Driven by music and choreography, Soon is a play first performed in Europe in 1998 and then again in the US in 2001. The music is available for the first time, recently re-worked into a compelling weave of brief spoken-word segments and songs constructed from the dialogues. Complete selection available to download from possiblefilms.com now. Individual tracks available everywhere else.

Track List:

01. Epiphany
02. Heaven On Earth
03. Listen to this song at our website.
04. Because
05. Angels Of The Lord
06. And Still Nothing Happens
07. Style
08. Go
09. Windows
10. Something Big
11. The Ways Of God
12. Doubt
13. God’s Army
14. School
15. I Have Been Sent Back
16. See How I Burn In My Love
17. Soon Reprise

Originally staged in Europe and the United States in 1998 and 2001 respectively, SOON is a fever-dream verbal avalanche about the joys, sorrows, and disasters of “creative religiosity.” Inspired by the Branch Davidian Conflict of 1993, the play explores the turbulent spiritual needs and the tortured reasoning of sectarian “end-time” Christians in America. Hilarious, moving, and sociologically astute, SOON “touched a naked nerve in contemporary American sensibility” (Western European Stages).

Perfect-bound paperback
85 pages
With an introduction by the author.

“I came to the subject as a writer curious about my country’s freedom of religion and its gun laws. But my study of the events at Waco led to a consideration of “revealed religion” in America generally. And, although the events at Waco were the catalyst, that catastrophe is not the play’s only focus. I have pared away the arcana specific to any one sect or another to focus on what all Christian “end time” denominations, share; namely, a belief that the world is miraculous and God is speaking to us in all sorts of ways.

I came to see that belief systems evolve. And – even more exciting – they evolve communally. Believers argue. This, I found, was really my subject; the sound of that argument, the way it moves, where it breaks, how it fixes itself.”

From the introduction.

Possible Films 2 comprises five new short films. An earlier collection, “Possible Films: Short Works by Hal Hartley 1994 – 2004” was released in 2004. This was a compilation of films Hartley had been commissioned to create at different times, in different places, and for different producers.

This new selection, Possible Films 2 (or “PF2”) is different in this regard and might usefully be called a “suite.” There are five separate films, but they were made practically at the same time over a few years, with a consistency of style and formal strategy that resembles something like a new album. The five films were made during when Hartley was living and working in Europe, and though clearly addressing different issues and initiated by separate concerns, they are linked by consistent preoccupations and formal creative strategies.

“Devotees of Hartley’s work are strongly encouraged to pick up this collection, along with anyone with an interest in modern experimental narrative.” —Pop Damage

“Exploring small ideas that couldn’t be fleshed out in feature form, Hartley creates intimate works that are honest and feel like they’re done by an artist doing it for the love of the craft, not looking for a quick buck. But would we think anything less from Hartley?” —Filmmaker Magazine

THE FILMS

A/MUSE (11:00)
An ambitious and idealistic young actress comes to Berlin to convince an American ex-pat filmmaker that she must be his next muse – the leading lady of his first great German film. Featuring: Christina Flick

IMPLIED HARMONIES (28:00)
Hartley’s conscientious assistant in Berlin receives weekly letters from her boss and sends him the books he needs as he struggles in Amsterdam to create the staging for Dutch composer Louis Andriessen’s opera, “la Commedia”. Featuring: Louis Andriessen, Christina Zavalloni, Claron McFadden, Jeroen Willems, Reinbert de Leeuw, Asko/Shoenberg Ensemble, Jordana Maurer

THE APOLOGIES (13:00)
A commercially realistic but artistically conflicted playwright lends his Berlin apartment to a young actress friend so she can rehearse her drama school audition while he goes off to save his doomed production in New York. Featuring: Nikolai Kinski, Bettina Zimmermann, Ireen Kirsch.

ADVENTURE (20:00)
Hartley and his wife, Miho Nikaido, travel to Japan to see her parents and reflect on 12 years of marriage, her career ambitions, and the adventures of growing older. Featuring: Miho Nikaido, Hal Hartley, the Nikaido Family, various friends…

ACCOMPLICE (3:08)
An artist-criminal far from home asks his assistant to pirate a rare videotape before the German Post Office Authorities come to confiscate it. Featuring: Jordana Maurer, DJ Mendel (voice), Professor David Poeppel (voice), Jean-Luc Godard, David Bordwell (voice).

Christina Flick in "A/Muse", one of five new short films by Hal Hartley included in the collection Possible Films 2

IFC Center in New York City (323 Ave of the Americas @ West 3rd) will present a two evening event with Hal, screening his 1991 film, Surviving Desire, on the 21st and his newest collection of short films, Possible Films 2, on the 22nd. Both programs start at 8:30pm. Hal will be introducing each program.

Q: What do you do when you’re not making films?

A: Make smaller films.

Q: About what?

A: What ever is on my mind. Or what ever is happening around me. There’s always something to make a little story about.

