B E I N G G E D D Y
L E E
“…draw a line, strong and
clear, make it bend to your will…”
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A great work of art is not so
much about something, nor does it have a specific meaning or value. A great
work of art is, after all, an animated object in moving time, the meaning of
which is up to the viewer. Art has no intrinsic meaning. This is its power, its
mystery, and hence, its attraction. Art is free. It stimulates the viewer to
insert their own meaning, their own value. So while one might have this or that
intention in creating their art, realize fully that any meaning or value art
might have comes exclusively from the beholder. Art's role is to provoke, to
raise questions that only the audience can answer. This is the highest value of
any work of art, not predetermined meaning, but meaning gleaned from the
experience of the encounter. The encounter is my interest, not the meaning. If
meaning is the point, then propaganda and advertising is the forum. The meaning
of a great work of art is whatever you wish to make of it.
This is its power.
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If you’ve ever visited my SYNC LYNKS webpage (a
clearinghouse of sorts with links to most websites dealing with film-music
synchronicity), you’ve seen the modified Geoffrey Reggio quote given
above. Mr. Reggio is the man behind the
surreal film “Koyannisqatsi” and all I did to modify his quote was replace
every instance where he used the film’s title with the term “art”, “great work
of art”, etc. Over the past couple of
years the ideas expressed in that quote have been sort of my mantra with regard
to one’s perception and interpretation of art…mainly that it’s up to you to
figure out what it means. That being
the case, then one may wonder why I’m writing what I hope will be a
comprehensive commentary about the contents of “Being Geddy Lee”. Does it have any “predetermined
meaning”? Is there enough space between
the lines for it “to raise questions that only the audience can answer”? Do I as the creator “have this or that
intention in creating” the work? At
this time my answer to these questions would have to be ‘I don’t know.’ I’d say I have to agree with something Geddy
Lee stated in the past regarding this very issue…paraphrasing it went something
like “I don’t know if you can really know what you have at the end of creating
your work. You’ve been so close and
intertwined in the making of it that ultimately you have to let the audience
decide.” So that’s what I’ll do…I’ll
let you read this, and if you’d like, you can see the project for yourself, and
then decide what it is.
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The project begins with the well known Universal Films logo coming on screen…you know, the shot of the revolving Earth from outer space and the large UNIVERSAL wrapping itself around the globe. For this opening I used a short, modified snipet of the Rush song “Half The World”. The screen then fades to black.
From black screen, we fade into the puppet stage with blue curtains drawn as the opening title sequence begins. The sound you hear at this point is a concert audience lightly cheering, quickly followed by the classical guitar opening of Rush’s song “A Farewell To Kings”. This ‘live’ version is taken from a 1978 concert in Detroit, MI, and it’s a soundboard recording, so the quality is very nice. I chose this song for a couple of reasons…
First, with its pastoral opening, and then moving into the main part of the song with all the bombast and cacophony, it goes quite well with the puppet show we see onstage. Speaking of the puppet, that leads to the other reason for the song’s use here. For those who don’t know, the album cover of “A Farewell To Kings” features a puppet ‘dressed in kingly guise’ sitting on a throne amidst what appears to be either a junkyard or bombed out cityscape. Since the film’s underlying theme leans towards puppeteering and the control thereof, I wanted to set the stage in this manner.
I also edited this version of the song and made it an instrumental. I did this because there are various points throughout this opening sequence where I incorporated dialogue into the mix. Essentially, this scene and the following scene (inside Craig and Lotte’s apartment) serve as a sort of ‘mission statement’ on my part. If you read on I think you’ll see what I mean.
During the opening classical guitar portion of the song, two quotes from Geddy Lee are used;
“In some ways, Rush’s music is very soundtrack-like. I mean, we’ve always taken a very cinematic approach to putting songs together.”
“Certain film cues have to appear at a particular time, so he has to sync up to a count-in at the beginning of that film and if you’re off by one beat the whole thing doesn’t work.”
Then once the classical opening ends and the bombast begins, there is a long string of instances where the name “Geddy Lee” is spoken. During the pre-production aspect of this project, every time I heard the name Geddy Lee spoken, I recorded it for use here and at one or two other parts of the film. I also tweaked these audio clips so that if you’re listening to this in stereo, each pronunciation of ‘Geddy Lee’ pans from one speaker to the other, alternating back and forth.
Off the top of my head, here in order, is a list of people who contributed to these instances of ‘Geddy Lee’…
1. Geddy Lee himself
2. unknown
3. Mark Goodman (from the early days of MTV)
4. Denise Donlon (of Much Music fame)
5. Cane (from VH1)
6. unknown
7. unknown
8. some news reporter for a Toronto television station
9. unknown
10. unknown
11. J.J. Jackson (from the early days of MTV)
12. Pamela Wallin
13. unknown
14. some British radio DJ (from 1980)
15. some Rush fan who appeared on television
16. unknown
17. unknown
18. unknown
19. Jim Ladd (of Innerview fame)
20. a morning news host for some Toronto show
21. unknown
22. Sebastian Bach (from Skid Row)
23. Guy Favazz (from KSHE radio in St. Louis)
24. unknown
25. Steve Downs (of Rockline fame)
26. unknown
27. unknown
28. unknown
29. baseball announcer John Miller (at the 1993 MLB All-Star game)
30. some musician at the 1990 Toronto Music Awards
31. Sam The Record Man
32. the lady announcing his name when receiving the Order Of Canada
33. Red Beard (of In The Studio fame)
34. some guy introducing him onstage at some benefit show
35. Smash (from KSHE radio in St. Louis)
36. unknown
37. Bob MacKenzie (of MacKenzie Brothers fame)
38. unknown
39. some guy from CHUM-FM in Toronto (circa early 80’s)
40. Jo Robinson (of Album Network fame)
41. unknown
42. some guy from Much Music
43. unknown
44. unknown
45. Tom (from the Bob & Tom Show)
46. some guy from a Philadelphia radio station
47. unknown
48. my son David (in his best falsetto voice)
49. my daughter Amanda (in her best matter-of-fact voice)
That’s the best I can do off the top of my head. I do know that Mike Meyers (of SNL and Wayne’s World fame), and Bob Coburn (of Rockline fame) are in there somewhere, but I can’t figure out where. Perhaps someday a more definitive list will be available.
So, after this long string of “Geddy Lee’s” are complete, the song plays out through to the puppet show’s finale. At this point, our puppeteer Craig hangs up his marionette and shakes off his hands…at this precise moment I used a snipet of the ‘live’ version of the song “Driven” (from the album “Different Stages”) in which an audience member can clearly be heard saying “That’s okay, Alex, shake it off.” In this project, Craig Schwartz is not ‘played’ by Alex Lifeson (more on that in the next paragraph), but I liked that great piece of dialogue so this is where I chose to use it. Immediately after this is said, as Craig winds down by taking a sip of his beer, we hear the echoed voice of Geddy Lee during some soundcheck saying “Check, one two, check, one, two…” We then fade to black.
