You know Reader, I recently remembered something about you: You’re probably a hipster. Considering that this blog runs on Diversions, devoted in large part to the local and indie music scenes (which I know are not mutually exclusive) and probably the most “ironic” thing to read in the Daily Tar Heel, there’s a good chance that you’re listening to something like Belle and Sebastian right now (not the tracks from Juno, of course.) Even as I write this, I notice that our blog covers a Pitchfork-lauded folk septet of soughing strings players, not one of them without a lazy beard or a mosaic blouse. Now, it’s very possible that you’re not a hipster, but, to indulge in my McCarthyistic tendencies, I must add that it’s very likely that you are indeed a hipster and, as such, refuse to admit to the label that society has carved out for you.
But let’s not play the name game. In this post I decided to cater to the refined tastes of “certain readers.” If you’re an incessantly namedropping, acerbically witted, plaid/gingham-shirted, skinny-jeaned vegetarian music blogger/Urban Outfitters rewards club member who slams mainstream artists while glorifying little-known bands that you liked “before they were cool” and marches to the beat of your own glockenspiel, then you will rejoice in the following news: Filmmaker Spike Jonze is working on a short film with indie sensation, Arcade Fire.
Jonze, an auteur whose music videos and feature-length films boast his novel cinematic eye in every frame, first collaborated with Arcade Fire in 2009, when the group recorded an acoustic version of their most popular song, “Wake Up,” for the trailer of Jonze’s downright awe-inspiring film, “Where the Wild Things Are.” In fact, the groundbreaking album from which the song originates (Funeral) was integral to the movie’s development, as Jonze once made clear in an interview, “I wrote the whole script to Arcade Fire’s Funeral, and I listened to [“Wake Up”] a lot. That record is thematically very connected to the film.”
With its indie trailer music and somewhat recognizable root of inspiration (an album Pitchfork called “all-encompassing,” “acoustic majesty”) Wild Things tapped the ever-elusive wellspring of praise within the hipster community. T-shirts, posters, costumes, and other accessories found a place in the hipster image. The film’s soundtrack (created by indie-rock superstar Karen O, frontwoman for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs) even managed to make their playlists. The music and film virtuosos will be sure to make another, yet different, splash with their next project.
According to a Pitchfork interview with Arcade Fire’s Win Butler, the project came to be when the band presented Jonze some material from their new album (The Suburbs) in February of 2010. Butler states, “Basically, we played Spike some music from the album and the first images that came to his mind had the same feeling as this idea for a science fiction film I had when I was younger. My brother and I and Spike wrote it together, which was really fun— it was like total amateur hour.”
Not just a sci-fi film, but a “science-fiction B-movie companion piece for the record.” To intentionally make a “B movie” is such an interesting approach. It’s one thing to make a film the best you can, but something else entirely to make a subpar film the best you can. Much like how Martin Scorsese was incapable of personally performing poor camera work for the home-footage scenes in “Raging Bull” (for which inexperienced crewmen were given the cameras), natural instincts creep into the filmmaker’s work. Is Spike Jonze such an all-encompassing artist that he can emulate the shoddy style of B sci-fi movies without being too ineffective? Can “amateur hour” be a credit to Jonze’s name?
To be honest, I don’t think either Jonze or Arcade Fire particularly care. And I guess that’s spirit to maintain with this project. Whether it’s cinematic gold or an asinine time-waster, just knowing that these two artistic forces are blending is comfort to us all. Hipsters and non-hipsters alike: Get excited!
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