I watched DEAD MEN DON’T WEAR PLAID a few weeks ago. The film is a spoof of 1940s films noir and detective films, in which Steve Martin gets to interact with about two dozen Hollywood stars via clips from their old films. The score was provided by Miklos Rozsa (his last), and he was selected for the job primarily because he was nearly the last living major composer who had actually scored films from that era. Since “DEAD MEN” used clips from about 17 different films, it was almost inevitable that Rozsa would get to re-score scenes from films that he had actually scored in the 1940s, and that indeed happened with scenes from “The Lost Weekend,” “The Killers,” and “Double Indemnity.”
A bad back had Rozsa laid up in bed during the recording sessions, and so Lee Holdridge conducted the score. No soundtrack was issued at the time of the film’s 1982 release. Music from the film first appeared in 1989 when Elmer Bernstein recorded the end titles (Finale) with the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra for the Varese Sarabande CD Miklos Rozsa: Hollywood Legend. A few years later, the complete score was issued by Prometheus on a 47 minute CD.
Here are the actual end credits, which run about 4 minutes, as opposed to Bernstein’s more leisurely pacing, which runs about a half minute longer.
I recall MV at LLL saying he'd like to do a Rozsa someday biut couldn't think of any left that needed the LLL treatment...I'd submit this one! Even if there want more music to be found or much better sound to get out of the tapes (both of which I kinda doubt), it'd be nice to have a nice cover that reflects the film...
Yeah, I bet Jim Titus would go wild with stuff like that if a LLL edition came out...and I've heard that there's somehow a 79 minute recording sessions release floating around out there...
