Good Soundtrack, Bad Movie

“Can a meretricious, inane movie with nothing else to recommend it produce a radiant, rousing film score?” asks Gary Giddins in “Rolling Thunder,” the January/February 2018 edition of Film Comment‘s “Playing Along” column. “Very rarely,” he answers. Although Giddins isolates Franz Waxman’s score for Taras Bulba as a specific example, the guests on this week’s episode of the Film Comment Podcast each provide a couple more, which led to reminiscences about genre sampler OSTs, unlikely pop music cues, and whether or not Steven Spielberg’s idea of humor is just…shouting. For this conversation, FC Digital Producer Violet Lucca is joined by Tom Scharpling, host of The Best Show, and frequent FC contributors Margaret Barton-Fumo and Nick Pinkerton.