10 great uses of music in Casino

I was privileged enough to attend a Q & A with Thelma Schoonmaker and she let us in on how specific to detail Scorsese can be. In the taxi scene in After Hours, Griffin Dunne puts a twenty dollar bill in the tip area. It ends up being taken by the wind out of the can and dances in the air until it's gone for good. Scorsese wanted the movement of this flying twenty dollar bill to match the movement of the flowing wedding gown billowing out of the train in I Know Where I'm Going!

It's fairly obvious how attuned the director is to detail just by watching his films, but hearing how in tune he is to it is still spectacular. There's a reason behind every cut and camera move. From the pan away from Travis Bickle on the telephone into an empty hallway to the cocaine- high energy of the May 11, 1980 sequence in GoodFellas. As detailed he in shot selection, it applies just as much to his song selection. 

Combing through the countless montages and tributes on youtube, there is one constant thorn in my side: the use of music. Never mind the edit having no flow or taking the short route and making it wall to wall match cuts. If you're going to make a tribute to something, why are you using your favorite Radiohead song? If it doesn't use a piece of music in the movie, then I'm already out of tune with it. 

Marty knows what all the great directors know: it's not about your favorite song, it's about the right song for the scene. Here are 10 examples of it. 

1. Contempt by Georges Delerue

Repurposing a song from a previous film is something new for Scorsese. The central conflict in Godard's Contempt occurs when a rift develops between a screenwriter and his wife. It's the closest parallel we can draw between that film and this one. 

The drums added to the scene sound like the street drummer from Taxi Driver disrupting a serene string section. Kind of like a car trailing dust across a desert plain. 

The second time we hear the theme is the most disturbing part of the film. And this is a movie with that baseball bat scene in the cornfield. Any editing flourishes are wisely disposed as Bob and Sharon make this domestic dispute utterly horrific to watch. 

These three scenes, taken together, represent shifts in power dynamics. The desert scene ends with Nicky's car kicking up dust over Sam, showing how Sam has to eat Nicky's shit and take it. The fight between Sam and Ginger shows his delusional paranoia. The third and final time we hear the score is when Sam has lost everything. Nicky has been beaten and buried alive. Ginger is forced a hot dose in a hotel. In the end, any semblance of power a character had has been stripped away by corporate America. We close on Sam Rothstein telling us he can still pick winners. 

And that's that. 

2. Can't You Hear Me Knocking by The Rolling Stones

In a movie filled to the brim with process and minute detail narration set to pop songs, this is the crown jewel. And if you think it isn't, you  better clean your fucking loop cause there's no flaws in it. In the span of six minutes and 45 seconds, we get the whole rise of Nicky Santoro and his crew, how he got bellmen, valet parkers, pit bosses and secretaries to tip them on when and where the score was. The editing choices of showing his crew drilling enough holes in concrete so they can knock it apart with a sledgehammer, then cutting to an exterior with the cops, cut to a camera bulb flashing, then dollying in on the hole in the wall as Sam tells us "nobody out there was expecting a guy like him" is such a riveting sequence, I find myself holding my breath.   

3. House of the Rising Sun by The Animals

Every rise has to have a brutal fall and Casino is no exception. In fact, what happens to Nicky Santoro is as brutal as anything Scorsese has done in any of his films. 

House of the Rising Sun has been in my top 3 favorite songs for as long as I can remember. So to see it being used to such effectiveness was a delight. 

The codes these wise guys claim to live by are meaningless. You can be as loyal a soldier as Andy Stone, but at the end of the day, your fate will be decided by your superiors in the back of a courthouse with the words "Why take a chance?" There is a specific part of the montage that has haunting synchronicity with the song. As a drug addled Ginger comes out into the hotel hallway and braces herself against the wall, the echoing effect in the lyric 'to wear that ball and chain' and 'weeeellll there is a house...'. After seeing Casino, it's been hard to separate the music and the image. 

4. Can't Get No Satisfaction by Devo

"Oh fuck you. Fuck you Sam Rothstein. Fuck you!"

