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| Williams |
Heartbeeps: (John Williams) The lovable 1981 Allan
Arkush film
Heartbeeps was a rare opportunity to see Andy Kaufman
on the big screen. He and Bernadette Peters star as obsolete robots in
the future, awaiting their demise in a company warehouse until they
decide to break loose by stealing a van and searching for a life on
their own. Other malfunctioning robots go in pursuit, though a happy
ending awaits as the two primary robots discover the concept a love and,
after building a child out of spare parts, retire to a blissful
existence together in a junk yard. The film, despite having some star
power in its cast and crew, went nowhere. When an average movie-goer (or
even a film music collector) thinks about John Williams soundtracks of
the early 1980's,
Heartbeeps isn't exactly what comes to mind.
But as is the case with every established composer, a successful
collaboration with a director or producer for a major film will often
lead to a subsequent collaboration on a smaller, more personal project.
Such was the case with
Heartbeeps. Williams had worked with the
producer, Michael Phillips, on
Close Encounters of a Third Kind,
and when this lighthearted Phillips comedy was being assembled in 1981,
Williams accepted the scoring job. It was perhaps awkward for such a
score to be written and recorded by the maestro in between
The Empire
Strikes Back and
Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the mystery is
deepened upon hearing its very unconventional instrumental style. For
the reason of a lack of interest from an ambivalent population of fans,
Heartbeeps was never released into the digital medium until long
after all of Williams' other post-
Star Wars era scores had
debuted on CD. With the resurrection of the once popular Varèse
Sarabande CD Club in 2001, the score was finally pressed onto CD to,
quite frankly, the praise of only a few Williams collectors.
Unfortunately, as noted by more than a few film score experts,
soundtracks such as
Heartbeeps don't go un-pressed on CD without
good reason. In fact, the overriding reason that this score was absent
on album for so long was because it has very little that resembles the
John Williams known to the world. Nor is it particularly
listenable.
Williams approached the very short film with a touch of
comedy and a more pronounced use of electronics than in any other score
of his career. While there are tender orchestral performances of
especially the score's love theme, the tone of the work is dominated by
the extremely simplistic, MIDI-like electronic style chosen specifically
to augment to robots' somewhat comedic and cheesy existence. Also at
work is a sense of jazz that existed throughout the composer's early
years. If you had a strong opinion about "Johnny" Williams' days of
writing music like
A Guide for the Married Man and
Not With My
Wife You Don't!, then you'll probably have an equally strong opinion
about the underlying comedy elements in
Heartbeeps. While of
different genres, the Williams style heard in the 1981 score is simply a
sci-fi spin-off of the same pop-minded Johnny Williams music heard in
the late 1960's. As such, for fans of the orchestrally complex Williams
styles of the early-1970's and beyond,
Heartbeeps will be one of
his few post-
Star Wars scores that is barely listenable, if at
all. He intentionally produced electronics that merged with jazzy,
contemporary instrumentation to produce a psychotic form of sci-fi
disco. The programming is purposefully dumb, as to enhance the comedy
and silliness of the film's content. The themes are trademark Williams
on paper, but once fleshed out with the prancing electronics chosen for
the recording, the music is a mesh of embarrassingly trite and
ridiculous sounds. To accentuate the robots' newly discovered love for
one another, Williams throws in some token orchestral performances of
moderate size (with "Val and Phil" strongly resembling
The Towering
Inferno), but these moments, even in the customary suite format
during the end credits, are never lengthy enough to steer the score away
from the childish electronics. Of particular annoyance is the
never-ceasing Crimebuster theme, a mind-numbing, pseudo-military
repetition meant to represent the bumbling robot villain. After four or
five of the numerous performances of that theme, the fast forward button
on your CD player will be a welcome sight. Even the orchestral closing
of the theme in "Crimebuster Always Gets His Man," which comically
mirrors the hits at the end of
The Fury, doesn't please the
ears.
Other than some of the tender, less obnoxious
explorations of the love theme (and even the title theme in its organic
variations), the only redeeming aspect of the
Heartbeeps score on
album (and one which may actually make it a worthwhile purchase for the
most hardcore Williams fanatics) is that it is occasionally interesting
to hear Williams' trademark stylistic mannerisms in such a bizarre
context. These include little motifs that would later be expanded upon
for his future classics. In the end, this is the kind of music you
expect to hear in a Woody Allen film, or maybe a television cartoon, and
resembles very little of the composer that Digital Age film music fans
know and love. The synthetic tones even resemble the badly dated,
arcade-like side of Wendy Carlos'
Tron. What few moments Williams
uses to concentrate on orchestral harmony cannot make up for the
deafeningly irritating electronics, marking
Heartbeeps as a
surprisingly weak score to present as the very first entry in the second
generation of Varèse Club releases. The original Varèse
Sarabande CD Club began circa 1988 and finished roughly five years
later, highlighting a movement made by the label to press limited
editions of CDs in a series parallel to their commercial products. The
final few Club CDs sat in the label's warehouse for ten years before
selling out, so it is no surprise that the original series, despite some
excellent successes (namely
The 'Burbs by Jerry Goldsmith),
fizzled to an unglamorous end. Always enthusiastic about the more
obscure film scores in existence, however, Varèse producer
Robert Townson chose to begin another Club series in 2001 with Williams'
Heartbeeps as its centerpiece. All one has to do is read
Townson's liner notes to grasp his overwhelming respect and joy for this
score. It is indeed a fascinating score to study and even appreciate,
but it is far from a coherent listening experience, and any Williams
collector purchasing this album blindly will likely be disappointed the
tone of the music. It's hard to fault Williams for producing the score
that was necessary for this film, but given the subject matter,
Heartbeeps is a potentially no-win prospect. Many older fans,
however, maintain a strong affection for the work. Approach with
caution, especially now that the album has sold out.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
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For John Williams reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.68
(in 91 reviews)
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The insert contains a lengthy note from album producer Robert Townson, for whom
it is customary to include lengthy analysis of both the film and score in the Varèse
Sarabande CD Club releases.
