The Missouri Breaks Ell, It Seemed Like a Good Idea: Pair Seems to Work and Is Quirky in the Best Way
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The Missouri Breaks ell, it seemed like a good idea: Pair seems to work and is quirky in the best way. quired a different kind of score – smaller in two superstars coming off hugely There are no back stories, no Screenwriting scale, but one that would capture the char - Wsuccessful films – Marlon Brando, 101 plot contrivances – scenes just unfold, acters and the drama as well as the period whose last two films had been The Godfa - characters breathe and live, romance blos - and the feel of the film. And, of course, ther and Last Tango in Paris , and Jack soms in very unexpected ways, and it’s just Williams delivered a perfect score (albeit Nicholson, coming off Chinatown and One a whole lot of fun to watch because it’s atypical for him during this period), mostly Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – add in never predictable. It looks great, thanks to composed for guitars, harmonica, percus - screenwriter Thomas McGuane, a well-re - the beautiful photography of Michael Butler, sion, and a handful of other instruments. spected novelist turned screenwriter, with but even more importantly it has a musical Williams never wants for coming up with in - Rancho Deluxe and 92 in the Shade (based score that just brings the whole thing alive, stantly memorable and beautiful themes on his novel) to his credit, and top it off with thanks to the great John Williams. and The Missouri Breaks has a beauty in the great director Arthur Penn, who’d made its love theme – never overused, always the brilliant The Miracle Worker, Bonnie and Williams had started out as a studio musi - right. His main title music sets the mood Clyde and Little Big Man . Then hire some cian in Hollywood in the 1950s, where he with tense bass notes, and off-kilter har - of the best character actors working then – was known as Johnny Williams. He gradu - monica and guitar – it’s wonderfully evoca - Harry Dean Stanton, John McLiam, Randy ated to composing and began working tive and haunting. There are up-tempo, Quaid, Frederic Forrest, and a fetching, steadily in television on such shows as M infectious cues, and cues for Brando that strong-minded leading lady, Kathleen Lloyd Squad, Bachelor Father, Checkmate and are really off-kilter. Even though the long and how could it fail? others, then in film with such low-budget cue, “Clayton at the Wake,” was unused in But fail it did, with both critics and audi - programmers as Daddy-O, Because the finished film, one can only imagine that ences. Perhaps the expectation of acting They’re Young , and I Passed for White . He it made the already crazy Brando perform - fireworks between the two screen giants graduated to his first bigger budget film, ance seem even crazier. It’s Williams doing was too high. Perhaps the story of down- Bachelor Flat , which was directed by Frank what he did (and still does) better than any - on-their-luck-but-well-meaning rustlers, an Tashlin and which starred Terry-Thomas, one, and it’s a score that’s completely imperious rancher who hangs rustlers just Tuesday Weld, and Richard Beymer. After unique to him. as soon as look at them, and a regulator that, he continued in TV with Wagon Train, hired by the rancher to take care of the Alcoa Premiere, Lost in Space and even There was an LP release at the time of the rustlers and one in particular, just didn’t ap - Gilligan’s Island , as well as films like Gidget film – that was a re-recording, and Williams, peal to audiences in 1976. Perhaps critics Goes to Rome, Diamond Head, The Killers, as he did frequently, arranged the music dif - and audiences just weren’t prepared for None But the Brave, John Goldfarb, Please ferently than the film, to work as a cohesive Brando’s outrageous, outlandish and out - Come Home, The Rare Breed, How to thirty-six minute album. That LP release sized performance, surely one of the odd - Steal a Million, The Reivers , and many oth - was issued on CD, first by Ryko, who added est in movie history. Or perhaps the timing ers. He was working constantly, had already three bonus tracks from the original film was just off for an iconoclastic western with been nominated for Oscars (for Valley of cues – the first time those had been heard no real heroes and not much plot. the Dolls, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, The Reivers, outside the film (although, interestingly, Images, The Poseidon Adventure – very those three cues contained no music that But thanks to TV and home video, films like few years went by without his name ap - wasn’t in the re-recording) – and then by The Missouri Breaks just refuse to go away. pearing in the nomination list), and in 1972 Varese Sarabande. People who missed it at the time of release he won his first Oscar for his work on the were obviously intrigued by the cast and film version of Fiddler on the Roof . For this CD release, we are really pleased writer and director – so, the film was dis - to present all of the original film cues for the covered and people began to reassess it, His cache continued to grow – he began very first time – their world premiere re - and somehow over the years it has become what would be the greatest composer / di - lease – from the original session masters. a cult favorite. People have come to em - rector relationship in the history of film It’s leaner and meaner than the re-record - brace the pleasures of the film and appre - when he scored The Sugarland Express for ing, and a completely different listening ex - ciate Nicholson’s wonderfully subtle Steven Spiel-berg. His three blockbuster perience. A handful of the cues went performance, and yes, even appreciate hits, The Poseidon Adventure , Earthquake unused but we’ve included everything for Brando’s colorful, unpredictable, and com - and The Towering Inferno made him even this release. And obviously as happens in pletely wacky approach to regulator Robert better known. And then came Jaws . And almost every film, some of the cues were E. Lee Clayton. suddenly John Williams was at the top of shortened or moved around in the film itself. everyone’s list. He won the Oscar for that We also are including the original LP pres - Brando is, of course, the stuff of legend. score, which was iconic the instant it was entation but we’ve gone back to the original The scuttlebutt at the time of filming was heard by audiences. It was his first Acad - album masters so we could be at the origi - that director Penn just gave up and let emy Award for original score. His first post- nal source for the best possible sound. Brando do whatever he wanted, because win score was for Alfred Hitchcock’s final there was no controlling him. He improvised film, Family Plot . And then came The Mis - So, here, at long last, are the original film a good deal of his role, came up with its souri Breaks . cues for The Missouri Breaks . They’ve been oddities, which included an accent that kept a long time coming, but we hope you’ll find changing in every scene, from Irish to Williams had already done big, brash, out - they’ve been worth the wait. American to British, and even appearing in doorsy Americana before with The Reivers a granny dress for no discernable reason. and The Cowboys . But The Missouri — Bruce Kimmel But all these years later, the whole film just Breaks wasn’t big and brash, and so re -.