A mechanized drumbeat fades in over the opening shot of Heartburn<\/em>, as Rachel (Meryl Streep) and Mark (Jack Nicholson) bump into one another. As their gazes shift from suspicion to allure, an insistent melody bubbles up on an electric piano, only to melt into the opening notes of Wagner\u2019s \u201cWedding March\u201d as the pair take their seats with their respective friend groups. The instruments are recorded with a heavy hand on the reverb, seemingly to make the drum machine sound like a brushed snare, but the attempts at treating it like an acoustic instrument just make it sound more like a drum machine. This is an apt metaphor for the relationship at the center of Heartburn<\/em>, in which two people who are wrong for one another go through the motions of a marriage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The inspiration for Heartburn<\/em> was as symbiotic as Nichols\u2019 use of the song \u201cComing Around Again\u201d. According to Carly Simon\u2019s website<\/a>, screenwriter Nora Ephron wrote the script while listening to Simon\u2019s 1985 album Spoiled Girl<\/em>\u2014which sold so poorly that Simon was dropped from her label after its release\u2014and the song \u201cThe Wives Are in Connecticut<\/a>\u201d, with its matter-of-fact depiction of marital infidelities, was a particular inspiration on the Heartburn<\/em> script. When Nichols died in 2014, Simon said in a statement to Billboard<\/em> that Nichols \u201cgave me the biggest break by asking me to score the movie Heartburn<\/em> and after that\u2026 Postcards From the Edge<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Simon struck up a particular affinity with Nora Ephron, whose career as a journalist and humorist in the 1970s paralleled Simon\u2019s time on the pop charts. While Simon has a sole writing credit on \u201cComing Around Again\u201d, her working relationship with Ephron was highly collaborative. \u201cShe would get inside of the head of the character and do some channeling and I would add some rhythm and this and that,\u201d Simon told Showbiz 411<\/a> after Ephron\u2019s death in 2012. \u201cShe had a gift for the specific, and could hone in on a character by giving me (in this case the songwriter) a word like \u2018souffle\u2019 and I added the verb \u2018burn\u2019 as in \u2018burn the souffle\u2019 and it says a whole lot more than what I could have cooked up alone for Meryl\u2019s character to be feeling through song.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n The score for Heartburn<\/em> sounds like it was pulled from the stems of \u201cComing Around Again\u201d; a drum machine here, a bassline there, a piano wistfully playing a melody over there. Nichols and editor Sam O\u2019Steen allow scenes to play out in long, wide-angled takes and refrain from using music to tell the audience what they\u2019re feeling so we can take in how wrong Mark and Rachel are for one another. In the scenes where Nichols does use music\u2014as in the moment when the couple have their first kiss under a theatre marquee\u2014it feels like he\u2019s emphasizing images from the couple\u2019s relationship he wants us to remember. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cComing Around Again\u201d is finally played in full about halfway through the film, when Rachel learns of Mark\u2019s infidelities while she\u2019s heavily pregnant with her second child. Nichols\u2019 careful use of the song\u2019s parts makes it sound more familiar, and after thinking back on the times we\u2019ve heard the score, we get a greater perspective not only on how Mark and Rachel are hurting one another, but on the wider effects of their tumultuous relationship. He fades the song out at the end of the first chorus and plays it in full over the closing scene in which Rachel decides to leave Mark. Hearing the repeated phrase \u201cI believe in love\u201d at the end of the song comes off as less optimistic than when you hear it out of context, and more like something Rachel would say through gritted teeth as she signs her divorce papers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Heartburn<\/em> was a modest success on its 1986 release, and Simon\u2019s album Coming Around Again<\/em> received two Grammy nominations. Simon would collaborate with Nichols on his next two films. Her soaring anthem \u201cLet the River Run<\/a>\u201d, which played over the opening credits of Working Girl<\/em>, netted an Oscar win for Best Original Song, and she also scored Nichols\u2019 following feature, Postcards from the Edge<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Like Heartburn, Postcards<\/em> depicts a troubled mother\/daughter relationship between two women who have spent their lives involved with the media. Up-and-coming actress Suzanne Vale (Streep, again) has developed a serious drug problem, to the point where she overdoses on the set of her most recent film. After going through rehab, she books a role in a low-budget movie, under the condition that she move in with her mother (Shirley MacLaine), an iconic actress-turned-lush. