So says one of the many party invitations that I’ve received here at IDFA–this one from a Guests Meet Guests cocktail hour hosted by the Krakow Film Foundation, Polish Film Institute and Estonian Film Foundation. We’re not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy, look alive.

I’m currently working my way through screenings of as many award-nominated films as I can, but between the Forum events, Talk Shows, panels and other events here, it’s a challenging festival to navigate. Veterans were disoriented, too, because everything in this snowglobe town shifts a bit when you change your focus and, this year, the venues changed. You feel like you’re in a bit of a spiderweb if you spend too much time here.

Luckily, I can go to the Docs for Sale viewing stations and watch screenings of films that are sold out. So, I’ve seen dozens of films and my head is spinning and I’ve spent a week standing next to the likes of Peter Wintonick and Werner Herzog talking about vampires and losers–more on this later. (I’ll refrain from using the other word Werner spouts a lot because even in this day and age, it’s dicey. But that’s why we love him, right?) And for the record, Werner, people smiled in pleasure when recalling seeing your film, so kudos on that.

Audiences here are the most brutal I’ve seen. Now, granted, I’ve been hanging out in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina and Silver Springs, Maryland so I’m no sophisticate, but, holy crap, the Dutch are rude as fuck. It’s humbling; you’re just their bitch if you want to spend time in their town. And I’m saying that mostly in admiration, for some reason.

Really long-winded way of saying that I will be posting reviews and impressions, interviews, etc. for a while–seriously, it could have been more fun, but I’ll be getting a lot of mileage out of the knowledge I gleaned going to this festival outside my own country. Tres different. Where those things will appear, who knows, because I want to spend the next little bit rocketing around the planet trying to be a goodwill ambassador for our humble States. Seriously, we have a lot of ’splainin’ to do.

More soon from Amsterdam. Our lovely Mr. Schnack, and the little devil on his shoulder, have a post on the winners at IDFA last night. Next stop on the daisy train, south of England to frolic in the type of place Morrissey sings about. Ciao, ciao.

These are some of the sites and blogs I visit and read regularly:

• Shira Golding wrote a really fine piece this week called “Upstream: The Wide Wide World of Online Video Platforms” for MediaRights. The organization also brings news of filmmaker, Jehane Noujaim’s call for entries for Pangea Day, a landmark, one-day, global film event showcasing shorts from around the world.
• Over at Shooting People, Ingrid Kopp blogs on Shooting from the Hip about an interview with writer, Harlan Ellison, who rails against the propensity these days of someone offering an artist exactly zilch to use his or her work–a timely topic for the looming writers’ strike.
• For some mind-bending independent film distribution statistics, visit the blog Independent Films by the Numbers, where resident cruncher, Matt Syrett, weighs in on some solid strategies for marketing and exhibiting your film to its best advantage–impress your friends and neighbors by whipping out those bar charts.
• I always check in with the Cinephiliac to read a heartwarming yarn about Aaron Hillis’ latest adventures in film journalism-land.
• Also love visiting Blank Screen–check out their great interview with Cartune Xprez, a curatorial project for animated videos and multimedia performances.
• The latest Westchester-based Burns Film Center newsletter reports that Janet Maslin will be talking to artist and film director, Julian Schnabel, after a screening of his beautiful The Diving Bell and the Butterfly on Thursday, November 29. Maslin will also host a chat with graphic novelist/filmmaker Marjane Satrapi, director of Persepolis, after it screens there on Thursday, December 13.
• And then there are my friends over at UnionDocs, hosts of the Documentary Bodega series. Their blog is maintained by program director, Christopher Allen and the eight resident curators and producers that use the large house on Union Avenue in Williamsburg as both living and work space for their film, photography, art, music and media projects. This is a unique arts collaborative where the visiting residents live and work for one year, usually while pursuing advanced degrees. Take a visit out there on a Sunday evening and get involved. One of the current residents, Hillevi Loven, an MFA candidate in Integrated Media Arts at Hunter College is working on a project on Christian hardcore/metal culture (hmm). She says that, “UDRP offers a growing community. I wanted to build a center for creative exchange and dialogue between media artists. I have always longed for a chance to create a presentation/exhibition space.” If you’re looking for a cool place to have a screening for your film, get in touch with the curators over there.

