Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 661

GOP Rep. Steve King slams Colin Kaepernick: “This is activism that is sympathetic to ISIS”

(Credit: MSNBC screengrab)

Notoriously right-wing Republican Rep. Steve King is back at it again, making controversial statements linking NFL football player Colin Kaepernick to the world’s most infamous terror group.

The Iowa congressman appeared on Newsmax’s “Steve Malzberg Show” on Monday to slam the 49ers backup quarterback for his silent protest against the national anthem in an effort to raise awareness about police brutality against African-Americans. King piled on the criticism for Kaepernick, claiming that his “activism is sympathetic to ISIS.”

After the host asserted that the 49ers coach was incorrect to claim that Kaepernick holds a constitutional right to protest “when you are working as a football player for a football team,” King agreed and suggested that Kaepernick should be fired for his protest.

“I think Colin Kaepernick is representing the San Francisco 49ers when he puts on that uniform,” he said.

“When he steps out on the stage, the world stage, he’s taking advantage of that and he’s undermining patriotism,” King argued. “For me, if I’m the coach, I would say, ‘You’re done. Until you take a knee and beg forgiveness from the American people, you’re not going to set foot out on this field again.’”

King then turned to unsourced and questionable rumors running rampant in right-wing media.

“I understand that he has an, umm, Islamic girlfriend that is his fiance and that this has changed him and has taken on some different political views along the way,” King explained, referring to MTV personality Nessa Diab.

The NFL athlete has denied any recent conversion to Islam but said he has “great love” for the religion.

Watch the clip below:

TV to soothe election panic: “The Contenders” offers historical perspective, “The Bunker” gently skewers the process

Fred Armisen in "The Bunker" (Credit: IFC)

Last week Hillary Clinton summed up Donald Trump’s latest campaign antics by saying, “Every day that goes by, this just becomes more and more of a reality television show. It’s not a serious presidential campaign.”

This was not an earth-shattering revelation by any stretch. Nor is Clinton the only person to make this observation about Trump. Rather, what the former host of NBC’s “The Apprentice” has done is make his place in the 2016 presidential campaign into watercooler fodder, possibly overriding anticipation for the new fall shows or the Emmys.

Putting Trump’s and Clinton’s campaign styles into a larger context, however, is probably more beneficial than simply enduring the increasingly loopy new cycle that his antics are creating. The 2016-2017 television season officially launches next week, and for viewers who prefer thoughtful entertainment with their politics, this one may be just as important as the news.

A number of politically relevant series are either debuting or returning to the schedule, offering shorter-term comfort with a touch of historical framing. In addition to Sunday night’s return of Showtime’s straight-shooting weekly doc series “The Circus,” this week brings the debut of PBS’ “The Contenders: 16 for ’16,” which kicks off on Tuesday night at 8 p.m. This and the “Frontline” election-year examination of the candidates, “The Choice 2016,” arriving Sept. 27 at 9 p.m., do their part to illuminate the intricate machinations of the political process, although “The Choice” tends to be a lot more sobering than just about anything else.

Given the anxiety surrounding this election, many prefer filtering the ever-morphing and expanding lunacy through a comic lens. Thank heavens, then that TBS’ “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee,” returned with new episodes on Monday night. Bee’s searing political analysis adds quotable sensibility to the ludicrous cacophony blaring back to us from the campaign trail. While “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah” has kept watch, Bee has been terribly missed during her hiatus. (Her HBO counterpart John Oliver also serves this purpose beautifully, but “Last Week Tonight” won’t return until Sept. 25.)

All these shows are genial escorts to guide us through the litter-strewn carnival ground that is the 2016 presidential campaign. The humor and insight on “Full Frontal” and “The Circus,” in particular, can serve as both balm and warning.

“The Contenders,” meanwhile, offers an educational, albeit shallow, wade through past presidential campaigns that marked shifts in how such battles are mounted and run. Episodes also remind us that some things have not changed that much over the years: There’s still value in styling oneself as a candidate who isn’t beholden to the establishment and who makes off-the-cuff remarks — even those not based in fact. And female candidates continue to be subjected to a double standard, one likely to stand even if we do elect a woman to the highest political office in the country.

The first episode of “The Contenders,” “Chisholm/McCain — The Straight Talkers,” illustrates these ideas by looking at the very different political lives and campaigns of former New York Rep. Shirley Chisholm, who became the first black candidate to seek the presidential nomination in 1972, and Arizona Sen. John McCain, who ran for president in 2000 and 2008.

“Contenders” host Carlos Watson admits the two couldn’t appear to be more different on the surface, but at heart “both were mavericks, both were original thinkers and, indeed, part of the reason they ran, and part of the reason they lost, is that both of these folks were unbought and unbossed.”

I suppose that’s one way of unearthing common ground between these two. Another is to point out that although Chisholm handled her campaign with utmost seriousness, the establishment laughed her off because she was a black woman with Oval Office ambitions. McCain, maverick though he was, is a white male who was anointed by the Reagan administration, who had prominence on the national stage before he decided to run for president.

At a time when the civil rights and feminist movements were still fighting to win equality in everyday settings, Chisholm’s declared candidacy was considered to be symbolic at best.

Chisholm’s campaign was underfunded from the beginning and never truly supported by white feminists or black male politicians; the most prominent, California Rep. Ron Dellums, eventually abandoned her for the party’s apparent nominee George McGovern. “Women are under a different kind of scrutiny than men,” Chisholm observed, a concept with which Clinton has some familiarity.

