11/2/1926 - 28/11/2010
Leslie Nielsen's death gets me thinking about Police Squad and Flying High, but it also gets me thinking about the 1956 film Forbidden Planet (featuring the first entirely electronic soundtrack in movie history).
The soundtrack, by Louis and Bebe Barron, missed out on an Oscar because the Barrons were not members of the American Federation of Musicians. For the same reason, they were not allowed to describe the soundtrack as "music" (for legal purposes the Barrons had to describe their contribution as "electronic tonalities"). While that does seem ridiculous, one thing that I like about the soundtrack is that it blurs distinctions between the diegetic sound and non-diegetic sound of the film: is this the music? - or is it the sound of the spaceship coming in to land?
Check out this clip on Youtube (it's the best short representation of the score in its intended environment, but I can't embed it...) For a clip I can embed, here's "Robby, the Cook, and 60 Gallons of Booze". This piece was sampled for Biggie Smalls' track "Kick in the Door" (though obviously the main break in Smalls' track is lifted from Screaming Jay Hawkins' "I Put a Spell on You"):
Well, that should be enough. It's not really about Leslie Nielsen anymore. So here's Nielsen's musical chops.