Do We Need A Soundtrack Moratorium On Cat Power In Film?

Are filmmakers and music supervisors getting lazy, do they have similar taste and or are they just reacting to a certain kind of collective hivethink?

One of our film critic friends from France has aired a grievance with us and we think he’s onto something, so we figured we’d vocalize it for him. He keeps pointing to some recent uncreative soundtrack recidivism, namely the constant/overuse of Cat Power in recent films.

We love the kooky Chan Marshall and so does everyone else. Yes, her 2006 album The Greatest, is one of her best. But are filmmakers overusing it?

The titular song, “The Greatest” has been everywhere of late.
Wong Kar-Wai used the song incessantly in his unsuccessful first English-language film, “My Blueberry Nights” (poor WKW, we love him, but…). In fact, he loved the song so much he gave Chan a small part in the film (which we actually loved).
And this year, Swedish director Lukas Moodysson (“Show Me Love”) used the track in his upcoming movie, “Mammoth” (starring Gael García Bernal and Michelle Williams) as did Francois Ozon with his upcoming film, “Ricky.” The same song is even used in Zac Efron‘s upcoming, “17 Again“! Ok, that’s a lot.

The latest news is that Cat Power’s “Werewolf” (from You Are Free) is featured in Pedro Almodovar’s forthcoming feature, “Broken Embraces.”

Having seen all the uses of the songs in all the aforementioned movies (many have not screened in the U.S. yet) our pal is not impressed with the usage and he’s had enough. “I suggest that directors should be punished with a fine for using a Cat Power song without good reason,” he writes to us, which makes us laugh.

Maybe we should clarify: perhaps we need a moratorium on Cat Power in international films? Is it a lost in translation reason why an album from 2006 is finally filtering over into the rest of the world? Though to be fair, in the last two years she’s surfaced in the “Revolutionary Road” trailer, “Juno,” and Justin Theroux’s directorial debut, “Dedication” (plus of course the aforementioned Zac Efron film; and those are just the big examples).

Do filmmakers need to discover a new musical muse? Since Almodovar, Ozon and Moodysson’s films haven’t hit the U.S. yet, we haven’t felt like we’ve been beat over the head with Chan Marshall of late, but perhaps it’s a storm a brewing and coming here soon. There’s also been ample chatter her about over-licensing songs for commercials (DeBeers Diamonds, Lincoln Cars, Cingular), but that would be another post unto itself (and we’re not sure we want to start a co-blog anytime an indie-rocker licenses a song to a commercial; we’d be here all night).