: Martin Scorsese, zero Oscars; Three 6 Mafia, one.”
In a stroke of genius camerawork, they pan to Marty’s face and he gives a look which I can only describe as “distraught but smiling through it.” I cannot find this clip anywhere, and the only real evidence I have that this moment actually happened is the fact that my brother remembers it too.
I think about his despondent little face and his incredible eyebrows and wish I could tell him it would all be okay - his time is coming. Just one year later, he will win the whole show with a little film called The Departed, which is so unhinged yet so on the nose it makes me want to scream. It also happens to be one of my top 10 favorite movies.
Regarding Everlong, I think the closest thing we will ever get to an answer for the questions “HOW?” and “WHY?” is reading between the lines of the quotes below.
About the music in Goodfellas, his collaborator said Chris Brooks said,
I asked him early on how did this come about and he said he knew every one of those songs two years before he shot a frame of film. He knew what was going to be in the film. So that was really it. It was all him. There was no music supervisor on the film.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Scorsese himself answered questions about his philosophy on music in movies.
THR: Let's jump ahead a little bit. On 2006's "The Departed," you included a Roy Buchanan song, his rendition of "Sweet Dreams," over the end credits. Did that come directly from you?
Scorsese: That's a song I've been trying to find a place for since the middle of the '70s. Paul Schrader played it for me once, "Sweet Dreams" by Patsy Cline. I loved the song. I used it in "Casino," and I used Patsy Cline's version in "The Departed," in the body of the film.
I know, intellectually, that these quotes are about songs used in different movies. But I can’t help but wonder… Did Martin Scorsese hear the song Everlong for the first time in 1997? Perhaps he was a huge Nirvana fan, and was so excited to see what Dave Grohl was up to. Maybe he loved the song so much, that he knew he just had to use it in a movie someday. He sat on it for almost sixteen years, then finally found it a home on Jordan Belfort’s yacht. Is this how it happened?
Probably not, but just the possibility of it makes me feel something. And at this point in the year, that’s all I really need.