Paul Lovelace and Sam Wainwright Douglas’ new documentary, The Holy Modal Rounders. . .Bound to Lose, is opening in New York at the Anthology Film Archives down in the East Village for one week starting December 7. Each of the seven nights will bring a unique event with special guests and related films. The Holy Modal Rounders were a 1960s Greenwich Village psychedelic folk duo. Sounds interesting already, huh?

Featured in the film are Dennis Hopper, former Modals drummer, now famous playwright/director/writer/actor Sam Shepherd, Peter Tork of The Monkees (like most, I had the biggest crush on Davey, but always thought Peter was really cute), Wavy Gravy, The Fugs, Loudon Wainwright III and other various and sundry celebs, burnouts, music lovers and friends of fiddler, Peter Stampfel and guitarist Steve Weber (whose resemblance to a giant muppet is uncanny). In a lot of ways, it’s a familiar music story where we see the young, idealistic goof-offs get together when they’re in their 20s and full of beans and storytell about the trajectory of their careers (in this case, it’s usually straight ahead or torked a bit down most of the time; success eludes these men like the plague). And the reasons success eluded these men brings up the usual suspects of drugs, alcohol, and living a life of unrestricted mayhem 24/7 for years on end. The gray matter takes a beating.

The co-directors are going the self-distribution route (yay) and have booked week-long runs and one-off screenings across the country. Lots of work–let’s see if it pays off for them. This film is a bit of East Village, New York history and they gather some really striking, very gritty black and white archival footage of the city in the 60s and 70s, well before Times Square was Disney-fied and when you could still go home, after being in a bar all night, smelling like a cigarette butt.

As part of their “hey, we’re playing in your hometown soon!” approach, the myspace page is in place and a crack team of dedicated friends and supporters are on board the train. They are presenting each night as a special curated event with other films, musical guests and some really interesting moderator/special guests like Nick Tosches and Lenny Kaye introducing films. They are also showcasing the theatrical premiere run of their film here with Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point, co-written by Sam Shepard while the band was recording its psychedelic landmark album The Holy Modal Rounders Eat the Moray Eels. Now that’s a fab film-geek factoid, ain’t it?

Contact Anthology Film Archives and get your tickets to one of these fun evenings. (Drugs not included.)

Capturing an artist’s creative process on film can be a tricky proposition. There have been many films, both fiction and non-, that have managed to capture that intimate intensity that only scratches the surface of what’s bubbling beneath. In fact, the best films about artists and musicians leave more unanswered questions than answered ones about the mystery of the creative impulse.There is a certain freak-show curiosity about those of us who really don’t do much else with our lives but make art–those of us who skirted the path of least resistance and jumped into a realm in which, in order to survive, one must do some heavy creative lifting. And for some artists, that can be a torturous existence since we live in a society that doesn’t tend to support or understand that kind of thing.I met Matthew Wallin, the director of the film project I Die Daily, at this year’s IFP Conference and Market. I saw a work–in-progress cut of Wallin’s film about artist and filmmaker, Matthew Barney, and was immediately intrigued and wondered if there was a chance for me to jump on board the project as a creative/consultative producer to help the filmmakers find funding to move into post, and to act as added support to see if we could get the project out there, looked at, and noticed. Not to mention exhibited, marketed, distributed and sold. It’s garnered a special invitation from the Berlin Film Festival early next year, and so it’s a key time for the director to show what he’s got to the European market. …Read more

Directors Bradley Beesley (Summer Camp, Roller Girls), James Payne and Julianna Brannum (Payne and Brannum are first-time directors here) have collaborated on a project that looks at the toxic legacy of lead mining in a small community in Oklahoma. The town of Pilcher, and its surrounding area, were declared a Superfund site way back in 1981 (that’s almost 30 years, folks) and the residents have been fighting for justice, and their children’s health, ever since. The Creek Runs Red is the next installment on Independent Lens this season and airs tomorrow night on your local PBS affiliate station. Here’s the trailer.

I had a chance to speak, at length, with Brannum about the making of the film and the unique collaboration the three directors shared in its creation. All working from different locations and never in the editing room simultaneously, it proved to be quite a challenge in presenting a strong directorial voice, since that was split three ways, in more than one sense. Beesley’s photography background shows itself off in fine form–since sound and image can coalesce so easily in completely random ways, the precise tone and palette and framing he uses throughout the film speak to a very deliberate eye. He uses the poisonous landscape for his beauty shots and it’s quite affecting, especially as a counterpoint to the story which is narrated solely by the people who have lived in this town all their lives. As the directors’ statement says, it is truly “the point of view of a small community.”