None of these were obstacles for McCain to overcome. Even his status as a maverick won him plenty of respect in his unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination in 2000. Where it came back to bite him was in 2008, when he flipped a number of his most important positions in order for the establishment to see him as a palatable candidate. By then he had been very much bought, was entirely willing to be bossed and ran on his predecessor’s platforms, promising security and promoting his military expertise. By then the country was sliding into a recession and yearning for generational change. Enter Barack Obama.

Looking at the opening episode of “The Contenders” as an allegory for the Clinton campaign (though Watson never says as much), “Dean/Buchanan: The Flamethrowers” may shed some additional light on why so many voters are willing to label Trump, an inexperienced, unfiltered boor, as “anti-establishment” and profess to value that he says what he’s thinking. In very different ways, presidential candidates Howard Dean and Pat Buchanan spoke to a similar level of anger and disillusionment. Dean even got some mileage by allowing his passion to erupt forth at campaign rallies — until his famous “yee-ah” broke loose and did him in.

The strongest aspect of “The Contenders” is its array of interviews, particularly with the candidates at the heart of each profiled campaign. It’s interesting to observe Dean, Buchanan and McCain looking back on their respective experiences with honesty and dispassionate clarity; this adds a level of intimacy the usual (and quite useful) array of academics and former political peers wouldn’t be able to provide. (Chisholm passed away in 2005.)

Noteworthy for different reasons are former senior Bush adviser Karl Rove’s additions to the conversation, in that he portrays the part of the oily operative to the very last. (Asked for thoughts regarding Dean’s imploded campaign, Rove chortles for a moment before offering, “We could have had a lot of fun with him.”)

Though Watson recently told critics that “The Contenders” is designed to appeal to political junkies and newbies alike, less politically inclined viewers may be best served by the eight-episode series, produced by the host’s company OZY Media.

It is less of an in-depth examination of these campaigns than a drive-by, reminding us that these past historical chapters took place and the people who wrote them existed. Future episodes compare the campaign stories of  vice presidential candidates Geraldine Ferraro and Sarah Palin; and presidential contenders Michael Dukakis and Mitt Romney, Gary Hart and Jesse Jackson, Ross Perot and Ralph Nader, and Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan.

Uniquely muddy as this presidential campaign season has been, parody may be a more effective coping tool.  IFC’s “Documentary Now!” has that angle pretty well covered with Wednesday’ season premiere, “The Bunker,” debuting at 10 p.m.

Like many of IFC’s originals, the mockumentaries featured in “Documentary Now!” can be too precious and narrowly appealing, drawing the keenest appreciation from film nerds. But what else can a person expect from a series that exists for the express purpose of lampooning nonfiction cinema? The genre is having its moment right now, but many of the docs Fred Armisen and Bill Hader spoof are decades old. When faux host Dame Helen Mirren welcomes us to the show’s 51st season as opposed to its second, one almost believes her.

Even so, “The Bunker” has a special currency in this run-up to November’s election, in part because the documentary on which it’s based, 1993’s “The War Room,” followed James Carville and George Stephanopoulos as they successfully steered Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign to the White House.

A person doesn’t need to have seen “The War Room” to get a kick out of “The Bunker,” though the former is currently streaming on Hulu. You only have to know who Carville and Stephanopoulos are to appreciate Hader’s distillation of the former into his “Bunker” version Teddy Redbones, partner to Fred Armisen’s “Boy Hunk of the Beltway” Alvin Panagoulious.

That nickname, by the way, is better than the ones assigned to Redbones. “They always write the same stuff about me,” Hader quips in his character’s deep-fried drawl. “Mississippi Machiavelli, or . . . succubus, or uh, what’s the other one? Suspected arsonist. But you know what’s the one thing they leave out? Undefeated!”

The pair hooks up with the floundering gubernatorial campaign of a former city councilman and hapless numbskull, Ben Herndon, who is competing the well-funded and completely qualified incumbent Tom Lester for no justifiable reason. Like other “Documentary Now!” episodes, much of “The Bunker” comedy is gentle, although some of its better gags are unintentionally reminiscent of real-world campaign insanity. Panagoulious and Redbones even manage to gin up a death threat. The truly odd part is, although “The Bunker” version is more innocent than real world events, it’s mordantly funny because it could be true.

The fact that the real presidential election is stranger than “The Bunker” fiction or light nonfiction could be more than enough political entertainment for most. Polls and voter habits indicate that most Americans have made their selections at this point anyway. Unlike the endless news chatter presently masquerading as a reality competition’s aftershow, “The Contenders” or “The Choice” won’t necessarily tell us what we want to hear. But they may arm us with the knowledge we keenly need to understand the gravity and significance of the selection set before us, even if at least one of these candidates refuses to take this business seriously.

“Wilco is not your average assignment”: Guitarist Nels Cline on how the band changed his life — and how much he changed the band

Nels Cline and Jeff Tweedy of Wilco. (Credit: AP/Barry Brecheisen)

Wilco is a band that’s nearly impossible to predict. The new Wilco album, “Schmilco,” shows the band’s acoustic, introspective side and it has arrived a year after the spontaneous, fuzzed-out record “Star Wars.” Some of both albums, different as they are, came from the same sessions.

We spoke to Nels Cline, the long-revered experimental guitarist who joined the band shortly before 2006’s “Sky Blue Sky.” (He also appeared on the band’s live album, “Kicking Television.”) 

