The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson, 2001).
Pick an American auteur from the early 1990s to the present day, then pick one of their films, and there’s a decent chance music supervisor Randall Poster was involved with the soundtrack. He’s collaborated with Wes Anderson on almost the director’s entire idiosyncratic oeuvre; he helped string together the ceaseless parade of rock, pop, and punk tunes that whipped Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) into a hyperkinetic lather; and he helped make Richard Linklater’s School of Rock (2003), well, rock.
Poster is one of three groundbreaking music supervisors that I spoke with for episode six of the third season of the MUBI Podcast, which tells the stories behind a sampler of cinema history’s most iconic needle drops. But Poster played a role in so many of those musical moments that it made sense to publish our full conversation.
NOTEBOOK: What's the first time you remember music in a movie having an impact on you?
RANDALL POSTER: American Graffiti (1973) was probably a gateway movie for me. If you remember the movie, it's all source music; there's no score in the film. And for me, it was just transportive, where the musical component helped me travel back in time. It made every aspect of that story more vivid to me, by virtue of the music in it. And I guess that was one of the first times where I thought, "Who picked the music? How did these particular songs get into this movie? Somebody, or some people, consciously placed it."
NOTEBOOK: How old were you?
POSTER: I think I was probably like 12? And Del Shannon's "Runaway" [featured in George Lucas’s film] became my sort of greatest secret pleasure, something that I was just mad for. That seemed like it was a relic from another world.
NOTEBOOK: What you're saying gets at something that I think’s at issue here, which is that movies give songs context. It's not a song that you have nothing to connect to; now you can associate it with a story, or a feeling, or an era. It's kind of like, “I can be in that world by playing these songs.”
POSTER: Yeah—I mean, it sold like a zillion soundtrack albums. It was a record that I brought home and played to death.
American Graffiti (George Lucas, 1973).
NOTEBOOK: Let's jump forward to your film career. You cowrote a 1990 movie called A Matter of Degrees. Describe the plot.
POSTER: Basically, it's about a group of friends who are graduating from college, who've been involved with the college radio station. And the station is about to go from being a free-form student station to an actual commercial radio station. That's sort of the spark for cultural crisis in the storyline.
NOTEBOOK: A few months after that movie comes out, Pump Up the Volume comes out. It’s also about a young radio guy—in this case a pirate radio guy—spreading an anti-corporate message. What was in the water in 1990 that made people make movies about radio, and about “selling out”?
POSTER: Well, it was released in 1990, but we made it in 1988, at a moment where what they had been calling "college radio" became [more commercial] "alternative music." MTV was huge. But it was also a moment that, you know, the Reagan era was upon us. These were characters who were sort of my age—the last of the baby boomers—where we had this notion of an evolving society, and progress being made. But when Ronald Reagan became president, it made clear the ’60s era was in its grave, and a lot of what was imagined to be enduring about it was vanishing. Except for the music, you know? The music was…
NOTEBOOK: ...Still had the potential for rebellion.
POSTER: Yeah.
NOTEBOOK: The movie was set at a radio station; is that where you started making playlists? Were you a college radio guy?
POSTER: No—I was spinning records in my dorm room and listening to a lot of college radio. But that was a moment when it was corporatizing, right? So I wasn't interested in that.
NOTEBOOK: How did you end up cowriting that screenplay?
POSTER: I had to do something, you know? So my friend Jack Mason and I wrote this script. And then we just all decided—me and our other college friends—"Well, let's try to make this movie." We learned how to raise money to make an independent film, and got a few people who had worked on some movies to help us production wise, and then got into the lab at Sundance. And that was the trigger.
NOTEBOOK: But clearly you were already deeply interested in music if you made this the theme of your film.
POSTER: Yeah. I was 15 years old when the disco era exploded [in New York City], which was happening simultaneously with the punk rock happening down at CBGB’s. It was a very rich musical landscape. I was caught up in it and played records and listened to the radio and went to movies. I guess that was my sort of version of film school.