Before we head into Chapter Two, now would be a good time to delve into the various ‘roles’ the members of Rush ‘play’ in BGL. In the context of the original interviews, the members of Rush, on varying levels, display two important things; their intelligence and their sense of humour. In your narrator’s humble opinion, I believe Mr. Lifeson’s bent is toward the more humorous side of things, Mr. Lee is somewhere in the middle, and Mr. Peart leans toward the more intellectual. Like I said, though, all three display both attributes. With that said, here’s who’s who in the film…
Geddy Lee in the role of Craig Schwartz – To be honest, I can’t think of any specific reason why Mr. Lee was ‘cast’ in this ‘role’.
Alex Lifeson in the role of Lotte Schwartz – It will sound silly, but the inspiration behind this choice was Lotte’s shoulder length blonde-ish hair, reminiscent of Alex’s late 70’s look.
Neil Peart in the role of Maxine – Thinking back in retrospect, I believe the subconscious decision to ‘cast’ Neil in this ‘role’ is the fact that out of all the characters in BJM, Maxine is by far the most intelligent (albeit with a bent toward the manipulative…a trait not shared with Mr. Peart). If you’ve ever heard Neil in an interview, you know that he expresses himself quite well, and at times can go on and on discussing a particular subject. An early idea that I had for Neil’s place in this project was to string together a 110-minute piece of nothing but him talking, lower the volume to almost a whisper, and simply have him talking the entire time. I scrapped this, though, knowing that it would do nothing but be a distraction. I did, though, want to utilize Neil’s penchant for dialogue, so there are various times throughout the project where he’ll come into the mix and expound on something…at times it has something to do with what we see going on onscreen, and at other times it’s just him rambling on about something non-sensical. There are also a few instances where Geddy and Alex do some expounding of their own.
A few other notes of interest…
There are times when we see Craig, Lotte, or Maxine talking onscreen and no one from Rush is talking in their stead. There are various reasons for this which we’ll discuss as they come up.
There are a few instances where the members of Rush break from their assigned roles and speak in another’s stead. We’ll also address each one as they come up.
There are a very few subtle instances where we hear the original voices of John Cusak, Cameron Diaz, Katherine Keener, and John Malkovich in their various roles. These are almost undetectable and were left in the mix simply as an ode of sorts to the actors. I won’t address them when they appear…you’ll just have to figure it out for yourself! ;-)
So, you may ask, who plays the ‘role’ of John Malkovich? Well, since the character of JM is ‘inhabited’ by numerous people at various points throughout the film, I didn’t ‘assign’ any one person to play him. All three members of Rush get a crack inside the Malkovich ‘vessel’. However, once Craig has permanently taken over Malkovich, Geddy Lee’s voice is used exclusively.
With all that said, let’s move on…
CHAPTER TWO
“MY FAVOURITE HEADACHE”
As we fade in again, we hear Geddy Lee, speaking in his best Eastern European accent, say “…and right away, she gets the favorite headache…” In the original soundtrack of the film, the Schwartz’s cockatiel is standing on the sleeping Craig’s head and says three times “Craig, honey, time to get up,” with each instance increasing in volume. So that’s exactly what I did with “…and right away, she gets the favorite headache…” We then hear Geddy clear his throat and say “Excuse me,” right as the opening bass line of the song “My Favorite Headache” begins. Once again, I edited the song a bit (actually all songs used in this project are edited in some fashion, except for one…more on that in a bit), but this version of MFH does include some of the words. As Lotte bends down to kiss Craig, we hear a snipet of Alex saying in a girl’s voice “Pookie!” This ‘pookie’, by the way, is used at other times when kissing occurs.
As stated earlier, this scene in the apartment is a continuation of the ‘mission statement’, if you will. At various points throughout this sequence…Craig waking up, Lotte leaving for work, Craig reading the newspaper, watching television, talking to Lotte’s pet chimpanzee Elijah…we hear the following snipets of dialogue in order:
Geddy –
“What’s different?”
“The most obvious difference is the sonic difference.”
“It was a determined effort to change the sound.”
“But there are a lot of times where we’re kinda’ not in sync.”
Alex –
“There are a couple of songs that require us being in sync with the film.”
“If no one hears this, that’s okay, cause I did it for myself…”
Geddy –
“…sorta’ like a puzzle…”
Alex –
“…I set these goals and I’ve achieved it.”
We then move to Craig sitting on the couch, reading the paper and watching television…the line from the song “I watch TV, what do you want from me,” is sung at this time. Geddy continues on talking…
“It’s added this other confusing element to the mix.”
“Let’s go for it!”
…in a faux-British accent he says the following…
“I would say it’s sort of…abstract expressionism”
“We really don’t know where we’re going until we get there.”
“It’s an interesting conundrum.”
…and right before the scene changes…
“Let’s have an about-face here.”
And then the scene changes…
CHAPTER THREE
“ANIMATE ME”
The scene shifts to a New York street corner where Craig is performing a somewhat sexually suggestive puppet show featuring two characters (a priest/monk and a woman) on either side of a walled partition writing steamy letters to one another. A young girl and her father enter the scene and stop at the corner waiting for the light to change and allow them to cross the street…and the young girl begins to watch the show (more on this in a bit).
At the very beginning of this scene we see a boombox playing a taped narrative of this show. It was at this precise moment that I used Bill Maher’s introduction of Neil Peart during his 1994 appearance on the show “Politically Incorrect”. Maher unwittingly mis-pronounces Neil’s last name as “Peahrt” (as in the fruit pear) which we’ll revisit in a few.
This then leads into an edited version of Neil talking about the song “Animate” in which he explains, in part, “that it’s really about one person…it’s set-up on purpose a little bit vague to seem like it might be about two people, a love song if you’d like…” The interplay between this dialogue and what we see onscreen is quite profound as we get a nice long shot of Craig (one person) holding his puppets (two people) and knowing what the subject matter of the show is (a love story). But as Neil continues talking, he explains that the song is really about a man getting in touch with his femine side, the inherent conflict between men taking on women’s roles and vice versa, etc. Again, the interplay throughout this entire scene is very cool.
The musical soundtrack we hear throughout the entire scene is from a 1979 soundcheck in which Geddy (on the keyboards) and Alex (on acoustic guitar) perform an unreleased classical and pastoral piece…it compliments the onscreen action very well indeed.
The music ends and Neil wraps up his dialogue simultaneously, and we see onscreen that the little girl’s father has just now turned around and figured out that his daughter has been watching this sexually charged show and this doesn’t sit too well with him. For the first time in the project, we get to hear the actual dialogue from one of the film’s characters as the father rushes towards Craig and exclaims “You mother-fucker!!!” and punches Craig to the ground. :-o
The scene immediately shifts to a battered and bruised Craig entering Lotte’s pet shop where Lotte attempts to console her fallen husband. We wrap up the Neil ‘Pearht’ segment as Bill Maher says “I’d like to thank my guest Neil Pearht”…and then we immediately cut to Neil explaining the correct pronunciation; “Neil PEERT, not Pert, Part, or Pearht…it’s Peert.”
We hear in the background the opening of the song “Middletown Dreams”. As Lotte moves toward Craig, they engage in the following ‘revised’ conversation…
…a piece of edited dialogue where I made Alex say…
“This is Alex Lifeson from Rush…Presto!…I have a woman’s voice.”
Geddy says…
“Yes, it’s true”
…to which Alex retorts…
“That’s normal.”
