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.  

Fear Of The Dawn - Jack White

Man Made Of Meat - Viagra Boys

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

My Dinner With Skynet

  Two actors, one location, 90 minutes of yapping - a new all-time favorite.

  Both actors work in tandem to carry this but they're flexing different muscles. Madolyn Smith-Osborne is a rumbling volcano who threatens to explode in every scene. Even when she seems fine, there's always some seismic shift in her expression or rumbling in her throat. She goes big because she has to but these aren't feeble attempts to out-act her co-star, especially since he's holding back. Malcolm McDowell isn't doing his typical scenery-chewing but, instead, nibbling and nipping with smarmy cuntiness; he's going to finish his meal on his terms. What they have in common is how they each bring history to these characters while every exchange is another spadeful layer on the lede.

 

  You see, so much of this story is deliberately withheld from us, which made my first watch alienating. Every time I thought I had a read on it, it'd switch things up in ways that left me more annoyed than intrigued. There were editing choices that felt nonsensical and character choices that felt absurd. Because of its initial set-up I thought this was going to be a slasher genre take on War Of The Roses; dialog-driven suspense around gender politics. No, it's much...much more than that. Of course I didn't find this out until the very end, so for 90% of the runtime I was perpetually disillusioned with it.

  I honestly thought it was going to end with me feeling like my time had been wasted. It looks good and the blocking is always dynamic but I feared that'd be all I got out of it. The lumber of doubt I had stacked against this thing was blocking my view of the forest.

 

  The ending, an epiphany of riches, sets everything right with 20/20 vision. It's a de-cloaking kind of twist, like when a mothership is blown up which unveils the fleet of drone saucers. Ultimately, not only did I not feel like my time had been wasted but I willfully invested more by watching it a second time. Every choice that I thought was stupid turned out to be deliberate and brilliant. And, again, it doesn't betray its propensity for mystery because, thankfully, the twist isn't some over-written exposition dump but a necessary kind of information leak that tells us just enough to piece it together ourselves. The dialog simultaneously covers its tracks while also leaving secret blacklight clues for those who are gifted with hindsight to track the glow.

  I love when movies are able to completely recontextualize themselves after a certain point and The Caller is one of the finest examples.

The best movies of the 2020s, so far: REBEL RIDGE

  I've written so much about Green Room for nearly a decade now and, having been disappointed by Saulnier's follow-up squib load, Hold The Dark, I had certain expectations for Rebel Ridge. Reading that it was gonna be about cops (and assuming it was another siege movie) of course I imagined Green Room 2: ACAB; intense pigbreaking slaughter with the hyper-realistic violence Saulnier has given us since Blue Ruin. But, by his design, Rebel Ridge is the complete opposite: a categorically Less-Lethal thriller.

  Saulnier, who's usually setting sail for arterial floods, deliberately wrote himself into a corner by defanging himself. It's admirable enough on paper but downright respectable since he managed to escape by challenging the notion of what one of his movies can be. Blue Ruin, Green Room, and Hold The Dark are all (for the most part) about how messy and awful violence is while showing us said violence to make that point. Rebel Ridge is Saulnier actually practicing what he's been preaching all these years: restraint. It's like after all the limbs he's lopped off and maimed he's finally applying tourniquets and cauterizing wounds left over. That said: it's only less lethal means of violence. Bones still break in pummeling combat sequences and there's the very real threat of deadly violence from our antagonists. But our hero isn't one of Saulnier's relatable unremarkables facing remarkable terror, he's a highly capable and efficient Marine who's all about de-escalation to keep blood from spilling...and he's out for revenge.

  Turns out this is a siege thriller but turned inside-out.

  What Saulnier does maintain is his signature knack for dialog and verisimilitude. Liiiiiitle by little he stacks the details of these characters and this world, sometimes without us even knowing. The dialog is much more catty and sharp since these are Saulnier's most 'professional' characters. They know how to play games of wit in gripping verbal standoffs that are just as exciting as any of the physical squabbles but it's very different than the panicked exchanges in Green Room.

  Rebel Ridge is a deeply satisfying movie, the kind that makes you want to pace around your living room and holler, but that spatial freedom also sucks in a way: After some incredible theater-going experiences last year (Beetlejuice², Civil War, Furiosa) to be forced to watch this crowdpleaser streaming on Netflix, minus the crowd, it's a fucking shame. This would play so goddamn well in a packed theater but such is the state of things.

Nothing else from 2024 compares to Meet The Grahams

  I typically keep my phone's volume on full because my notifications never wake me up, only the next morning is when I see what all I've missed. The only time I turn it on vibrate is when I'm at work or the movies. Hell, my YouTube notification chime isn't all that shrill and my phone is usually close to me when I doze off. So when I say that the notification for Meet The Grahams woke me up from a dead sleep and my phone was on the nightstand for once, trust me when I say that this track is evil.

  And, at the time, I didn't even know how much demon energy was in it, either. I got excited because, I mean, any New Kendrick is worth celebrating, so my heart rate was already pumping as I barreled downstairs to get my headphones. But, as Kendrick's frighteningly calm tone purred out "Dear, Adonis," on top of a sample of wailing cries and ascending, repetitive piano, I was fucking AWAKE. By the time it got to the ghostly choir of layered vocals shouting "YOU LIED," I was actually holding my breath despite how many times I uttered "Jesus" and "what the fuck?". And, again, this debuted in the middle of the night. Like, did I actually hear this song or do I have sleep paralysis?? The balled energy of my excitement converted to anxiety and disgust so I didn't go back to bed for another couple of hours. This is truly a stomach-turning, lip-curling, eye-watering, creepy fucking track that felt, as hyperbolic as this sounds, illegal to listen to (which...was not far off considering Drake has recently taken Kenny to court).

  Meet The Grahams is as harrowing as tracks like u, FEAR. and Mother I Sober because it's one thing to be vulnerable and condemning of yourself but it's another to point out someone else's flaws and vulnerabilities publicly and against their will. And even if the allegations he spews are all bullshit, that doesn't matter: he says it with such palpable venom and imposing nerve that I believe he believes it. The work itself isn't diminished simply because it's still a song, after all, and Kendrick is a stellar performer.

  So it's not like I didn't think K-Dot was capable of a track like this, it's just that he's never projected this kind of despair to anyone but himself. When Humble came out there was speculation that he was dissing this rapper, dissing that rapper, but everyone's theory was wrong because Kendrick was dissing himself. He's always been more introspective and has made so much music about how to love and forgive, not just others but one's self, so color me shocked that he brought us to a place where he taught us how to properly fucking HATE someone. Dismantling Drake with existential disrespect isn't even a braggadocios power move, it comes from a place of angry, demented pity. He even positions himself as the one person who could help Drake while pushing the blade in as deep as it can go as he tells him that he'll never be a better opponent to Drake than Drake is to himself.

  All of that is intense enough but to write letters to his parents and his children, saying he thinks Drake should die in prison, is unbelievable and nothing short of astonishing.

  That's why this is the best piece of media I experienced last year and undeniably one of the best songs ever written. It outshines every movie and show from last year because none of them have stuck with me like this has.