3.3.09
8:55pm
Warning: this post contains intense fan boy adulation for Nine Inch Nails and incessant exhortations for the reader to listen to their music.
You have been warned.
Found out Sunday that Nine Inch Nails' song "The Day The World Went Away" was going to be used in the new trailer for Terminator: Salvation.
I watched it yesterday and now I am writing this post.
Action...reaction...
The music was slightly edited here and there to make the quiet parts longer and the noisy parts more drummy (there are no drums in the original track) but it was clearly the song and it works very well with the imagery and subject matter in the trailer.
Like many people, I am planning on seeing Watchmen this weekend, and I am almost certain that this Terminator trailer was made to be placed right before it, just like the teaser was made to appear right before The Dark Knight (oh Warner Bros., you can just fuel space shuttles with your credibility right now, can't you? Will, can we get a new X-Prize in which the contestant harnesses the power of Warner Bros. credibility to make a rocket go someplace? Excellent.).
All this lead me to thinking about how effective Nine Inch Nails' music has been in pretty much every film/trailer I've seen it in.
Professionally speaking; I don't mean the "Mr. Self Destruct" video set to Fight Club footage or the "Every Day Is Exactly The Same" video set to Binding Silence footage (metaburn!!!!!1 580,000 plus hits meta burn!!!!!!1!!!!)
Ever since I heard my first Nine Inch Nails instrumental tracks on their Broken EP (the creepily suggestively titled "Pinion"-- which only works in full if you've seen the video for it, and the regrettably angstily titled "Help Me I Am In Hell"-- gasp! I'm so Goth I'm dusty...) I have enjoyed them. It's easy to get your message across in a song with lyrics, you just say what you're trying to get across; but to express an idea or image or sentiment with only music, or in the case of Nine Inch Nails, sound? That takes talent.
On their next album, "The Downward Spiral", they had another instrumental called "A Warm Place" which was so disparate from anything NIN had done before, it shocked some people, even more so because it was sandwiched between a song called "Big Man With A Gun" in which Reznor is screaming about having a big dick and coming all over you, the listener, and "Eraser" which has about two whole minutes of Reznor screaming "kill me" over and over as his voice eventually gets swallowed by an ocean of dissonance. That's right, there was a mainstream artist in 1994 who knew the meaning of 'juxtaposition'.
Between "The Downward Spiral" and their next album which would come out five fucking years later, Reznor finally did what a lot of people wanted him to do: work on movie soundtracks. Namely, Oliver Stone's "Natural Born Killers" and David Lynch's "Lost Highway". Reznor produced both soundtracks and created new music for each. His music appears more noticeably in NBK (a different version of "A Warm Place" and "Something I Can Never Have" are used at key moments in the film and the original track, "Burn", which was actually written by Reznor AFTER he had seen the rough cut of the film, appeared in the credits) but it works in "Lost Highway" as well. The track created for "Lost Highway", "The Perfect Drug", has one of the tightest Mark Romanek directed videos ever; it's Nine Inch Nails meets Edward Gorey on absinthe.
Trent Reznor's "Driver Down" appears at the end of the movie.
Trent Reznor's "Driver Down" appears at the end of the movie.
Those are the only notable Reznor soundtrack moments to date, but since then, people have used Reznor's music in films and trailers to excellent effect.
I'm actually kind of glad I didn't see this in theaters, because I probably would have made some terrible pre-adolescent stew in my pants.
Moving on.
Then, Tony Scott (Ridley Scott's brother, I think) had his brief love affair with Nine Inch Nails when he used some NIN music in The Fan (sort of effective, but a bit too "the song is describing what's happening in the scene" at times) and Man On Fire (much more effective and mature; Scott blended a few different songs together in one scene where Denzel attempts suicide. Very powerful and disturbing).
Next occasion that I'm aware of was when the instrumental "Just Like You Imagined" was used in the trailer for "300".
This song is amazing and the way t was utilized in the trailer fucking blew everyone's mind. If only the actual movie had been better.
But whatever, this isn't about the quality of the movie.
If you see Watchmen any time soon, you're probably going to see this trailer.
Tell me it doesn't work.
I guess the point of all this was to ponder out loud why NIN music just works so well in films and trailers.
I suppose it's the inherent cinematic nature of Reznor's music.
Although I'm partially convinced that the concept at the heart of this ponderance is stuff happening in time with music.
Man, am I ever a sucker for that.
If it's done well.
I'm not THAT easily impressed.
Seriously.
Anyway, after their tour with Jane's Addiction this summer, NIN is going on hiatus so Reznor can do more stuff (some not Nine Inch Nails related, some not even music related), hopefully some of which will relate to scoring films.
And here come those exhortations:
I urge you to check out "Ghosts I-IV".
It's five dollars here.
Not all of it is gold but a lot of it is really solid.
It's beautiful, creepy, funky, vulnerable, cacophonous and a lot of other adjectives.
If all you know of Nine Inch Nails is "Head Like A Hole" and "Closer", you're going to be surprised.
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