If it wasn’t clear before, it is now…Alex Lifeson will be playing a woman in this film!
CHAPTER FOUR
“SUBDIVISIONS”
We now shift to Craig sitting at a table, thumbing through the classified ads, looking for a job. He finds the ad for LesterCorp (we see that it is located on the 7 ½ floor of the Merton/Flemming Building), and he proceeds to make his way to the job interview.
Very early on in this project, in fact many months before pre-production commenced, I had already mapped out the musical bed for this entire scene…it all revolves around the song “Subdivisions” and I’ll explain it as we go along here.
At the beginning of the scene, where Craig is sitting at the table, I looped the synthesized opening of Subdivisions into a 27-second piece while Geddy talks about the inherent malaise that can overcome someone who grows up in the suburbs (“you grow up, graduate from school, get a job,” yada yada yada). As he finishes talking, this loop then fades into one of my favourite pieces of Rush music. It was taken from a 1990 soundcheck in Toronto where Geddy, playing solo on his keyboards, sings the opening lines of the song…
Sprawling on the fringes of the city,
In geometric order,
An insulated border,
In between the bright lights and
The far unlit unknown
Growing up it all seems so one sided
Opinions all provided
The future predecided
Detached and subdivided
In the mass-production zone
The sound quality was quite nice to begin with, but I pumped it up even further by running a ‘phase shift’ on the clip to give it a more ambient sound. This piece serves as our soundtrack as Craig makes his way to the office building, goes inside, enters the elevator, and is dumbfounded as he can’t figure out how to stop at the 7 ½ floor. A lady enters the elevator with him and seeing his puzzled look offers to show him how it’s done.
Just before she shows him this, however, the solo Geddy piece ends, and then fades into yet another soundcheck snipet of a different “Subdivisions” clip. The quality of this clip is less than desirable (taken from a 1992 Irvine,CA soundcheck), but I used it because of what happens. The boys are running through the soundcheck, and not really finishing the songs…they’re just playing bits and pieces, making sure all instrument levels are kosher, and then moving on to something else. This “Subdivisions” clip captures the sudden break-off and abruptly ends at the precise moment our lady friend presses the emergency stop button on the elevator. We then hear her say “7 ½” and here is one instance where I used Alex’s voice to say “Thank you,” in Geddy’s place.
Craig exits the elevator, watches it close, and then we hear a promo spot that’s contained on one of the Neil Peart interviews I have…
“One On One w/ Neil Peart is brought to you by Titan Condoms…protection plus value!”
(the music bed for this spot is the opening guitar of “Where’s My Thing?”) ;-)
And so as Craig winds his way through the corridors of the 7 ½ floor, we hear our friend Mr. Peart give us his insights on creativity. Taken from his instructional drumming video “A Work In Progress” he states…
“Keep It Simple Stupid. Don’t you really love to hear that? K-I-S-S. To me, that often leads to L-O-V-E; Leave Out Virtually Everything. Seems to me what we should be looking for is M-U-S-I-C; Make Up Something Interesting & Complimentary.”
This great turn of phrase from Neil helps set up what we are about to witness.
These pearls of wisdom lead us to the moment where Craig is addressed by the enigmatic LesterCorp secretary, Floris (played oh so perfectly by Mary Kay Place). In the film, we quickly learn that Floris is a strange lady, whose main purpose it seems is to fuck with other peoples’ heads by appearing to not understand a word they say. Here’s how her and Geddy’s conversation goes…
Floris – “Welcome to LesterCorp. How may we meet your filing needs?”
Geddy – “Ummm…well it’s kind of the hardest question in the world to answer.”
Floris – “Oh, uh, please have a seat, Mr. Warez.”
Geddy – “snergphright” (backwards masked dialogue)
Floris – “Pardon.”
Geddy – “nerphroferlgin” (more backwards speech)
Floris – “I’m, I’m sorry, I have no idea what you’re saying to me right now.”
Geddy – “seedelorah” (yes, more backwards speech)
Floris – “My name is Wortz.”
Geddy – “Just forget it.”
Craig then goes and takes a seat and waits to see Dr. Lester. Within a few seconds, our two uncommunicative characters begin speaking again…
Floris – “Mr. Warez?”
Geddy – “Oh, yes.”
Floris – “Chest?”
Geddy – “That’s about it, I guess.”
Floris – “You suggest what? I’m sorry,
I have no time for piddling suggestions from mumbling job applicants. Besides, Dr. Lester will see you now.”
It’s hilarious to see the pained look of confusion on Craig’s face during all of this. Things only continue to get more bizarre as we enter Dr. Lester’s office…
Dr. Lester – “Oh, come in, Mr. Warez.”
Geddy – “Because I started to remember, the best interview is just a
conversation.”
Dr. Lester – (pressing the intercom button), “Security”
Geddy – “sojhnev” (backwards speech) …continuing on… “Well, as the man says ‘it gets curiouser and curiouser’.”
Dr. Lester – “She’s not my secretary. She’s what they call an executive liaison…”
Geddy – “Yes.”
Dr. Lester – “…and I’m not banging her, if that’s what you’re implying!”
Geddy – “Blame it on me, right. That’s something that I regret.”
Dr. Lester – (now more relaxed and ready to proceed with the interview) “Ah, well, now… Tell me, Dr. Schwartz, what do you feel you can bring to LesterCorp?”
Geddy – “Oh geez, you know, where do we start?”
Dr. Lester – “Oh, alright, we’ll see about that.” (Lester takes two pieces of paper, drawing the letter “R” on one,
and a non-descript symbol on the other)
“Tell me, which of these letters comes first, this one or this one?”
Geddy – “I’m thinking about consonants and vowels.”
Dr. Lester – “Damn you’re good! I was trying to trick you. Well, then…” (Lester picks up a stack of file cards…) “…put these in order.”
Geddy – “Okay.”
Dr. Lester – (while watching Geddy quickly file the cards, Lester presses the intercom button) “Floris, get Guinness on the phone!”
Floris – (through the intercom speaker) “Ah, yes sir, Genghis Khan Capone.”
Dr. Lester – (addressing Geddy once again) “Damn fine woman, Floris, I don’t know how
she puts up with this speech impediment of mine.”
Geddy – “This is turning into a Peter Sellers comedy skit.”
Dr. Lester – “Flattery will get you everywhere, my boy!” (he then motions for Geddy to join him and have a seat on the windowsill) “I’m afraid I’ll have to trust Floris on that one. You see, she’s got her doctorate in speech impedimentology from Case Western. I apologize if you can’t understand a word I’m saying.”
Geddy – “That thought crossed my mind.”
Dr. Lester – “Well, it’s very kind of you to lie. You see, I’ve been very lonely in my isolated tower of indecipherable speech. (Geddy looks at Lester with a very confused expression…Lester continues on…) “You got the job! Any questions?”
Geddy – “Yeah. Who is today’s Tom Sawyer?”
Dr. Lester – “Low overhead, my boy! We pass the saving on to you! Ha ha ha ha ha! But seriously, that’ll all be covered in Orientation.”
And then Craig/Geddy leaves the office and makes his way to Orientation. As he makes his way through the corridors, we are once again blessed with more pearls of wisdom from Mr. Peart’s instructional video…
“One of the great arguments in human anthropology and many fields of human activity is Nature vs. Nurture. Is it more important what you are or how you’re taught? Is it heredity or environment?”
