The Brave Little Toaster

Retrospectus Obscurus Volume V

1) Elmer Bernstein is at the Egyptian Theater on Hollywood Blvd with Tony Curtis for the screening of Sweet Smell of Success - Q&A afterwards. Call the American Cinematheque.

2) Ryuichi Sakamoto concert at 8PM at the El Rey on Wilshire Blvd, a few blocks west of La Brea.

Sorry about the lateness of the news -- hope you can make it to one or the other!

By Scott Andrew Hutchins

Name: The Brave Little Toaster

Type: Animated Musical

Director: Jerry Rees

Composer: David Newman (music and song arrangements), Van Dyke Parks (songs)

The Brave Little Toaster is a wonderful film where musical styles clash to fit the context. David Newman's score starts out as very pastoral, opening with violins and adding cellos, then chimes, which The Radio (Jon Lovitz) describes as "a billion and one strings." There's piano tinkling and a horn fanfare as he runs down stairs. This early scene is one of the few scenes in the film which involves hitting the action, though there is phrasing throughout the film, in restrained levels. "April Showers" by Louis Silvers and B.G. DeSylva is played as a dustball plummets gently, while Kirby starts up with a cue that sounds like it was written for a fighter pilot.

When the Radio and the Lamp and Blanky get into an argument, the music seems written to accompany a serious fight scene, making there argument seem ludicrous. An ominous ostinato pulsates as Kirby starts to suck up Blanky, with the Radio and the Lamp in his folds.

The dialogue was created by an improv group called the Groundling Theater. The principal roles are voiced by Jon Lovitz, Tim Stack, Timothy E. Day, Deanna Oliver, Thurl Ravenscroft (best known as Tony the Tiger), and Phil Hartman. Willard Carroll, one of the executive producers, who has possession of a big packet of my own research, told The Baum Bugle that Lovitz and Hartman joined Saturday Night Live just two weeks after recording their dialogue. (He takes so long in making his animation that "unknowns" he casts like Shay Astar, Bradley Pierce, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, and Benjamin Salisbury, become stars before the projects are released, in this case The Oz Kids.)

In a rare example of pre-existing source music in an animated film, the appliances clean up the cabin to Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti," broadcast over the Radio. Music as before rises over the song with the passing of a car that might mean the Master's return, so Radio stops the music suddenly, and there is an interesting overlap.

The appliances pile on top of one another to hoist Blanky to the attic window, in a very dark theme which foreshadows Newman's work for Carroll on The Runestone. It then becomes a really romantic, old-style Hollywood piece as the cabin becomes a glittering mansion in Blanky's imagination as he runs up to meet the master.

There is no music when Phil Hartman pretends he's Jack Nicholson as the Air Conditioner, until he goes mad and shorts out, when it becomes a fearsome piece reminiscent of Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries." The music goes out again, and is not played when the "For Sale" sign is posted outside the cabin.

Then there is the rag as the appliances work on a plan to find the Master. This is mainly on clarinet and piano, and there is an arabesque parody as they try to fly on Blanky. When Toaster finds a car battery, the music sounds like it could have come from Raiders of the Lost Ark, a grand adventure discovery theme. It bursts out again as they open the door.

Light music seems to come out of the radio. here the music plays through the drama, like a serious film, then it gets a light beat and the first song, with full orchestral backing, comes in. The lyrics advance their motivation.

Blanky has a brief minor key piano piece and tambourine when no one will snuggle with Blanky. In the morning, "natural" sounds repeat the music of the song, followed by carnival-like themes for the fieldmice, but eventually develops into a Busby Berkeley-esque setpiece that does not advance the plot, but enhances pacing and commentary. A fish is singing an opera piece I recognize but can't name. It's probably by Verdi.

Much of the underscore Newman uses throughout the film is very much in the Claude Debussy/Igor Stravinsky vein: romantic and slightly dissonant. Near the end the music takes on a warm-up sound, with carefully placed rhythms, like modern all-music. I'm thinking particularly of "For John Cage" by Michael Nyman. The strings crescendo quite hard when leaving, but not in a melancholic manner.

When Lampy lights up the monstrous looking tree, there is a piece for brass and strings that sounds right out of a classic horror film.

Strings turn to low brass for Toaster's dream sequence as smoke pours out of her, then it becomes very much like Danny Elfman as a clown firefighter (think Pee-wee) sends water forks her direction. Horn ostinatos accompany the search for Blanky. When she gets vertigo, I think Newman avoids mimicking Herrmann, but I fazed out for a bit, and am not sure, even though I wrote it down. Strings and clarinet create suspense as Kirby is dragged into quicksand, the the Radio brings in "My Mammy" from The Jazz Singer as a final broadcast.

A very rapid piece accompanies Elmo St. Peter's (Co-screenwriter Joe Ranft) monster truck race back to his collectible shop, where after some more horror themes, a gramophone plays an organ, which leads into the next song, "It's a B-movie" This is a disco piece, played by a much smaller group than the New Japan Philharmonic that performed the score. This scene deals with the potentiality and inevitability of becoming spare parts, so the music has a greater sound of technology. The rest of the film contrasts variations of "City of Light" with various kinds of more technological music.

When they arrive at the apartment, they are driven out by "Cutting Edge" appliances, in a rap song playing much like a commercial, along with ethnic influences as the Entertainment Center (Randy Cook) tries to convince them that an island vacation without leaving home is the best. They are tossed into a dumpster, despite the happy reuniting with the Black and White TV set (Jonathan Benair).

When Rob (the Master) finds his cabin in shambles, there is a soft piano ostinato as he repairs the air conditioner, and more romantic strings.

At the dump, the car crusher is very rhythmic, but mostly goes away for the final song "Worthless," which mixes acoustic piano, jazz, and rock instruments in interludes between the TV set's commercialization of the dump and cars singing of what they had done in a few lines before they are destroyed. The fadeout from this song has a power I cannot describe, it's just a trombone (I think) with a piano piece repeated, but the strings fade back in.

The music becomes truly cacophonic when the Magnet is in such pursuit that it takes Rob with the appliances. The magnet's them is played on strings and xylophone. The horns just blaze (I'm not musically educated enough to describe better) as the Toaster prepares to make the sacrifice.

The ending has a brass fanfare that sounds very reminiscent of Glen Larson and Stu Phillips's Battlestar Galactica theme. And crescendos of "City of Light" will full orchestra end the film, with the end credits more of this, back to the softer, less accessible title music, then back to the finale.

Thus, the music in the film clashes with an angst over technology and a loss of culture and sentiment. The score produces sentiment, while the memorable songs eat away at it, perfectly assessing some of the themes of the film, as exemplified by the overkill andd advertising parodies of "Th Cutting Edge."

The film was directed by former Disney animator Jerry Rees, who followed with the live-action The Marrying Man, form a script he co-wrote from a novella by Thomas M. Disch. It was one of four films David Newman scored for Willard Carroll and Thomas Wilhite's Hyperion Pictures, the others being Rover Dangerfield, The Itsy Bitsy Spider (featuring the voice of James Carrey (Jim) as an exterminator), and The Runestone. The latter film I will cover in a forthcoming column. The Brave Little Toaster was followed by two sequels, The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars and The Brave Little Toaster to the Rescue, both of which were written by Willard Carroll (from novels by Dischoboth out of print) and directed by Robert C. Ramirez, and were not scored by Newman, nor were the songs by Van Dyke Parks.

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