As productive as this onetime alt-county band had been, its staff changes and lead singer Jeff Tweedy’s personal demons — chronicled in the movie “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” — made the group a very unstable unit. With Cline’s arrival, Wilco settled down significantly, and its lineup has been unchanged since.

Cline also just released a two-disc jazz album, “Lovers,” which is heavy on standards and understated playing that recalls Jim Hall’s. It ranges from the classic “Beautiful Love” to a song from Henry Mancini’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” score and Sonic Youth’s “Snare Girl.”

Cline spoke to Salon from his home in New York. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Let’s start with the new Wilco album: On an initial listen, it’s a more subdued, introverted record. Some of it was put together when you did “Star Wars,” I think.

Yeah.

Give me a sense of what it was like to play those songs, what the experience of connecting with those numbers was like.

Some of those songs I didn’t actually know would end up being on two different records because [Jeff Tweedy] was writing them mostly at the same time. It didn’t surprise me, you know: There was a time when even during the making of “The Whole Love,” where there’s so much diverse material, that Jeff was thinking like, Wow, I don’t know if this should be two different records or whatever.

So I think that quite often we’re working on materials that seem at first in . . . rough form to be perhaps disparate, and then [they become] joined together as one record with the exclusion of a bunch of songs.

So there’re always many outtakes. In the case of the “Star Wars” and “Schmilco” material, I think, Jeff kind of knew ahead of time that he was going to separate them into material that was what I would like to term more low-key but not down tempo. Where his singing is more dulcet, it’s not full-voice singing, and it’s more based around him playing acoustic guitar. And that “Star Wars” would be this, for the most part, seriously rocking kind of record.

Right.

And I think early on in the process we started working on the “Star Wars” stuff first, and then we started attacking that material first because we kind of knew that was the next record for him.

But I think they both share one similar aspect which is they’re both very compressed traditional rock ‘n’ roll-length records. They’re very direct. And they’re sort of to the point. And there are very few overarching alarm bells for importance because Jeff, I think, is trying to steer around that. I mean, interestingly to me, “Wilco Schmilco” was the working title for this record for a long time, and I was surprised it ended up being the title when all was said and done.

But I think that in a way that would lead one to believe that it’s kind of an almost humorous, sort of frivolous record, when I find it personally to be quite the opposite. I find it to be lyrically one of Jeff’s best records and actually quite lyrically direct compared to “Star Wars,” which is actually quite impressionistic lyrically.

So I think it’s just his way of steering around expectations and and portentousness.

Right, you don’t have any 12-minute “Cortez the Killer”-like heavy songs on this one.

[Laughs] No they’re all pretty classic song lengths.

Though if you wanna do one like that — I think your fans would be interested — and you cover, I don’t know, “Like a Hurricane” and Richard Thompson’s “Sloth,” you could stretch everything to 15 minutes of guitar jams.

Humorously, perhaps: There’s always a moment before we began a new record where Jeff says, “Man, we should just do like really angry all-instrumental record.”

These things never happen. But, there is that sort of underlying  kind of possibility that you never know. And I think Jeff being a you know, a savvy and also kind of self-challenging individual . . .  and the band being pretty flexible, don’t rule it out. [Laughs]

That’s the funny thing about Wilco. Your fans don’t really rule out anything; I don’t quite ever know what you guys are going to deliver and that makes it exciting to see you live and to have a new record drop. It’s like, What’re they going to do this time?

I mean it’s certainly an aspect of the band. . . . It’s Jeff’s songwriting acumen that attracted me to joining Wilco.

Before you joined Wilco, you had a strong reputation among jazz people and fans of experimental music. You were well-respected and well-liked. And then you get a call from Jeff, 12 years ago. I think it was after “A Ghost Is Born.” Am I right about that?

Yes, exactly.

So after that, and before “Sky Blue Sky,” you get a call from Jeff Tweedy asking if you wanted to join a band that’s pretty famous and pretty beloved. And there’s also been a lot of pain and turmoil. And I can’t think of too many other examples of a new guitarist joining such a major, well-established band. Maybe Mick Taylor joining the Rolling Stones.

[Laughs] Wow, that’s a really interesting example.

Well, for a lot of us, Wilco is one of the big bands of the last 20 years. So to add a major voice to a band like that was a pretty big deal. I mean, the Beatles never did that. So what was it like for you to get that call?

Well I won’t lie, I mean, there was an aspect to me joining Wilco that had to do with survival because I was . . . You might think that I was doing great because I was releasing records and playing with a bunch of people on the West Coast. But I was not doing great.

Right, you were still in L.A. at this point.

Yeah, and just driving up and down the coast playing with people, doing whatever I could do. . . . And I wasn’t interested in doing anything but the music that I was doing. But it was also very difficult to be doing that.

That said, Wilco is quite a different proposition because I had turned down a couple [of] things that probably would have at least paid my bills but they just didn’t seem interesting. But Wilco is not your average assignment, you know.

Right.

I knew if I did it, it would be kind of a life changer — which of course it was. But beyond what you said — you used that word “beloved” — I guess I kind of knew that, but I don’t think I got the extent to which people were obsessing about everything that Wilco did and everything that Jeff does. And I’m glad I didn’t watch the movie ’til I had been in the band about eight years.

Wow, yeah.

Or seven years. Just because the baggage, it’s not musical. So I’m only really interested in what I could musically bring to the orchestra.

Right, and I think that you were more in an experimental subculture at that point.

