Film Composer Harry Nilsson | Episode 20

In this episode, Adam and Charlotte sing along to the soundtracks of some of their favorite musicals composed by the great Harry Nilsson. They discuss the fine and not so fine points of his films, how he crushes a cover song, and the possibilities of why he isn't more revered. Join us as Perf does Nilsson!

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Transcript

Harry Nilsson

Oh no, not again.

Hi, I'm Adam. 

Charlotte: And I'm Charlotte. And welcome. Welcome to Perf Damage, the Weekly podcast hosted by a movie obsessed husband and wife team who work in the film industry. We'll 

Adam: share stories of film production in restoration. We'll review and recommend. We'll examine the minutia of Subgenres and even micro genres.

Adam: And most importantly, we tackle the art of the 

Charlotte: double feature. Just remember all our opinions are our own and do not represent those of our employers. 

Thank you for joining 

Adam: us. 

Welcome.

All 

Adam: right, welcome back. 

Charlotte: Welcome to another week, gov Perf Damage. 

Adam: So Charlotte, what are we gonna do 

Charlotte: this week? This week we are going to talk about another film composer. We had a lot of fun talking about Wendy Carlos a couple episodes ago. And on a podcast, music is a easy thing to share where you don't need a visual usually.

Charlotte: Yeah, seemed like another, that 

Adam: was one of my favorite ones from last season actually. I really enjoyed it. 

Charlotte: There's so many favorites from last season , so today we are gonna talk about a film composer who has 213 credits on IMDB to his name.

Adam: Wow. That is a lot of credits. 

Charlotte: You might not recognize his name, but you absolutely know his songs. 

Adam: So what songs are we talking about, Charlotte? 

Charlotte: He did this one, which was in Midnight Cowboy, that you might recognize.

Oh, I know this 

Adam: one for sure. 

Everyone knows this one. Everybody's talking about me. I don't hear word to say only vehicles of my.

Adam: Oh, that was also prominently featured in Forest Gump. Oh. That was an amazing soundtrack. Did pretty much every song from the sixties was featured in Forest Gump. . All right. What else has he done that we might know?

Charlotte: Okay. He also did this one, which, this one's at the end of Reservoir Dogs

brought order cooking diamond sister. 

Charlotte: She paid it for the lime. She put the lime in the cooking. Now she dragged and pulled up. She put the lime in the cooking. Now she dragged and pulled up. She put the 

Adam: lime cooking. Oh yeah. That one was also prominently featured in the Adams Family animated movie that came out in 2019.

Adam: . All right. What else have we got? 

Charlotte: We've got this song,

Charlotte: which is in that Netflix show. Russian Doll, at the very beginning, very episode.

Gotta get up, gotta get out, gotta get home before the morning comes. What if I'm late? Got a big day, gotta get home before the sun comes up. 

Adam: Yeah, that one's big right now. ? Yeah. Just started season two. All right. What else 

Charlotte: have we got, y'all? Okay, we got, we got some more here. If none of these are familiar, which I think by now you probably are familiar with this artist, but here's another one.

Charlotte: I 

Adam: think people will know this one too. 

Just this one from Goodfellas. You can, You can swim, you can jump into the fire, but you never need 

Adam: Oh yeah. That, that one's in that really great scene with Ray Leotta when he thinks that the cops are watching him and he's all coped out. Yeah. The 

Charlotte: helicopter's chasing 

Adam: him. And he's in the car. He's in the car and he's looking up and he thinks they're after him.

Adam: , that was also in the Craft and Most recently and Euphoria. Oh, 

Charlotte: that's right. I forgot it was on that. Yeah, on the 

Adam: h bs show. I I love that song. That's one of my favorites. Yeah. Alright, so if that doesn't ring a bell, we got another one here. Yep. 

Charlotte: We got two more examples. What do we got some songs from him?

Charlotte: We got 

this one. Oh, I know 

Adam: this 

Charlotte: one. Which was covered by other artists. 

One is,

can be as bad as one. It's the loneliest number since the number one. 

Adam: Yeah. That's really famous from Magnolia. The opening, right? When you're an opening, yeah. Yeah. From Magnolia when PT Anderson's introducing all the characters. Also recently used in Lego Batman for those people with kids. I know you've seen that movie,

Adam: Yeah. All right, we got one more. What's more, what's the last one, Charlotte? What do we got? 

Charlotte: One of the best karaoke songs. I think if you really wanna bring the party down, 

nobody can't forget to this evening your face is leaving. But I guess that's just the way the story goes. You always smile, but in eyes.

Yes.

Adam: That was in another Scorsese film. Casino. And it was also in one of your favorites, rules of Attraction. 

Charlotte: Yes. It was used in the suicide scene of Rules of Attraction. 

Adam: It is a 

Charlotte: very sad song. It is a very sad song. So the artist we're talking about here today is none other than Harry Nielsen.

Charlotte: So 

Adam: Harry Nielsen, why is he not more of a household name? I don't understand it. 

Charlotte: I think it might have something to do with his lack of appearances and his lack of touring. He did not want to perform live, and he never. . 

Adam: He was deathly afraid of performing live. He didn't think he could ever replicate what he did in the studio. 

Charlotte: So he did, not only did he do great music just in general, he also did a couple movie scores or soundtracks, and that's what we're gonna focus on today. His contribution to film, his contributions to film. And there are so many. 

Charlotte: So to hear more about Harry Nielsen, stay tuned.

Charlotte: All right. 

Adam: So let's talk Harry Nielsen, Charlotte. I know this is one of your favorite artists, so why don't you give us a little history, a little backstory. 

Charlotte: Okay. I'll do a little brief history for you here. He was born in 1941 in Brooklyn, New York on Father's Day, and sadly, his father left the picture in

Charlotte: 1944, as he recalls in a song called 1940. . 

Adam: Yes. You you just plucked that from a lyric . I did , 

Charlotte: I had to sing the lyrics in my head. His 

Adam: dad was a a scout for baseball team. So he was not around a lot when he was a kid. He was always off looking, for new talent. 

Charlotte: But he left it when Harry was three.

Adam: So then the mom and him had to move in with her family, her mom. 

Charlotte: Her mom and dad. And they lived there in Brooklyn, and they lived there until he was 15 when they broke the news to him that the family really couldn't afford for him to continue to live there without a job. So he left and decided to go out on his own at 15, and he went directly to Los Angeles. 

Adam: So who's better to describe this situation than Harry himself?

Adam: Yeah. Let's hear 

Charlotte: how he 

Adam: describes it.

Adam: Okay. . That's sad and not ideal. . No. 

Charlotte: So he moved to Los Angeles and he had some random jobs. The first one that he had, he worked at a movie theater called the Paramount Theater, which was in downtown Los Angeles on Broadway. And he was, I think an assistant manager or some sort of manager position for about two years after that.

Charlotte: He spent seven years working at a bank. Oh, wow. He worked not as a teller, but he worked the night shift overseeing this computer center where they would process millions of dollars of checks every night. And he was pretty high up in that little area. He was a supervisor overseeing over a hundred people.

Charlotte: So this was a night job, so during the day he would go out and he would try to sell songs or try to figure out how to get a record deal. So he walks into this publishing house and he sees two guys there and he says, Hey, what do you guys do here? And they say, oh, we write music. He says, oh, I like to play music. So them being a publishing house, he said, okay, sit down and play something for us. So he sits down and he plays a couple songs for them. And the two guys said that they both looked at each other and they could see it in each other's eyes that it was a, oh my god, this guy is amazing. But they played it cool. And they said, oh, that's great, Harry, how'd you like to sign with us 

Charlotte: so he did. And he got a job, his first music job, writing for a publishing company at $50 a week, 

Adam: which wasn't enough to quit his day job. 

Charlotte: No. Technically his night job. His night job, . Yeah, , his day night job. No. So he kept working at the bank and he also started writing little diddies 

Charlotte: for this company, and this continued until he wrote the song Cuddly Toy, which got licensed to the Monkeys who recorded it, and it became a huge hit. And the first day that it was out and it hit the charts, the guys at the publishing house told him, Harry, you can quit the bank now.