This serves as both a segue from the interview to the orientation and touches on the fact that Craig finds himself in strange ‘environment’ indeed.
Craig enters a room with a few rows of chairs lined up…a few people are already seated, waiting for Orientation to begin. In the film’s original state, Orientation consists of sitting there and watching a strange video telling how the 7 ½ floor came into being. In a nutshell, the story goes like this; Captain Merton (an Irish immigrant) teamed up with a guy named Flemming in the early 20th century to construct an office building. One day, a dwarf lady comes to Captain Merton and shares her tale of woe about how “high ceilings mock my stature.” She gains the sympathy of the Captain and he’s moved to declare that in his new building he will construct a floor with low ceilings so that she and her fellow dwarfs will have a friendly environment in which to work. It’s then explained that as the years went by, the floor was rented out to businesses that for one reason or another needed the cheaper rental rates that went along with occupying the 7 ½ floor…‘low overhead!’
What I did for this video presentation was to dig way back into the Rush archive (1982 to be exact) and pieced together an edited Source Radio Special. The narration is done by a man named Shawn (Sean?) McCann (sp?). It runs around 2 minutes in length, chronicling for the most part the early days of the band. In contrast with what’s occurring in the orientation video, it’s completely silly and downright non-sensical, but in its own way, it works.
During this video, Craig catches his first glimpse of Maxine sitting in the back corner of the room. After the video’s over (we hear the opening piano strains of Geddy Lee’s “Slipping” as everyone else leaves the room), ‘Geddy’ turns to ‘Neil’ and engages him in a brief conversation…
Geddy – “What’s happenin’?”
Neil – “I wish I knew.”
Geddy – “Individually, we are a ass…together, we are a genius!”
Neil – “You’re a fool.”
Then as a segue to the next scene, Geddy states…
“Let’s go and start the other way.”
We hear the “SNAP!” portion from the Rush song “Neurotica” and this leads directly to…
CHAPTER FIVE
“THE OMEGA CONCERN”
We cut to Craig and Lotte in their kitchen preparing supper. This is a scene where instead of having our Canadian heroes mouthing every single line, I opted to go with something a bit different.
I lifted a conversation between Geddy and Alex from an old Rockline show where they were discussing Alex’s little business venture, The Omega Concern. I won’t quote the conversation word for word (we only need to do that for specific passages of the film), but Alex explains that The Omega Concern is an “organization that’s semi top-secret” and that their goal is to “develop and manufacture things that are either totally useless or have a very specific use” and that the design “has to be very interesting and most importantly, it has to be made of wood.”
Geddy interrupts at this point and tells Alex that he has to “fess up” and tell the listeners that he (Alex) is an inventor of unique items such as the acoustic guitar stand that he uses onstage, a light box that Geddy uses in the studio to read the lyrics sheet, and a book holder Neil uses to read while eating. Geddy encourages Alex to take credit for being so clever. Alex answers by saying “At the end of this show I’ll give you an address that you can send a $40.00 check to, in care of me.”
By the way, the musical bed used here is the bridge/guitar solo from the Alex Lifeson song “Promise”. This scene is very short which sort of explains why I chose to approach it differently…for better or worse, it works.
CHAPTER SIX
“WORKING MAN”
We then cut to Craig and Maxine at work getting items out of a vending machine. They are engaged in a conversation, but I opted to let the music flow here…a strange edit of the instrumental bridge from the song “Working Man”. It begins with about a 10-second loop of the bassline at the beginning of the bridge, moving into yet another loop that has a boogie feel…in fact, that’s what I called it; the boogie loop. As stated at the outset, it’s the dialogue’s central role to move things along, but there are instances where the music takes over (especially near the end of the film). This ‘working man boogie’ loop is one such instance.
When we cut to Craig at a filing cabinet, the ‘boogie loop’ then goes into the guitar solo from the song, as Floris is making a come on to Craig. Once again I incorporated Geddy’s backwards speech to confuse the hell out of everyone (especially Floris!). Spurned by her prospective lover, she defiantly walks away by saying “You bastard!” And then Dr. Lester enters the scene…
Lester – “Don’t toy with Floris, Schwartz! If I was 80 years younger, I’d box your ears!
Geddy – (in a distorted & manipulated voice) “The sleeping giant woke up.” (then in a more normal voice) “Hey, how are ya’?”
Lester – “105…carrot juice…lots of it. I swear sometimes it’s not worth it. I piss orange. Oh, and I have to piss sitting down, like a god damn girly girl, every fifteen minutes. But nobody wants to die. Ah, to be a young man again, eh Scwartz? (laughs) Maybe then Floris would care for me.”
Geddy – (in some foreign accent) “How ‘bout Macedonian? I do a good Macedonian.”
Lester – “I don’t wanna’ be your god damn link, damn ya’. I wanna’ feel Floris’ naked thighs next to mine. I want my body to inspire lust in that beautiful, complex woman. I want her to shiver with a spasm of ecstasy, Schwartz, as I penetrate her…” (interrupted)
Geddy – “Lerxst. (then in a foreign accent again) How was the take? Was it great? (then in a Scottish accent) I could try it with a Scottish accent, is that better?”
Lester – “Ah, you’re right. I’ll tell you what…meet me after work today, at Jerry’s Juiceteria on Lexx, and I’ll spill my god damn guts for ya.”
The scene changes to a corridor where we see Craig/Geddy talking on a pay phone. I utilized a snipet from a Rockline show to have someone on the other end of the phone say “Hi, Geddy, how ya’ doin’?” Geddy responds “I’m good, how are you?” The caller answers “I’m doin’ real well.” During the remainder of the conversation, Geddy describes how the character Bytor in one song is the bad guy, while in another song he’s the good guy. Maxine has entered the scene now and Craig motions for her wait while he wraps up the phone call. The “Working Man” mix has now ended and the only background noise we hear office noises (other telephones, the elevator, etc).
The conversation between ‘Geddy’ and ‘Neil’ goes something like this…
Geddy – “As long as the Rolling Stones are still performing, I’m a young guy.”
Neil – “Yes.”
Geddy – “I guess the longer that Mick Jagger’s around, we’ll always feel young.”
Neil – “Oh yeah.”
Geddy – “Okay. Yeah, that is pretty abstract.”
Now in the original film, what’s really going on here is Craig is trying to get Maxine to go out with him. Since she’s being coy with him, he suggests that if he can guess her name (he doesn’t even know it yet!), that she should agree to go out and have a drink with him. She agrees. Then Craig goes through this very animated and weird sounding ‘thing’ where he’s basically pronouncing sounds that he hope will spark some sort of reaction out of her to give him clue as to her name. Those of you familiar with the film know what I’m talking about.
For this part of the dialogue, I took a clip of Geddy Lee saying something…which I am not going to disclose…and stretched the hell out of it to where it sounds like a computer speaking in very slow motion. In the film, Craig finally exclaims “Maxine!” I had Geddy say “Max Webster!” (more on that next chapter)
So, continuing on with the Neil-Geddy conversation…
Geddy – “Max Webster!”
Neil – (laughs!) “That was vicious.”