Well, yeah, I mean most of my life, that’s what I was doing. I did play in rock bands leading up to that; I played in the Geraldine Fibbers. I played with Mike Watt, which is how I met the Geraldine Fibbers. I played in a rock band in Los Angeles for the same five people for eight years called BLOC, which was immediately signed and dropped from a major label.

But not in a job or kind of workmanlike way. 

It was what I like to do. But what I like to do isn’t particularly lucrative, so with Wilco, the possibility . . . like being rescued, you know.

You were sort of like any artist trying to make a living balancing it all. Like “I wanna do things that interest me musically, but I also need to pay the rent.” And you’re sort of doing that dance and it’s not clear to you that things are going your way commercially even if you’re still excited artistically.

Yeah, and to be honest, I was not getting any younger. I was almost 50 years old when I joined Wilco.

So I was like 48 years old and thinking that I was delusional to think that I would someday actually be able to make a living playing music without constant stress and worry.

And so the interesting thing about Wilco, besides its beloved nature or its artistic vastness and the existence of possibilities, is that they also ended up from the very beginning offering to assist me to do my own stuff more lucratively. So they started helping me to actually be a more successful improviser, to further my own ideas because the idea is that whatever we are doing outside the band is not only gonna make me happy, but will bring something aesthetically back to the band, which I think is absolutely true and quite unique.

Yeah, that doesn’t happen very often. It sounds like you didn’t have to wrestle with the integrity question because you’re joining this popular group. And not only were you able to bring something to them. You were able to keep doing things on the side.

Yeah, I’m the old man of the band. You can’t teach the old dog that many new tricks.

There have been a lot of shifts in the Wilco story. You’ve injected musically a kind of experimental and unpredictable spirit into the band. But as an organization Wilco has actually settled down and become calmer. Do you think that you’ve had anything to do with that?

No, I mean, if you listen to “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” and you take that to “A Ghost is Born,” there’s already an experimental bent in the band. I think personally that what I have added to the band in terms of that, possibly is a little bit overstated at this point.

I don’t know why stability occurred but I think it’s a combination of things. The first thing, straight up I would say that it’s a good combination of people.

We have not only musicians who really love each other and get along and are enjoying what we’re doing, but we’re older. The pitfalls of rock and roll life do not loom large and affect the music.

So we’re mature individuals.

I think that the combination of great chemistry and maturity is what has kept this band of these six individuals together for 12 years now. We’re loving what we’re doing, and we never know what’s gonna happen next. We never know what the next phase is gonna be. And Jeff is really savvy and artistically challenges himself and the rest of the world. He’s very smart and, I think, besides his great songwriting he’s an excellent leader.

And I like bands. I like being in a band.

Even my own band has been going for over 20 years now. You know, I’m sort of the kind of guy who would stay with something, which is very kind of un-jazz of me. I like it and I guess it’s true. I grew up with band mythology and I still dig it.

Secrets of the “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” soundtrack: “Oh my God, this song is about Cameron”

Mia Sara, Matthew Broderick and Alan Ruck in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" (Credit: Paramount Pictures)

“Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” which celebrated its 30th birthday this past June, has long been the most popular movie without a soundtrack from a decade crawling with them — whether baked into a film’s plot (“The Blues Brothers,” “Footloose,” “Dirty Dancing”), tangential to it (“Back to the Future”) or bolted on to grab a piece of MTV’s action (“Top Gun”). “Ferris” writer/director John Hughes was an obsessive music fan who cemented the legacies of several artists by building film scenes around their songs — try to imagine “The Breakfast Club” without Simple Minds’s “Don’t You (Forget about Me) or the kiss at the end of “Pretty in Pink” set to something other than OMD’s “If You Leave” — and even had his own record label run by Tarquin Gotch, who had earlier worked with Hughes as music supervisor on “Ferris.”

Music in Hughes’s universe worked both as filmmaker’s trademark and glimpse into his passions. Perhaps matched only by the contemporaneous movies of Amy Heckerling and Cameron Crowe, soundtracks in the work of John Hughes feel like mix-tapes the director made special for you.

Why then did Hughes fill his biggest hit as a director with several now-legendary musical moments — Yello’s “Oh Yeah” as the audio cue for a certain Ferrari, The Beatles’ “Twist and Shout” for a certain parade — only to beg off on releasing them collectively as a soundtrack? For years, the story went that Hughes couldn’t imagine his teenage audience being interested in a soundtrack that had both British New Wave and “Danke Schoen,” made famous in 1961 by Wayne Newton, and couldn’t see how the songs would hang together as an album. But now, we know there’s an equally compelling argument put forth by Mr. Gotch that the rights to “Twist and Shout” were only available for the movie, not a soundtrack release, and who could imagine a “Ferris Bueller” soundtrack without the song the title character sings to an adoring crowd?

How we know this is the most delicious irony of all: It’s in the liner notes of the now-released “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” soundtrack, available after three decades this week from La-La Land Records, a 14-year-old label based in Burbank which specializes in film and television soundtracks. We spoke to the album’s co-producers Dan Goldwasser and Neil S. Bulk about collecting the sounds and songs of the beloved teen classic in one place after so many years, the power of film music in situations dramatic and common and Principal Ed Rooney’s favorite track on the album.

How did you two become involved with the project?

Dan Goldwasser: Back in 2009, I set up some meetings between La-La Land and Paramount, the studio that released “Ferris.” Prior to that, studios like Sony and 20th Century Fox had been opening up their back catalogs of movies for archival soundtrack releases, but Paramount wasn’t quite on board yet. For lack of a better phrase, the vault was closed.