Brannum also explained that finding their subjects took quite a few trips out there over several years’ time. Understandably leery of more “outsiders” coming in and poking around their backyard and then leaving again without really doing much to help them, the townspeople eventually rewarded the filmmakers for their dedication and patience with their heartfelt and honest interviews–and compelling characters they are, with craggy, sculpted faces and rough-hewn voices that bring the best of Dorothea Lange’s depression-era photography to mind.

Beesley has also worked extensively with the band The Flaming Lips (one of my personal faves, I’ve had their official screen saver on my Mac for years) and their music is featured as part of the original soundtrack. Beesley has also directed the definitive Lips doc, Fearless Freaks. Check out the cool trailer on Beesley’s site here.

Check your local listings and try and catch this public TV broadcast debut. On my blog in the near future, I will be posting an in-depth interview with Brannum as part of my series on international female nonfiction filmmakers. Right now, you can read a new interview with spitfire, Cynthia Wade, director of this year’s festival fave Freeheld. Due to extremely sensitive Academy Award rules and regs, we don’t get to talk about her run for Oscar in this initial conversation, but we do talk about all the ethical, and other hairy, issues inherent in doing the kind of excrutiatingly intimate films Wade does. Check it out here.

The hands-down quote of the day comes from David Cronenberg. The filmmaker was recently asked how he felt about Paul Haggis naming his “race relations are hard” Oscar winner Crash less than a decade after Cronenberg released his own film, about car crash fetishists, with the same title. According to IMDB, there were at least five films called Crash before Cronenbeg’s, but his, based on a J.G. Ballard book of the same name, was certainly the most well-known. And according to the New York Post, Cronenberg thinks Haggis plagiarized on purpose:

I’ve told [him] that he was a [bleep]hole basically for doing that. And so have many other people. It’s very disrespectful, not only to me, but to J.G. Ballard, who wrote the book . . . I made my movie . . . in a very respectful way. Haggis just co- opted the title, and he knew what he was doing.

Did he, though? Could Haggis have really thought that the titular confusion would *help* his movie? I guess there could have been a cunning plot afoot, but I don’t want to give Haggis too much credit.

Australian filmmaker Rolf De Heer has been the recipient of much love here at Spout. Just a couple of weeks ago, Paul devoted an entire episode of FilmCouch to De Heer, calling the director “the most inspiring filmmaker alive.” I haven’t seen any of his films, but that podcast alone has me convinced that Rolf De Heer is some kind of cinema god.

So it’s with grand excitement that I learned, via Twitch, of the website for Rolf De Heer’s latest project, titled Dr. Plonk. It’s a black-and-white silent comedy set in 1907, about a scientist who invents a time machine in order to prove his theory that the world will end in the year 2008. The website boasts a trailer which, if in any way representative of the film as a whole, indicates that de Heer and crew have masterfully mimicked the look and feel of silent comedies of the early 20s. His protagonist seems to be semi-Chaplin-esque, but the antics remind me more of Fatty Arbuckle.

Not only is there a trailer, but the website also offers a amazing 40-page press kit (which you can download as a PDF) describing, in minute detail, Dr. Plonk’s conception and de Heer’s filmmaking process. The tome begins with a quote — “A good press kit is a pre-condition to a successful moving picture show” — attributed to Dr. Plonk himself. Page 10 outlines the process of buying a 90-year-old, hand-cranked camera, and how through trial and error, “slowly all ideas of precisely duplicating the past are consigned to the rubbish bin.” Page 11, titled “The Sound Recordist in Silent Film”, reads: (this page has been intentionally left blank). And so on.

After premiering last spring at the Adelaide Film Festival, Dr. Plonk will open in Australia later this month. It seems to have no U.S. distributor as of yet, but hopefully it will pop up at another festival or two this fall.

UPDATE: A story published in Saturday’s print edition of the New York Times has some additional information on Jeremy Blake’s disappearance and Theresa Duncan’s death. The story says a note referring to Duncan was found with Blake’s passport on Rockaway Beach. NYPD scuba teams have searched for but have not yet found a body.

