4/14/23
Newsletter #306
The Crack of Dawn
In November of 1979, eighteen of us twenty-one-year-olds drove south in a caravan from Detroit to Morristown, Tennessee to make Evil Dead. After a week of day exterior shooting, we switched to shooting at night in and around the cabin for the next ten weeks. Since most of filmmaking is setting up or tearing down, you can listen to music while you work; just not when you’re shooting.
The only person in the cast or crew to anticipate this was me. I brought a cassette tape player and maybe ten tapes. Tim Philo, the cameraman, had three Bruce Springsteen tapes. That was our musical selection for ten weeks of sixteen-hour days, and we played the living shit out of those tapes. Philo had: The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle (Springsteen’s second record, and my favorite, very possibly due to this), Born to Run, and Bruce’s new record, Darkness on the Edge of Town.
Now, the question remains: what tapes did I bring? All of my cassette tapes have been thrown out over the years, so I have no reference. I intentionally didn’t bring any jazz or classical because nobody else would dig it. I know I brought Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here, and Hank Williams’ Greatest Hits. I’m pretty sure I had David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs and Station to Station, as well as a homemade tape with The Yes Album on one side and Fragile by Yes on the other. I believe I had the Rolling Stones’ Let it Bleed and Sticky Fingers.
These are all pretty standard selections that don’t say much about me, the rest of us, or the time period. However, I had made two compilation tapes right before leaving of contemporary songs that I liked. These are the tapes that were played the most, so these were the main soundtrack for the making of Evil Dead, the ultimate experience in grueling terror. And I have been racking my brain for years to remember what songs were on those tapes. When one of those songs comes on, I’m automatically back in that cabin, freezing, spattered with fake blood, and so tired I could plotz.
First and foremost, which I find wonderfully ridiculous, and severely incongruous for the setting and activity, but not odd for me because it was my tape, is Enough is Enough by Barbra Streisand and Donna Summer. Man, I hear that song and the fake blood is flowing. Also Donna Summer’s Last Dance (Oscar-winner for Best Song, 1978), and MacArthur Park. Although I wasn’t a fan of disco, 1979 was in the middle of the disco era so it was everywhere, and I just like Barbra Streisand and Donna Summer. In any case, I think those songs are ridiculously silly background scores for the making of Evil Dead.
Other songs on those tapes were: Life During Wartime and Psycho Killer by the Talking Heads, which are much more appropriate as soundtrack music for making Evil Dead — This ain’t no party/This ain’t no disco/This ain’t no foolin’ around. Also on the tape was: Heart of Glass by Blondie, Sultans of Swing by Dire Straits, Watching the Detectives by Elvis Costello, and Is She Really Going Out With Him by Joe Jackson. Listen to those songs and you’re in 1979.
I lost a day in travel, and a Crack of Dawn went with it. C’est la vie. Still, 306 of these silly things in as many days. What am I doing? I was pretty sure that I would run out of stories by week three. In any case, I love telling stories, and I do hope that at least a wisp of that love emanates from these tales.
And ready or not, a new day dawns.