Know The Score: Mer­rill Gar­bus on the joys of Clue

When Clue was released in 1985 it received luke­warm reviews from crit­ics who labelled the film, which was a big screen adap­ta­tion of the mur­der mys­tery board game Clue­do, ​“gim­micky” due to its three dif­fer­ent end­ings and a cen­tral Tim Cur­ry per­for­mance so fre­net­i­cal­ly camp it’s as if he’s ingest­ed all of the speed in Hollywood.

But time has been kind to the crime com­e­dy. The spooky old Hol­ly­wood atmos­phere, Curry’s infec­tious­ly fun role as tour guide-cum-but­ler Wadsworth, and the film’s snap­py dia­logue – par­tic­u­lar­ly from the wry Mrs White (Made­line Kahn): ​“Life after death is about as prob­a­ble as sex after mar­riage”; ​“Hus­bands should be like Kleenex, soft and dis­pos­able” – com­bine to make Clue feel like Scoo­by Doo for adults.

Arguably the glue hold­ing the film togeth­er is John Mor­ris’ ener­getic score. An iron­ic take on a Hitch­cock hor­ror, the com­pos­er, famed for his col­lab­o­ra­tions with Mel Brooks, mix­es strings with ​’80s synths as the film’s tone rapid­ly shifts from spooky to stu­pid. For the cli­mat­ic ​‘I know who did it’ sec­tion, the score is basi­cal­ly the fuel that pow­ers Cur­ry as he sprints around the man­sion, retrac­ing the killer’s steps. The man­sion theme, mean­while, is fab­u­lous­ly brood­ing, the ham­my music help­ing mould the film’s self-aware schlock.

“It was such a charm­ing movie that I just loved as a kid,” Mer­rill Gar­bus, the lead singer of art pop duo Tune-Yards, tells LWLies. ​“Mor­ris did this per­fect send up of a sus­pense score and when all those camp strings came in, it was like, ​‘You should be scared now!’ I love how sign­post­ed it all was. It’s a lot like going on a haunt­ed house ride at one of those old theme parks. It’s so cartoony.”

Since releas­ing their exper­i­men­tal debut LP ​‘Bird-Brains’ in 2009, Tune-Yards have pio­neered an inno­v­a­tive brand of hyper-ani­mat­ed dance music. The chaot­ic drums of ​‘Gang­ster’ and ​‘Water Foun­tain’ are des­tined to make you dance with no inhi­bi­tions on a hot summer’s day. A lot like Mor­ris’ Clue score, Tune-Yards’ music is play­ful and capa­ble of unex­pect­ed shifts in tone, with Gar­bus’ vel­vety voice glid­ing through each track like Wadsworth jog­ging through the dif­fer­ent rooms of the haunt­ed mansion.

“Maybe Clue has been a sub­con­scious influ­ence all this time,” reflect Gar­bus, adding a cheeky gig­gle. ​“I love Clue because it is such a rel­ic of the slap­stick com­e­dy era. John Mor­ris also did Young Franken­stein and Blaz­ing Sad­dles, which are quick-wit­ted come­dies that don’t real­ly exist any­more. You wouldn’t expect a film based on the Clue­do board game to have such rich instru­men­ta­tion, but it real­ly does.”

She con­tin­ues, ​“At the end of the movie you get three dif­fer­ent end­ings, where the killer changes each time like the board game, and his music takes on this rapid pace as Tim Cur­ry runs around the man­sion explain­ing how the killer did it. It made me fall off the couch laugh­ing when I was lit­tle. He uses the same har­mon­ic tem­plate, but a slight­ly dif­fer­ent take on the music by grad­u­al­ly speed­ing it up. Being able to sur­prise your audi­ence with music is very impor­tant and Mor­ris could do that so very well.”

Tune-Yards (also com­prised of bassist Nate Bren­ner) have now grad­u­at­ed to Hol­ly­wood, with their score for direc­tor Boots Riley’s absur­dist 2018 com­e­dy Sor­ry To Both­er You dri­ving the film’s off­beat satire. The score per­fect­ly cap­tures the eccen­tric­i­ties of Bay Area rap­pers such as E‑40 and Mac Dre while pay­ing trib­ute to hor­ror odd­i­ties such as The Wick­er Man and Suspiria.

Accord­ing to Gar­bus, mak­ing this step up wasn’t easy, with the duo putting ​“thou­sands of hours” into the score. ​“Scor­ing stuff is a series of tri­al-and-error exper­i­ments. We have to send things to the direc­tor and say, ​‘This is what we made based on your screen­play, what do you think?’ You need a lack of ego and not to get stuck on one thing.

“Boots might ask us to change a key change into a minor rather than a major, so you need flex­i­bil­i­ty and to be able to work on chang­ing some­thing until it turns into gold. When you deal with a direc­tor with a clear idea of the mood they want to evoke, it might mean five times more of your music goes into the trash can than it would nor­mal­ly, but when it all comes togeth­er it’s such a love­ly feeling.”

Their next film score, which Gar­bus strong­ly hints could be anoth­er col­lab­o­ra­tion with Riley, will heav­i­ly ref­er­ence the sound­track to the 1962 psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller Cape Fear. Gar­bus says she and Bren­ner were direct­ly influ­enced by com­posers like Mor­ris, who are able to put a fresh spin on some­thing that’s already familiar.

“It isn’t easy to write music like Clue because Mor­ris is putting an iron­ic gaze on some­thing we already know so well. We already know Hitch­cock­ian sus­pense, but how do we do it a lit­tle too obvi­ous­ly so the audi­ence is able to laugh at sus­pense? It’s a curi­ous bal­ance. Con­duct­ing an orches­tra to play iron­i­cal­ly isn’t easy, but Mor­ris does it in such a for­mi­da­ble way.”

Gar­bus is also a tal­ent­ed pup­peteer and, before Tune-Yards took off, she would host exper­i­men­tal pup­pet operas to small audi­ences at a the­atre in Ver­mont. She says this expe­ri­ence made her great­ly respect com­posers who write music for come­dies, par­tic­u­lar­ly because they often don’t get their dues due to snob­bery around the art form.

“I think com­e­dy com­posers often don’t get their dues and aren’t tak­en as seri­ous­ly as oth­er musi­cians, but to par­o­dy some­thing you need to nail that style exact­ly. You need to tear apart the thing itself and then rewire it so it becomes a social com­men­tary. When you think about how some­one like Mor­ris does a par­o­dy of a suc­cess­ful score, you’re not always con­sid­er­ing how much work and ener­gy that takes. I hate snob­bery around those kind of musi­cians; Weird Al Yankovich is a genius!”

The Clue score taught Gar­bus that movies and pop music could be inter­linked, and she says it would be a ​“crime” if new gen­er­a­tions didn’t dis­cov­er it too. ​“The Clue sound­track taught me that you could turn a movie into a pop song. It taught me that cre­at­ing some­thing some­one goes out the the­atre hum­ming is beau­ti­ful. They go to see your movie for the sto­ry, but if they come out singing your song it is a big bonus and some­thing a per­son nev­er real­ly for­gets. This is the exact expe­ri­ence I had watch­ing Clue as a child and that hap­py feel­ing has stayed with me.”