Charlotte: And he never looked back. 

Charlotte: That was in 1968 when that song came out. During this time, Harry had also been recording albums. In 1967, he had recorded Pandemonium Shadow show. And then the following year he had recorded aerial ballet and somehow the Beatles got ahold of these albums. And in 1968, during an interview, they proclaimed that Harry Nielsen was their favorite group. Yeah. John and their favorite 

Adam: artist, John Lennon, was asked what his favorite artist was.

Adam: Yeah. And he said, 

Charlotte: Nielsen's my favorite group. Nielsen's my favorite group. So everybody had to know who Nielsen was. 

Adam: It's interesting that the monkeys gave him his first big break and they were basically an American manufactured band to cash in on the Beatles craze. . And now the Beatles have proclaimed them their favorite artist. . So it all comes full 

Charlotte: circle. It does. So due to Harry's growing popularity, auto priming, juror decided to hire him to do music in his 1968 whacked out feature Skidoo. 

Adam: So Skidoo, this is not one of Perming Drew's big films. It's one of his forgotten ones. , 

Charlotte: I think it's hard to forget, Adam. 

Adam: Oh yes, it is . it's One of those 1960s freak out films that deals with the hippie culture and the drug culture that followed them.

Adam: So let's read a synopsis on Skidoo

Charlotte: X gangster Tony Banks is called out of retirement by Mob Kingpin, God to carry out a hit on fellow mobster blue chips Packard, when banks do mirrors, God kidnaps his daughter Darlene on his luxury yacht. 

Adam: Yeah, that's pretty much the plot. What little plot this film actually has. This film 

Charlotte: has very little 

Adam: plot.

Adam: And you know what's funny is that when you think hippie drug culture, you definitely think Jackie Gleason, 

Charlotte: right? ? Yes. Let's talk about the stars in this film, of which there are many. Jackie Gleason, Carol Channing, Frankie Avalon, Frank Goon, Burgess Meredith, Caesar Romero, Mickey Rooney, Groucho Marks in his last film, slim Pickens, Richard Keel,

Charlotte: John Phillip Law, and Harry Nielsen as a tower guard. That's right. Not only did he do the music, he also played a small role in the film. Yeah. And he's really funny. He is very funny.

Adam: That cast just , it definitely cries youth movement, doesn't 

Charlotte: it? It does. And the dialogue in the film is really wacky and trying really hard. . 

Adam: Yeah. I feel like this is a prime example of that old guard director trying to adapt to new Hollywood. , trying to stay relevant. 

Charlotte: I think there was a lot of that around this time where you had all the parents trying to be hip and groovy.

Adam: Basically it's them wrestling with the new concept of youth culture and trying to come to terms with it. And it's really awkward and strange and it comes through in so many movies from that period. , like that movie Candy 1968, did you ever see that one? I don't think so.

Adam: It's written by Terry Southern. Ah, yes. Who wrote Dr. Strangelove and who later has an association with Harry Nielsen, which we'll come to later. I love you Alice B Tolas also from 1968 is a, another great example of this. The old guy who's trying to come to terms with hippie culture. 

Charlotte: Hear that Mom, I know you've love Alice b Tolas. You should check out Skidoo if you haven't , because they're very similar. Very similar, yes. My mom loves I love you Alice B Tolas.

Charlotte: Don't ask me why

Adam: The whole thing comes off death to what Counterculture really was. 

Charlotte: This is just a weird series of kind of vignette stories in a way. 

Adam: So Jackie Gleason's daughter is dating this leader of a hippie group played by John Phillip Law, who was 

Charlotte: in danger.

Charlotte: Diabol League. Barbarella, 

Adam: yes. Who was a major figure in the counterculture at the time. But 

Charlotte: this is th those were all 1968. This dude was busy that year. 

Adam: Yeah, he was, yeah, he was. He's good looking guy. So yeah. You can see why. , I'd hire him. But that wig that he's wearing is pretty shabby in 

Charlotte: this film.

Charlotte: Yeah. He's got this really long hippie wig and it's hilarious. What's funny, we were checking this film out again, we were freshening up on it because we hadn't seen it in so long. And you said, who's the guy in the long hair? Yeah, and I couldn't, I said, what ? I said, are you talking about John Phillip Law and your face when you realized that's who it was pretty classic.

Charlotte: Yeah. 

Adam: Danger Diabol is one of my absolute 

Charlotte: favorite, Favorite films. I know. How do you not recognize 

Adam: him? He wasn't wearing a full face mask in, so you could only see his eyes 

Charlotte: though. So cool. If you haven't seen Danger Diabol, we could talk about that ad nauseum. What? 

Adam: Maybe in our 1968 episode.

Adam: We really 

Charlotte: should. There's so many good films from 1968, the Green slime. I'm looking at the poster right 

Adam: now. No, no more needs to be said. The Green slime. There 

Charlotte: you go. 2001 . There are so many good films from that year. It's such a crazy year for everything. Life and cinema. Anyways, we are digressing here.

Charlotte: so while filming, while Skidoo was being filmed, Harry Nielsen got a call in the middle of the night, and I'm gonna let him tell that story.

Charlotte: So the Beatles love him. They do. And that was around the time that they had announced to the world that they loved Harry Nielsen. So they were all about Harry Nielsen at this point.

Charlotte: I have, 

Adam: A few little facts about this film. Ah, hit us with the facts. All right. The yacht that God owns in the film that's Groucho Mark's character. Basically the whole last act takes place on this yacht.

Adam: It does was owned by John. What? That's awesome. Yeah. It was named The Wild Goose and it was a former World War ii, Navy Minesweeper, and he loaned it to auto priming for the film as a personal favor because they had done a movie together called In Harm's 

Charlotte: Way. Which, if you remember, is on the TV at the beginning of the film.

Charlotte: They're flipping through all these commercials and they're trying to find stuff to watch. Deodorant, . Yeah. There's all these weird, wacky commercials, but they keep flipping back to this film with John Wayne and Kirk Douglas on a submarine, which is in Harm's Way, directed by No Auto 

Adam: Preminger. Did not know that.

Adam: I didn't put that together cause I'd never seen 

Charlotte: that film. Yeah. I knew what the film was, I just, I didn't know the connection about the yacht. That's, yeah. That's so 

Adam: cool. . So yeah, this is like that whole zah situation. I was just thinking about the Zah. Yeah. To go back to our William Castle volume one, the Zah part one with the 

Charlotte: Zah.

Charlotte: Oh, you will never forget that 

Adam: story if you hear it . Yes. The Wild Goose is still around. It's it's housed in Newport Beach and you can charter it for personal cruises if you want to. What, and this is fun too. In 2011, it was added to the National Registry of Historic Places.

Adam: A boat. A boat was, yeah, 

Charlotte: interest. All right, let's get all of our friends together. Let's pull our 

Adam: pull to, to afford that thing we'll probably have to pool a lot of resources. Yeah. We'll pulling all the resources here. Yeah. That would be fun, wouldn't it to just go out on, cuz it has so much history.

Adam: Yeah, that would be cool. 

Adam: This was written by Dorin William Cannon, who also wrote Altman's Brewster McLeod, 1970 which was another trip movie.

Adam: So he was like the trip movie 

Charlotte: specialist. Yeah. They saw Skidoo and they thought, oh, let's get this 

Adam: guy. Yeah. That scene with Jackie Gleason on L s D,

Charlotte: Jackie Gleason accidentally licks an envelope that is laced with L S D and goes on a little trip, and then later they decide to dose the entire prison.

Adam: So if you've ever wanted to see Jackie Gleason on L s d, this is the movie to watch. 

Charlotte: Or Slim Pickens or . So many people. 

Adam: And speaking of l s d, this is the funny thing. Both Auto Preminger and Groucho Marks experimented with L S D before doing this film In preparation. 