Geddy – “Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding!” (pause) “I wanted to be Superman.”
Neil – “Why am I doing this? It was awful!” (pause) “The apprentice takes something easy and makes it look difficult, while the master takes the impossible and makes it look easy.”
And with that, we move on…
CHAPTER SEVEN
“MAX WEBSTER”
The scene cuts to Craig and Lester sitting in Jerry’s Juiceteria, with Lester divulging his sexual fantasies. I won’t go into the quote by quote analysis, though…suffice it to say, from what you’ve learned about Lester so far, you can imagine that it’s twisted.
This scene and the one that follows it are brought together here by an interesting source; Rush’s affiliation with the now defunct Canadian band Max Webster. Back in the early 80’s, Rush and Max Webster were more a less a tight group of friends. They toured together, to some extent shared the same road crews, and on Webster’s 1981 album “Juvenile Delinquents” the members of Rush appeared on a closet classic “Battlescar”. One night during pre-production of this project, I was fiddling around with this song, and more specifically the instrumentation at the beginning. It features a lengthy, quasi-heavy and spooky bass riff…on a whim, I decided to reverse this bass clip and see what it sounded like backwards. I kept finagling around with it, just playing with it in a sort of dada-esque fashion, almost really not paying any sort of conscious attention to it. But there was one portion of the backwards bassline that when played over and over again, sounded sort of like the makings of an altogether separate song. When I looped this portion several times, and then allowed it play with the other parts of the backwards bassline, it really was ‘sorta like a song’! I knew that this had to be used somewhere BGL.
So, as Lester’s going on and on about how his “spunk is manna from heaven,” Craig interrupts him so that he can go on his date with Maxine (of course, Craig lies and says he has to go home to his wife). It is precisely at this interruption that I have Geddy, in a stretched and distorted voice, say “I used to like jamming with Max Webster a lot because we sorta’ knew each others’ style a little bit.” Then the backwards bassline ‘song’ begins and all dialogue for the rest of this scene and the next is muted out.
Speaking of which, the next scene shows Craig meeting Max at a bar (The Stuck Pig) and they engage in conversation. We can’t hear what their saying obviously, but he’s basically trying to come on to her, and she, in her subtle and manipulative way, is deflecting his advances. As the scene ends, she’s had enough and motions to the bartender for the check, and we move on to another song…
CHAPTER EIGHT
“MOVING TO BOHEMIA”
There are a lot of great songs on GL’s “MFH”. If I had my druthers, and could have figured out a way to do so, I would’ve used them all, in their entirety, on this project. But alas, only one song was afforded this opportunity; “Moving To Bohemia”. I don’t claim to know fully what the ‘Bohemian’ mindset is…I’ve never really looked into it more than just on a superficial level. I suppose I prefer to allow my own imagination to conjure up some sort of definition…and that in itself is probably part and parcel to the Bohemian aesthetic. Of course, immediately after I wrote that last sentence, I felt compelled to go online and look it up…here’s, in part, what Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary has to say:
“a person (as a writer or an artist) living an unconventional life usually in a colony with others”
Well, if my living with my wife and children qualifies as ‘living in a colony with others’, then sign me up!
But getting back to BGL and Moving To Bohemia’s use in the film, it’s there for a couple of reasons. It serves as a bridge over a few scenes that take us to the point in the story where Craig discovers the Malkovich portal. Some of the lyrics serve as a nice compliment to what we see onscreen (and the story as a whole). One of the more poignant lines would be…
“I had a dream of a different place,
I had a dream that you had a different face…”
Self-explanatory…
Just the whole vibe of the song’s message…of leaving reality behind, suspending our disbelief, and taking a journey to somewhere strange and beautiful…that’s what “Being Geddy Lee” is all about. And besides, musically the song kicks some major ass!
There are a few instances, conveniently at the beginning,
middle, and end of the song, where some dialogue is incorporated into the
mix. After I had seemingly wrapped
principal production in late June, I realized there were two snipets of
dialogue that I had wanted to use that had not found a place anywhere in the
mix. The first being a short
explanation by Geddy on the origins of the band’s name…
”You know what a ‘rush’ of excitement is suppose to be…it’s like a…it’s like a
‘buzz’, really.”
The person interviewing Geddy (Smash from KSHE radio) interjects “The days when a ‘rush’ was a ‘rush’!”
Laughing, Geddy replies “Yeah, that’s right!”
The second snipet was a stilted interchange between Geddy and Alex when and interviewer asked them if their instrumental song “Leave That Thing Alone” (from the Counterparts album) had any relation to the instrumental “Where’s My Thing?” (from the Roll The Bones album)…
Geddy – “Only the fact that they both have things in the title.”
Alex – “Yeah, and they’re on our records.”
Geddy – “The things are different things.”
Interviewer – “It’s not the same thing.”
Geddy – “It’s not the same thing.”
(uncomfortable pause) “Really,
you have to say, it’s just not the same thing.”
Alex – “No…no…it’s…it’s…it’s just a thing.”
Geddy – “It’s just a different thing.”
Interviewer – “Totally different thing.”
Geddy – “Yeah.”
Alex – “It’s some thing, though.”
So, like I said, MTB and these sporadic snipets of
dialogue take us through a few different scenes. First, Craig returns home after his unsuccessful date with
Maxine. He talks to Lotte for a few
minutes before she goes to bed and he heads to his puppet workshop. There he makes a Maxine puppet and puts on a
little play in which he explains his passion for puppets to her. Then we cut to the final scene of this
segment, and more dialogue between Craig/Geddy and Maxine/Neil takes place at
LesterCorp. We’ll skip the quote by
quote analysis, but the conversation ends with Geddy expounding on his song
“The Present Tense” (my personal favourite from MFH!) and I think that what he
says also compliments the Bohemian mindset…
”Sometimes we distract ourselves so much by working, and by the busy-ness of
life, and by, you know, whatever, games, sports, that we forget about the
moment that we’re in and we don’t appreciate what’s around us, and to breathe
deep into the ‘present tense’.”
CHAPTER NINE
“THE CAMERA EYE”
We finally come to the part of our story where Craig discovers the portal into John Malkovich. As the scene opens, he is fastidiously going about his filing duties. While we watch this, we are once again are treated to a Neil Peart monologue, this time explaining how he came to be the principal lyricist for the band. The drum bed underneath this section was taken from his instructional drumming video, an edited version of the ‘practice’ portion. Near the end of this Peartian monologue, we see Craig accidentally drop a file behind the cabinet, and he trudgingly goes through the motions of moving said cabinet and sees a piece of plywood that has purposely been nailed against the wall. As he removes it, Neil finishes talking and all we hear are Craig’s movement and other office noises. Despite the fact that Craig does no talking during this sequence, I threw in a snipet of Geddy Lee saying “What is that?” as Craig looks upon the miniature door for the first time.
