Tone-Deaf Tinseltown: Seeking Recognition for Original Soundtracks

As the calendar turns to November, the entertainment industry gears up its marketing machine to promote talent that will hopefully spur big holiday sales and resonate in the popular culture long enough to gain accolades at the major winter awards ceremonies (the Golden Globes, Oscars, Grammys). For cinephiles, this is therefore the time of year to anticipate an advertising blitz unleashed by the movie studios promoting their most critically acclaimed films, directly politicking for Academy Award nominations through "For Your Consideration" (FYC) ads in trade publications. By contrast, for audiophiles, the Oscar campaign season (which unofficially began a week ago) has dwindled in importance over the past fifteen years--a development that I find lamentable since the erosion of the unique cultural platform for pop music created by the Oscars is hardly the fault of the musicians, songwriters, and composers that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) seeks to honor each year. In particular, the Academy Award for Best Original Song has suffered in reputation, and what was once a show-stopping, highly forecasted moment is now treated like an amusing subplot on Oscar night.

Perhaps the explanation is that the film industry simply cares insufficiently about the idea of the original motion picture soundtrack to make it an integral part of any movie, not to mention movies that are expected to contend for awards. The economic success of recent best-selling movie soundtracks like 2007's Music from the Motion Picture "Juno" obscures the fact that they contain few original songs beyond the film's incidental or orchestral score. Such a strategy would have been unimaginable in Hollywood only a decade ago, as the biggest would-be blockbusters of the 1990s stocked their soundtracks with commissioned pieces from a mix of both high-profile and up-and-coming musicians. More recently, however, an original movie soundtrack has been eschewed in favor of amalgamations of classic radio staples, retro '80s tunes, and forgettable modern rock--not just in summer "popcorn" movies but also in films across the board. The first wave of FYC advertisements for 2008 appears to support this theory: the whimsical ad (see image left) taken out in Variety by Disney, an entity with a long track record of scoring Best Original Song nominations and wins, for the consideration of Wall-E omits any mention of its soundtrack centerpiece, Peter Gabriel's "Down to Earth," already the recipient of Best Original Song laurels at the 2008 World Soundtrack Awards. That any studio would summarily ignore an easy-pickings category like Original Song is puzzling given that studios spend hundreds of thousands of dollars sweating out their awards-season ad campaigns, precisely because an Oscar win can be, according to the recent statements of a "specialist awards PR tactician" in the Guardian, "worth millions in publicity."

The Academy itself may be beginning to recognize the potential obsolescence of the Original Song competition in the current climate for film music, overseeing a change in eligibility rules. The 2005 ceremony boasted an embarrassing three nominees in the category, indirectly resulting in the approval of three nominated songs each from the films Dreamgirls and Enchanted in 2006 and 2007, respectively, to mask the supposed dearth of worthy entries. For the 2009 event, AMPAS has decreed that no given film is allowed more than two song nominations in a stated "attempt to level the playing field." However, this change is having little effect on increasing the buzz associated with the category and soundtracks in general. Prognostications for music Oscars tend to be limited to a pre-emptive crowning of Bruce Springsteen by over-eager bloggers for his theme to The Wrestler, a movie scheduled for release in December. By all early (and perhaps unreliable) accounts, it is exactly the type of original soundtrack song that defined the field in the late 1980s and 1990s: a specially authorized track from an established artist written and performed through an affecting emotional lens but of little consequence to the plot of the movie.

These new rules hopefully signal an effort to include more variety in the field of Original Song nominees, which means desirable national exposure for more musicians. Yet one cannot help feeling that, in this case, the award-show pundits and AMPAS are hitching their wagons to a falling star. Premature plaudits for what very well may be a superlative new Springsteen track are nonetheless indicative of a severe cultural myopia regarding movie music. The lukewarm attitude from journalists like the Los Angeles Times' awards specialist Tom O'Neil towards the nomination hopes of "Another Way to Die," the newest James Bond theme from the upcoming film Quantum of Solace (see image right), is startling given that the Bond film franchise is one of the last cinematic institutions to emphasize the original movie soundtrack and place it front and center, if only for a few minutes during the opening credits. Furthermore, a notable composition like Huey Lewis and the News's title song for the 2008 summer comedy Pineapple Express is likely to be left out in the muddled world of Best Original Song nominations. This is not only because of the song's drug-referencing subject matter, but also because its self-referential lyrics and direct connections to the film's plot are a drastic departure from the general nature of nominated songs, which tend to address their associated films abstractly (and often generically) through theme or mood.

Sound can be taken for granted in movies, but many films are remembered specifically for their attention to combining soundtrack and image in ways that exhilarate the viewer or clinch the emotional impact of a particular scene. Unfortunately, one of the best tools in cinema's aural arsenal--the original song written for film--is a struggling art form garnering little respect from entertainment industry authorities like the AMPAS. Perhaps the notion of a star-studded album of music created for a specific film is hopelessly outmoded, but it is not hard to imagine a minor comeback for soundtracks in the realm of the digital single, an appealing option to a casual music buyer due to its convenience, value, and instant gratification. And while more Oscar recognition is not the only way to validate the merits of the original film soundtrack, it is undoubtedly a crucial element in convincing the public that movies are supposed to be a feast for the ears as well as the eyes.