Charlotte: Does that mean that they could write that off as a business expense? Oh 

Adam: yes, they 

could.

Charlotte: Legitimately. 

Adam: They were doing it for a film as research, right? That's what they said. Yeah. And Timothy Leary, the godfather of L S d, was in the trailer for this movie. Oh, recommending it. All right let's get back to Harry Nielsen.

Charlotte: The most memorable thing about the music that Harry did for Skidoo is the very end. He sings the ending credit. And when I say he sings the end credit, I mean he sings the entire end credit sequence.

Charlotte: Stop. Before you skidoo, we'd like to introduce our cast 

and crew. Jackie Gleason was Tony Banks, Carol Chan, flow, Frankie Avalon, and g. Fred Clark, a Tower Guard, Michael Constantine Leach, Frank Goshon, the man, John Phillip lost Stash. Peter Lawford, the Senator Meredith of the 

Charlotte: warden. Yeah. And it's not just the actors in the film, he keeps going.

Adam: And that voice at the beginning, that was Otto priming. Juror saying that he sounded like Dracula. Executive assistant 

to the producer, NAD Ruddick Dialogue, coach Max Slater. Story casting Eric Kirkland, production managers Kenny deland and Howard Joslin, assistant directors Eric Monheim Jr. Wally Jones, Al Murphy and Steven North.

Production accountant, Herman Darine, production Secretary, Joyce Lily, costume coordinator, hope, price, 

Adam: makeup, it keeps 

Charlotte: going. The entire credit sequence, the entire credits. And the studio loved it so much that they actually used this in their advertising campaign. So part of the credits are actually in the trailer.

Charlotte: While they were shooting Skidoo, somebody calls Harry and tells them that the Beatles want to meet him. They want him to come over for a session just to hang out. They're recording at Abbey Road right now. So if he happens to be in London to please come by to the recording session. So he thought, oh my God, this is as good as it gets.

Charlotte: But the problem was he was right in the middle of production on Skidoo, which he was also acting in. So it wasn't like he was just doing the music and could leave. So he goes up to Otto Minger and he asked, 

Adam: Hey, we actually just quote this from that book, right? 

Charlotte: Yeah. Okay. So Adam, you'll be auto I'll be auto.

Charlotte: Okay. So he goes into Otto's. Otto, I've just had a call from England inviting me to a Beatles session. Would you give me Friday, Saturday, and Sunday off so I can go attend? It means an awful lot. Of course. 

Adam: These are your good friends, the Beatles. 

Charlotte: Not good friends. I mean, I've never met them. I mean, I'm, I met George.

Charlotte: I spoke on the phone with John and Paul, and so please, this means a awful lot to me. 

Adam: Sure. If you are such good friends, why don't you ask them to sing a little song in our movie? 

Charlotte: That makes this a business trip, so why don't you pay for it, ? 

Adam: You don't think I will? Nat?

Adam: Nat, get Mr. Nien a ticket for London for the weekend. He's going to meet his friends, the Beatles, and maybe they will sing in our movie.

Adam: Oh, Oh. And Nat, make sure the ticket is second class or economy. . 

Charlotte: Okay. First, I don't know where auto priming juror is from. 

Adam: He's supposed to be from Germany, but I think he had 

Charlotte: a little, that was, he hit some in his throat that day. Yeah, 

Adam: he sound he sounded more like he was from the Middle East or something.

Charlotte: He was, yeah, he was a little sick. Yeah. That day that he recorded this. Harry goes and he meets the Beatles and they become fast friends. And they become fast friends. So 

Adam: that quote was actually from 

Charlotte: a book. From the book, yep. Nielsen, the Life of a Singer songwriter by Alan Shipton. Very good biography on Nielsen.

Charlotte: It might be the only one that you know of. It's the only one you need. . 

Adam: There you go. Yeah. 

Charlotte: Yeah. It came out about 10 years ago, 2013, I think. 

Adam: Yeah. A lot of fun anecdotes. 

Charlotte: Like this one. Yeah. The other important thing that happened during Skidoo, he had been estranged from his father and somehow his father found out that he was working on the film Skidoo.

Charlotte: So to get in touch with Harry, Harry's father contacted Paramount Pictures and said, can you pass this note along to my son, Harry Nielsen, that his father's trying to get ahold of him and he left his contact info. And so Harry called and he reconnected with his father. And his father actually came out to LA and visited for a couple weeks.

Charlotte: So because of this film, he was able to reconnect with his father and find out everything that had gone on since he had walked out the door in 1944. 

Adam: Wow. I don't think people realize that auto printing juror was a household name, like Hitchcock at this point.

Adam: So there was a lot of press for this film. Yeah. It was part of a new deal he had just signed.

Adam: In fact, he even had a caricature. He dances around at the beginning of Skidoo. Yeah. He's on holding a flower.

Adam: So what about Harry Nielsen, the movie star. 

Charlotte: So he plays a tower guard in this film. And your first introduction to him, he's already been dosed with the L S D, like everybody in the. Prison and he's up there with another guy and they're doing a bit of a, like a Laurel and Hardy kind of thing where they're talking back and forth and Harry's got the spotlight, like a giant spotlight that he's just moving around all over the place and his tongue's sticking out and they're watching all of these trash cans be taken out at the prison.

Charlotte: And the other guy thinks that it's a Green Bay Packers playing naked. That's what he envisions on his L S D trip. But Harry sees a garbage can ballet and there's a whole song to that too.

 Living in the garbage can can be a lot of fun. It helps us do and downs and coffee ground. Living in the garbage can be a lot of fun, especially if you need the perfect, the great garbage is just fun of good stuff. All the Discard 

Charlotte: man and the whole thing is done with these kind of crazy flashing lights 

Adam: and it's like a Busby Berkeley very much cuz you're seeing it overhead and there's all this choreography with lids 

Charlotte: that's my favorite song. I think that's in the film. Although you do get other than the credit song. Other than the credits, there is another really good song that appears, it's called I Will Take You There.

If Only I could Find a Place where Smiling Strangers Faces, I would Take You there.

Charlotte: This song kind of gets buried when it plays in the film because it's playing. There's a party scene going on at a house and it's playing and people are talking. It's almost, it's very kind of Altman style because there's a lot of conversations going on and then the music's up and competes with that.

Charlotte: It's a little weird, 

Adam: but yeah, it's unfortunate cuz that's a really beautiful 

Charlotte: song. It is. He also wrote all the little commercials that you hear at the beginning, like we were talking about with the in harm's way on the TV when they're flipping through. He wrote all those little diddies, 

puff puff, puff, Puff. If you want the habit early, you must puff. You'll never lose your man. If 

Charlotte: you drink fat color, you'll never have to worry about losing him. You'll never do your man. 

If you drink that cola, you'll never 

Charlotte: have 

to worry about being slim. You don't exactly 

Charlotte: smell exactly like a garden full of roses in the summertime.

Should smell.

Tell me what to do, I pray. Tell me what to don't.

You need a deodorant. I need a deodorant. 

Charlotte: You need a brand new scent. New daisy chain deodorant. You need a deodorant. 

Deodorant. I said a brand new scent. Deodorant. I need a brand new scent. New daisy Change deodorant. 

Charlotte: Deodorant. I know. Anytime either one of us needs deodorant, that's what we sing. I 

need a deodorant.

You need a deodorant . 

Charlotte: It's hard to even go that. Yeah. Like how does one even make that sound? 

Adam: Okay. We can't talk about songs in this film without talking about Carol Channing's strip teas. 

Charlotte: Yes. If you've ever wanted to see Carol Channing doing a little strip tease, this is the film for you. She has this incredible dress on this little yellow sixties dress that's short and it zips around her.