This is when things get really messy. So messy, even Frank Vincent has to get in on the narration. The booze, the coke, the broads. The "baby, baby, baby, baby, baby" matching up to the rat-a-tat of the gunfire on the cop's house is *chef's kiss*. Once again, Marty is having fun with music. This time it's a cover of Satisfaction by Devo and he doesn't just use it once, he chops it up into three scenes.

5. Mathaus Passion

The opening and ending to the film are scored to this piece, originally for Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew. When Casino came out, many critics saw it as GoodFellas Pt. 2. Besides the distinct difference in photography- switching from Michael Bauhaus to the master of soft light, Robert Richardson- this had a scope and sweep worthy of the majesty of a piece like this. There is nowhere in GoodFellas where you can insert this piece of music, or Theme for Contempt for that matter, and not just have it flow rhythmically, but tie into the broader picture. This is the tale of the fall of an empire and it couldn't fit more perfectly. 

6. Without You by Harry Nilsson

"We're not going to see any fucking elephants, ok?" mighty be my favorite line of the whole movie. 

They could make a whole movie out of Lester taking Amy to see The Elephant Man and Amy making Lester's life a living hell. I'd watch it. She has zero respect for him and Woods plays off the young actress brilliantly. "And I'm sending this kid to Bolivia in a fucking box!" 

The scene is undercut by Nilsson's Without You playing softly in the background. When Ginger is screaming about how naive Lester is about Sam, the soundtrack kicks into the foreground as Nilsson cries "I can't liiiive!"

7. I Ain't Superstitious by Jeff Beck 

The first scene of violence occurs when Ace spots two gamblers cheating. After the call is made to the pit boss, a woman brings a cake with sparklers on top of it and sings Happy Birthday. There's something about this song being sung during Jeff Beck's guitar solo that makes this song fit so perfectly. Ace gives the pit boss the go ahead to zap the gambler with a cattle prod and they never know what hit them. 

8. Stardust by Hoagy Carmichael

I can't think of a better song to sum up the preceding 3 hours of betrayal, loss, and tragedy. 

9. Ain't Got No Home by Clarence "Frogman" Henry

There's a story Tarantino tells where he visits the set of Casino to meet Scorsese and Don Rickles spots  him and says "Quentin, thank God you're here! This guy doesn't know what he's doing at all! Thank God a real director has finally showed up!" 

Rickles is just right for the part of casino manager. His facial expressions are on point. This scene in particular shows just how well a song can carry the rhythm of a scene. "Take this one and stick it up your sister's ass."

10. Love Is Strange by Mickey and Sylvia

Kicks off an incredible streak of songs. Heart of Stone by Rolling Stones follows this and is then followed up by Love Is the Drug when they introduce Lester the Pimp. 

'Love is strange. Lot of people take it for a game' they say in the lyrics. Sam Rothstein is a man obsessed with controlling every little thing in his casino. "He bets like a fuckin' brain surgeon." Nicky would say. So when he sees Ginger and falls for her, all bets are off. She throws Ace up in the air like the many chips from the dealer and we spend the rest of the movie watching those proverbial chips fall. And when it happens, it's not pretty.  

Top 10 Seasons of Television

 I realized recently that, at this point in my life, I’m excited for just about one thing per year on average. In 2020, it was The Devil All the Time; in 2021 it was Licorice Pizza; 2022 was Batman and Nope; 2023 was Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3; and 2024 was all about Longlegs. Well, so far, 2025 looks to be the year of The Last of Us season 2. 

Two teasers have dropped in recent months, and I’m going to do something I never do and actually embed one of them here for your viewing pleasure:

Just look at it and soak in the hype. 

I’m someone who considers the modern era to be a Golden Age of TV. In fact, I’d go a step further: the 2000s and 2010s completely transformed the way I look at TV (the 2010s especially). I was never into game shows or soaps, barely into sitcoms, fucking despise corporate news, and only enjoy one or two cooking shows. It wasn’t until TV became a longform alternative to cinema that I really took notice. Somebody like Christopher Nolan would say that TV at its best can’t compare to the grandeur and gravitas of the “theater-going experience,” but the truth is that theaters suck. I can count the number of memorably enjoyable theater experiences I’ve had in my life on one hand. But I digress.

