Blue Velvet (Movie)

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    Angelo Badalamenti, Composer for ‘Twin Peaks,’ Is Dead at 85

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    The filmmaker David Lynch turned to his haunting work again and again, for “Blue Velvet,” “Mulholland Drive” and other neo-noir films.Angelo Badalamenti, an internationally sought-after composer who wrote the hypnotic theme to “Twin Peaks,” David Lynch’s 1990s television drama series, and the music for five Lynch films, including “Blue Velvet” (1986), died on Sunday at his home in Lincoln Park, N.J. He was 85.His niece Frances Badalamenti confirmed the death. She said she did not know the cause.Mr. Badalamenti was at the piano behind Isabella Rossellini when she sang “Blue Velvet” at the Slow Club in Lumberton, N.C., a flower-filled, picket-fence kind of town with a very dark side. Aside from the title song, a Bobby Vinton hit from 1963, he had composed much of the film’s music.He also wrote the music for Mr. Lynch’s 2001 neo-noir mystery “Mulholland Drive” and had a small role in the film as one of two mobster brothers who spits out his espresso in a conference-room scene.His best-known work was the “Twin Peaks” theme, recognizable from its first three ominous, otherworldly notes. He won the 1990 Grammy for best instrumental pop performance for the number, which was, according to the Allmusic website, “dark, cloying and obsessive — and one of the best scores ever written for television.”In 2015, a Billboard writer described the theme as “gorgeous and gentle one second, eerie and unsettling the next.” It was, according to Rolling Stone, the “most influential soundtrack in TV history.”Mr. Badalamenti didn’t really disagree.“Music and composing — I almost feel a little guilty about it — come so easily for me,” he told the north New Jersey newspaper The Record in 2004. “It’s like the well doesn’t seem to run dry.”Angelo Daniel Badalamenti was born on March 22, 1937, in Brooklyn. A second-generation Italian-American, he was the second of four children of John Badalamenti, a fish market owner, and Leonora (Ferrari) Badalamenti, a seamstress.Growing up in the Bensonhurst section, he started piano lessons at 8 but quit because he preferred playing stickball outdoors with his friends. He took it up again at his older brother’s insistence and came to appreciate the piano when girls admired his playing. He was soon accompanying vocalists and other acts at Catskills resorts during summers off from high school and college.Mr. Badalamenti attended the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., and earned a master’s degree at the Manhattan School of Music in 1960.His first job was teaching the seventh grade in a public school, but when he wrote a musical Christmas program for his students, members of the Board of Education saw the production and told the local public TV station Channel 13 about it. The station videotaped and broadcast the show, and the Monday after Christmas, Mr. Badalamenti got a call from a Manhattan music publisher with a job offer.Nina Simone recorded some of his first songs, including “I Hold No Grudge,” in 1965. Nancy Wilson sang “Face It, Girl, It’s Over” (1968).Mr. Badalamenti got started in films by writing music for “Gordon’s War,” a 1973 blaxploitation film. Ossie Davis, the director, wanted an all-black crew, all “brothers,” he said. Mr. Badalamenti pointed to Sicily on a world map. “You do seven strokes from Sicily, and you’re in Africa,” he said he told Mr. Davis. “I may not be your brother, but I’m certainly your cousin!”Mr. Badalamenti was at the piano when Isabella Rossellini sang “Blue Velvet” in the 1986 David Lynch movie of the same title. De Laurentis Group/Courtesy Everett CollectionHe and Mr. Lynch met when Mr. Badalamenti was called in as a vocal coach for Ms. Rossellini on the set of “Blue Velvet.”Jamie Stewart, whose band Xiu Xiu did an album of “Twin Peaks” music, saw Mr. Badalamenti’s Lynchian work in a historical midcentury context: a postwar world where everything appeared to be sunshine and pastels but where the evil unleashed by World War II still lurked.“It’s very romantic but can be terrifying,” Mr. Stewart said of the music, speaking to The Guardian in 2017. “It has a violence and a sincere sentimentality — sadness but not despair.”Mr. Lynch, who described Mr. Badalamenti’s work as having “a deep and powerful beauty,” said that he and the composer would be entirely in sync in expressing Mr. Lynch’s vision for a film. “I sit next to him and I talk to him, and he plays what I say,” he said in an interview with the American Film Institute.As Mr. Badalamenti explained on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” that’s how he wrote “Laura Palmer’s Theme” for “Twin Peaks.” Sitting beside him at his Fender Rhodes keyboard, Mr. Lynch began talking.