Charlotte: It's almost like a snake going around her. It starts with a neck, then goes around the shoulder behind. Anyways, she unzips this dress, and if that's not enough, she starts like swinging her hips so that the fabric slowly comes off of her body. It's the funniest 

Adam: little moment word of warning. You cannot unsee this once you've seen it, 

Charlotte: the other Carol Channing scene, the big number is the finale when she's dressed as a captain and comes the board, God's yacht and is singing the title track.

There's 

Charlotte: sun power, gun power, atomic power, fun power, power, power, flower power, gold power, and low power. And if power is all they really understand, we take the power of the flower and the power of the, 

we put them both together and we love them to death. Mm. Shy.

Skidoo, skidoo, the only thing that matters is with who you do skidoo ski. The only thing that balances with woo skidoo. I do, I do 

Charlotte: believe it really is. Anytime I hear those lyrics, I just think, Dr. Seuss, that's what it reminds me of, because they're almost nonsense. 

Adam: I saw an interview with Auto Primmer and they asked him what the title Skidoo meant, and he said, it doesn't mean anything.

Adam: , it's just a nonsense word. and this is a nonsense 

Charlotte: movie. It is very nonsense. It's so appropriate. , 

Adam: Skidoo, skid Doodly. 

Do . 

Charlotte: Between the one and three. There is a two . 

What the hell? 

Adam: All right. Enough on Skidoo. Yeah, Skidoo. mean, we could go on, but no one wants to hear more about Skidoo. No. But we do highly recommend if you are into the kind of wacky, messy, sixties counterculture attempts.

Adam: . This is 

Charlotte: a fun mess. It is. Check it out, Skidoo 1968.

Adam: All right, Charlotte, so after Skidoo, what did Harry end up doing? 

Charlotte: After this one came out, his record company wanted him to start promoting his albums . So we did a couple TV specials. He did one in France with Peggy March. Peggy March was a famous singer from the sixties who did that song. I will follow him.

I love him. And merry follow. I will follow him, follow him 

Charlotte: wherever. So he went to France in 1968, did a special with Peggy Mar. He does most of the singing, edit it. He did good old desk. He did a couple songs from the album, mostly from Ariel Ballet. He also made an appearance on an episode of the TV show, the Ghost. And Mrs. Muir, he plays a musician who ends up taking refuge from a storm in their house, and he sings a couple little 

Adam: songs. Yeah, that was really cool seeing him in that.

Adam: He's actually really good too. . Yeah. He's been bad. It's a weird show though. It's a very weird show. A ghost is in love with a lady and he's trying to profess his love tour the whole time. He just messes up her love life. 

Charlotte: The Ghost writes a poem and he keeps trying to read it to Mrs. Mirror and he keeps getting interrupted. But then after he hears Harry singing this song without her, he decides, oh, he should put music to this.

Charlotte: He should make it 

Adam: a song. Yeah. Really beautiful version of that too. 

Charlotte: . So he leaves the lyrics out where Harry can find it to write a song without, so it's a, fun little sixties TV show episode. It's on YouTube if you wanna try to find it. 

Adam: It's worth your time. Definitely. For the two Performances by Harry in it.

Adam: And one of those songs never made an album. 

Charlotte: He also did the theme song for a show called The Courtship of Eddie's father in 1969. He sings the theme Best Friend. 

let tell you about my best friend's, a warmhearted person who love,

Charlotte: he also sang little Bits in the first couple episodes. He sings sort of narration. 

Adam: Yeah. He's like a Greek chorus. Talking and commenting on what's happening in the show. 

Charlotte: Yeah. And George Tifton, who he worked with, who did all his musical arrangements on Pandemonium and Aerial ballet, was also working on the show, and the plan was for them to do the whole series like this.

Charlotte: But right after the show started airing, his career really started to take off. So he was only able to do just a few episodes. 

Adam: Yeah. Bill Bicks Pee of The Incredible Hulk Fame. Stars in the show. He also did a couple appearances on Playboy after. He did. Yeah. 

Charlotte: Which are fun. He looks very uncomfortable. Yeah. 

Adam: They're weirdly choreographed too, where he's oddly sitting on the couch. Yeah. Arm while everybody's standing 

Charlotte: around, a bunch of people just hanging out.

Charlotte: The lights are super bright and he just starts singing his songs and he's just singing without any kind of instrument and yeah, he just looks very uncomfortable. It's very 

Adam: bizarre. 

Adam: So this is all leading to his big moment in 1969. , which is 

Charlotte: well for Midnight Cowboy.

Charlotte: So he had been asked to write a song for Midnight Cowboy along with a few other artists who will mention in a second. But while they were editing the film, they used his song, everybody's talking as temp music while other people were submitting songs. He wrote, I guess The Lord must Be in New York City.

I'll say goodbye to, and tomorrow

I, the Lord

Charlotte: says very similar kind of feel to everybody's talking. I think he must have known that they were using that as the temp music. They 

Adam: reached out to Bob Dylan and Bob Dylan wrote Lay Lady, lay for It. But apparently that was submitted to late to actually be considered.

Adam: They'd already chosen. And so he just included it on his next album. 

Charlotte: And Randy Newman wrote Cowboy 

Adam: Randy Newman, who is one of Harry Nielsen's heroes. So what does this do for him? 

Charlotte: This propels him into the center stage because this song was huge and he ended up winning a Grammy for this for best vocal performance? Yeah. Best male vocal performance. But he didn't actually write this song.

Charlotte: So his first really big hit that he sings himself is not one of his own songs, which always bugged him. 

Adam: Yeah. That's a weird irony. Yeah. Cause he's a singer songwriter. That's his identity. And yet , he's a gun for hire, just singing a song on this one. But he sings it so well.

Adam: He does Grammy award winner. 

Charlotte: So the whole time Harriet maintained his friendship with the Beatles and Ringo and him became inseparable and they started working on a story that originally was called Harry and Ringo's Night Out.

Adam: So Harry and Ringo's Night Out was originally conceived of as an animated special, right? 

Charlotte: Yeah. And they even put together a promo video and they were shopping it around. 

Adam: Yeah. a little three minute video. , Harry Nielsen was a crow, and Ringo was a cherub. 

Adam: So after they failed to get any traction with ringo and Harry's Night Out. He had that bug 

Charlotte: So in 1971, Harry worked on a project that a lot of people really think fondly of. And it's the animated feature called The Point, which he wrote and does all the music for. 

Charlotte: The synopsis of Father Reads his son a bedtime story about young olio who is banished from the fantastical kingdom of pointed heads and things for having no point. So it's about a little boy who's born in this place where everything is pointed, everybody's heads are pointed, the dog's heads are pointed, everything has a point, but he's born with a round head.

Charlotte: So that's the basis for the story. The point. And you have this story on how he came up with that idea, 

Adam: right? When Harry Nielsen was talking to this reporter, Richfield in 1992, he talked about how he came up with the idea.

Adam: One time I took some acid that was left over after a party. I always wanted to take it and never had. I looked out on the picture window and there was this Kenyan and it was like alive. It was beautiful. So I kissed my wife and I said sorry to. . I took that acid and I'm going for a walk. She said, okay. And it was Dawn.

Adam: I took a walk on this little lane and it came to me. That the trees had points and the leaves are pointed and their houses look like they had points. Oh yeah, that's it. Everything has a point. And then I thought, what would happen if someone had been born without one? Realizing this thought would lend itself to a film as well as music.

Adam: Nielsen reached out to animator Fred Wolf, who had just won an Oscar for a short film. The Box

Adam: and The Point Was Born, and that's the genesis of the Point. , 

Charlotte: This ended up being a movie of the week on ABC and was actually the first full length animated feature to air on network television. 

Adam: Oh, wow. That's an achievement. 

Charlotte: It's crazy when you hear the music for this feature, because it's for children. But the songs are really deep and they're not really geared for children. It's not like they were written for children. 

Adam: Yeah. I think that this was conceived to work on multiple levels though. The fact that the songs are a little more complex, I think really lends to the longevity of this. And why people still really adore this to this day. Are we gonna play one of the songs?

Charlotte: The first one that he wrote, everything's Got 'em. He's talking about all the points and it's setting up the town.

