Mark Knopfler Soundtracks: Comfort and Joy
Mark Knopflers penned his first film soundtrack for Local Hero, the now-legendary 1983 film written and directed by Scottish filmmaker Bill Forsyth. The music played an important role in the film, and the main theme, Going Home, was a huge hit in the U.K. The cinematic relationship between Knopfler and Forsyth continued in 1984 with a smaller but no less touching film entitled Comfort and Joy.
Inspired by actual events in Glasgow, Scotland, the movie tells the story of radio disc jockey Alan Dickie Bird (played by Bill Paterson), whose girlfriend leaves him just in time for the holidays. His depression is broken when he spies, then follows, a beautiful young woman in the back of an ice cream van. Through a bizarre series of events, Alan gets caught in a comical yet strangely ominous war between two family-run ice cream businesses. Its up to him to play mediator and bring a resolution in time for Christmas.
Although Knopfler wrote three original pieces for the movie (Comfort, Joy, and A Fistful of Ice Cream), music from and references to the Dire Straits album Love Over Gold is woven throughout the entire film. According to Philip Gillett of offscreen.com, director Forsyth once admitted in an interview that he was trying to mirror the tone of the moody Love Over Gold by featuring the songs Telegraph Road, which traces the rise and fall of a city, and Private Investigations, which depicts a person trying to solve an enigma which may be of his own creation. Forsyth used the lyrics to another track on the album, It Never Rains, as dialogue between two DJs at the radio station in the film: "I hear the seven deadly sins and the terrible twins came to call on you / The bigger they are, baby, the harder they fall on you. And not coincidentally, after his girlfriends departure, Alan Bird describes his situation as being in "dire straits.
The 3-track score was released on vinyl in Great Britain by Vertigo (DSTR 712) in 1984.
Mark Knopfler is a singer, songwriter and guitar player touring in 2006 with Emmylou Harris to promote their new album "All the Roadrunning." For Mark Knopfler news, biography, photographs, and tour information visit the site: http://www.knopfler.info
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