“It’s the dead of night,” Mr. Badalamenti said. “We’re in a dark wood. There’s a full moon out. There are sycamore trees that are gently swaying in the wind. There’s an owl.”The words became notes that evoked the story of a murdered homecoming queen in the Pacific Northwest.They collaborated again and again, on the films “Wild at Heart” (1990), “Lost Highway” (1997) and “The Straight Story” (1999), in addition to “Mulholland Drive.” There were five iterations of “Twin Peaks,” including the film “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me” (1992) and an 18-episode sequel series (2017).In between, Mr. Badalamenti wrote for a wide variety of movies, among them “Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors” (1987), “The Comfort of Strangers” (1990), “Naked in New York” (1993), “The City of Lost Children” (1995), “A Very Long Engagement” (2004) and “The Wicker Man” (2006).He used what he called his “classical chops” to score “Stalingrad” (2013), a wartime love story set against that pivotal 1942 battle. It was an enormous box office success in Russia, where it was produced.One of his longest-running projects was the music for the PBS program “Inside the Actors Studio,” which was on the air from 1994 through 2019, hosted by James Lipton.Writer’s block was rarely a problem for Mr. Badalamenti, but composing a torch-lighting theme for the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona had him stumped. The notes finally came to him in the shower, he recalled, and he hurried downstairs to his piano. “I wrote it in half an hour,” he said.He received the Henry Mancini Award from Ascap, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, and a Lifetime Achievement honor from the World Soundtrack Awards.Mr. Badalamenti is survived by his wife, Lonny; his daughter, Danielle; and four grandchildren. His son, André, died in 2012.His niece Frances interviewed him for a magazine, The Believer, in 2019. He remembered being drawn to film noir in his youth, telling her, “The haunting sounds have been there, the off-center instrumentals, ever since I was a child.”Alex Traub More

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      Julee Cruise, Vocalist of ‘Twin Peaks’ Fame, Dies at 65

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      In projects for the director David Lynch, she brought an eerie, otherworldly style to “Falling” and other songs.Julee Cruise, a singer who brought a memorably ethereal voice to the projects of the director David Lynch — most famously “Falling,” whose instrumental version was the theme for Mr. Lynch’s cult-favorite television show, “Twin Peaks” — died on Thursday in Pittsfield, Mass. She was 65.Her husband, Edward Grinnan, said the cause was suicide. He said she had struggled with depression as well as lupus.Ms. Cruise was building a career off Broadway in the early 1980s when serendipity struck: She met the composer Angelo Badalamenti when they worked on a show together.“I was in this country-and-western musical in the East Village,” she told The San Francisco Chronicle in 1990. “I was a chorus girl with a big skirt and a big wig, singing way too loud. Angelo was doing the music for the show, and we became friends.”A few years later, Mr. Badalamenti was engaged by Mr. Lynch, who was still early in his career, as a vocal coach for Isabella Rossellini in the 1986 Lynch movie “Blue Velvet” and ended up writing the score for that film as well. Mr. Lynch and Mr. Badalamenti had written a song for the film that needed a vocalist.“Angelo asked me to find someone to sing a song for the soundtrack called ‘Mysteries of Love,’ but he didn’t like any of the singers I recommended,” she told The Chronicle. “He wanted dreamy and romantic. I said, ‘Let me do it.’”Ms. Cruise had always thought of herself as “a belter,” as she often put it (she had once played Janis Joplin in a musical revue called “Beehive”), but the voice she came up with for “Mysteries of Love” was something else entirely, enigmatic and wispy. It suited that and other Lynch-Badalamenti compositions perfectly. One writer called her style “angel-on-Quaaludes vocals.”The three were soon collaborating on Ms. Cruise’s first album, “Floating Into the Night,” which featured songs by the two men, including “Mysteries of Love” and “Falling.” They also collaborated on a stage production called “Industrial Symphony No. 1,” performed at the New Music America festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in November 1989, with Ms. Cruise performing amid an elaborate set that included an old car.“Often, Ms. Cruise floated far above the stage, like a prom-gowned, bleached-blond angel,” Jon Pareles wrote in his review in The New York Times. “At one point, her body plummeted to the floor and was packed into the car’s trunk by helmeted workmen; later, she re-emerged to face a video camera and sing ‘Tell your heart it’s me,’ as 10 chorus girls in gold lamé danced next to her image on television screens.”Ms. Cruise achieved a longtime goal when she performed at the Public Theater in New York in 2003 in “Radiant Baby,” a musical about the artist Keith Haring. She played his mother (among other roles).Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesNational exposure came the following April when “Twin Peaks” premiered on ABC, with an instrumental version of “Falling” serving as its theme. Ms. Cruise appeared in the pilot and subsequent episodes as a roadhouse singer.The show quickly became the talk of television, and in May 1990 it led to an appearance by Ms. Cruise on “Saturday Night Live.” She wasn’t in the original lineup, but the controversial comic Andrew Dice Clay (he called himself “the most vulgar, vicious comic ever to walk the face of the earth”) was the scheduled host, which led to protests from at least one cast member, Nora Dunn, who refused to appear in that episode, and caused the original musical guest, Sinead O’Connor, to drop out at the last minute.Ms. Cruise was one of two acts summoned to replace her. Mr. Grinnan said in a telephone interview that Ms Cruise, who was still not well known, was working as a waitress at the time and had to skip out on her job. But, he noted, she didn’t call in sick.