It was around 2013 when we revisited the project with Paramount. There was no conscious decision to skip the 25th anniversary of the movie in 2011 but to tackle an A-plus “premium” title like “Ferris,” we would have had to start working on it much earlier.

We‘d always had a wish list of titles we wanted to get rereleased. “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” was always at the top of that list. We knew it would be a monumental task because the number of different songs from different musical eras that would have to be cleared. And the risk with a soundtrack is that it contains a premium song, a huge hit everyone knows like “Twist and Shout,” which will subsequently raise the price of getting the rights to everything else on the soundtrack and pretty soon you’re not in budget anymore.

The business of soundtracks dominated by songs instead of instrumental scores really began with “American Graffiti” in the early 1970s and Martin Scorsese’s movies where he liked to use a lot of pop music. Record labels soon caught on to the idea that there was money to be made in soundtracks. Which is great because that’s our business but it also makes what you can get and what you can afford to include on a soundtrack a big part of what we do.

What made it onto the “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” soundtrack?  

Neil S. Bulk: La-La Land likes to include as much music on their releases as possible. Our goal with Ferris was the same. 

Goldwasser: We took a kitchen sink approach: Try to put everything in the film on the album. That meant Ira Newborn’s score — which was easy, Paramount owned that already — but also as many other songs as we could license. In the end we got nearly everything in the movie except “Twist and Shout,” “March of the Swivelheads” and “Taking the Day Off.” The rights holders respectfully declined our request, sadly.

However this is the first time the version of “Beat City” [the song by The Flowerpot Men playing over the montage of Ferris, Sloane and Cameron driving into Chicago] you hear in the movie has been released. We had a version of it from the 7-inch vinyl single John Hughes himself released to his mailing list back in the ’80s that we borrowed from his family for reference. We were also able to get Ben Watkins and Adam Peters who wrote the song to personally supervise its mixing and remastering for this project using the original studio vault elements. 

Who or what went into deciding it was time for “Ferris” to get a proper soundtrack release?

Goldwasser: Obviously it’s nice to tie in a release with the 30th anniversary for promotion. But there’s such a huge fan base for “Ferris” and 30 years worth of people clamoring for a soundtrack that fans would be happy [to have] regardless of when it came out.

But given the era we’re living in, hasn’t the movie’s soundtrack, or pretty much all of it, been reconstructed on thousands of Spotify and YouTube playlists already?

Bulk: Sure, but this is nearly everything in the movie in one place, including liner notes featuring new interviews with music supervisor Tarquin Gotch, John Hughes’s son James, editor Paul Hirsch and composer Ira Newborn. It has the CD debut of “Beat City” and “I’m Afraid,” vocal and instrumental, as well as Newborn’s score, including music written for but not used in the film. Those two songs were both re-mixed especially for this release and are artist approved.

The album not only allows you to relive the movie sonically, but for collectors, a critical mass of our audience, it’s about holding something in your hands you couldn’t for 30 years because it didn’t exist. And for a collector, our soundtrack has nearly all the music you’d hear watching “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” not just whatever versions you happen to find in videos on YouTube.

Another theory of mine related to this is about soundtrack albums in general. The music soundtrack is the only part of a movie you can strip out of it and enjoy on its own. You can’t strip out the editing. You can buy a costume, but it’s just a thing sitting on a mannequin. But the soundtrack exists by itself.

We put a lot of thought into sequencing and flow but we know that, in the age we live in, fans, particularly younger ones, were just going to buy the album, rip it to iTunes and create their own playlist anyway. But we still sequenced the project as songs, score, bonus tracks, so you could listen straight through if you want, but still focus on the type of music that interested you most.

What formats will the soundtrack be available in?

Goldwasser: Right now, we’re releasing it as CD. Digital and streaming rights are an entirely different set of negotiations our timeline and budget didn’t allow for. We’re exploring a vinyl release too.

How would you describe the soundtrack to someone who has never seen the movie? 

Goldwasser: I’d tell them to go see the movie.

Neil S. Bulk: A musical journey in the mid-’80s and leave it at that.

What’s your favorite track?

Bulk: I’m going to cheat and have two. One is song and one is score. The song: “I’m Afraid.” Which is playing as an instrumental during Ferris’s monologue after Cameron freaks out. In the film it has no vocal. Our release has both versions, with and without vocals. When you can hear the vocals, you say, “Oh my God this song is about Cameron,” a kid who is always afraid, who hides under the table when the doorbell rings.

My other favorite is a piece of score called “Ferris on Line 2.” It’s the sound of a horror movie score that everybody recognizes as such and shows the power of film music. It’s terrifying even though in the movie it only refers to a blinking “Hold” light on a telephone.

Goldwasser: My favorite song is The Dream Academy instrumental “Please Please Let Me Get What I Want” which is playing when the friends visit the art museum. When I was a kid, I assumed it was part of the score. But it’s actually an instrumental version of a Smiths song. It sounds amazing, beautiful, introspective. In that scene, we see Ferris and Sloane together and Cameron alone starring at the “Sunday Afternoon” painting by Seurat.

Bulk: It’s first time we realize that this is Cameron’s movie, that he will be the character that changes.

Goldwasser: My favorite part of the score is called “Rooney on Patrol.” It’s the cop-on-the-beat music playing when Principal Rooney flips up his sunglasses to go looking for Ferris, and really similar to the jazzy soundtrack Ira Newborn did for “Police Squad!” in 1982. Rooney thinks he’s the shit and the music plays on his delusion: What school principal leaves work in the middle of the day to chase down a kid cutting class?