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Nichols uses so much diegetic music in Postcards from the Edge<\/em> that Simon\u2019s score seems almost like an afterthought. The cues act as transitions between different facets of Suzanne\u2019s life, and they also ground the film in its late 1980s milieu. Simon\u2019s airy production and juxtaposition of jittery guitar riffs against precise drum lines was in conversation with what musician Mike Pace has termed \u201cSpago Rock<\/a>\u201d. Though she didn\u2019t write the closing-credits song for Postcards<\/em>, Simon would use some of the musical ideas from the film score as the basis for songs on her next album, Have You Seen Me Lately<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n By the end of the 1980s, Rob Reiner, Herbert Ross, and, yes, Mike Nichols had directed Ephron\u2019s scripts, and she was ready to make her own film. Columbia Pictures head Dawn Steel had suggested Meg Wolitzer\u2019s novel This Is Your Life<\/em>, the story of a single mom who becomes a standup comedian, as a good fit for Ephron\u2019s sensibility, and Ephron and her sister Delia adapted the novel into a feature film. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When This Is My Life<\/em> went into production, Ephron contacted Simon about scoring the film. Simon recalled to People<\/em> magazine in 1991 that Ephron told her \u201c(i)t’s ‘our story’, about the tricky business of raising children and maintaining a solid career, without the benefit of a live-in father.\u201d Simon\u2019s working relationship with Ephron was as collaborative as it had been on Heartburn<\/em>\u2014Simon recalls the director \u201c(giving) me lines<\/a>\u201d for the film\u2019s love theme, \u201cLove of My Life<\/a>\u201d\u2014she also drew from her relationship with her kids for inspiration for the songs she wrote for the picture. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The ten songs Simon wrote for This Is My Life<\/em> serve as a kind of Greek chorus for the film, anticipating<\/a> and putting words to the emotions of the protagonists. This works best in scenes like an early-film montage in which Dottie (Julie Kavner) performs at a series of open mics. Simon\u2019s wavering vocals echo the nervousness Dottie experiences as she judges whether her jokes are connecting with the audience, and the rolling snare drum that\u2019s slightly behind the beat mimics the way Dottie\u2019s punchlines don\u2019t quite land with her audiences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This Is My Life<\/em> allowed Simon to grow in another way. In her previous film scores, the music she\u2019d written was consistent with what you\u2019d hear on a 1980s Carly Simon album. Ephron\u2019s work frequently had throwback elements, and in This Is My Life<\/em> she balanced her irreverent sense of humor and awareness of contemporary relationships with a 1940s visual aesthetic in the set design and in Dottie\u2019s costumes. Simon had dabbled in pre-rock and roll pop songwriting (as with \u201cSomeone Waits for You<\/a>\u201d, the title song from Swing Shift<\/em>), and the song score for This Is My Life<\/em> gave her the opportunity to write more in this style. The crisp production, rolling percussion, and substitution of banjolele in place of guitar complemented Simon\u2019s languid melodies and vocals, deftly balancing the jazz age with the early 1990s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n With her recent induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Carly Simon has received the credit she deserves as one of the leading lights of the singer\/songwriter era. Her skill at telling stories through music extended effectively into film, and she was able to work with some of cinema\u2019s leading lights to add her insights to their stories of marriage and motherhood. As Simon enters into the twilight of her career, her work in film deserves a second look.\u00a0 Carly Simon’s recent induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame confirms her singer\/songwriter bona fides. But what of her film work?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":607,"featured_media":19214,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1381],"tags":[162,34],"class_list":["post-19213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","tag-movies","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/607"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19213\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/crookedc-01.svg\")
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