“a_simple_plan”
Danny Elfman
A Simple Plan
Compass III
I have seen two movies so far in 1999, Sam Raimi’s carefully crafted A Simple Plan being one of them. I enjoyed the film, a sort of cross between a remake of The Treasure of Sierra Madre , Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolfe? , and an old EC comic like Crime Suspenstories . It’s a creepy little fable about three friends who stumble upon an enormous sum of money in the woods. Money that’s not theirs… but let’s keep it anyway! Yeah, and who will crack first? Even creepier is that I went to elementary school with supporting actor Brent Brisco, who broke my thumb in fourth grade when he accidentally pushed me into a wall (he didn’t mean it, it was an accident, really!).
Had the film been directed by someone other than Sam Raimi, I don’t think it would have been very good. A story like this would be ruined had the typical Hollywood director injected even the slightest amount of soap opera or character development. This is a fable: character isn’t important. Mood is. And who better than Danny Elfman and Steve Bartek, et al (secretly Oingo Boingo) to set up every scene with the right spine-tingling music?
It’s an ideal soundtrack, as the bulk of the recording is the incidental music (there are three additional “pop” songs, but, in fact, they appear in bar scenes, playing from the jukebox, etc.). All the incidental music is here, and it flows perfectly, building up as each page is turned…
http://www.compassiii.com/asimpleplan/ or http://www.asimpleplan.com.
