THE SOUND OF MUSIC AGAIN USING OLD SONGS IN NEW FILMS AS UNUSUAL APPROACH TO ATTRACTING AUDIENCES.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

It's the same old song at the movies these days. But we didn't realize that the songs were quite this old.

In three major films opening this month - the just-released ``A Knight's Tale'' and the Friday premieres ``Moulin Rouge'' and ``Shrek'' - pop tunes of the late 20th century fill the soundtracks as well as the scenarios of stories set in 1370 Europe, Paris circa 1900 and a medieval fairy tale world.

Now, 2001 audiences can thrill to the crowd at a 14th-century jousting tournament lip-synching (and board-pounding) to Queen's stadium anthem ``We Will Rock You,'' while lords and ladies boogie down to David Bowie's ``Golden Years.'' Or we may fall in love as Belle Epoque Bohemian Ewan McGregor woos can-canning courtesan Nicole Kidman with ``Your Song'' and a medley consisting of ``All You Need Is Love,'' ``Up Where We Belong,'' ``I Will Always Love You'' and a dozen other silly love songs (including Paul McCartney's ``Silly Love Songs''). Then we can get happy with a computer-animated, Never-Neverland donkey who sounds suspiciously like Eddie Murphy singing the 1960s Monkees hit ``I'm a Believer.''

This hit parade - and each film includes many, many more familiar tunes of the rock era - appears at first glance to be a crass attempt to make period films, which are always a difficult sell according to conventional Hollywood wisdom, more appealing to contemporary audiences.

On second glance, that still seems to be the main reason for it.

But like many movie trends, the anachronistic pop song thing is something of an aesthetic coincidence. Working as independently as anyone can in the incestuous moviemaking business (``Knight's Tale'' is a Hollywood-generated project filmed in the Czech Republic, ``Moulin Rouge'' a primarily Australian affair, and ``Shrek'' was made in sound booths and cyberspace), the talents behind these three films developed their musical concepts via different creative frameworks and artistic agendas.

And hey, if it sells some extra tickets to die-hard Queen or Smash Mouth fans, what's the harm?

``Some of the idea of the movie was to bring the Middle Ages to life more, not have it be such a museum kind of thing,'' says ``Knight's Tale'' writer-director Brian Helgeland. That's about as far as he will go toward admitting that familiar rock tunes are a ploy to reel in the youth market. And since most of the recordings are a good generation older than the average fan of the movie's 22-year-old star Heath Ledger, you're inclined to believe Helgeland, 40, when he claims that the whole idea had a personal, not commercial, genesis.

``I'm usually very inspired by music, and I try to come up with some music to listen to whenever I write a script that, thematically, seems to speak to the movie in some way,'' Helgeland says. ``I thought a lot of what this movie was about was youth and identity and trying to find your place in the world and, in some ways, freedom. Then I thought, well, that's rock 'n' roll.

``It's a lot about being that age, discovering what your own music is going to be and how that helps define you as separate from your parents' generation and your friends. So I listened to the music I first started listening to on my own, and it was a lot of these specific songs. And while I was doing that, it came to me that the music should be incorporated into this movie.''

For the computer-animated, fractured fairy tale ``Shrek,'' including recent recordings and remixes of popular songs just seemed like a natural extension of the project's satiric, postmodern attitude.

``We didn't pick the music to try to be marketable,'' explains ``Shrek'' co-director Andrew Adamson. ``We just really picked the music that we liked. I mean, the movie is full of anachronistic turns. You have Donkey talking about Tic-Tacs; it really seemed appropriate that the music had the same anachronism to it.''

``Moulin Rouge's'' director, Baz Luhrmann, has mixed time frames and song styles before in the films ``Strictly Ballroom'' and ``William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet.'' He conceived ``Rouge'' as a classically artificial movie musical from the start, with both staged production numbers at the infamous title nightclub and characters bursting into song in the midst of dramatic scenes. Beyond that, each song used has been rearranged and re-recorded - often with the actors' own singing voices - for the movie.

``Rouge'' clearly boasts the most artistically intensive use of anachronistic music among the three current films. Maybe that's why its soundtrack team is comparatively more willing to acknowledge the approach's potential commercial upside.

``Baz told me that he wanted to shoot a musical without any original songs in it,'' recalls ``Rouge's'' music director, Marius DeVries. ``It was to be set at the start of the last century and released at the beginning of this century, so it would have a centennial flavor to it, 100 years of musical culture between those two points that he wanted to celebrate and plunder in the most deeply imaginative and eclectic way.''