Rumors are swirling that artist Jeremy Blake has gone missing, a week after his girlfriend, filmmaker/blogger Theresa Duncan, committed suicide. Kate Coe alerted me to the news, which she’s rounded up from several sources at FishbowlLA.

Duncan, a former videogame creator, was known in the blogosphere for her sometimes eccentric but often fascinating ruminations on art, imagery, culture and perfume. Her blog The Wit of the Staircase had its second anniversary on July 4th; she last updated July 10. She was apparently in New York, directing an adaptation of a Francesca Lia Block novel for Fox Searchlight. There is no IMDB entry for the film, or for Duncan; I don’t know how far along production had progressed, but it was her first feature film and it she had apparently hit a bump in the road.

The news of Duncan’s suicide and Blake’s disappearance stems from this perfume message board, which was then picked up by L.A. Observed. Blake, in apparent reaction to Duncan’s death, disappeared earlier this week. According to a posting on this modern art blog, Blake’s passport and clothes were found on Rockaway Beach here in New York shortly after a 911 call was placed reporting a sighting of a man swimming out to sea.

Again, I can’t confirm that this is how it all went down (no mainstream non-blog* outlet has yet reported on either Duncan’s death or Blake’s disappearance), but if it turns out to be true … man, what a sad story. Fans of Punch Drunk Love will know Blake’s work: he designed the film’s psychedelic transitions. He and Duncan also collaborated on a short called The History of Glamour, which L.A. Observer describes as “animated mockumentary about an art scene similar to Andy Warhol’s Factory.” Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be on YouTube but another of their collaborations, an animated short made for the Oxygen channel, is:

**Wording changed after learning via an email from Tyler Green that he and Modern Art Notes are “as mainstream as it gets.”

I’ve spent much of the morning noodling around on the website for Francis Ford Coppola’s upcoming film, Youth Without Youth***.Sony Classics bought distribution rights to Coppola’s first film in a decade last March; at the time, Anne Thompson offered this description:

Inspired by his daughter Sofia to make a low-budget personal film, Coppola opted not to take the festival route, preferring to fly under the radar. The indie-financed film, which Coppola shot last year in Romania, is set during World War II and stars Tim Roth as a 70-year-old professor who is struck by lightning, suddenly turns 40 and becomes brilliant. (He also sprouts a doppelganger.) His quest is to discover the origin of language and consciousness. By movie’s end he and his lady love (Alexandra Maria Lara) speak in tongues—sans subtitles…The movie has been compared to an arty Raiders of the Lost Ark.

In keeping with Coppola’s apparent desire to keep the project personal, the web site functions as a kind of scrapbook documenting his inspirations for making the film. There are snapshots of his actors rehearsing, black and white photos of Bucharest, a bio of Mircea Eliade (the author of the novella on which the film is based) and, perhaps most significantly, three “diary entries” through which Coppola works through both his need to return to personal filmmaking, and his desire to reclaim a youthful exuberance for life and work. The diary entries are dated September 2005, so if they’re genuine (in this day and age, no one is above suspicion when it comes to doctored bloggery), they were generated 4-6 weeks before Youth went into production.

In one entry, Coppola explains how he was begrudgingly goaded into inflating one Godfather film into three:

Originally, I didn’t intend to make more than one Godfather film; yet economic forces at the studio were insistent: “Francis, you have the formula for Coca-Cola; are you not going to make more?” But the first film expended most of the arrows in my quiver or, more aptly, the slugs in my revolver. So, the second film had to stretch into new and more ambitious territory to show a few more; otherwise, it would have been weaker than the first. By the time the third arrived, the basic ideas that made the first fresh and excited were all but used up.

The diary is basically a manifesto. Coppola describes his predicament as typical for any aging artist–the temptation to keep draining the well that brought past success is too great, economic safety is too attractive to risk doing anything new. He decides that the only way to break that vicious cycle “is to become young again, to forget everything I know and try to have the mind of a student. To re-invent myself by forgetting I ever had any film career at all, and instead to dream about having one.”I’m not sure I buy the idea of the bright-eyed student risking it all to make a picture about an old man reclaiming his youth, but for the time being, I’ll give Frank the benefit of the doubt. Considering the fact that he could very easily while away his final years living off his wine fortune, you’ve got to throw him a bone for refusing to go down without a fight. Youth Without Youth is currently scheduled to play at the Rome Film Festival in October, before opening here on December 14.