This is, This is the town where the people all stay. This is the town and these are the people. That's the way they wanted it. That's the way it's going to stay. 

Charlotte: That's got a nice little playfulness to it. 

Adam: Yeah, it sets it up. One of the things I like is that you can listen to this album without watching the movie and you understand the entire story.

Adam: . Yeah. The story is told through the songs 

Charlotte: and actually on the album, Harry Nielsen did bits of narration that tell the story and fill in the blanks in between the songs. 

Charlotte: So there's two songs on here that are just really fantastic. The first one is Think About Your Troubles. the story of the song is animated into the film. And it's all about Obl The Boy after he's banished from the town for not having a point.

Charlotte: He's really sad and he is just thinking about his troubles. 

Sit beside the breakfast table. Think about your troubles. Pour yourself a cup of tea and think about the bubbles. You can take your tear drops and drop 'em in a tea cup. Take them down to the riverside and throw 'em over these side to be swept up by a current, been taken to the ocean to by some fishes who were by some fishes, swallowed by a whale who grew

socom

lift his body to the bottom of the ocean. Now everybody knows Decom, the basic are giving back to the ocean, and the seed does what? It ought salty water,

cause taste just like a cheer.

And it comes out from a,

which is

about,

Charlotte: that song's just so deep, and I'm not really sure if I understand the meaning to it. 

Adam: He's talking about the circle of life. He is but he's also bringing it back into a circle about what's happening in the show with the tea. He's made of water. And the water is made of all these elements that Yeah, I know, but go into making the world. 

Charlotte: But he is saying all of this, and then he says, but now think about your troubles. Yeah. 

Adam: They seem small and 

Charlotte: insignificant. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's what he's 

Adam: saying by that.

Adam: Because the world is so vast and there's so much more going on than just what's happening in your little world. I just love that. 

Charlotte: Yeah, it's beautiful. It's beautiful. But that is not the most beautiful song on the album. The most beautiful song has got to be lifeline. So this is whenever the Boy Oleo is looking down into a deep hole. And this is a song that plays,

I am so afraid. Darkness

just.

Adam: Yeah. He has such melancholy in a lot of the songs that he writes. They're fun and playful and yet there's this striking sadness that underlies all of them. 

Charlotte: Because the whole thing's about prejudice.

Charlotte: It's a parable about prejudice. The whole town being against him because he doesn't have a point. Because he's 

Adam: different. Yeah. Yeah. But that melancholy, I think is that's something that makes his music special. It does. There's something universal about that kind of hurt. 

There's that 

Charlotte: part later where he really hits a high note too. Almost brings tears to my eyes. 

Will,

there isn't any 

Charlotte: hope. So Pretty. And all his harmonies that he does with him, he sings the lower, he sings the main he's doing all these harmonies too that are just beautiful. Nobody sings with Harry. Like Harry sings with Harry. That's true. 

Adam: Oh, that there's a, that brings up a funny story. When his first album came out, a lot of the reviews were like, this is amazing.

Adam: But I don't understand why he doesn't credit the backup singers . And it was just because he was overdubbing himself. , so there were no backup singers. Yeah. There's no backup singers. He is the backup singers. 

Charlotte: So yeah, the point is beautiful. And there are many other songs on that album, me and my Arrow poly High, which kind of has a schoolhouse rock sound to it. And down, 

Adam: oh, down is a good one.

Adam: The Point also has some kind of interesting behind the scenes things too. Oh, yeah. It starts out with a narration. And that narrator originally on broadcast was Dustin Hoffman.

Adam: He was friends with Harry Nielsen. And Harry Nielsen asked him to do a one performance only, the only time you ever heard that was on the original airing was the original airing on abc. Oh, 

Charlotte: interesting. I've never heard the Dustin Hoffman. I've never heard 

Adam: it either. Yeah. Where we're used to the home video version, he had Ringo do the home video version.

Adam: , but there are actually two other people that have done it. So every time it aired on television after the initial one he had to have somebody else do it. He had some guy named Alan Barman. And then when it was shown on Disney Channel, they had Alan Thick do the voiceover. . So four people played the narrator. 

Charlotte: Five, if you count Harry on the album where he's 

Adam: narrator. Story. Story. Oh yeah. I didn't think about that.

Adam: Yeah. So there you go. Yeah. Five narrators. 

Charlotte: So 

Charlotte: If you haven't seen it, the animation style is very experimental. 

Adam: It's stripped down. It's not what we're used to today. . But they did this for television and so that was on a budget. , no one had ever done that before.

Charlotte: Yeah. The point 1971. Check it out.

Charlotte: This next one, this is a piece of work that we're gonna talk about. This is the Unforgettable Sun of Di Dracula from 1974. Adam want hit us with the synopsis. Is there a synopsis on this one? 

Adam: There's not much of a plot, honestly.

Adam: I'll try to explain the plot as it exists, 

Charlotte: which has more of a plot. Skidoo or Son of Dracula, I don't know. I think 

Adam: Son of Dracula actually does have a plot. 

Adam: Sonner Dracula directed by Freddie Francis, 1974 T rt.

Adam: 90 minutes the first Rock and Roll Dracula movie. Yeah, that is the tagline. Has there been a second there Has Roula Oh yeah. Which I think I've referenced before on the show. Okay. Due to be Crown King of the Netherworld by his mentor, Merlin the Magician Countdown, the Son of Count Dracula falls in love with the beautiful but human amber and finds himself in conflict with Barron Frankenstein, who is vying for the same honorary title.

Adam: And I think that's a really good description of the plot. It's hard to discern when you're actually watching the movie. Yeah. 

Adam: Directed by Freddie Francis. Freddie Francis was a hammer. Films stalwarts that directed Dracula has risen from the grave and evil of Frankenstein, Dr. Tara's House of Horror. . He basically was synonymous with the idea of gothic horror that Hammer made popular in the sixties and fifties.

Adam: The reason he was hired is because he's spoofing that style. , it's supposed to be a comedy. 

Charlotte: Yeah. I think the problem with this film is that it just doesn't go far enough because both Harry, who plays the Count Countdown, countdown , 

Adam: which is just, 

it's just dumb. I 

Charlotte: love it.

Charlotte: He's got a band called The Countdowns. Yes, he does. They don't really go far enough with it cuz he's not that versatile of an actor they were partying the whole time that they were doing this movie too. And they perform like they're both hungover.

Charlotte: Yeah. Yeah. There's not a lot of range to 

Adam: their performance. Yeah. Ringo's in this. He plays Merlin and Merlin the Magician. Yeah. He's barely there. He's behind luckily he had a giant white beard to hide behind. And Harry did not . Yeah. But you know what, it works for Harry because he's supposed to be kind of corn.

Adam: And sad because he has to take on all this responsibility. That. He doesn't want, 

Charlotte: he doesn't wanna be a Dracula. He was born a Dracula and he doesn't wanna take over the Dracula throne. So he wants to be human. Humanized. Humanized. So he goes through a he 

Adam: humanization process. Yes, 

Charlotte: he does. To be with Amber.

Charlotte: Amber, the beautiful Amber , who's a human. 

Adam: Yes. A micro skirted human. 

Charlotte: Micro 

Adam: skirted . What's great about this film is the performances in it. You 

Charlotte: talking about the musical performances. 

Adam: The musical performances that they actually capture on film. The rest of the film is wretched.

Adam: It's hard to watch. It's not funny. I think that's the main problem is that it's supposed to be a comedy and it's never funny. Yeah. It's not even when they're making lame attempts at jokes, they're really fall flat. They're terrible. Yeah. And they don't do it enough. They should just be really broad with it.

Adam: And they don't 

Charlotte: Yeah. Especially if you're spoofing, it needs to be over the 

Adam: top. Yeah. Like people need to know that it's supposed to be a comedy. I think that's the problem. Yeah. So this film never found distribution at all. It's never been officially released, but if you wanna see it, you can watch it on YouTube cuz it's available in its entirety there.

