Blog
Goodbye Horses
Written by Jimmy
First, start listening:
This is the Q Lazzarus song from 1988, written and produced by William Garvey. It is also featured twice in Jonathan Demme film’s: Married to the Mob (which I watched this week prompting this blog) and Silence of the Lambs. In earlier blogs we discussed Demme’s use of music in film, noting that in Something Wild, he uses the Feelies cover of Fame to make a movie shift on a single note from comedy to thriller. With Goodbye Horses he does something very different: in Married to the Mob the song is quietly played in the scene where the two main characters are falling in love. The song is romance. In Silence of the Lambs, he uses the song to expose the essence of Buffalo Bill, applying make up and beginning to reveal his desire to ‘come out’ as the beautiful butterfly (transformed into a woman from the skin of his victims). The song is all terror, all dark.
In one movie, one song switches the movie from light to dark. In two movies, one song switches from light to dark depending on context. That’s the power of a great song. That’s the power of a great film maker.
Before we get too serious, here’s how Family Guy explored the inner meaning of the song:
Jimmy