If Ferris Bueller made the soundtrack for this movie, what would be on it?

Dan Goldwasser: This has to be it. “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” is the most fantasy-like of all of John Hughes’s teen movies. I’m not saying the movie is Ferris’s fantasy, but he is our narrator for it.

Neil S. Bulk: The music in the film is the soundtrack that Ferris would score the film with. The idea of a movie is that it’s the most important event in a person’s life. Therefore, this is the best music that Ferris would use to score his most important day off. It can’t get any better than this. John Hughes says something similar on his commentary track. Who am I to argue with that assessment? 

What is Ferris’s favorite track? Sloane’s? Cameron’s?

Dan Goldwasser: Ferris’s is “Danke Schoen” because he sings it twice. I think it’s his favorite song — he wasn’t singing “Twist and Shout” in the shower at the beginning of the movie.

Sloane’s is “Edge of Forever,” by the Dream Academy. That’s the music playing when we last see her character and she says, “He’s going to marry me.” The reality is they probably don’t. But Sloan can imagine her future in a way Cameron and Ferris can’t. The music is the optimism of that moment.

I think Cameron really likes the fake recording of the Coughlin Brothers Mortuary they use to fool Principal Rooney. Amidst all the character’s moroseness, Cameron has a sick sense of humor.

Tell me an unmade soundtrack you’d like to bring back to life?

Bulk: I’ve always wanted to do a collection of the instrumental, music from “The Brady Bunch.” I know you can find “Brady Bunch” songs like “Sunshine Day” on records. But I’m talking about the underscore playing when Marcia’s walking home smitten with the dentist.

Goldwasser: Giorgio Moroder’s score for “Scarface.” That movie had a soundtrack but his score has never been released. 

What are you guys working on now?

Bulk: I’m producing a 3-CD set of music from the Lynda Carter “Wonder Woman” television series. Dan is the art director on that collection.

Goldwasser: Independently, I’m working on a series of digital singles with Fox for songs from “Family Guy.”

You guys usually work together?

Goldwasser: More often than not.

Bulk: We have our own projects. Dan also does art direction and I don’t. It’s like an old married couple — Ferris and Cameron kinda stuff.

Mel and Sue are leaving the tent: Can “The Great British Bake Off” still rise without these key ingredients?

Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins of "The Great British Bake Off" (Credit: BBC)

A good bake, to borrow a phrase from “The Great British Bake Off’” judge Mary Berry, requires an understanding of chemistry, a sensitivity to flavor balance and texture, and a respect for precision. This is part of the reason why there are many more home chefs than devoted bakers. Cooks can improvise; so can bakers, but only after flawlessly executing a specific master recipe.

Without having the elements in proper proportion and at the right temperature, doughs won’t adequately rise, cookies won’t properly crisp and the flavor disappears.  Proper adherence and execution to recipe is the difference between confection perfection and a cake wreck.

Knowing this may shed some light on why “Bake Off” fans on social media all but lost their cookies at Tuesday’s news that hosts Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins are quitting.  Their departure follows yesterday’s news that the series would be departing BBC, where it has aired for seven seasons, for Channel 4 beginning in 2017.

The average TV consumer may be excused for wondering why people are making such a fuss over the loss of a pair of hosts featured on a public television culinary series. Reality hosts come and go from unscripted shows all the time, regardless of how iconic they are or closely associated with a show’s brand they may be. But Giedroyc’s and Perkins’s exit feels a bit different, in that their one-of-a-kind partnership and meshing temperaments is integral to the show’s winning formula.

Part of the emotional spike over Giedroyc’s and Perkins’s joint decampment can be attributed to fan loyalty. The women are loyal friends and familiar faces to U.K. viewers as the comedy team Mel and Sue. Their spectacular onscreen amity has won the pair its own subset of followers within the “Bake Off” faithful.

“Bake Off,” known to American viewers as “The Great British Baking Show,” recently completed its third season on PBS. The series flouts a number of unscripted television conventions, beginning with the fact that it is upbeat, genteel and populated by contestants who support and respect one another. By reverently focusing on the process of baking, “The Great British Bake Off” / “Baking Show” fosters a new appreciation for the creativity and focus required to execute biscuits, cakes, puddings and breads impressive enough to pass muster with experts.

Each individual operates under the pressure of time limits while navigating an unpredictable environment. It’s hard to get all your ingredients to optimal room temperature when the room happens to be under an open-air tent in Berkshire’s Welford Park. The unscripted competition’s viewership on PBS is smaller than that in its home nation, where the sixth season finale attracted some 15 million viewers and an audience share of 55 percent.

Perkins’s bawdy double entendres, Giedroyc’s saucy retorts and the pair’s signature challenge cook off chirp — “On your marks, get set, bake!” — reflects “British Bake Off’s” lighthearted approach to very serious displays of skill and inventiveness. If Berry and her fellow judge, celebrity artisan baker Paul Hollywood, act as the binding agents in this mixture, Giedroyc and Perkins are the leavening that makes “Bake Off” peculiarly fulfilling television. There is conflict on the show, but it’s of the internal variety as each contender attempts to wrestle her ambitions into the prescribed time restrictions. The tension can be thick, but Mel and Sue do (did? sniff) their part to dissipate it with encouragement and playfulness.