The point of this post is to say that when I think about my favorite shows, almost all of them were released in the past 15-20 years. Whenever I see someone compile a Top 50 or Top 100 Shows of All-time, I know I won’t be able to contribute one of my own because 1) I haven’t seen that many, and 2) I’ve always struggled with assessing shows holistically. I find it too difficult to reconcile all the good seasons with the bad ones (assuming a show is uneven, which most are) and come to a definitive, all-encompassing grade or score or ranking. So, instead, I’ve decided to compile a list of my favorite Seasons of Television. 

I like to look at it that way: these aren’t just seasons of separate shows; these are seasons of television as a whole. I associate them as much with each other as I do with their own respective canons. (For instance, I’ll always associate Leftovers season 3 with Twin Peaks: The Return because they both aired in 2017.)  

I assume (not just hope) that this list will change after April, and that’s a good feeling: to have complete confidence that some piece of media is going to deliver based on the material and people involved. The only downside if that happens is that the one thing I have to look forward to this year will have come and gone before 2025’s halfway mark. 

Anyway, here’s the Last of Us teaser again: 

And now the list: 

1. Mindhunter Season 2 (2019)

What’s funny is there’s nothing all that special about this season in the grand scheme of Mindhunter. Objectively speaking, it’s a logical and seamless continuation of season one’s tone, style, themes, and subject matter. Its most captivating qualities are largely incidental: the Atlanta child murders, the late 70s/early 80s soundtrack, Charles Manson, David Berkowitz, et al. In terms of execution, I can’t honestly say it does anything ‘better’ than the first season (though, the absence of Debbie is a definite plus). The only thing I can really say is that if season one was about success then this season is about failure, and the murky, complicated emotions that arise from that create a more palpably menacing, hopeless atmosphere. 

2. Twin Peaks: The Return (2017)

My favorite work by my favorite filmmaker. That’s a big endorsement, sure, but this is a lot like Mindhunter season 2 insofar as it feels sort of incidental for Lynch because this just happened to be where he was at at this point in his career (which just happened to be at the end of said career...). It’s too big and unwieldy to unpack in this little blurb, so I’ll focus on what I feel is the show’s most noteworthy strength: mystery. Lynch’s entire body of work - music and painting included - always seemed to center around the idea of “creating mystery.” His distinct brand of humor and terror and weirdness was always in service of that. To that end, The Return is his most effectively maddening puzzle box. 

3. Arrested Development Season 2 (2004)

I flipped a coin to decide between the first two seasons. Together, they feel like one long season - so much so that, no matter how many times I revisit them, I often forget where one ends and the other begins. Other sitcoms have made me laugh harder or louder, but none have made me laugh nonstop for this long. In terms of laughs-per-minute, it’s the funniest sitcom I’ve ever seen (seasons 1 & 2 specifically). Perhaps even more impressive than that, though, are the tender moments sprinkled throughout which are drenched in irony and undercut by call-backs, puns, and punchlines, yet somehow still manage to work on a sincere, unironic level.

4. Norm Macdonald Live Season 1 (2013)

For all their political incorrectness and bloviating about free speech, “edgy” comedy podcasts of the past 10 years haven’t managed to feel remotely as candid (or as funny) as this. In a world full of comics who “don’t give a fuck,” Norm truly didn’t give a fuck, and his improv skills were, in my opinion, not only underrated throughout his career, but wholly unmatched. All three seasons are brilliant, but the first one is the funniest because Norm wasn’t yet trying to take the show seriously on any level whatsoever. 

5. True Detective Season 1 (2014)

I’ll keep waiting around for another season that’s as good as this one, but the truth is that it was lightning in a bottle. Just like The Dark Side of the Moon or the original Alien, this is the kind of peak that never comes again, to borrow a phrase from Hunter S. Thompson. The desperate and obvious - and, at times, haphazard - attempts to recreate its magic in the later seasons only drew more attention to Nic Pizzolatto’s shortcomings, and the various rip-offs in the years following only solidified how inimitable it was.

