QT Talks About Music in Movies

Quentin Tarantino Interview from "The Tarantino Connection" movie soundtrack sampler

EXCERPT! THIS IS NOT THE COMPLETE INTERVIEW!

Quentin Tarantino about music in movies.

From the booklet of the Soundtrack-collection: "The Tarantino Connection"

"One of the things I do when I am starting a movie, when I'm writing a movie or when I have an idea for a film; is, I go through my record collection and just start playing songs, trying to find the personality of the movie, find the spirit of the movie. Then "boom" eventually I'll hit one, two or three songs“ or one song in particular, oh this will be a great opening credit song.

Because to me the opening credits are very important because thats the only mood time that most movies give themselves. A cool credit sequence and the music that plays in front of it, or note played, or any music“ whatever you decide to do“ that sets the tone for the movie thats important for you.

So Im always trying to find what the right opening or closing credit should be early on when Im just even thinking about the story. Once I find it that really kind of triggers me in to what the personality of the piece should be what the rhythm of this piece should be.

You dont even have to use music it could just be silence, all right! But thats important, that, in some ways is like the rhythm and more or less the personality that youre trying to project in this film.

Having "Misirlou" as your opening credits is just so intense it just says "you are watching an epic, you are watching this big old movie just sit back". Its so loud and blearing at you, a gauntlet is thrown down that the movie has to live up to; its like saying "We're big!".

Thats one of the things about using music in movies thats so cool, is the fact that if you do it right, if you use the right song, in the right scene; really when you take songs and put them in a sequence in a movie right, its about as cinematic a thing as you can do. You are really doing what movies do better than any other art form; it really works in this viscerat, emotional, cinematic way thats just really special.

And when you do it right and you hit it right then the effect is you can never really hear this song again without thinking about that image from the movie. I dont know if Gerry Rafferty necessarily appreciated the connotations that I brought to "Stuck in the middle with you" there is a good chance he didnt....'