As he opens the door, not only did I keep the original sounds in tact, but I added the introduction of the song “Limbo” which also features a door opening. As he looks inside the portal, I threw in a weird mix of the opening to the song “Witch Hunt”…if you listen in stereo, on one channel the bells are played forward, while on the other channel they’re played backward…then as it’s looped, the channels switch. This effect plays very well as an introduction to this tunnel. After briefly looking inside, Craig wants to make sure he has some privacy and goes to close his office door. He then returns to the portal’s entrance, and begins to crawl inside. At this point, I took the ethereal saxophone/synthesizer mix from the title-track to Alex Lifeson’s solo effort “Victor” (this mix occurs at the end of the song), backward-masked the clip, and that is what we hear as Craig begins his journey. When he reaches the ‘point of no return’ and begins to slide involuntarily down the hole, the sax/synth mix fades into an extended remix I made out of the ‘swirling’ noise heard at the beginning of “The Oracle” segment of the song “2112”. As he comes to an abrupt halt inside John Malkovich, I used the ‘industrial’ drum sound from the song “Force Ten” to compliment the screeching halt.
Now, during pre-production I recorded literally scores and scores of various interview snipets that ran a myriad of topics. The intention (or at least the hope) was that at various points throughout the project these topics, which were recorded completely out of context, could somehow be pieced together to bring some cohesiveness to the thing. So, for our first trip inside Malkovich, we get what I loosely term the ‘political’ portion…very loosely! By the way, what’s going on onscreen has absolutely nothing to do with what’s being said. The music, however, does (which we’ll get into in a minute).
The instant we arrive inside Malkovich, as he’s reading the newspaper, finishing breakfast, and getting ready to leave his apartment, we hear Geddy Lee talking about how both of his parents are survivors of the Holocaust during WWII. I’ve always had a great deal of respect for survivors of what is no doubt the single greatest travesty of the 20th century…and the fact that Geddy Lee is the off-spring of two survivors makes me grateful that fate intervened on his parents’ behalf. So I knew that I wanted this aspect of his story to be included somewhere in the project and this is where it landed.
After Geddy is finished talking, we see our friend Malkovich standing at an end table, gathering items together in preparation for leaving his residence. As he looks up and into a mirror (and we first discover that Craig has ended up inside John Malkovich), I threw in a couple of lines of salutation that Geddy spoke during a Rockline show…
“Hi John.”
”Hello Craig, how ya’ doin’?”
;-)
The theme in dialogue briefly shifts away from the
‘political’ thing, and I threw in something very special that I had in
mind…first, a little background info.
The drummer who performed on Geddy’s solo album was a gentleman by the
name of Matt Cameron…he’s most noteworthy for playing in the now defunct
Soundgarden and is presently beating the skins for Pearl Jam. In October of 2000, when Pearl Jam came to
Toronto, Matt invited Geddy to the show.
During the song “Wishlist”, singer Eddie Vedder changed a line of the
song and made a reference to Geddy Lee (more in just a second). Fast-forward a couple months later, and
Geddy is at a radio station in Philadelphia, promoting MFH. During the interview (which by the way is a
great interview!), the DJ (his name escapes me now) brings up this little
incident, much to Geddy’s pleasant surprise (“You really did your
homework!”). With that background info
out of the way, I played the DJ talking immediately followed by Eddie Vedder
singing…both saying the same thing…
“I wish I was as fortunate, as fortunate as Geddy Lee.”
Much thanks goes out to Ron Smetek for providing me with the Pearl Jam Toronto Bootleg this excerpt was lifted from!
At this point in the film, the scene briefly cuts away from Craig’s journey and we see Maxine back at the office talking on the phone. I used part of a call from an overzealous fan that Neil took on his one and only appearance on Rockline (1991) to go with this. Then we cut back to the portal experience.
As Malkovich exits his building and the doorman flags down a cab for him, we hear the opening street sounds from the song “The Camera Eye”. The music continues on, but is hard to hear because as Malk enters the cab, Neil Peart brings us back to the ‘political’ thing in a big way as he begins a conversation (recorded in the early 90’s I believe) with then Prime Minister candidate Jean Chretien (who later was elected). What’s being said at this point isn’t all that important, but the conversation does to an extent mirror the interchange between Malkovich and the cab driver. At the end of this discussion about all things Canadian, our 15 minutes are up and we are violently sucked out of Malk accompanied by a backward-masked snipet from the “Overture” portion of “2112”.
Cut to a relatively still shot of the ditch by the NJ Turnpike, accompanied by a ‘stretched’ piece of keyboard sample from “The Camera Eye”, and then BAM! The hard guitar sound of said “Camera Eye” kicks in right as Craig falls helplessly into the ditch. The music plays on as he gathers his wits about him and realizing where he is, he begins to make his way back to the office.
Cut back to the office where Maxine is still on the phone (accompanied by a brief piece of the Peart/Chretien conversation), and right as Craig stumbles through the door, the guitar hits its last emphatic strum, segueing into an extended-drone remix of the Camera Eye’s keyboard bridge. This sets the stage for a conversation between Craig/Geddy and Maxine/Neil. The whole thing is set-up to appear to be non-sensical, when in actuality it serves as both a closure to the whole ‘political’ thing, and then compliment what the actual characters are talking about (namely, Craig’s discovery). Here’s how it goes…
Geddy – “Welcome to Canada.”
Neil – (in distorted voice) “No.”
Geddy – (in a distorted voice) “Mutating.”
Neil – says the word “synchronicity” SIX times, each instance becoming more and more distorted and stretched
Geddy – “Well, I see two things. I see a frustrated population and I think that’s a result of a two party system.” (brief pause) “That struck me as the most profound thing while watching the Gore/Bush thing; nobody wants to hear these guys really!”
Neil - “Envy is a motor of destruction in that respect!”
Geddy – “What people do in a time like this is move to the safe ground.”
Neil – “What’s wrong with that?”
Geddy – “Well, when you first start doing it you feel very exposed.” (pause) “That’s a really interesting theory.” (pause) “Well, what if all the great mysteries of the world are really just jokes being played on us by some, uh, other life form or spiritual being?” (pause) “Those moments in life where life just seems too big and it overwhelms you. You get these kinda’ moments of existential angst.” (pause) “I don’t know.” (pause) You don’t want to go there. You’re opening up a real can of worms here.” (pause) “When something traumatic happens to people they have a tendency to give up.”
At this point, Maxine/Neil motions toward the open window and with her body language says “Okay, well, there’s your way out…give up.” She then leaves the office leaving Craig to sulk alone.
CHAPTER TEN
“DO YOU KNOW THE DIFFERENCE
BETWEEN A PIZZA AND A BASS PLAYER?”
This is a short scene in which begins as Craig has just gotten out of the shower when the phone rings (the phone ringing you hear, by the way, is a weird, alternating, channel swapping sound I created using a tubular bell from “Xanadu” and a triangle from “Hemispheres”). Craig is surprised when he answer that it’s Maxine and this is when she hatches the idea of charging $$$ for people to go inside Malkovich. At first Craig is bothered by the profundity of the idea, but when Max reluctantly agrees to be his girl, he changes his mind.