Adam: Yeah. We have what, a 

Charlotte: bootleg dvd. 

Adam: Yeah. Before YouTube. We got a bootleg DVD of it. There's a lot of really great appearances by people especially during the concert sequences. Yeah. 

Charlotte: Part of the countdowns. 

Adam: List them off Charlotte. It's an all-star band.

Adam: Keith 

Charlotte: Moon is part of the countdowns. Peter Frampton. John Bonham, these are all people in Dracula's band. 

Adam: I read that David Bowie almost played countdown. 

Charlotte: Can you imagine this movie 

Adam: with David Bowie? I can, it would definitely have been released.

Adam: Yeah. There's no way it wouldn't have gotten a release with David Bowie in the lead as opposed to Harry Nielsen, but I can't 

Charlotte: imagine David Bowie singing, remember. 

Adam: No. It would be very different musically. You know what's great though is that Freddy Francis recovered from this film and he went on to become a gigantic cinematographer here in the United States.

Adam: He did Elephant Man in 1980. He did Dune in 1984. Wow. Glory in 1989. He did Cape Fear for Scorsese in 1991 and he did the Straight Story in 1999 with David Lynch. He worked with David Lynch a lot. Yeah. So he was able to recover from this. I'm not sure everybody else did. . This was an official Apple film though.

Adam: This album's made up of all tracks that were already released or were to be released on other albums. Except for one Daybreak premieres on this soundtrack. 

Charlotte: Can really hear his Caribbean influence that would be such a big part of his music later in his career.

Cu day life is making sad cu come the sunlight making Nissan

ever. The sunshine making so sad, so sad, so sad and soul silent. 

Charlotte: It's so funny cuz when you hear that song through the lens of Dracula, it really makes a lot of sense. He was also referred to as the Hollywood vampires with 

Adam: Oh yeah, we weren't talking about that at this point. He was running with John Lennon, he was living with John Lennon.

Adam: , in a house. And they would go out every single night. People said that when Harry showed up at your door, You would be gone for like three 

Charlotte: days. Yeah. You, when the hairy train arrived, you didn't know where it was taking you, but you knew it was gonna be a wild red and you'd wake up in a massage parlor in Vegas and wonder how you got there, days later.

Charlotte: Three days later. Yeah. No, there's some great stories. All of them you can hear in the documentary on Harry Nielsen called, who is Harry Nielsen and Why is everybody talking about him? 

Adam: From 2010.

Adam: Just after this 1974 is when Pussycat came out, that was his album that John Lennon produced. And this was at the height of their carousing at night. And they had screaming matches.

Adam: That's the 

Charlotte: rumor. I don't 

Adam: know if that's, you don't 

Charlotte: think that's true? I don't know. Because I've heard John Lennon tell a separate story about how he sobered up while everybody else was partying and then he had no idea that Harry had done anything to his vocal chords.

Adam: He was abusing himself with drugs and alcohol. And he ends up rupturing one of his vocal chords during this time period. During the recording of pussy Cats. Pussy Cats, which was originally titled Strange Pussies.

Adam: Yeah. And RCA said, Nope, no, nope. not gonna happen. Yeah. 

Charlotte: Instead of telling John Lennon who was producing the album, Hey, I need some time off, he didn't because they had already prepaid for all the studio time.

Charlotte: So he continued to record with these ruptured vocal chords. And there are stories that he was spitting out blood. He had a little bucket next to the microphone and 

Adam: Yeah, normally if you wanna save your vocal chords, you have to rest them. When that, when something like this happens. So he would've had to stop.

Adam: And I think he also was right up against the gun he owed RCA an album. And and so he just worked through it instead of taking the time he needed to heal 

Charlotte: himself. Yeah. And for a guy who had this beautiful three Octa range to hear him, Sing on this album. It's heartbreaking because this is him ruining his voice.

Charlotte: Just to make this album and it's, you can hear the struggle. Yeah, 

you can. So after 

Charlotte: this, his voice was never the same. Yeah. That's sad. It is. It is sad. He does own that song. 

Adam: Yeah, that is an old Stacks song. Jimmy Cliff. 

Charlotte: That's one thing about Harry. If Harry covers a song of anybody else's, he always does it better. 

Adam: Oh, while we're talking about that, can we talk about him covering Randy Newman, just real quick? 

Charlotte: Sure. Harry Nielsen was a huge fan of Randy Newman, and

Charlotte: one thing about Harry, he never did what everybody expected him to do or what he probably should have done to advance his career. He didn't tour. He also, at the height of his career, decided to record an album of Randy Newman covers, who was relatively unknown at the time, and well 

Adam: thought of as a singer songwriter, but not a pop star.

Charlotte: Which he would later become.

Adam: So this wasn't the conventional move, and I think his management was always preaching to him if you really want to be a career musician, you need to do some more stuff that's commercial. , 

Charlotte: but he was also always on a self destructive path, and I think maybe that was part of the decisions that he made, stemmed from that.

Adam: He'll defend that as creative freedom. Yeah. But we all know that, had he made some different choices, he would probably be better known today. So in a lot of ways you want Harry Nielsen to cover one of your songs because you know he's only gonna make it better. He makes it way better. But afterwards, you basically don't own that song 

Charlotte: anymore. . Yeah. You don't wanna sing it after Harry. Exactly. And like the song on Nielsen sings Newman living Without 

Adam: You.

Adam: Oh yeah. Here we go. Let's play this so people can hear it. Okay. 

Time to face the dawn. 

Adam: This is the Randy Newman version of 

Another Lone Day. Baby is so hard living without you.

Yes. Is so hard. Baby is so hard. Baby is so hard. Living without you.

Adam: So that's Randy Newman's take on his own song.

Charlotte: Yeah. And then you've got the Harry Nielsen cover, which just 

so gorgeous. Time to face the dawn and gray of another Lonely day. It's so hard living without you.

It's, it's

so, 

Charlotte: So 

Adam: beautiful. The same song, but harmony. Everything's different. The harmonies, the phrasing, the orchestrations, everything is different about it. And Vastly Better. I love Randy Newman. I do too. Absolutely love Randy Newman. I But that song, that's Harry's song now. . 

Charlotte: Yeah, , yeah. Another thing that he did, like the Nielsen Sings Newman, he also recorded an album of standards in, 

Adam: after his two biggest hits.

Adam: So he had two hit albums that were putting him on a trajectory to be an actual musical star, A pop star. Yeah. 

Charlotte: And before he did Pussycat where he lost his voice, he recorded a little touch of Sch Neilsen in the night. And it's just, it's all standards and they're beautiful. I highly recommend you check 'em out. 

Adam: So the 

Charlotte: next film that Harry Nielsen would work on was Popeye 1980.

Adam: Popeye, do we really need to go into a synopsis for this? I don't 

Charlotte: think so. It's Popeye. It's Popeye. 

Adam: It's one of those films that has a bad reputation, but it's really not a bad film. It's a unique film.

Adam: Popeye 1980, directed by Robert Altman Introduc. introducing Robin Williams in his first starring role. First film. First film 

Charlotte: in a film. He was TV star at the 

Adam: time. Mor Mindi was huge. . So he was actually a very large star, but this was his acting debut in a feature film.

Adam: The reason that Paramount made this film was because they lost a bidding war for Annie. And so they were looking at other things that they could turn into a musical.

Adam: And don't you have something that Robert Evans said about that? 

Charlotte: In La Times article from 1977, Robert Evans said that this project really started after justin Hoffman came to him and said he wanted to do a kid-friendly movie, and he had a project about clowns and another one about Dracula, but Evans was just really not interested in either of those subjects. So he happened to notice that in the American Society of Composers, authors and publishers he happens to notice that the Popeye theme is consistently earning $75,000 a year in royalties. And Popeye was still a pretty popular character. So he thought, Hey, if the music's making that much money every year, what if we did a Popeye musical?

