Traipsing Through The
Ghost Of Tin Pan Alley Looking For The Muse Of Music-Looking For A Melody
Too-With Drew Barrymore And Hugh Grant’s “Music And Lyrics” (2007)-A Film Review
And More
DVD Review
By Leslie Dumont
Music and Lyrics,
starring Drew Barrymore, Hugh Grant, 2007
Very seldom has a movie
theme and moment in my life come together but that is the case with the theme
of the film under review Music and Lyrics.
In the film Alex, who I give more detail on in a moment, played by boyish Hugh
Grant, is struggling to keep his head above water in the music business and
needs to find a lyricist badly and Sophie, ditto on the details, is just
struggling to be a writer but who is a natural born lyricist who is not looking
at the start to do lyrics.
How does that dilemma
apply to me. Well let me tell you in a few thousand words, just kidding. As the
reader may know and if not, I will mention that I have relatively recently
retired from the day to day grind of writing a by-line for Women Today a publication I was associated with for some thirty
plus years. I am sure that the average reader does not know that I started out
as a free-lance stringer at this publication as did many others. After a couple
of years though my fellow writer and then companion (and we are friendly again
now too and let’s leave it at that) advised me that I needed to move on, get myself
a by-line at a publication which would value my skills more than as a long-term
free-lancer here. Good advice. When a change of leadership came through a
couple of years ago and to keep my hand in the business the current site manager
Greg Green on Josh’s recommendation hired me to do a general assignment
by-line. Meaning I could write on any subject that might interest me.
That information gives
you an idea about my career but does not give an understanding on what my
youthful dreams had been. That is where the theme of this movie comes in and
why I strongly related to it beyond the charming acting of the two principals.
I grew up in New Jersey close to New York City, close enough to imbibe in the folk
music revival on the weekends that swept the bohemian clots and campuses around
the country in the early 1960s. I had a good voice and a fair knowledge of that
folk part of the American Songbook. Moreover I could write songs, lyrics anyway
and had something of an amateur’s success in the coffeehouses around the
Village on “open mic” nights and when I went to college up in Saratoga Springs
I grabbed some gigs at the famous and still going Caffe Lena’s. Here’s the rub
though I like many other “folkies” had to make some kind of decision when that folk
minute faded, or at least became something for aficionados meaning only a few could
make a living out of their art. My big problem then, and now, which is the
opposition problem Alex had was that I never was good at putting a fine finish
on my lyrics, needed a never found melody maker to go up the next step.
I always, as Josh could
testify back when we were an item, kept that musical interest up, kept writing lyrics
even while working as a stringer and with my by-line when I had spare time. I
was always dissatisfied with the melodies, with meshing the two together as
Josh could tell you then, and now too that I have time to work some on those lyrics
that had piled up in drawers. I need a melody maker, a person who could hone my
lyrics into something good. Josh, did I say we are now friends again and let’s
leave it at that, offered to help me. Problem, big problem is that Josh doesn’t
have a musical bone in his body. No, that is not true, he knows more of the
American Songbook than I do, has written more about music than any other subject
in his own long career as a free-lancer and then here. But that take is more
about the place of different kinds of music in the American experience or about
the stuff that he and his corner boys up in Olde Saco, Maine listened to growing
up, stuff like that. What I need is a melody maker, end of story.
Well not quite end of story
since I have been very frustrated not being able to find somebody to work with,
someone like in the old days of the mythical Tin Pan Alley when one person
wrote lyrics and the other did the melody, common practice and for the times a good
one before the superstar kids who could write and make music all in one fell
swoop, in one person like say Bob Dylan, guys like that came on the scene. I
brought the issue of my frustrations to my chiropractor who has helped me with
stress management and other troubles who recommended this film which I was
totally unaware of. So, I, well, Josh and I watched, and while it didn’t solve my
own musical problems it was as Josh said, “just what the doctor ordered.”
Of course from minute
one when Sophie comes to water “has been” rock star Alex’s plants as a substitute
for a friend you know that this is going to be the inevitable “boy meets girl”
or vici versa story that has saved many a lame Hollywood plot (this one in the “so-so”
category saved by the main characters’ performances more than anything else). And
they will get under the inevitable silky sheets. With a twist-“has been” Alex is looking via
the next generation superstar Cora (although how and why was beyond me except I
plead guilty to not understanding what thirteen-year olds, my grandkids, listen
to currently) to “get well” to make something of a comeback, since this Cora is
the conduit to that return. Problem, big problem again, Alex hasn’t written anything
but trash for a long time, since he was king of the hill in the famous 1980s rock
group Pops-you may remember them if you are from Generation X. He needs, maybe
not as desperately as I need a melody maker, a lyricist.
Turns out that Sophie is
not just a spaceshot plant-tender but a spaceshot writer with a few credentials
who beyond that seems to have a grasp for writing appropriately endearing lyrics.
Naturally there have to
be some ups and downs like Alex even getting spaceshot serious writer Sophie to
write bubble gum lyrics for this teen idol Cora. They do, do a good job too as
the romantic attraction builds. Then it all comes crashing down-almost. Seems
Cora has a very different take on how to present this well-crafted song to her
audience. Alex desperate to move back up the music food chain (Seth Garth’s forever
term) is willing to let Cora do whatever butchery she wants to the song as long
he gets back into the limelight or at least moves up from playing for his once youthful
now aging audiences at state fairs and conventions. Split issue. Well almost
since they are smitten, and all is well once Alex realizes he can’t sellout and
keep his dear Sophie. And they compose and write happily ever after. Well I
have had my say-except if any melody maker is out there you know where to find
me.
[I was not sure where to
put this but Josh and I had a conversation recently, really going back to the
1970s and just revisited by this film about “has-beens” like Alex, like me at a
more amateur level and what you do when the flame burns out, when the music that
made you goes out of fashion and you wind up playing conventions and coffeehouses.
I decided, a right decision to move on to a professional career. Alex decided to
stick it out no matter how far down in the mud he went. Josh reminded of a series
he did covering two folk icons-Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, the media-anointed king
and queen of the folk minute. His take was what happened to those who had maybe
not as much fame as that pair but who were famous for the moment but who
decided to move on when it looked like they were not going to be able to make a
career out of their youthful dreams. Or did not want to trek the awful miles in
some rundown car staying on the road at some broken down motel in order to play
to twenty people in Kingstown, Pennsylvania or someplace like that. Josh is
thinking of asking Greg to okay an encore performance of that series in light of
this film-L.D.]