``During the scriptwriting process, Baz and his co-writer Craig Pearce decided that, for people to connect to this as a film musical, we were going to have a much better result if we used these well-known tunes,'' adds Anton Monsted, ``Rouge's'' music supervisor and executive music producer. ``Of course, we had to go and meet with all the major music publishers to explain what we were doing. What's particularly unusual about this film is that we're bending and twisting these well-known songs in ways that, perhaps, haven't been done before - certainly from a licensing point of view.

``We've changed the lyrics, we've changed the tune, we've taken well- known songs like 'The Sound of Music' and medleyed them with other well-known songs,'' Monsted explains. ``Basically, if there's a book on music licensing, we've probably covered every chapter of things that you can do to complicate the act of licensing a song.''

All of which the publishers, smelling new monetary life for their copyrights, did their best to troubleshoot. A few of the songs' writers, however, expressed reservations. Inevitable, it would seem, when you don't use music by dead guys or that's been specifically commissioned for your movie. Yet, according to Monsted, the handful of complaining songsmiths were not concerned with artistic integrity.

``The only problems we really had were with a couple of writers who, for their own personal reasons, objected to the sex that was going to be in the film,'' he explains. ``We endeavored to license the Cat Stevens song 'Father and Son,' but (the devout Muslim) wasn't very happy with the idea of it being used in the context of a film that had premarital sex in it.''

While most publishers and songwriters are generally thrilled to have their songs revived for movies they might never have expected to want them, convincing studio executives that, say, Thin Lizzy's ``The Boys Are Back in Town'' belongs in a 14th-century setting took a little extra persuasion.

``It didn't seem like such a strange thing to do - for instance, I couldn't tell you what music could be better for the sword-fighting sequence where Bachman-Turner Overdrive is playing - until people at the studio saw it written into the script and asked, 'Is that gonna work?' '' Helgeland says of his brainstorm. He also seems puzzled by the inability of some critics and viewers to swing with the concept.

``It's not really a historical convention that you're fighting with the music,'' Helgeland insists. ``If it was historically accurate, in 1370 none of the instruments in an orchestral score even existed. So it's really movie convention; what you expect the sound in a period movie to be is what you're fighting with this music.''

But with fulfilling audience expectations the grail of studio movie marketing, the big question remains:

``Do pop tunes make period movies more commercial?'' ``Shrek's'' Adamson ponders. ``Look, no one comes to you and asks, 'Can you make your movie more successful than other animated movies that have come out?' You obviously just try to make it as good as you can. If you start second-guessing what the market wants, then nine times out of 10 you'll come off as false, and the other times you'll just be wrong. So you've just got to go with your own instincts, whether it's with humor or music or any other element.

``So, really, this was just about doing it to our aesthetic. ... Although, one point I'll concede is that, in some cases, we probably used more contemporary artists because we did want to make it more accessible for children.''

But there were definitely some times when they didn't, such as the outlandishly bold choice of experimental musician John Cale's cover of Leonard Cohen's allusive, dirgelike chorale ``Hallelujah'' for ``Shrek's'' key emotional montage.

`` 'Hallelujah' is a term of celebration, yet the song is sung with all this irony and it's very sad,'' Adamson notes. ``At that moment in the film, everybody seems to have got everything they wanted, they should be happy, but they aren't. We tried a few songs, but when we put that one up against the scene's storyboards, it moved us all. To be honest, I was surprised we were able to keep it, in the end, in the movie, because it's not a commercial song.''

Whoever put the ``Shrek'' soundtrack CD together obviously agreed. Old guy Cale's rendition of ``Hallelujah'' has been replaced by one sung by younger, presumably hotter Rufus Wainwright.

CAPTION(S):

7 photos

Photo: (1 -- 3 -- color) Music of note

Old pop songs find new life in contemporary films

(4) ``Moulin Rouge'' music director Marius DeVries: ``(The film) was to be set at the start of the last century and released at the beginning of this century, so it would have ... 100 years of musical culture between those two points that (director Baz Luhrmann) wanted to celebrate and plunder in the most deeply imaginative and eclectic way.'

David Sprague/Staff Photographer

(5) ``SHREK''

(6) ``A knights Tale''

(7) ``Moulin Rouge''