American viewers may consider themselves fortunate to be one season behind our UK counterparts, in that we still have another cycle of Mel and Sue to savor. (Note: this paragraph has been corrected since the story’s original publication, thanks to an eagle-eyed reader.)  It’s a safe bet British fans will be just fine as well. When a show strikes gold with a format as solid as “The Great British Bake Off,” it’s likely to keep on humming.

Then again, it would be neglectful not to mention CBS’s “The American Baking Competition,” and ABC’s “The Great Holiday Baking Show,” two wan attempts to translate the “British Bake Off” format into series fit for American palates. Berry came stateside to judge ABC’s version, and Hollywood evaluated CBS’s competition, but both shows failed to impress, in no small part due to the ineffective mélange of hosts and judging personalities. In effect, neither had their Mel and Sue.

One point this show drives home is that there are many ways to create differently delicious versions of the same cake. It’s also true that substitutes exist for pretty much any ingredient in any recipe, but that doesn’t mean the finished product will taste the same as the original version. Otherwise we’d all be going gluten-free.

Samantha Bee explains why Donald Trump reminds her “of all the dinners I served at the lobster house”

Samantha Bee (Credit: TBS)

This week’s Variety cover story features a profile of and interview with “Full Frontal” host Samantha Bee, who gave her unique reason for despising GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump:

“I waitered for so long that I literally have PTSD from it, and now, when I feel people being unfair to one another — when I feel people negating other people — it takes me right back to that place of having people be so awful to me because I was serving them food,” Bee told Variety’s Brian Steinberg. “When I see Donald Trump, I think of all the dinners I served at the lobster house.”

“Full Frontal” — like most politically-minded late-night shows — leans heavily on Trump criticism, but Bee promised she’d maintain her edge even if his opponent, Hillary Clinton, wins in November.

“If Hillary Clinton is elected, the tsunami of misogyny that will emerge will overtake all of us,” she said. “You can see what happened when we had a black president, and you will see the same if she becomes the leader of this nation. I feel there will be no shortage of things for us to talk about.”

If, on the other hand, Trump ends up in the Oval Office: “I’m not sure we’ll have a world, so we’ll see.”

Read the full profile over at Variety.

Author Eric Schlosser: That “emotionally unstable” Donald Trump could end up with the nuclear codes is “like the plot out of a science-fiction film”

Eric Schlosser, author of “Command and Control,” in a Facebook Live interview with Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir on Tuesday, warned of the dire possibility that GOP presidential nominee could wind up with sole control of the United States’ nuclear arsenal.

“I feel compelled to make a political remark,” Schlosser said. “It’s extraordinary that there’s any possibility Donald Trump could be president of the United States and commander-in-chief and in charge of our nuclear arsenal. Under the law, the only person who’s authorized to order the use of nuclear weapons is the president. And he or she is pretty much unrestricted about when he or she wants to use them.

Schlosser explained that people who work with nuclear weapons in any capacity must pass a personnel reliability program — “basically a personality test to see if you should be let anywhere near nuclear weapons.”

“Donald Trump would fail that on every score,” he continued. “He’s a liar, he’s got all kinds of personal business problems and debts, he’s clearly emotionally unstable, and in the military he would be forbidden from working with nuclear weapons. And the notion of him being commander-in-chief, with the launch codes, capable of devastating cities and countries, is extraordinary. It’s like the plot out of a science-fiction film.”

Watch below:

President Obama chides media treatment of Clinton and Trump: “We can’t afford to act as if there’s some equivalence here”

With less than four weeks to go until voting registration closes in Pennsylvania, President Obama hit the campaign trail in Philadelphia for his first solo rally on behalf of Hillary Clinton on Tuesday.

In front of the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum made famous in the film “Rocky,” the president came out swinging strongly against Clinton’s Republican rival Donald Trump, explicitly naming the Birther turned White House aspirant for the first time while chiding the media for giving him a pass for his inflammatory rhetoric.

“You want to debate who’s more fit to be our president? One candidate who’s traveled to more countries than any secretary of state ever has, has more qualifications than pretty much anyone who’s ever run for this job and the other who isn’t fit in any way, shape, or form to represent this country abroad and be its commander-in-chief,” Obama said. “So somehow as things go on because we’ve become so partisan, our standards for what’s normal have changed. And Donald Trump says stuff everyday that used to be considered as disqualifying for being president. And yet because he says it over and over and over again the press just gives up and they just say, well, yeah, OK.”

“He wasn’t going to let you on his golf course,” Obama said. “He wasn’t going to let you buy his condo. This guy’s suddenly going to be your champion?”

“You can’t grade the presidency on a curve,” the president proclaimed, critiquing the coverage Trump has received in comparison to Clinton. “This is serious business. And when we see folks talking about transparency — you want to debate transparency? You’ve got one candidate in this debate who’s released decades worth of her tax returns. The other candidate is the first in decades who refuses to release any at all,”

“You want to debate foundations and charities? One candidate’s family foundation has saved countless lives around the world. The other candidate’s foundation took money other people gave to his charity and then bought a six-foot-tall painting of himself.”

“He had the taste not to go for the 10-foot version,” Obama cracked.

“America’s got a lot of businessmen and women who have succeeded without hiding their taxes returns, or leaving a trail of lawsuits, workers who didn’t get paid, people feeling like they got cheated,” Obama said.

Pointing to Trump’s repeated assertion that he was opposed to the war in Iraq despite having supported an invasion in 2002 in an interview with Howard Stern, Obama provided the fact-check that had often been missing from prominent media figures: “Well, actually, he wasn’t.”

