The blood-sucking Count, like all good horror villains who have followed in his footsteps, refuses to stay dead.
“Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror,” F.W. Murnau’s celebrated silent-era vampire film, has been given new life in the 21st century: It will return to theaters this fall with its classic orchestral score replaced by Radiohead’s dense, brooding albums “Kid A” and “Amnesiac.” Few people have heard Hans Erdmann’s original score, as much of it has been lost; later shows either built on what remained or created new orchestral scores.
The original film, an unauthorized adaptation of 1922’s “Dracula” that is now in the public domain, has inspired filmmakers for more than a century, including Werner Herzog’s 1979 “Nosferatu the Vampyre,” E. Elias Merhige’s 2000 “Shadow of the Vampire” with Willem Dafoe and Robert Eggers’ upcoming “Nosferatu.”
The revamped version, dubbed “Nosferatu X Radiohead,” marks the debut of “Silents Synced,” a series that blends classic silent film with alternative rock: “Nosferatu” will be followed by Buster Keaton’s “Sherlock Jr.” set to the tunes of R.E.M.’s “Monster” and “New Adventures in Hi Fi,” and other films featuring music by Pearl Jam, They Might Be Giants, the Pixies and Amon Tobin. (The Buster Keaton film will be preceded by a Charlie Chaplin short with music by Girls Against Boys.)
“Silents Synced” will have its world premiere on Saturday at the American Cinematheque’s Los Feliz Theatre. “Nosferatu” will also play at the Gardena Cinema on Sept. 25 and twice more in October. The series will open nationwide in 200 theaters on Oct. 4.
The project is the brainchild of Josh Frank, who has written plays and books about music, as well as owning and programming independent movie theaters in Austin, Texas. “This is the culmination of everything I’ve done creatively,” he says. “The issue here is: What else can you do with your favorite music? It’s about the theatricality of putting on a show for people and using what I’m passionate about, which is music, and experimenting with narrative.”
Frank conceived this idea two decades ago while listening to Nine Inch Nails’ album “The Fragile” while watching “Metropolis,” Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent classic. (The strange synchronicity between rock music and old movies dates back to the 1990s, when Pink Floyd fans noticed a surreal connection when “Dark Side of the Moon” was paired with “The Wizard of Oz.”)
“They were perfect together,” she recalls, but Frank, then writing his first book (about the Pixies), lacked the know-how to make it happen. He continued writing books, but in 2009 he also opened Blue Starlite, a “mini-drive-in” in an Austin alley. (He later added a second location and helped reopen an independent theater on the city’s east side.)
“Silents Synced,” a new series combining classic films with alternative rock, created by Josh Frank, launches with “Nosferatu X Radiohead” at the Los Feliz Theatre.
(Lotus flower)
In the early days of the pandemic, when his drive-in was Austin’s only movie theater, Frank had trouble winding down at night and stayed up until dawn while his family slept, returning to his old fantasy armed with new knowledge.
“Now I had an audience and I knew how to run a movie theater, but I also knew how to [knew] “I understood what independent cinema needed and what was missing,” he says. “And I understood the music industry well enough to find that original way to present to bands, their managers and record labels what I wanted to do and why it was special.”
When Frank started out, he would watch three or four silent movies in a row and the next day he would listen to his favorite albums and think about which ones would go well with certain movies. Then he would try them out. “A lot of them would work until the second or third song and then they would stop working, but once a month, boom, it would work and it was very exciting,” he recalls.
Frank thought it would be “sacrilege” to cut the film itself, but the subtitles were left on screen too long — “people read very fast these days and you don’t need 30 seconds of the word ‘Help!’” — so he tinkered to make the film and music fit together. And he ultimately decided that he didn’t have to find entire albums that fit together perfectly, and that he could mix and match songs from each artist’s catalog. “Every movie is timed differently, and that’s exciting,” Frank says.
Frank, who compares the experience to seeing Pink Floyd’s laser light show as a teenager, loves movies but is also driven by his passion for music. “When I find the right album that matches the movie, something magical happens. [happens] “That creates a whole new context for the music and for the film,” he says. “This music that you’ve been listening to for 20 years, you suddenly feel the same excitement as the first time you heard it. When I compared Radiohead to ‘Nosferatu,’ there were a lot of goosebump moments.”
While he's open to eventually considering other music, like David Bowie or Pink Floyd, he wanted his first series to be dedicated to the music of his generation. “This came from a Gen Xer who lived a very similar life to that generation and was raised in this world and with that music,” he says. He did, however, test his creation with his parents, in-laws and other older people, who said they wouldn't normally listen to bands like Radiohead but liked the songs in the context of the film.
He found it surprisingly easy to get most bands and their managers on board. “I’d never heard anything so quickly,” he says, even though The Cure had passed away and Nine Inch Nails was in the midst of a management change. “These bands that have been my heroes since I was 16 said, ‘We understand what you’re doing and we like it. ’ That was really cool.”
The hardest part was learning how to make music licensing deals, he adds, especially since record labels don’t think creatively and some were only interested in getting him to pay impossible prices. “I had a beautiful one with the Smashing Pumpkins and ‘Sunrise,’” he says. “A couple of labels wanted the amount of money it would cost to make a full Hollywood movie, just because what I was asking for is something people don’t normally ask for — asking for two albums, not just one song.”
Bertis Downs, R.E.M.’s manager, said in an email: “All the guys were huge Buster Keaton fans long before this crazy idea came about.” All the band members, Downs says, “like the amazing way the music and the movie work together.”
Music is also the driving force behind Frank’s business plan. “I’m targeting music fans because it’s part of my theory that people who love movies are already coming, so we’re going to try to broaden our audience and get other people to experience movies,” he says.
And that’s important because Frank is equally passionate about helping his colleagues across the country who are working to keep independent movie theaters alive in an era of streaming and short exhibition windows. “Especially after the pandemic, they’re struggling and I wanted to give those theaters something just for them,” he says. “Silents Synced” is licensed to theaters for one year without streaming before that. He hopes that if a theater has a successful run with a particular film, it will schedule it as a midnight movie to maximize its offering and keep audiences coming back.
“We’re making it really easy so that it becomes a regular thing that kids think is cool to do late at night, like when I used to go see ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show.’”
The response has been enthusiastic. “This will get audiences excited about seeing movies in theaters,” says American Cinematheque programmer Imani Davis, adding that her theater is in a “music-loving part of town,” so she expects a large crowd of music fans.
And Judy Kim, whose family has long owned the Gardena, is excited to get started with “Nosferatu” because it has a “huge horror following in my market.”
While Frank is happy to support theater owners, she is most excited to support his project. “I love people who are trying hard and trying to create solutions,” Kim says. “I will be screening all of Josh’s movies.”