6. The Last of Us Season 1 (2023)

“What if The Walking Dead was actually good?”  I’m generally not a fan of post-apocalyptic fiction because it’s rarely done well. Most movies/shows/books in this genre are either too depressing, too pretentious, too hokey, or just plain boring. The Last of Us, on the other hand, somehow finds the sweet spot - it’s everything you’d expect in terms of content and tone, except vastly more engrossing and emotional (and scary). And the performances are some of the best I’ve ever seen.

7. The Leftovers Season 3 (2017)

This was my least favorite season up until recently when I binged the entire series for the first time since it originally aired, and I discovered that that was the proper way to experience it. Watching this season in quick succession makes it feel like an 8-hour finale rather than eight separate episodes which, on their own, can seem somewhat underwhelming compared to previous seasons. That’s because this one is the most subdued of the three; the melodrama is dialed back considerably and the big musical crescendos are fewer and farther between. The final episode, especially, is probably the subtlest Lindelof has ever been. Now it’s my favorite season for that very reason.   

8. Chernobyl (2019) 

Radiation terrifies me. Nuclear weapons terrify me. Oppenheimer tapped into the latter fear; Chernobyl tapped into the former. Together they make for a pretty solid “Double Feature” (even though they’re technically different mediums). Not just because of the subject matter, but because of the tone as well. The palpable sense of doom that permeates every second of this miniseries is something you can’t manufacture; as good a fiction writer as Craig Mazin obviously is, this show’s most riveting quality is the nonfiction element. 

9. Watchmen (2019)

I could write a book on this one, and not entirely for good reasons. There’d be a whole chapter titled ‘How Not To Do A Finale.’ And it’s funny because Lindelof’s reputation for crafting unsatisfactory finales had eluded me up until this point. I enjoy the LOST finale, and Leftovers’ ending is perfect, so the exhilarating brilliance of the first 90 percent of Watchmen served as nothing more than confirmation bias that Lindelof was an underappreciated genius with an unblemished track record... and then he burned me. This show could’ve been my #1 of all-time - it was that good - but it jilted me at the altar, so instead it lands at #9, which is more than it deserves.

10. The Night Of (2016)

This miniseries aired right around the time I was coming to the realization that I’m more than just a passing Zaillian fan; I’m a card-carrying Zaillian-head. And this series marks the biggest, boldest presentation of his style to date. Part courtroom drama, part police procedural, part psychological thriller, all wrapped in a thick atmosphere. And don’t let the opening credit sequence fool you, it’s not a True Detective wannabe (though if it were repackaged as TD season 3 I wouldn’t object). Also, it introduced me to the brilliance of Bill Camp. 

Fear Of The Dawn

Man Made Of Meat

 

TIER LIST: TOOL SONGS

 Click here for a refresher on the "rules." 

S	Invincible, Descending, 7empest, Right in Two, Vicarious, The Pot, Intolerance
A	Fear Inoculum, Culling Voices, Prison Sex, Lateralus, Schism, Stinkfist, Forty Six & 2
B	Pneuma, Disposition, Eon Blue Apocalypse, Sober, Jambi, Reflection, Aenima, Parabol(a), Hooker with a Penis, H.
C	The Patient, Wings of Marie, 10,000 Days, Rosetta Stoned, Lost Keys, Bottom, Faaip De Oiad, Message to Harry Manback, Intermission, Jimmy, Die Eier von Satan, Swamp Song, Disgustipated, Cold and Ugly
D	Triad, The Grudge, Pushit, Third Eye, Crawl Away, Undertow, 4°, Flood, Hush, Jerk-Off
E	Ticks & Leeches, Intension, Eulogy, Sweat, Part of Me, Opiate
F	Chocolate Chip Trip, Litanie contre la Peur, Legion Inoculant, Mockingbeat, Lipan Conjuring, Mantra, Cesaro Summability, Viginti Tres, (-) Ions, Useful Idiot