***Not to be confused with The Best of Youth, the six-hour Italian TV miniseries that, when released theatrically in the States in 2005, became the best reviewed film of that year (it swept me up, too, although for the first couple of hours, it was hard to fight the nagging suspicion that I was watching the Italian Forrest Gump.)

When is it time to demarcate a filmmaking “movement”? What if the filmmakers in this movement don’t want to be grouped into any kind of movement at all? And what if the films in this movement revolve around the crisis of self-definition? Could it get any worse for one of its members than to have to talk about feeling self-conscious about being in a movement?

An article in the Spring 2007 issue of Filmmaker Magazine begins by asking these very smart questions, which immediately intrigued me. The article, “What I Meant to Say,” looks quite thoroughly at the independent film movement known by many as “mumblecore.” There are several posts waiting to emerge from this article, so I hope Paul and some of the other guys will share their thoughts in the coming days. For now, just check out the article and take note of the collaboration aspect of this movement.

The article generalizes these mumblecore films as “severely naturalistic portraits of the life and loves of artistic twentysomethings.” Names like Joe Swanberg (LOL), Mark Duplass (The Puffy Chair) and Andrew Bujalski (Funny Ha Ha) are all names that bubble to the top of this “scene,” if you can call it that. (I’ll never forget stumbling across Funny Ha Ha with some friends. It was definitely unlike anything we had ever seen.) Here’s another description from the article:

The first aesthetic indicators–and, it must be stressed, not all friends of mumblecore make films like this–are improvised dialogue and naturalistic performances, often by non-actors. The films employ handheld, verite-style digital camerawork and long takes. Budgets are tiny. The plots hinge on everyday events. The stories are often obvious reflections of the filmmakers’ lives. Most characters are white and educated and pursue creative endeavors when not pursuing one another. They are sensitive. They are sincere.

So that’s mumblecore, and it’s been slowly emerging for a while now. But apparently something interesting started taking shape this year at SXSW, causing people to sit up and pay attention. The festival’s promotional shorts were co-created by eight so-called mumblecore filmmakers, most of whom also had feature-length films at the festival (most of which were made with, written with, or acted by some of the other filmmakers).

It may be hard to follow all that, but you get the idea–this is a tight group. Read the article and you’ll see all the names and how they’re intertwined. It’s quite remarkable. And it made me think that something exciting is happening, whether or not I love this style of film (and I’m not convinced, yet, that I do–I’ll get back to you after I see more). The exciting thing that’s happening, from my perspective, revolves around a shared filmmaking experience that organically draws in ideas and talents from anyone who has some to offer. It’s not about competition–rushing to finish your film first, get it to festivals, attract the most attention. It’s about the love of making movies like this, of finding a format for expression that works, and sharing with others through that format.

In the end, these films, as the Filmmaker articles says, are ultimately about “trying to communicate.” While all films are trying to communicate something, it’s often something that’s inside one person (the writer or director). What’s interesting (and rather poetic) about mumblecore, is that people are interacting and trying to communicate on the screen as well as through the creation process. That seems to be filmmaking collaboration at its best.

Ah, the age-old debate: Do you have to get a formal education to succeed in the arts? From painting and poetry to song writing and filmmaking, successful artists have done it both ways–with school and without. (Unsuccessful artists have done it both ways, too.) Either way, the bulk of the learning emerges from doing, right? And formal programs are so often lagging behind what’s really happening in the field. Of course, we all know that one of the most valuable things to gain from going through a program is connections, but are they worth the college debt? Especially considering that few people find the arts to be a lucrative career path?

As a writer, I have struggled with these questions myself, so a headline in yesterday’s New York Times caught my eye: “Where’d You Go to Film School? In My Bedroom.” The article points out how a formal education in filmmaking can seem even more pointless in “the era of miniDV digital video cameras, Final Cut Pro editing systems and YouTube auteurs with development deals.”

But now there’s something in between a formal education and the clueless dive-in-head-first approach–filmmaking tutorials offered on DVDs and CDs. On one level, it’s super exciting to think that you can gain some level of expertise and direction without wasting all the time and money on school. I’m a big fan of figuring out what your story is and then telling it, without a whole lineup of excuses that do nothing but set you back. (I’ll tell it after I get my degree, or after I save X amount of money, or after I move to New York…you know the drill.)

