In a recent interview with the A.V. Club, Will Oldham, aka Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, sounded off on film directors (especially “that Darjeeling guy”) who treat movies as vehicles for their own personal mixtapes. On Wes Anderson, Oldham ranted: “His completely cancerous approach to using music is basically, ‘Here’s my iPod on shuffle, and here’s my movie.’” He goes on to say that “it’s a crime not to give people who are good at making music for movies the work” and that when filmmakers ask him to license one of his songs, his usual response is “Regardless of what you’ve been doing, my song doesn’t belong in your movie.”
Speaking at Amoeba Music in Hollywood today (via Pop & Hiss), Quentin Tarantino described his philosophy to soundtracking Inglourious Basterds and let’s just say that Will Oldham music probably won’t be appearing in any future Tarantino projects. “I hate that crap,” Tarantino said of original compositions written for films, adding later “I just don’t like the idea of giving that much power to anybody on one of my movies. I would much rather work with a music editor than a music composer.”
Whereas Oldham prefers to write a song with specific relevance to the film/scene, Tarantino boasted that his soundtracks are “a personal mix-tape that [he’s] making for you.” Which is more significant than just an “iPod on shuffle.”
I’m having trouble choosing sides on this issue because both Oldham and Tarantino make valid points on the subject and they’ve both made great contributions to the film soundtrack genre (Oldham’s “All These Vicious Dogs” from All the Real Girls has been on repeat at my place for days). Either way, they both went a bit too far by referring to any of these decisions as “crap,” “cancerous,” or “crimes.”