“She said that she called in famous,” he said.Though “Twin Peaks” brought Ms. Cruise wide exposure, Mr. Grinnan said she found a stint touring with the B-52’s in the 1990s to be particularly enjoyable. She replaced Cindy Wilson, an original member, when Ms. Wilson took a break from the band.“It was probably the happiest performing of her life,” Mr. Grinnan said.Julee Ann Cruise was born on Dec. 1, 1956, in Creston, Iowa, to Wilma and Dr. John Cruise. Her father was a dentist, and her mother was his office manager.Ms. Cruise was something of a musical prodigy on the French horn, her husband said, and received a music degree in the instrument from Drake University in Iowa. He said she had applied the delicacy and phrasing of classical French horn to the voice she came up with for the Lynch projects.But once she graduated, she thought that acting and singing would be more appealing than playing in an orchestra. She went to Minneapolis, a good city for theater, and spent several years performing with the Children’s Theater Company there before moving to New York in about 1983.After “Twin Peaks,” Ms. Cruise made another album with Mr. Lynch and Mr. Badalamenti, “The Voice of Love” (1993). She also continued acting. Mr. Grinnan said it was her performance in an Off Broadway musical, “Return to the Forbidden Planet,” in 1991 that caught the attention of the B-52’s. Mel Gussow, reviewing that show for The Times, said she stood out.“Only Julee Cruise invigorates the show with musical personality,” he wrote. “Well remembered for her singing on ‘Twin Peaks,’ she is spunky as well as amusing, although the script unwisely keeps her offstage for most of the first act.”Ms. Cruise later toured with Bobby McFerrin and worked with electronic musicians like Marcus Schmickler. In 2003 she fulfilled a longtime goal of performing at the Public Theater in New York when she was cast in the musical “Radiant Baby,” about the graffiti artist Keith Haring.Ms. Cruise as Andy Warhol, one of four roles she played in “Radiant Baby,” with Daniel Reichard, who played Keith Haring. The hardest part of performing in that show, she said, was “the costume changes.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIt was a demanding assignment. As The Times wrote, she played “Andy Warhol, Haring’s mother, a demonic nurse and a critic who resembles Susan Sontag.”Which of the roles was most difficult, a reporter asked?“The costume changes,” she said. “I’m the oldest person in this cast.”Ms. Cruise alternated between homes in Manhattan and the Berkshires. In addition to her husband, whom she married in 1988, she is survived by a sister, Kate Coen.Ms. Cruise reprised her “Twin Peaks” role in “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me,” Mr. Lynch’s 1992 film, and, a quarter-century later, in an episode of Showtime’s reboot of the TV series. In an interview with The Los Angeles Times in 2017, she reflected on her long “Twin Peaks” ride.“It was so much fun to be part of something that just went ba-boom!” she said. “You didn’t know it was going to do that. What a nice surprise life takes you on.” More

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      Dean Stockwell, Child Actor Turned ‘Quantum Leap’ Star, Dies at 85

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      He appeared alongside Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly when he was not yet 10. He later had signature roles in movies like “Married to the Mob” and “Blue Velvet.”Dean Stockwell, who began his seven-decade acting career as a child in the 1940s and later had key roles in films including “A Long Day’s Journey Into Night” in 1962 and “Blue Velvet” in 1986, while also making his mark in television, most notably as the cigar-smoking Al Calavicci on the hit science fiction series “Quantum Leap,” died on Sunday. He was 85.His death was confirmed by Jay Schwartz, a family spokesman, who did not say where Mr. Stockwell died or specify a cause.Mr. Stockwell had a hot-and-cold relationship with acting that caused him to leave show business for years at a time. But he nonetheless amassed more than 200 film and television acting credits from 1945 to 2015, as well as occasional stage roles.As a child he appeared alongside some of the biggest stars of the day, including Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra in “Anchors Aweigh” in 1945, when he was not yet 10. But while many child stars don’t make the transition to adult careers, Mr. Stockwell was blessed with angular, rugged good looks as a young man and a distinguished maturity later, attributes that made him suitable for all sorts of roles.Several times Mr. Stockwell lost interest in the profession that he had been all but born into, escaping to work on railroads and in real estate and, in the 1960s, to immerse himself in the counterculture. He also enjoyed several career revivals, notably in the 1980s, when he was cast in career-defining roles in movies like Wim Wenders’s “Paris, Texas,” David Lynch’s “Dune” and “Blue Velvet” (as the menacing and eccentric henchman of a drug dealer played by Dennis Hopper), and Jonathan Demme’s “Married