At the same time, while it’s important to just tell your story, maybe knowing how to tell your story is the thing you can’t learn off a DVD. Maybe you need another human being–a mentor–to ask the right questions and push you in the right way. Maybe you need someone experienced to help teach you how to weave together your narrative and the technical aspects in an engaging way. Here’s how a film professor quoted in the Times article put it:

Tom Denove, vice chairman for production in the film, television and digital media department of the film school at the University of California, Los Angeles, contended that educational software often misses the real point of making a film: the inherent power of a narrative.

Breaking from Oscar buzz, the Spout guys talk to Alison Willmore from IFC Blog about Sundance, what “independence” means these days and what role the Independent Spirit plays in filmmaking. Discussion continues from our interview with Tim Robbins, to the work of John Cassavetes and Terry Gilliam.

Download FilmCouch #6 or subscribe to FilmCouch in the iTunes store (search for “filmcouch” or click here to launch iTunes) and a new free episode will download every Friday.

I just watched Julia Loktev’s first feature film, Day Night Day Night starring a first-time actor, Luisa Williams. The film starts with the camera on the no-named girl (Williams) and then, with one brief exception, she’s in every shot of the entire film. We see what she sees and hear what she hears (the amplified chewing while she eats is an especially nice touch). There’s no explanation for who she is or where she comes from, and there are no dramatic music cues to tell us what she’s feeling. Nonetheless, what could have been a formal exercise in filmmaking takes us on a journey that’s nothing short of riveting.

The journey of this girl goes into some sensitive subject matter in a completely fresh and compassionate way. Ultimately, the journey is a spiritual one that left thoughts and images lingering in my mind long after the film ended. (And Williams’ performance is sure to be noticed–I think she’ll be showing up on the screen again soon.)

Listen to my interview with the filmmaker, Julia Loktev. (Pardon my sleepiness. It was late.)

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I just left the Telluride tribute to the master editor Walter Murch (The Godfather, The Conversation, The English Patient). So much wonderful filmmaking knowledge came from his lips. If it were not prohibited to record these sessions, I would have podcast the Q&A. But I’ll share the highlights I found most meaningful.

As an editor, the hardest thing to do is to remember the emotional resonance of a scene after viewing it day after day. To maintain that emotion, when Murch first sees the shots he’ll be working with, he writes in free association anything he thinks or feels while watching. He then keeps those notes open as he goes into the process of editing those shots over and over again into various scenes.

Murch is always looking for the visceral moment. He shared a quote about how if the novelist is smarter than the novel, they should move on to another profession. The work should always be beyond the reach of intellect. One way of identifying these visceral moments is to watch a shot and stop it at a moment he strongly reacts to. He then marks the time code and watches the shot again. If he hits stop again and it’s at the exact same spot in the time code, he knows there’s something there to be included in the film.

As any good editor, Murch’s thinking wanders back and forth between the technical and the creative. The result of one study he’s done across many films shows an average action sequence having a minimum of fourteen different camera angles, while dialogue scenes have about four. Four camera angles in an action sequence is too slow, and fourteen angles during dialogue would distract from what anybody’s saying.

In speaking about the various modes of viewing film now (from theater to video iPod), Murch defined the “cinematic experience.” At home, the viewer is king and the television is a jester coming into the room; if the king doesn’t like what he sees, off with the jester’s head. However, the cinematic experience is uncontrollable. The film starts when it starts and ends when it ends and the viewer has no control. It’s also collaborative viewing where one person’s laughter in one corner of the theater can infect the experience of everyone else. In short, the cinematic experience, Murch said, fulfills an innate human desire to open one’s mind to the uncontrollable.

A good film must also have its own unique “grammar.” It can’t feel like anything seen before. Although Murch may have opinions regarding a scene, he’s very careful not to pass judgment until he’s intimate with the work as a whole and has learned the language of that particular film.

Finally, in a serendipitous moment, Murch screened the scene in The Godfather when Woltz awakes to the severed horse head in his bed. This has always been my favorite blend of film and score, which I’ve attributed in the past to the composer, Nino Rota. However, the music in that scene was originally much too over the top and gave away the horror too early. So Murch took a solo trumpet piece Rota had written for elsewhere in the film, and blended it with the original music Rota intended for the scene. That’s the piece that’s in the film as we know it. Who knew?