Transcript
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Mark Kermode (0:33)
Hi, this is Mark Kermode. Thanks for downloading this Kermode on Film podcast or if you're watching on the YouTube channel, thanks for watching us. I am joined once again by Jack Howard.
Jack Howard (0:41)
Hello.
Mark Kermode (0:41)
We are upstairs at the glamorous Sun Pub in London's busy West End. And this is episode two of our Eyes Wide Shut special. In the last episode, when we'd both gone back and watched the film again, we established that actually, neither Jack nor I like Stanley Kubrick's last film.
Jack Howard (0:57)
Yeah, it wasn't a particularly balanced argument. We very much on the same team in this one.
Mark Kermode (1:01)
But what we decided for this episode, we're going to answer the question of why don't we like it? So, Jack, I am relieved that having both revisited Eyes Wide Shut, we are on the same page. I mean, I have to say, watching it again, as I said, I just found it immensely reassuring that I hadn't completely fudged it the first time around. I stand by all the criticisms I made of it the first time.
Jack Howard (1:23)
I don't think I hate it quite as much as you do.
Mark Kermode (1:26)
I don't hate it.
Jack Howard (1:27)
Okay.
Mark Kermode (1:27)
I don't hate it. And actually, in order to be balanced, let me tell you a few things that I think are good about it, okay? I think that the use of music is pretty remarkable. And I think that Jocelyn Pook's work on it is astonishing. I just wrote a book, Surround Sound the Stories of Movie Music, which I wrote with Jenny Nelson, available wherever you get your book, wherever you get your books. And actually, one of the films that we use as a soundtrack selection is Eyes Wide Shut and specifically Jocelyn Pook's work on it. I'll tell you a story that we repeat in that book, which I think is kind of a way into the film. When Jocelyn Pook got the assignment, what happened was that they were shooting the party scene, the Masine, and Stanley Kubrick had heard a piece that Jocelyn Pook had written and recorded called Backwards Priests, which was the sound of Romanian Orthodox priest service being played backwards, like really kind of weird and sort of chanting. So he had got in touch with her and said, I'd like you to work on the film for me. And she said, you know, Great. You know, Stanley Kubrick. And so she did some work on that piece, and then she wrote some other music, including the. The Naval officer piece, which is very, very important. And obviously he used other music as well, as Kubrick always does. Ends up using existing pieces of classical music. But what happened was that Justin told this story that she was only allowed to see the scenes that her music was being used in. So they would send a car with a videotape, as it was back then, of the scene that she would be writing for, and she would have to write for it. And as always was the case, she wrote more music than got used. But, you know, a fair amount of her music gets used. I think it is the backbone of the school. And at some point, she had many conversations with Kubrick and she found him a brilliant collaborator. Said he knew classical music inside out. He really knew what he was doing. She said to him at one point, you have to. You have to let me see the context of these things. Firstly, I need to know the context of them because I need to know the context within the story. And secondly, I need to know what other pieces of music you're using because I need to know how my. My music relates to it or counterposes it or mirrors it. Gradually, over the course of a long relationship, Kubrick sort of relented and allowed her to see more of the movie. But at the beginning, the lockdown on it was so total that literally she was only allowed to see the individual pieces that she was working on.