Charlotte: Think of the commercial potential for that. So that's how it started.

Adam: So this film from the very beginning had a rocky road. You talked about Dustin Hoffman. . So at this point, Dustin Hoffman was attached to the film. And they approached John Schlesinger to direct, so they had a package. Also, Lily Tomlin was signed to, to Right to play Olive oil. Olive oil. Dustin Hoffman ended up leaving the project over creative differences with the writer. So then Schlesinger also left, and then they approached Arthur Penn from Bonnie and Clyde to direct, and he developed for a while, and then he fell out, and then ultimately they went to Altman and Altman signed on to do it because he was really looking for a commercial film at that point.

Adam: He'd done mash but hadn't had another major success since mash, and that was almost a decade ago. 

Charlotte: And Evans was looking for the same thing. He needed a commercial success because he had, after saving the studio, had made a series of not so great decisions. 

Adam: And despite what everybody says about this film it was ultimately a success financially.

Adam: It's always thought of as a bomb. And it's not, it wasn't . The film went vastly over budget, but it was 20 million, which was very expensive for this type of film back then, but it ended up making $60 million worldwide, which is a triple, which is a success on any metric. 

Charlotte: Unless the studio's projecting that it's gonna make more. In which case they'll claim it's a loss even though it's not. 

Adam: Correct. Yeah. So this movie made money for them. It didn't make the volume of money they were hoping for, , that's, that's ultimately the takeaway. Yes. So in addition to big cost overruns they decided to shoot this movie in Malta and they built an entire city on the ocean.

Adam: They said it 

Charlotte: was gonna be half the cost to do that there, then it would be to do that in America, 

Adam: And Altman decided to bring everybody with him, including the musicians that were doing the soundtrack.

Adam: So Harry Nielsen went with a bunch of musicians and they built them a studio there where they came up with all the songs on the set 

Charlotte: and they had editing 

Adam: suites. So all of this was done on set with the actual actors. They were working it out the way Altman does. Altman only needs a script to get a budget and then he throws the script out the door.

Adam: And he does whatever he wants, which is why this film went vastly over budget cuz they shot so much stuff that didn't make it into the film. 

Charlotte: Shelly Duval wasn't the second choice. She was actually the third choice because after Lily Tomlin, it was Gilda Radner. But she decided she couldn't do it. It, I've read over scheduling issues and others say her management said, yeah, it was gonna be a bomb.

Charlotte: Don't do it. So who knows what was true, she didn't do it. And then it took some convincing for the studio to hire Shelly Duvall. And she went to a recording session with Harry Nielsen and sang He Needs Me. He taught her how to sing this song, which is one of the most memorable songs from the film.

Charlotte: And they worked the song out and they put the music over. Oh shit. I knew what the film was that they cut images of the film and they had her vocals going over it, and they showed it to the studio head and his wife happened to be there. And his wife was like, that's olive oil.

Charlotte: You have to hire her. And the story is that, the wife of the studio head is how she got the job. 

Charlotte: There's actually sessions recorded that you can hear Harry teaching Shelly how to sing this song, and it's so endearing.

Charlotte: She, he's very gentle 

Adam: about it. Just come off of The Shining . And so she was a little traumatized by that experience and I think Harry saw that she needed the gentle touch we should just play a clip from this. It's amazing. The way he coaches her.

needs it. Turns out.

He needs me. He needs me. He needs me. He needs me. He needs me. Sorry. Oh dear. Let's do,

that's it. There we fade. Okay, now we have a track. Anyway, we just punch in on Shelly's vocal. Cause I like what she did in the beginning. 

Charlotte: I just love hearing him coach her. Even showing her where to breathe. 

Adam: Yeah. I love when he sings with her too. 

Charlotte: He can harmonize with anyone. , 

Adam: even Shelly Duval. . That's one of my favorite songs. So this movie was on H B O when I was a kid all the time.

Adam: And I've probably seen it 40 or 50 times, . So it's always had a very close place in my heart. . So we should also talk about some of the troubles on the set. Most famously Robert Evans was arrested while this was shooting for trying to buy cocaine in Malta.

Adam: Yeah. I thought 

Charlotte: he also brought in cocaine, like in a big Oh, I'm 

Adam: sure he did suitcase. I'm I think that's probably why the film had so many cost overruns was the cocaine 

Charlotte: budget. Cocaine budget. Yeah. Yeah. Didn't he have a court case when the film was being released? He was in court for the cocaine charges.

Charlotte: Yeah. 

Adam: Oh yeah.

Charlotte: This was one of the two films that Paramount financed with Disney and this was the first one that they did together cuz Disney was trying to change their image from wholesome family film.

Charlotte: So this is probably not exactly the publicity 

Adam: that they . Oh, I'm pretty sure that Disney wasn't caring for that publicity at all. Yeah. Also he and Altman apparently because of cost overruns got. Close to fist fighting on set a lot. And because of cocaine, I heard Robin Williams held up shooting because he didn't like the forearms and the way they looked for a couple weeks there was just a lot of stuff happening on set.

Adam: Yeah. And 

Charlotte: they ran outta money by the end of the film. And if you've seen the movie, there's an octopus attack sequence towards the end where Shelly Duvall's getting attacked by this octopus. And it's really pathetic looking because all the effects guys were gone. And so there's just this limp octopus scene.

Adam: Yeah. The, in the whole ending of the film seems rushed. Like it is. The film is overly long. First of all. It's almost two hours. Yeah. And it shouldn't be, but the ending of the film is chopped bits because I think they were trying to make something out of it and they just didn't have the footage. Yeah.

Charlotte: I've heard people blame the music for this film being a mess. And I think that is, I don't know, I'm biased, but I feel like that couldn't be further from the truth. I think that the music saves this movie. Oh, 

Adam: absolutely. The, without this music, the film wouldn't be nearly is endearing.

Adam: I am what I am. What I am. What I am. What I 

am. Everything is food. Food, Food. . 

Charlotte: That's, I always like to think of that as our dog's. Favorite song. Everything 

Adam: is food. Oh, she loves food, 

everything is food for food. Everything is food pro. Everything is for everything. You is snow with food, everything. Everything 

Adam: is food. . And he says anime. I still say anime all the time. Yeah. Because of this movie. . . 

Charlotte: Yeah. Even the beginning when all the people in Sweet Haven are singing. That's a 

Adam: sweet, sweet haven.

Adam: Mm-hmm. .. 

I love it. He's 

Adam: large. . All the songs are fun in this film. They are. Apparently the audio was also really bad in the film. It's a Altman film, so of course he doesn't care about audio cuz he always overdubs everything Anyway, all the conversations and things robin Williams had to come and pretty much overdub most of the movie and you still can't understand him.

Adam: And yeah, he mumbles quite a bit. Actually. I love his mumbling in this film cuz he says some pretty raunchy things that are just cast away, sure. Disney loved that . He also, this was the first film that had the Disney logo that says the word shit. So that was a big deal. There you go. One for the record books

Adam: So we both think that Popeye needs a revisit from everybody. It's legacy shouldn't be as soiled as it is cuz it's quite a good 

Charlotte: film. Watch it with some friends, make sure there's some wine or something. And sing the songs and sing the songs. And don't expect too much and you'll have a great time. 

Adam: Have some 

food.

Everything is food.

Adam: So after Popeye I think he really diverted his attention into film a lot more. Harry ended up forming a production company. With Terry Southern called Hawkeye Films. Terry Southern is the writer of Dr. Strange Love and Candy. And they produced a film that Harry and Terry wrote called The Telephone 1988, starring Whoopi Goldberg and directed by Rip Torn, the only film he ever directed.

Charlotte: Why have I never heard of this film? I 

Adam: don't know. I've never seen it either. It was just in the research that I uncovered this thing. We are gonna have to remedy that though. Yeah. 

