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November 11, 2018

Clair De Lune and the Movies

Wondering the other day how many times the song ‘Clair De Lune’ has been used in movies...Clair De Lune means ‘light of the moon’ in French in case you didn’t know...I didn’t until I looked it up...you’ll recognize the opening notes even if you don’t know the name...Plung Pling Plong/ Plung Plung Plung Plong Plong Plong...I remember hearing it quite a few times in films...usually for dramatic effect...yeah, that’s kind of random but the reason I bring this up...a rainy Saturday night and I was trying to read some book stressing the importance of beat writing in society and how it revolutionized everything!!!...well, not everything Mr. Author...God, I hate when people overstate their importance or the importance of something else which don’t mean diddly...I was in the study or the drawing room or whatever it is when my wife was in the bedroom watching some movie, she’ll watch about any movie they’ve ever made...and all of them are “good” in her opinion...like when she drags me to the cheap movie shows...thank god for my iphone and headphones...all of a sudden there was a burst of noise...BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM with what sounded like people screaming for their lives and cars racing around with squealing tires and more screaming and maybe a few more BAM BAMS thrown in for good measure, and then I heard Clair De Lune...seemed like an odd song to have playing at that time considering what else I heard, but I’m not a Hollywood director...it just took me 3 times to spell Hollywood right...always thought of going out to Hollywood to make movies but I never had the guts...I don’t know much about making them but there’s thousands of people out there now who don’t know how to make movies either, so I don’t think one more would make any difference...I’m sure I could make ones that were better than the crap they’re putting out now…it seems to me that once they got rid of the Hays code which was a type of censorship enforced beginning in 1934 and lasting for about twenty years, movies have gone downhill into the sewer...almost any movie now has some unnecessary language or scenes to appeal to the ‘cool kids’ or to let the director or writer flaunt it...the code wasn’t perfect, some of it was silly, but it prevented the kind of trash that gets made today...even some coming attractions have gotten questionable...at least to me...it’s anything goes with filmmaking these days...do anything, say anything...but just because you can doesn’t mean that you should...but it’s all in the name of art and the first amendment or some such thing...rant over...anyway, back to Clair De Lune...always liked it...Kathia Buniatishvili does a great version of it on YouTube…the song was written by Debussy who also wrote the great song ‘Prelude To An Afternoon With A Faun’...saw a Japanese film once that had ‘Clair de Lune’ in it, but I can’t remember what the name of the film was...an ex-executive had to take a job as a janitor at a mall to survive after being let go by his company and he felt ashamed and tried to keep it a secret from his family...some of us know how that feels...but eventually he decides that if he’s going to be a janitor, he’s going to be the best damn janitor he can be...you know...that mindset...think I’m going to go listen to Clair De Lune.

Clair De Lune by Kathia Buniatishvili