“But they just accept it,” the president said of the media. “So the bottom line is, is that we can not afford suddenly to treat this like a reality show. We can’t afford to act as if there’s some equivalence here. To be president, you have to do your homework and you have to know what you’re talking about and you’ve got to apply steady judgment even when things don’t go your way and you’ve got to make the tough calls even when they’re not popular. Even when they take years to pay off and you have to handle criticism without taking it personally, just brushing it off. And then go ahead and get the job done. And that’s something I learned.”

Watch Obama’s full remarks below:

Look Again: The day’s most compelling images from around the globe

Pakistani Muslims pose for selfie after attending Eid al-Adha prayers in Lahore on September 13, 2016.

Muslims across the world celebrate the annual festival of Eid al-Adha, or the Festival of Sacrifice, which marks the end of the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca and in commemoration of Prophet Abraham's readiness to sacrifice his son to show obedience to God. / AFP / ARIF ALI (Photo credit should read ARIF ALI/AFP/Getty Images) (Credit: Afp/getty Images)

 

Langlaagte, South Africa   Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters

A suspected illegal miner is questioned by police

Much of the world’s workforce — literally an amount no one can calculate — consists of people doing “illegal,” unofficial or undocumented labor. We’ve been hearing a lot about that from Donald Trump during this presidential campaign, but the number of undocumented immigrants working in the United States (although long an important factor in our labor market) is insignificant compared to the hundreds of millions of people around the world who perform jobs without the appropriate status or paperwork. This miner in South Africa was apparently arrested on suspicion of working illegally in the country’s largest gold mine. Was the company or contractor who paid him arrested too?

–Andrew O’Hehir, senior editor

 

Frankfurt, Germany   Michael Probst/AP

A little girl takes a picture of a lion in the zoo

I can’t help but wonder what this lion, being photographed by a child in Frankurt, Germany is thinking. “What has happened to my life? Before I was the ‘king of the jungle,’ now I’m merely a tool for Facebook shares and Instagram likes! And there’s nothing I can do about it! I didn’t say you can take my photo! What if I’m having a bad hair day! My friends are going to mock me. Oooh wait, please use a good filter that makes me look younger. AND TAG ME IN THE PHOTO!!”

–Pete Catapano, executive editor

 

Berlin, Germany   Tobias Schwarz/Getty

A journalist uses a smartphone equipped with a Google Cardboard mount

Maybe about three months ago, I got a package in the mail from The New York Times. I tore it open, barely containing my excitement (no one sends me anything!!!), and found a heap of cardboard. What the HELL am I supposed to do with a bunch of cardboard I could easily have found strewn across my Bushwick stoop? Turns out it was a pair of virtual reality goggles like in this picture. Needless to say, my roommate and I spent approximately the next five hours exploring the depths of the earth and bumping into our real-life furniture along the way. I still have bruises.

–Tatiana Baez, social media coordinator

 

Lahore, Pakistan   Arif Ali/Getty

Pakistani Muslims pose for a selfie after attending Eid al-Adha prayers

If you’re young in Lahore, Pakistan, why not use a mobile to capture a holiday’s exuberant spirit after morning prayers on Eid al-Aha? Considered the Festival of Sacrifice, Eid al-Aha takes its cue from Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice a son for God. Many observant Muslims worldwide take the hajj to Mecca at this time. Some Muslims will distribute meat from a freshly slain sheep or cow to those who are less fortunate, according to CNN. Then it’s time to feast, exchange gifts and celebrate.

–Marjorie Backman, copy editor

A Muslim woman was set on fire on NYC street in a possible hate crime

Surveillance footage of the suspect (Credit: NYPD)

A Muslim woman dressed in traditional Islamic clothing was set on fire in an incident on Sept. 10 in New York City.

The NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating the alleged attack as a potential hate crime.

The woman was identified by The New York Post as Nemariq Alhinai, a 35-year-old dentist who was visiting the U.S. from Glasgow, Scotland.

Police said Alhinai was on the street, window-shopping in midtown Manhattan, when she felt something burning on her left arm.

Alhinai put out the fire and looked over to see a man next to her holding a lighter, police said.

Surveillance footage was released showing the man as he walked away. He was wearing a black tank top and jeans.

Police said Alhinai was not injured, although the fire left a hole in her blouse.

The incident came just hours before the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Authorities are investigating to see whether the alleged attack was motivated by anti-Muslim bias.

Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Muslim civil rights group the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told The New York Daily News, “I would obviously be concerned because it’s symptomatic of the overall rise in Islamophobic sentiment in our society.”

Attacks on Muslims have been increasing in frequency in the U.S. New York City has seen its own string of such incidents.

In August, a man shot and killed a Muslim cleric and his assistant in the New York City borough of Queens. Oscar Morel, 35, was charged with several counts of murder and faces up to life in prison without parole if he is convicted. Authorities said they were investigating the shooting as a hate crime.

In the month after the Nov. 13 Paris attacks, hate crimes against Muslim Americans and mosques tripled in the U.S. These crimes included extreme attacks, such as arsons, shootings, assaults, vandalism and death threats.

Islamophobia and anti-Muslim bigotry have been exploited by a growing number of American politicians. Donald Trump has campaigned for president on the promise to at least temporarily ban Muslim migration to the U.S. Other politicians have called for the U.S. government to refuse to take in Muslim refugees.