Of course, I turned it completely ass-backwards and used various phone conversations culled from Rockline and a couple of other shows to have Geddy talking on the phone. When Craig/Geddy picks up the phone, he obviously says “Hello.” Then a short string of various people say “Hey, Geddy, how ya’ doin’?” I’ve listened to every single episode of Rockline with Rush, and it never ceases to amaze me that nearly every caller begins the conversation the same way; “How ya’ doin’?” The guest’s present state of well-being, or lack thereof, is always established at the beginning of the show when the host asks. Okay, enough ranting. Then we’re treated to a conversation between Geddy and a woman who asks if he has had throat cancer (a rumour that has been circulating for over 20 years now). Geddy assures her that this was never true. Then in a bit of a twist, I included a segment of an interview from the syndicated morning show “Bob & Tom” in which Geddy is the one we hear over the phone line…
Tom – “Geddy Lee, do you know the difference between a
pizza and a bass player?
Geddy – “No.”
Tom – “A pizza can feed a family of four.”
Craig/Geddy hangs up the phone…and we move on…
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“ALEX LIFESON: AIRPLANE PILOT”
The scene shifts to Craig and Lotte strolling down the sidewalk, as he is explaining to her about how he’s going to be working some late nights due to his new ‘business venture’. She’s okay with the business side of things, but is incredulous when it comes to the portal issue. He offers her to see for herself and she accepts. During this discussion, I had Alex and Geddy speaking just random things which I’m not going to reveal here.
We move to the entrance to the portal (utilizing once again the door from “Limbo”) and while there is some talking between the two characters, I opted for a mix of a different sort. The mix begins with the spooky intro to “Cygnus X-1”…echoing tubular bells, the synthesized menagerie of eerie tones, etc…this segment is also looped into a backwards state. Then reaching back once again into the archives, I pulled a segment from a 1984 Source Radio Special in which the interviewer joins Alex Lifeson on a plane ride…with Lifeson at the controls. In this edited segment, Alex is ‘taxi-ing’ out to the runway, talking pilot jargon with the control tower, and getting ready for the flight. As the plane’s engine goes to full throttle for take-off, we are whisked into Malkovich…at the same time, the shot turns to Craig as the door slams in front of him…I took this opportunity to use the door closing at the very end of the ‘live’ album “All The World’s A Stage”.
Another edited piece from 2112’s “Overture” segment brings us inside Malkovich where we immediately find ourselves taking a shower…the running water you hear is not from the film, but instead is the water flow at the beginning of “Discovery” from 2112. It’s been awhile since we last heard Neil Peart expound on something, so he explains the inspiration behind the song “Dreamline”. Of course, in the film Lotte is growing increasingly ecstatic as Malk washes himself…and these are the seeds that lead her to believe she wants the sex-change operation. When the shower ends and Malk begins drying himself off, the Discovery water flow segues into a mix of the light guitar flutterings at the conclusion of the ‘live’ version of “In The End” (from ATWAS) and mixes into the equally light guitar flutterings at the conclusion of “Lakeside Park”.
We cut to Craig waiting by the side of the road for his wife to exit into the ditch…the quick drum opening of “Bytor & The Snowdog” leads instantly into the guitar solo from “The Necromancer”…and this music continues on as they get in the car and head to Lester’s house for dinner. This gave me another opportunity to bring together a bunch of disparate sound clips from various interviews…this time dealing with the legend of “The Gangster Of Boats”.
When Rush included the fantastic instrumental “Where’s My Thing?” on the Roll The Bones album, they subtitled the thing “Part 4 of the Gangster of Boats Trilogy”. Now you would think that a reasonably intelligent person could see that this was meant as a subtle joke. Unfortunately, people tend to over-analyze everything Rush does (something I was certainly guilty of myself back in my adolescence)…but what’s even more unfortunate is that every time a member of Rush appears as a guest on Rockline, somebody calls in and asks about the Gangster Of Boats thing…it never fails. It’s a joke, people! Okay, enough ranting. Suffice it to say, I had more than enough GoB material to string together a piece that lasts the entire ride to Lester’s.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“POLARIZE ME”
We enter Lester’s dining room, and the good doctor is pouring on the charm with Lotte. She’s still dazed from her trip inside Malk, so she’s sort of half paying attention, half not. The edited conversation between Lester and Lotte/Alex goes something like this…
Lester – “Tell me, Lotte, can you understand a word I’m saying?”
Alex – (after a brief pause, he responds in a stretched and distorted voice) “I don’t think so.” (then in a normal speech pattern he states) “But I did come up with an interesting egg-cup holder, which, actually Neil could tell you, cause I made it specifically for him out of a vitamin bottle.”
Lester – “Ah, be still my heart!”
(long pause)
Alex – (in an animated voice) “Yes, smash good…it’s taken from the Monster
Mash”
Lester – “Ah, it would be great pleasure my dear. You’ll go up the grand escalle’, and once atop the stair, you’ll want to enter the fifth door on my left. Watch the step down, it’s sunken.”
Alex – (in a Dracula-like voice) “It was a graveyard smash.”
In reality, Lotte asked for directions to bathroom. As she walks up the stairs, a guitar tuning from a soundcheck is heard underneath our resident sage, Neil Peart, explains to us the original meaning of the term ‘masterpiece’. Taken once again from his instructional video, he states…
“A writer friend of mine introduced me to the original meaning of the term ‘masterpiece’. It seems that in medieval times in the days of the craftsmen and handworkers, whether you were a carver or a painter or any kind of artisans in the crafts, you’d have to serve a long apprenticeship and then eventually you might be allowed to submit a piece of work to the masters and perhaps be accepted among their number.”
As soon as Neil’s done speaking here, we then hear his “1-2-3-4” count-in to the song “Animate”. But instead of the drum introduction we’re accustomed to hearing, we go to a bizarre, quasi-industrial remix of the song done by some unknown artist (if, by the way, you know who this person is and can provide me with adequate proof, I will gladly give them credit). Coinciding with this song, our friend Lotte has indeed made her way upstairs, but instead of the bathroom, she has entered a small room with dozens of pictures of John Malkovich hanging on the wall. She looks around in disbelief, not knowing quite what to make of this development. As we see various shots of the pictures hanging there, Geddy chimes in and says “Because she was so moved by this scene of moving pictures…and the lady was very upset because, you know, those pictures weren’t moving her.”
The scene and music fade and cut to Craig and Lotte driving home after their visit with Lester. Instead of them having a conversation, I decided to tie up loose ends with Neil’s take on Alex’s eggcup holder. He went on to explain that it, along with various other items, were placed at points around the studio and served as small mementos of inspiration…go figure. By the way, the great guitar solo from “Cinderella Man” serves as our musical bed here.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“COMPLICATE ME”
We now shift to the office where Maxine and Craig are readying a classified ad for submission to the newspaper. Lotte interrupts this meeting, much to Craig’s surprise, and while Maxine’s on the phone placing the ad, she pulls Craig to the side and informs him that she wants to “do the Malkovich ride” again, and if she experiences the same thing she did before, she wants to consult with a doctor about gender-reassignment. Craig goes ballistic and tells her she’s nuts…Maxine, now off the phone, tells him to let Lotte go and do it, with her ulterior motive being that she wants to call Malkovich while Lotte’s inside.
Of course, I had to go in and screw with this conversation and have Ged, Al, and Neil do the talking. This dialogue is much too long to spell out word for word, so I will simply say this; it works, especially when Craig/Geddy and Lotte/Alex are discussing her desire to become a man. If you want to hear the specifics you’ll have to get a hold of a copy. I should also add that when breaks in the conversation occur, I use portions of the instrumental bridge from “Bytor & The Snowdog” to go from one clip to the next. Then at the end of the scene, the bombastic conclusion of this bridge plays out as we cut to Malkovich at home.