NOTEBOOK: My guess is you were too young for this… but were you actually going to clubs like CBGB's?
POSTER: I was, ’cause the drinking age in New York City then was 18. So basically at 16, you could get yourself, you know, set up.
NOTEBOOK: Okay, so you get into movies by writing them and making an indie film. How do you end up as a music supervisor?
POSTER: I worked on the music for A Matter of Degrees. And it played in film festivals and had a theatrical distribution—but really didn't make an impact. But people liked the music; people were very taken with the way the music was used. We were friendly with a bunch of bands who were our contemporaries. We did new recordings for the movie, and did a soundtrack at Atlantic Records. A Matter of Degrees had no score. It was all songs. I came out of the experience thinking that what I really wanted to do was work with great film directors. So I figured, “OK, I'll focus my attention on the music and that'll be the touchpoint with directors.”
NOTEBOOK: I think there are people—even in our enlightened age and even our enlightened audience—who aren’t entirely sure what a music supervisor does. What does that job encompass?
POSTER: The music supervisor is the person the director or producers have on hand to imagine and initiate a music strategy for the movie. It's also the person who—if it's a period piece—researches musical eras, and presents them to the director for consideration. And is involved, often, in acquiring the rights to these compositions and recordings. Sometimes we also record music specifically for movies. Sometimes we record it so it can be performed on camera. Sometimes we do the “casting” for the bands and musicians that'll be on camera. And work with the director sometimes to find the composer—to be another set of ears evaluating what the composer is doing.
NOTEBOOK: It’s a lot, it sounds like.
POSTER: It can be. It's not always the same, you know?
NOTEBOOK: To what extent does the job entail you picking the songs? As opposed to acquiring rights and the like.
POSTER: I would never say that I pick the songs, right? The directors pick the songs. You know, I may suggest the songs. I may be the biggest enthusiast for a particular song. I may.... work to get a director to make a different decision.
Kids (Larry Clark, 1995).
NOTEBOOK: That’s a very polite way of putting it! Let's talk about Kids (1995)—was that your first film as supervisor?
POSTER: I think I started The Crossing Guard before Kids, but it came out later. That's my recollection of it.
NOTEBOOK: Kids had a huge impact, especially for an indie film. Certain songs really became hits. But It seems like everyone involved with that movie is an incredible creative iconoclast. You got Larry Clark directing it. A young Harmony Korine writing it. Lou Barlow of the band Dinosaur, Jr. did some of the music for it. What was your collaboration like with these very unusual, probably very opinionated people?
POSTER: I was Harmony's champion. I got involved with Kids 'cause I'd read the script, and the title page said "Kids—by the world-famous writer Harmony Korine." I just thought that was the funniest thing I'd ever read.
NOTEBOOK: He was like 18, right?
POSTER: I think he was, yeah. 18, 19. Could have been 20. So I sought Harmony out, and just was smitten with him, you know? He was just so funny and had such a fresh take on things. And so we would just hang out, went to record stores, bought records. And then he had been communicating with Lou Barlow, who was mostly performing as Sebadoh during that time. I went up to Boston and sat with Lou a couple of times in the studio. And the stuff they were sending down—demos, whatever—Larry Clark and Harmony were happy with. And then the crazy thing was, we actually got a top 40 single from it, "Natural One." Which really was one of those things where it was a piece in the film, and we just said, "Let's put some vocals on it." And it just came together.
NOTEBOOK: It was originally an instrumental?
POSTER: Yeah, it was originally going to be [part of the] score. And then it became a song.
NOTEBOOK: So this is one of your first soundtracks that you worked on, and it becomes… I would call it an outsized hit.
POSTER: I would say "outsized hit" is a good way to describe what "Natural One" was!
Gummo (Harmony Korine, 1998).
NOTEBOOK: What happened to your career after that?
POSTER: It helped me get some money to spend on the Gummo (1997) soundtrack.
NOTEBOOK: Harmony Korine's debut directing gig.