to the Mob,” in which his performance as a mob boss earned him an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor.Mr. Stockwell as an eccentric criminal in David Lynch’s film “Blue Velvet,” from 1986.De Laurentiis Entertainment GroupAs the son of actors — his father, Harry Stockwell, and his mother, Elizabeth Veronica, appeared onstage and in films together, and Harry Stockwell provided the voice of Prince Charming in Walt Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” — Mr. Stockwell had little semblance of a typical childhood before he began acting.He first appeared on Broadway in 1943, at age 7, in “The Innocent Voyage.” (His older brother, the actor Guy Stockwell, who died in 2002, was also in the cast.) He was recruited by a Hollywood talent scout, and his movie career began in 1945, when he appeared in “The Valley of Decision,” with Gregory Peck and Greer Garson, and in “Anchors Aweigh.”Mr. Stockwell was immediately praised for his skill, winning a special award at the Golden Globes for “Gentleman’s Agreement” in 1947. Reviewing the movie “Kim” in 1950, Bosley Crowther of The New York Times praised his performance as “delightfully sturdy and sound,” adding, “Little Dean shows a real tenderness.” Other Times reviews of his performances as a child called his work “touching,” “commendable” and “cozy.”Robert Dean Stockwell was born on March 5, 1936, in Los Angeles. His parents divorced when he was 6, and he spent most of his childhood with his mother and brother. He would later say that he looked up to directors and leading actors on the set as father figures.He would appear in 19 films before he turned 16, at which point he quit acting for the first time. Withdrawn as a child, he took little pleasure in acting, seeing it as an obligation foisted upon him by others, he said in an interview with Turner Classic Movies in 1995.“If it had been up to me, I would have been out of it by the time I was 10,” he said.After graduating from high school at 16 — as a child actor, he received three hours of schooling while working — Mr. Stockwell realized he had little training to do anything else. He flitted from one odd job to the next before reluctantly returning to acting in 1956, when he was 20.Mr. Stockwell, left, with Scott Bakula on the set of “Quantum Leap” in 1989.Ron Tom/NBCU Photo Bank, via Getty ImagesOne of his biggest roles in his 20s was alongside Jason Robards, Katharine Hepburn and Ralph Richardson in the 1962 film version of Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” in which he played the younger son, Edmund Tyrone. He, Mr. Robards and Mr. Richardson shared an acting award at the Cannes Film Festival.Other notable roles in that period included “Compulsion” (1959), a fictionalized version of a well-known murder case, in which he and Bradford Dillman played the killers of a young boy; and “Sons and Lovers” (1960), based on the novel by D.H. Lawrence.Later in the 1960s, Mr. Stockwell found comfort in the counterculture movement and the hippie ethos.“My career was doing well, but I wasn’t getting anything out of it personally,” he told The Times in 1988. “What I was looking for I was finding in another place, which was in that revolution. The ’60s allowed me to live my childhood as an adult. That kind of freedom, imagination and creativity that arose all around was like a childhood to me.”After a few years off, he returned to acting, only to learn that his time away had led Hollywood casting agents to forget him. For about a dozen frustrating years, he struggled to land roles, appearing in fringe films and performing in dinner theater.“I even heard about a casting meeting where the producer said, ‘We need a Dean Stockwell type,’” he told The Times in 1988. “Meanwhile, I couldn’t even get arrested.”He quit acting again in the early 1980s, moving to New Mexico to sell real estate. His next comeback would be his most successful, beginning a decade of his most critically acclaimed work.In 1988, he was acclaimed, and Oscar-nominated, for his performance in “Married to the Mob.” The next year, he was cast in “Quantum Leap.”That show, seen on NBC from 1989 to 1993, starred Scott Bakula as Sam Beckett, a scientist who, because of a botched time-travel experiment, spends his days and nights being thrown back in time to assume other people’s identities. Mr. Stockwell portrayed Adm. Al Calavicci, described by John J. O’Connor of The Times in a 1989 review as “Sam’s wiseguy colleague, who hangs around the edges of each episode, setting the scene and commenting on the action.” Mr. Stockwell, Mr. O’Connor wrote, was “Mr. Bakula’s indispensable co-star.”Mr. Stockwell was nominated four times for an Emmy Award for best supporting actor in a drama series for his work on “Quantum Leap.” He never won an Emmy, but he did win a Golden Globe in 1990.He is survived by his wife, Joy Stockwell, and two children, Austin and Sophie Stockwell.In a 1987 interview with The Times, Mr. Stockwell said that his approach as an actor hadn’t changed since he was a child.“I haven’t changed in the least,” he said. “My way of working is still the same as it was in the beginning: totally intuitive and instinctive.“But as you live your life,” he added, “you compile so many millions of experiences and bits of information that you become a richer vessel as a person. You draw on more experience.”Neil Genzlinger contributed reporting. More