"I was thirteen & ready for love. When the venal waif Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn) got out of that cab on Fifth Avenue in a black dress & pearls in the early morning, I wanted to sip her through a straw."
- Donald Fagen, Eminent Hipsters
- Donald Fagen, Eminent Hipsters
"Whenever I mention this picture to someone around my age, a strange, tragic smile flits across his or her face as if in remembrance of an old lover."
- Donald Fagen on Breakfast at Tiffany's
📷 Bud Fraker's iconic shot
- Donald Fagen on Breakfast at Tiffany's
📷 Bud Fraker's iconic shot
"Even those who dismiss the film as a piece of typical Hollywood fluff that took the sting out of Capote's original story, blah, blah, are betrayed by a wetness in the eyes, a heaving chest & an occasional shudder of bliss/pain."
Audrey with Orangey Cat, who won a Patsy Award
Audrey with Orangey Cat, who won a Patsy Award
In his great Henry Mancini essay in Eminent Hipsters, Donald Fagen talks about Audrey's fire escape performance of Moon River "wearing pedal pushers & a sweatshirt. In Capote's novel she sings, more appropriately, a mournful country ballad, but why quibble with perfection."
Donald Fagen's essay "Henry Mancini's Anomie Deluxe" first appeared in Premiere Magazine, October 1987. You can read it here:
sdarchive.com/premiere3.html
Though (typically) upstaged in this thread by Audrey Hepburn, Fagen begins with Blake Edwards' & Henry Mancini's Peter Gunn.
sdarchive.com/premiere3.html
Though (typically) upstaged in this thread by Audrey Hepburn, Fagen begins with Blake Edwards' & Henry Mancini's Peter Gunn.
Here are the Peter Gunn titles.
“Mancini, who had scored Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil that same year, seemed to understand what the show was all about: style and nothing much else in particular.”
“Mancini, who had scored Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil that same year, seemed to understand what the show was all about: style and nothing much else in particular.”
"At least to a hyperesthetic 10-year-old, the show’s whole gestalt made a lot of sense. It spoke to my condition. I could identify with Gunn’s outsider stance & admire his improvised life-style without venturing outside the perimeter of comfort & convenience my parents provided."
"It was, in fact, all the same stuff my parents adored but darkened with a tablespoon of alienation and danger. Sort of like watching Mickey Mantle lope to first base with a copy of La Nausee sticking out of his back pocket."
- Donald Fagen on Peter Gunn
- Donald Fagen on Peter Gunn
Donald Fagen revised his Henry Mancini essay for its publication in Eminent Hipsters in 2013. The second sentence becomes: "Sort of like seeing a smiling Pan Am pilot climb out of his 707 with a copy of La Nausée sticking out of his back pocket."
Which is better?
Which is better?
In his revised essay, Fagen adds these details:
"Future film score titan John Williams was the piano player. The studio band included trumpeter Pete Candoli, brothers Ted & Dick Nash (reeds & trombone), guitarist Bob Bain, drummer Jack Sperling & vibraphonist Larry Bunker."
"Future film score titan John Williams was the piano player. The studio band included trumpeter Pete Candoli, brothers Ted & Dick Nash (reeds & trombone), guitarist Bob Bain, drummer Jack Sperling & vibraphonist Larry Bunker."
