Wang Chung's "To Live and Die In L.A." soundtrack - C/D

Wait is such an earworm that the first time I watched the film I went a full week with it in my head when I fell asleep and still there when I woke up in the morning.

I think of this album and 1984: for the love of big brother as great examples of a band creating a soundtrack through songs, and landing somewhere between pop songs and something more experimental.

Fuckin incredible movie

innit.

I've owned the soundtrack for years but unbelievably I hadn't seen the movie until last night. I love that even if you take away the 80s tropes, it's still a great gritty b-movie crime noir: hammy/overwrought acting, killer soundtrack, moral bankruptcy, no movie stars. A bigger budget would have ruined it.

it's like one half if kafka made a car chase, one half video game with endless baddies

^^^^^

My only issue is that there isn't a 20min long remix of the title song, but even then I'm afraid that it would be too short.

watching this again tonight and goddamn robby muller is a total fucking genius, so much of this movie looks incredible

real talk tho: has there ever been a leading man as bandy-legged as william petersen? motherfucker would have no chance of stopping a pig in a passage

Fucking classic & this thread reminds me I have a copy of TLADILA and might watch it tonight

do it, let’s be tladila buddies

"hold it right there fella!"

also psyched to see To Live and Shave in LA here in a week and a half

wait sorry

"Right there fella!"

this script is great, moment to moment it's kind of stupid in terms of dialogue but the overall arc and characters are so incredible that it works.

willem dafoe is so perfectly reptilian in this

One of my fav films ever

Evening viewing sorted, thanks brahs

this movie hits you like a shotgun blast to the face

The money making sequence is great. I don't know if that is exactly how it is done, but it looks authentic.

yeah, it’s gorgeous to look at and it’s great procedural filmmaking a la the safecracking in thief

(and this movie is better than anything michael mann ever did imo)

it’s gorgeous to look at

Its best feature IMO. Cinematography by the great Robby Müller

yeah between this and repo man muller shot two of the greatest los angeles movies ever

two L.A. movies that specifically avoided the usual L.A. cliches except for the “brave heroes” opening scene in Beverly Hills, which the movie walks back so far on that by the end the brave hero is revealed as a legitimate psychopath.

Can you guys name any other great-looking “L.A. in the ’70s/’80s” movies off top of your head? I once had a thread on this topic on the IMDb messageboard for “The Driver,” but they deleted their boards. There were surprisingly few suggestions...

The Driver is a solid one. Night Moves is half-L.A. but it’s pretty great. Very Rockford Files-type location shooting.

Hardcore, Straight Time, The Long Goodbye — all good L.A. films from this period, the former is great if you’re a Paul Schrader fan. The latter two are great, period.

The Hidden is an outstanding eighties L.A. film, great locations throughout Hollywood, works as both a cop thriller and horror/sci-fi flick.

body double? the long goodbye?

and if we’re defining 70s as the era the movies were made in rather than set in, chinatown

two votes for the long goodbye!

kinda feel like die hard counts

Thanks, that's helpful! Haven't heard of and/or seen most of those.
(xp - I've seen Die Hard, ha ha)

Someone on that board suggested "Hickey & Boggs" - never got around to seeing it...

Watched it tonight, been a few years. Yeah. Fucking awesome. The best action movie ever imo. So cool and confident and fun. Still get shocked when Chance is killed 15 minutes before it ends. Omar otm on how his character turns. So many stunning cuts: Masters burning his painting dissolving into clear blue sky, the low angle shot of his eyes gleaming just before he burns to death, Chance's face as the terrorist detonates the vest, the whole highway sequence...

saw this in the cinema for the first time fairly recently, totally great.

re. the question above: Beverly Hills Cop II sticks in my mind, for some reason. Los Angeles Plays Itself of course.

oh god the alternate ending

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD3mErQjNX0

not many movies could get away with ending vukovic’s metaphorical movie-long descent into hell with a literal fight in a blazing building but yeah friedkin really is that good

Lmfao when Chance's face is blown out into a black void and Vukovich is just cradling his lifeless body going "talk to me... talk to me... talk to me..."

Dean Stockwell had a mini Cazale run of masterpieces from 84-86: Paris, Texas; To Live and Die in L.A.; Blue Velvet.

best part is Chance doesn't even get the honor of getting killed by the guy he's after, but his hillbilly flunky.

Can you guys name any other great-looking “L.A. in the ’70s/’80s” movies off top of your head?

Into The Night (John Landis, Jeff Goldblum, Bowie, a dozen movie-directors-acting cameos), Echo Park (low budge), maybe Miracle Mile.

Thanks! Several more I hadn't heard of...

the 1982 film Vice Squad w/Season Hubley and Wings Hauser, with the latter as a psychopathic pimp, is really something else. Outstanding Hollywood locations, extremely sleazy low-rent vibe.