POSTER: Yes. But I mean, "Natural One" still sounds great. In fact… like, directors always want to know, "Has so-and-so song been in another movie?" And you can pretty much say "yes" with confidence—pretty much everything has been in something. But I tell directors, "If you use a song well, you'll own it." In the same way, I'll sometimes say [to myself], "Oh, I don't want to use X song in this movie, ’cause I already used it once in a movie ten years ago.” But "Natural One”… I think I try to put "Natural One" in like every movie!
NOTEBOOK: You still do?
POSTER: I try—it hasn't stuck!
NOTEBOOK: [Laughs.] I mean, it's been a while since it was in Kids. I'm not sure people even remember that it's from Kids, necessarily.
POSTER: Well, that's good.
NOTEBOOK: I feel like the ’90s were, just in general, a time when it sometimes felt like films were almost being made in order to put out a soundtrack of pop songs.
POSTER: Yeah, I never got into it that way. You know? I was never really keen to work on the movies where the record companies were funding the music budgets.
NOTEBOOK: Is that what was happening?
POSTER: Well, it happened when people were still buying CDs by the basketful. Soundtrack albums sold a lot. And so record labels, in order to get in on certain movies and get their artists in the movies, they would basically finance a movie's music budget.
NOTEBOOK: Wow. So a movie was being made, and then it would be a partnership with the label? Basically, "We'll funnel songs to it."
POSTER: Well, yeah. It took care of the music, and the distributor or the principals would get some kind of royalty, you know?
NOTEBOOK: What’s changed between the ’90s and now?
POSTER: I've gained probably 25 pounds since then.
NOTEBOOK: [Laughs.] Industry-wise, I mean.
POSTER: I don't know. It's always a challenge doing music for movies, because it's the last money that gets spent on a movie. So by the time you get around to paying for music, that part of the budget’s often been dipped into a couple of times. And it always costs more than they want it to. That's never changed. That's always the same.
School of Rock (Richard Linklater, 2003).
NOTEBOOK: This brings up an interesting point. Because that implies that the movie's been shot. And now they come to you and say, "Here's our budget to pay for this music.” Some of which has already been edited into the film. For instance, you’ve worked with Richard Linklater a lot. And in his movies sometimes specific songs are essential to some of the great scenes in cinema.
POSTER: School of Rock is a film we did together that was all about preparing music for shooting.
NOTEBOOK: The song I’d pick from that film would be "Edge of Seventeen," by Stevie Nicks. Which absolutely defines the character in the scene it plays in. Was that in the script?
POSTER: We had the rights to it before we were shooting it. I don't remember if it was in the script—sometimes you just say, "Hey, we're going to use 'Edge of Seventeen' in scene 57," but it’s not necessarily written in the script.
NOTEBOOK: But ideally you don't start shooting until you've made sure that you have the rights. Have you been in a situation where the director says, "This is the song I have to have to shoot this scene—you've got to get it for me, by hook or by crook."
POSTER: It's always by hook or by crook! There was an Italian pop song from the ’60s that Wes Anderson wanted to use, in this short film [Castello Cavalcanti] about a race-car driver. The writer of the song was named Wolfer Beltrami and he had passed away, so we were trying to track down his heirs. And ultimately, we found Wolfer Beltrami's daughter's husband… through his hairdresser in Italy! That was sort of based on our own detective work.
Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson, 2008).
NOTEBOOK: Let’s talk about Wes Anderson, whose movies I don’t think would be the same without your work on them. Is there one song in his films you’re particularly proud of?
POSTER: Bobby Fuller's "Let Her Dance”—at the end of Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)—is a song we were listening to, and we loved it, and we were like, "We have to use this in a movie." And then we put it away for ten years under lock and key. Until we finally had the moment, you know? That was... the perfect moment.
NOTEBOOK: How did you meet Anderson?
POSTER: He was finishing Bottle Rocket (1996). I was in L.A. and a woman in the music business said, "You should meet this guy. You guys would connect." We went to the farmer's market in L.A. We had lunch. And just started working, you know? They hadn't put out a soundtrack album to Bottle Rocket. And I [quickly] made that happen. We started working on Rushmore (1998) pretty much immediately.