Adam: So they also had an unproduced film and I just, I have to mention this cuz it, it just sounded so funny to me. It was a dark comedy called OITs and Harry had this kind of habit of reading the newspapers cuz he just loved stories and he was always looking for something new. And based on a headline that he saw that said Headless Body Found in Topless Bar

Adam: he decided, he came up with this whole story about this newspaper Obi writer that gets all of these odd jobs where he meets all these strange, weird people. Like Scorsese's after hours. Where it's just him meandering through all these crazy people that live in the city. And they would all be played by famous friends of Harry's, of course.

Adam: , unfortunately never produced, but it sounds like a really fun idea. But the main thing that Hawkeye films did, that brought in all the real dollars for them was they produced audio books. They did this before they became super popular and they pioneered the audio book craze ahead of time.

Adam: They of foresaw that. That's really cool. They did a lot of bios of his friends. Like Mickey Dolan's bio was one of the first ones that they produced. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. So yeah, they did that and look at audiobooks today.

Adam: So yeah, Harry kind of bounced around. He did songs for films like single songs 

Charlotte: he did that his whole career 

Adam: He contributed to World's Greatest Lover, 1977. 1977. He did song for Fisher King in 1991. He did one for me, myself and I in 1992. He produced plays, he wrote musicals. . So he had a play open in 1980 called Zapata, which was based on the Mexican revolutionary.

Adam: And he did all the music for that. In fact, one of the songs that he wrote for, that he reworked into a song for the animated holiday special Ziggy's gift in 1982. That's cool. He developed another play that musical that didn't really go anywhere. Blondie and Dagwood. There's a couple songs that are around from that, that never got never got put on, but Zapata was actually produced. There's a great picture of him and Ringo Star at the premiere, and they're wearing matching hats, these crazy cowboy hats with feathers 

Adam: and stuff.. 

Charlotte: So around here, we really like Harry Nielsen. He is not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which is a crime, 

Adam: nor has he ever been nominated. 

Charlotte: . He needs to be. If you wanna learn more about Harry, there's this great documentary we mentioned earlier. It's called, who is Harry Nielsen and why is everybody talking about him?

Charlotte: And you can find it in a lot of places. You know how to find it. I don't need to tell you how to 

Adam: find it. Yeah. It's got a lot of great material in it. Interviews, a lot of great interviews, commercials , Paul Williams, 

Charlotte: Mickey 

Adam: Dolans, a lot of excerpts of him talking about himself from interviews 

Adam: . Yeah. It's great. Yeah. Highly enjoyable. They talk a lot about the lost Weekends , and what a fun guy he was when he showed up. . 

Charlotte: Yeah. He's, again, a composer of a few films. Not many, 

Adam: but we like the music that he's done. I think that those films are better for the music that they include. , Absolut. , come on. Popeye wouldn't be Popeye without the 

Charlotte: music. Skidoo wouldn't be Skidoo without him singing the end credits or Carol Channing singing Skidoo.

Charlotte: It just, it wouldn't be the same movie and the point could only be Harry cuz he came up with the whole idea. 

Adam: Because he wasn't performing in front of live audiences all the time, he was able to put his efforts into a bunch of different things that a lot of musicians don't get to do because they're always touring.

Charlotte: And he was always interested in trying something different. You can see that with his, just his albums that came out. A lot of them are very different from each other. And he goes in different directions with a little touch of Schmill sin in the night. His standards album. 

Adam: Yeah. And that may be why he isn't a bigger figure now, is because it wasn't easy to put your finger on him, it wasn't a sound.

Adam: . Although a lot of his music does have a specific sound. 

Charlotte: Yeah. He's got sort of areas or, albums that are periods. Yeah. That's the 

Adam: word. So Harry Nielsen a forgotten hero of ours 

Charlotte: there's one album, Adam, that you would recommend of Harry Nielsen's. What album would that be?

Adam: It's definitely Nielsen SCH Nielsen, that's the one.

Adam: It's got down without you Coconut jumping into the fire. Gotta get up. Just got a large portion of the songs that I always enjoy hearing. What about you? 

Charlotte: I don't think I can pick an album , because I love his first two. I love Pandemonium Shadow show and I love Aerial Ballet, but those are so completely different than like you said, Nielsen SCH Nielsen or Son of SCH Nielsen.

Charlotte: But there is a song on Son of SCH Nielsen that I would recommend playing for anyone. And this is a song that I always play for people when they say they don't know who Harry Nielsen is. After I tell them, you do know who he is and I play songs. I always play this one, which is You're Breaking My Heart, which is the song that a group of Harry's friends actually sang at his funeral when he died in 1994. I'm gonna play a little bit of it for you now.

You breaking my heart. You turn it apart, so

I wanna do Have a good time.

Charlotte: Yeah. So anyone you know that's going through a breakup or anything, just play that song for 'em. It always makes 'em feel better. , 

Adam: it's like the perfect breakup song. It really is. It's the thing everybody's thinking, but never says, I 

Charlotte: know all these breakup songs are about being sad. He's like I'm sad, but it's your fault and I hate 

Adam: you.

Adam: Yeah. You're the one that's making me feel this way. Yeah. . Yeah. That kind of sums him up perfectly. , that sense of humor, that playfulness and musicianship. 

Adam: Alright. I think we did Nielsen, huh? 

Charlotte: Yeah. What is it? Perf. Perf Does Nielsen. 

Adam: Perf Does Nielsen

Adam: We perf. 

Charlotte: Maybe that should 

Adam: be the episode name. So you guys should write in, let us know what your favorite Nielsen songs are or your favorite Nielsen movie. Yeah. 

Charlotte: Which one? Which one would your favorite 

Adam: be? Mine would probably be Popeye Hands Down. 

Charlotte: Yeah. Figures would be Popeye. Yeah. I'd have to say the Point would be mine.

Charlotte: . And it's because of the music and Yeah. I buy that. That's a great album. So it is. I listen to that album a lot. I know 

Adam: you do 

Charlotte: which means you listen to that album a lot. 

Adam: Yep. But it's a good one. It is. 

Charlotte: So thanks for letting us talk about Harry. Hope you enjoyed hearing some songs maybe you didn't know or maybe you didn't know and you just liked listening to him 

Adam: again.

Adam: Hey, maybe you knew the song but didn't know who did it and now you do Harry and now you know about 

Charlotte: Harry and there's so much we didn't even talk about. So watch the documentary, you'll get a lot more stories. 

Adam: Yeah. Cuz we still wanted to focus on the films that he contributed to. Yeah. We 

just try to 

Charlotte: focus on the films.

Charlotte: Yep. Because this is a movie podcast and that's what we do. Talk about the 

Adam: movies. If 

Charlotte: you wanna get a hold of us, you can send us an email. We are perf damage podcast gmail.com. You can also send us a note on Twitter. We're at perf damage. Follow us on letterbox where we'll list every single film that we mentioned today, which is gonna be a lot. Adam puts together a list per episode that has every film we mentioned.

Charlotte: So if you're trying to figure out what we talked about, you can go to that list and find the film there. 

Adam: So until next time, thanks for joining us here 

on Birthday Damage.

Charlotte: You know what's funny is that in the beginning of the film starts and they're watching TV and they're going through all these commercials. They keep flipping back to a John Wayne film where he is on the one with him and Kirk Douglas, that the name escapes. At this second.

Charlotte: They're both on a yacht anyways. It keeps, they keep flipping back to John Wayne. 

Adam: Yeah, he was a personal friend of auto priming jurors because they had done a movie together. And I don't remember. Something Harm's Way In Harm's Way In Harm's way as a film. I believe that's the one. But you can double check me.

Adam: I'm not 

Charlotte: looking that up. I'm 

Adam: checking. I'm fact checking myself. Okay. Let me, I believe it was called In Harm's way.

Charlotte: It's in harm's way. We're talking about the same film. Oh, there you go. . 

Adam: That's awesome. All right. So how do we, I don't know, but 

Charlotte: I feel back. I feel like we somehow have to, I don't know, we're so dumb. 

Adam: This could be our outtake cuz we're just idiots, but we are idiots I've never