Masters burning his painting dissolving into clear blue sky

i think about this shot like once a month

oh yeah miracle mile is a good call - it’s a kind of weird companion piece to this now that I think of it

both have the walls closing in on the main characters until a bummer of an ending

night of the comet is another good la movie imo

MM is an all-time favorite of mine

i think about this shot like once a month

― flamenco blorf (BradNelson), Wednesday, June 20, 2018 3:27 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i wrote it into a pitchfork review once lol

miracle mile is a real marvel of genre-mashing, there’s not much else out there in the nuclear-nihilism romance category

Haven't seen it probably since the 80s, but I remember "52 Pick-Up" being pretty good. Finally got around to reading the Elmore Leonard book a few years back and wanted to see it again, but have not re-watched it. It's a pretty grim story.

I'd think you could stretch to include "Less than Zero" for 80s dark and glitzy LA.

It's not LA noir, but for trashy 80s crime movies I have been wanting re-watch "I, the Jury", "Body Heat" and "Year of the Dragon" again. I loved crime movies like that as a teenager. There are a couple of others already mentioned like "Body Double" and "Into the Night" that I would like to see again too.

"Black Rain" is another one that looks really amazing, even if the movie is pretty pulpy too. That movie would be good for people that are doing all that 80s synth soundtrack music to cut up as a video with the big motorcycle sequence and the crazy rain used in that movie.

"Into the Night" is one of my favorite movies that no-one usually knows. The scene with David Bowie and Carl Perkins as hit men facing off against each other is a classic.

52 Pick-Up is a nice choice, that movie is extremely trashy in the best sense. And very sweaty. Everyone in that movie sweats off ten pounds.

It's kinda wild that Ann Margaret is in that role.

The Outside Man is a great 70s L.A. crime film. Jean-Louis Trintignant as a hitman who can barely speak English double-crossed and left stranded in L.A., chased all over the city by a manic Roy Schneider ("Where's Frenchie?!!"). Great locales, lots of funny bits with a surreal edge - Jean-Claude Carrière was co-writer. The climatic shoot-out in a funeral home is memorable, and the final shot, while not as shocking as the climax of TLADILA, is even more agonizing and downbeat.

Ann Margret's in it too!

To Live and Die in LA will always be a classic to me. Pitch black darkness. Touching that brings out interesting shit in a person.

Shifting gears, Mann's Manhunter is good for the toll it takes on someone getting into the heads of psychopathic serial killers. I've had to do that in my own professional work, wouldn't recommend it!

They don't make enough "REAL" movies anymore. Always about fantasy dudes who face no consequences for facing the horrors of life.

Can you guys name any other great-looking “L.A. in the ’70s/’80s” movies off top of your head?

I remember the movie Angel being kind of popular in the 80s. High school honor student by day. Hollywood hooker by night.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_(1984_film)

Just saw this movie in the theater tonight. What was the point of the whole subplot with John Turturro's character, Carl Cody? Chance gets him out of jail so Cody will help him get to Rick Masters; Cody tricks Chance and escapes; Chance eventually gets him back... and that's it? Quite a bit of the movie is dedicated to all this, but it doesn't seem to lead anywhere. The person who actually connects Chance and Vukovich with Masters is Masters's crooked lawyer. What am I missing?

I remember seeing 52 Pick-Up on VHS when I was maybe in junior high and being genuinely shocked by how sleazy it seemed. I wanted to see how it held up now that I'm old and jaded, so I bought the recent Blu-Ray edition and...holy fuck, it might even be sleazier than I remembered. John Glover is amazing in it.

I love this movie so much. Recently watched Heat which is also a force. But where Heat has some towering moments, LA hits the peak at the start and never lets up.

I saw a 35mm print of this recently and the Wang Chung soundtrack is surprisingly abrasive in spots, I was really struck how in a sequence like the airport chase it was just pounding drum machine clatter.

LA is definitely hot orange, room-temp Michelob, cocaine sweating

Heat is cool blue, Lexapro come-down, cocaine sweating

Yeah my film-induced-narcoleptic wife kept waking up whenever the sound track would kick in just to ask me to turn it down. It definitely comes in hard. Going to be rolling some Wang Chung in the background this next week, stunning soundtrack

every moment of the wang chung soundtrack hits like a knife (in a good way)

Bill Simmons did this film on the Rewarchables recently and Wang Chung figure prominently into their discussion. Their young producer Craig who sometimes doesn’t love the sentimental faves of the older guys said the second he heard the opening“Buddle-uh-DUH Duh” of the title track he knew this was a five-star movie.

I rewatched it and pretty much love both the film and soundtrack as much as ever. Several months ago I listened to the chapter on this from Friedkin’s memoir (read by Friedkin himself) and it was terrific.

this was a few years ago, but i definitely did a fist pump when i found a copy of this unexpectedly. "black-blue-white" is proto-NIN

I enjoyed this movie but was way underwhelmed by this soundtrack, tbh. Gonna get banned for this probably, but a lot of it just sounded like weak S.A.W. remixes of the Miami Vice theme or something.

man this film rules so hard - i have trouble imagining it being better with a different soundtrack, the sledgehammer music cues do so much to keep the intensity levels in the red

yeah I think I was just expecting something more chill and dreamy for some reason, totally my bad