NOTEBOOK: Rushmore has, I think, the first of many uses of the Kinks in Wes Anderson’s work. Why do they hold such an outsized interest for him?
POSTER: Rushmore’s soundtrack was a collection of these bands from the British Invasion, who all kind of had these punk-rock spirits, but dressed like gentlemen.
NOTEBOOK: Like the main character.
POSTER: Yeah. And then the fact that [Kinks songwriters] the Davies brothers [had a fraught relationship] meant that—in terms of The Darjeeling Limited (2007), where we use three Kinks songs—they were just the perfect fit.
NOTEBOOK: Of course. Because it’s also about the relationship between brothers. I should probably also mention Nico's "These Days,” from The Royal Tenenbaums (2001).
POSTER: That one was very specific, early on. Wes did the choreography for it—you know, the slow motion—and that's probably one of the most iconic sequences in all his movies.
NOTEBOOK: Was that tune his idea—“I want this tune, go get it”—or yours?
POSTER: It was Wes's idea and Wes's decision. But there's a little bit more to it than coming to me and saying, "This is the song, we're going to use it, go get it." It's more of a conversation, thankfully. Just in terms of building a musical vocabulary for the movie. That movie’s vocabulary was very lonely, and it leaned more into the ’70s.
NOTEBOOK: Is it set in the ’70s, or is it just the visuals in my head making me remember it that way?
POSTER: Well, you know, it's in... it's in “Anderson time.”
The Wolf of Wall Street (2013).
NOTEBOOK: Let’s wrap up with Martin Scorsese. A guy who maybe created—or maybe didn’t create, but was one of the pioneers of—needle-drops in films.
POSTER: He expanded the qualities!
NOTEBOOK: His soundtracks are just pored over. I have to ask you: he’s used the Rolling Stones’ "Gimme Shelter" multiple times in his films and I've always wondered how, knowing people are going to be poring over his soundtracks, what is it about that song that he just goes back and back and back to?
POSTER: There are actually a lot of repeats in Scorsese movies. He uses "Moonglow" all the time. And I think he—in the same way I’ve wanted to put "Natural One" in another movie— I think he just gets a kick out of it. You know, Scorsese... Scorsese does what Scorsese does!
I’ll tell you a story. I was working on The Wolf of Wall Street. And there's a sequence in the film where Leo [DiCaprio’s] character gets married, right? For the wedding band, we had Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings. They recorded the music and they were the on-camera band. We knew [their song] "Goldfinger" was going to be the featured song. But we’d recorded another half a dozen songs with them—songs I’d discussed [in advance] with Scorsese. So we're shooting the wedding, and I get called to camera. Marty's there. Leonardo DiCaprio's there. And they say, “Leo wants to do a dance to ‘Baby's Got Back.’" Right?
NOTEBOOK: The rap tune “Baby’s Got Back." Sir Mix-A-Lot.
POSTER: Yeah. So, okay—we haven't recorded "Baby's Got Back." But I have the real musicians there on stage, you know? And we play it on a boombox a couple of times. And the band basically get it down. They look like they're playing the song. So they shoot the sequence with "Baby's Got Back.” This is that really incredible dance sequence where DiCaprio does that crazy robotic mixed-up dance; it's one of the iconic sequences in that movie. And so weeks later I finally see a cut of the whole movie. And in that sequence, they start playing "Baby's Got Back”… and he's dancing… and then all of a sudden [on the soundtrack], a Bo Diddley record, "You Pretty Thing," starts playing. And it makes no sense! Except that it's coming from this... you know, this brilliant mind, this instinctive musical mind. And it works!
NOTEBOOK: I've actually heard that Scorsese does this on purpose; that he chooses music that has nothing to do with the scene you're watching. Is that his actual philosophy?
POSTER: I've never heard, really, a philosophy explained. Except that he thinks it's cool.