He is sitting in a chair, reading out loud a play out from a book, and recording his words into a mini tape recorder…and Lotte is inside him following along. The dialogue I used here is that of Geddy addressing, via tape, his well wishes to a Rush convention that was held in Italy (speaking in English, by the way). I got this snipet of dialogue off the internet and will be glad to give credit if someone can provide me with the source.
After Ged’s done speaking, the phone rings (yes, the bell-ting mix is used once again here), and when Malk answers it, it’s Maxine. She tries to coax him into meeting her and he flat out tells her no. Only after he has hung up, with Lotte’s subconscious insistence, does he change his mind and decides to meet this strange lady.
My editing of this scene consisted of the following…
When Malk answers the phone, Ged’s voice is used to say
“Hello.”
However, the caller on the other end says “Hey, Alex, Happy New Year!”
Alex’s voice then replies “Thank you.”
A different caller then asks the following – “The song ‘Bytor & The Snowdog’ hasn’t been played in about 50 tours. So could you maybe do it next time?”
To which Alex sarcastically replies “Yeah, we were holding out for the 51st.”
And yet another caller chimes in with the following – “A frequent topic on the National Midnight Star is your nightmares and how they’ve inspired some of the things you’ve written over the years.”
Continuing on this dada-fest, a backward masked lyric from “Cygnus X-1” makes an appearance…
Followed by Ged, in talking about his band, “Here’s the pompous rock group with this hyperactive rhythm section…for all the pompous overtones, it’s fun.”
Which is then quickly followed by an echoed mix of the “ah, ah ,ah, ah, ah” section from “Between The Sun & Moon”.
And it’s concluded with Geddy repeating FOUR times “My first band was the Dusty Coconuts.”
At which point Malkovich has had enough and hangs up…
And as he sits there contemplating whether he should meet with Maxine, a segment of a Pavement song (the title escapes me at this time) poses the following;
“What about the voice of Geddy Lee? How did it get so high? I wonder if he speaks like an ordinary guy?” To which the singer’s band mate replies “I know him and he does.”
This leads into the echoed voice of Geddy Lee discussing…well, his voice…
“You know, my voice was different. It polarized a lot of people. I probably had as many people come up to me that told me they loved my voice as told me they hated my voice. You know, over the last few years, I’ve considered myself more of a singer than I have in the past and that all happened with a kind of a sound my voice had years ago.”
And we get to hear his voice from years ago scream out the echoed conclusion of “Anthem” coincide with Lotte’s sudden exit from Malk. Then the rest of the song plays out as she ditches Craig at the ditch.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“NOBODY’S HERO”
So, John Malkovich is now sitting at a table in a restaurant waiting for the mystery lady to show up…Lotte has already entered him. While he’s waiting, another patron at this eating establishment comes up to him and they engagement in a brief, mostly one-sided conversation…
Patron – “Excuse me. Are you Geddy Lee?”
Malk/Geddy – “Yes, it’s true.”
Patron – “Wow.
You’re really great in that movie where you played that retard.”
Malk/Geddy – “Well, I appreciate that very much.”
Patron – “I have a cousin who’s a retard, so as you might
imagine it means a lot to me to see retards portrayed on the silver screen so
compassionately.”
Malk/Geddy – “Thank you, goodnight.”
And the guy walks away…enter Maxine…and enter a looped version of the piano at the beginning of “Red Tide”.
I chose at this juncture to have Neil discuss his opinion on heroes instead of attempting to have our two characters ‘talk’ to one another. I approached this a bit different this time, though. Whenever the camera shot was from inside Malk, I ‘phase shifted’ the dialogue giving it a more ambient sound, and when the camera was outside, I left the talking in its original state. Since Maxine’s basically pouring on her manipulative charm (which is turning both Malk and Lotte on in equal measure), the ‘heroes’ rant really has nothing to do with this scene. As we’ve seen at various points so far (and some yet to come), these unrelated contrasts hopefully contribute to the ‘rollercoaster’, the ‘ebb and flow’, etc…they’re essentially there to muck things up!
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“IN THE NOT TOO DISTANT
FUTURE…”
After the restaurant scene, we see Craig and Lotte driving home after she’s made her latest trip inside Malk. They are discussing this latest foray into the this netherworld, and Lotte’s purposely not letting on to her husband that she’s now got a crush on Maxine. She’s talking him into inviting Max over for dinner.
This gave me the chance to use an idea that I had long before ever starting this project. One of my favourite television shows is Mystery Science Theater 3000. It also happens to be a favourite of the guys in Rush and back on the 1994 edition of Rockline they talked a bit about it…(a loop of the opening bassline to “Turn The Page” begins)
Geddy – “That’s my Mystery Science Theater Lunchbox. I was fortunate enough to have a very good friend give me that for my birthday last year, which is a prized possession and I take it with me everywhere…Mystery Science Theater 3000 is one of the most excellent shows ever.”
Alex – “I think it should be mentioned here, too, that one of the highpoints of Geddy’s career and Neil’s career was the fact that they’ve both been mentioned on Mystery Science Theater.”
At this point, I run a string together of nearly every MST3K reference to Rush :
“You know, in that light she looks just like Geddy Lee.”
“They’ve stumbled upon Geddy Lee’s birthplace.”
“Well then, is Geddy Lee there?”
“Neil Peart on drums.”
”Neil Peart on drums.”
“The true story of Neil Peart.”
“I bet you listen to Rush, don’t you?”
“’Serum’, the new CD from Rush.”
“Man, I’m so baked right now. You oughta’ hear this Rush tape.”
“They gave us Ed the Sock, and Rush.”
“The Rush Guy.”
“He died listening to Rush…2112.”
“But the trees can’t help their feelings, if they like the way they’re made…Mike, stop it now!”
“Rush albums! Whoo, haha!”
“Hey, it’s the band Rush!”
Due to time and space limitations, I had leave out one of these references because of a scene change. I should mention that I got these snipets from this WEBSITE, but I just paid it a visit and a message saying “content not available at this time” appeared. Whether this is temporary or permanent, I do not know. Regardless, if you’ve never checked out MST3K, you need to!
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“ANGEL’S SHARE”
We head back to LesterCorp now where Craig/Geddy and Maxine/Neil are speaking with their very first customer…
Customer – “Now, when you say I can be somebody else, what do you mean exactly?”
Geddy – “Well, it’s an unanswerable question. It’s an indescribable process that goes on inside of you. It’s not pretty.”
Customer – “Can I be anybody that I wanna’ be?”
Geddy – “Well, it’s kinda’ the hardest question in the
world to answer.”
Neil – (using Geddy’s voice) “I want it
to be Superman.”
Customer – “That’s perfect! It’s my second choice, but it’s wonderful. (he sudden becomes semi-distraught and begins lamenting…) “I’m a fat man. I am sad and I’m… (interrupted)
Neil – “Are you a man or a mouse?”
Customer – “Oh…oh, uh, yes.” (he hands Neil 200 bucks)
The customer then stands up, and when Craig/Geddy opens the door for him, Geddy says…