A comedy about obsessive love from the director Time Magazine called “the smartest new outlaw in the movies.” Surviving Desire is a bold and playful little tale about a handsome young college professor smitten with a beautiful young female student. It is a swift dissection of male infatuation that is as fierce as it is compassionate.

Newly digitally re-mastered with color correction supervised by the director, this early Hartley favorite stars Martin Donovan, Mary Ward, Matt Malloy, and Rebecca Nelson. North American customers will also receive Theory of Achievement & Ambition, two shorts directed by Hal in 1991.

01 – Aquanettas – Mind Full of Worry
02 – My Bloody Valentine – Only Shallow
03 – P.J. Harvey – Water
04 – Red House Painters – Japanese to English
05 – Yo La Tengo – Shaker
06 – Bettie Serveert – Tom Boy
07 – Liz Phair – Girls! Girls! Girls!
08 – The Jesus Lizard – Then Comes Dudley
09 – Pavement – Here
10 – Jeffrey Taylor & Ned Rifle – Opening
11 – Jeffrey Taylor & Ned Rifle – Cue #3a, #2, #3b
12 – Jeffrey Taylor & Ned Rifle – Cue #10
13 – Jeffrey Taylor & Ned Rifle Cue #11
14 – Jeffrey Taylor & Ned Rifle – Cue #18c
15 – Jeffrey Taylor & Ned Rifle – Cue #15c
16 – Jeffrey Taylor & Ned Rifle – Cue #24
17 – Jeffrey Taylor & Ned Rifle – Cue #35b
18 – Listen to this song at our website.
19 – Jeffrey Taylor & Ned Rifle – Closing
20 – Jeffrey Taylor & Ned Rifle – Cue #4

Hal Hartley

01. Lookout (1:02)
02. Opening (1:50)
03. Rush Hour (1:25)
04. Dear Jim (1:50)
05. Night Flight (1:58)
06. Boat Song (2:32)
07. North (1:57)
08. Girl At Sea (1:46)
09. Worst News Possible (2:26)
10. Sacrifice (2:33)
11. Rock (0:54)
12. Scared Of You (1:52)
13. No Such Thing (As Monsters) (6:57)
14. Listen to this song at our website.
15. Communiqué (3:30)

*

Composed and performed by Hal Hartley

Thanks to Jeffrey Taylor for additional arrangements on Attack, and to Andy Russ for general rhythm, programming, and tech advice.

*

It’s about ten years now since the film No Such Thing was shot and I returned to New York from Iceland to edit and compose. While we were making the movie it was called Monster. But a certain (to remained unnamed) global entertainment conglomerate threatened to sue me if I released a movie of that title. No Such Thing, however, was also a title I liked as it had always implied the unsaid “as monsters“.

I’ve come back to this music several times over the years, hoping to rearrange a selection of the movie’s cues as songs in themselves or as suites because I felt I made a big leap in my music with this project and it led to everything else I did musically for the next ten years; that being the music for the films The Girl From Monday and Fay Grim, as well as the second, US, production of my play, Soon.

It was nothing gigantic, just a confidence equal, at last, to my ambition and curiosity. And this, I think, resulted from my collaboration in 1999 with Dutch composer Louis Andriessen. Working with him on our short film, The New Math(s), I spent much more time listening closely to – and discussing – twentieth century orchestral music; everything from Stravinsky to Varese, Messiaen and Schoenberg to Shostakovich, all the way along to Steve Reich and Andriessen himself.

Simply put: music as far as can be from what I myself did.

Still, I was fascinated by what I learned about how “real” composers worked. And I was encouraged to try and make some music as music. It sounds funny to say it that way, but I had always made music I could play myself. I am not a great player, so my music stayed relatively simple, which is not a problem for me; I like simple music and there is, in fact, some very simple music in No Such Thing As Monsters. But I was anxious to try my hand at what I had heard called “pure music” and for the first time in my life, I sat down with pencil and paper and wrote four measures of something like a canon for four voices. I just sort of enjoyed the architecture of the music I was writing on the page.

My tech assistant at the time, Andy Russ, programed these four lines into the Yamaha QY70, a tiny portable digital workstation I was taking with me to Iceland. The result, when I heard it a week later, was a jagged, angular chord progression with a melody kind of punching and clawing its way to the surface. I was very excited. But it was only months later that I saw this little canon had become the quarry out of which most of the score’s motifs were drawn; almost everything I used was in that original collision of notes.

Anyway, one result of all this was that I had to learn to play better. Or get better musicians to play what I was composing. By that time (the early months of 2001) I was making music on the Roland XP80, the industry standard digital music workstation. So this meant becoming a better piano player or programer. I progressed from bad to only fairly bad as a pianist. But I became a competent programer. Finally, I invited my friend Jeff Taylor to work with me for a weekend on arranging what I thought at the time was going to be the opening credit music – the fullest, most orchestrated variation on the canon in the film. Specifically, I needed help with it’s middle “break”. My canon tended to help create “Piano Attacks”, brash uncompromising walls of sound that made me think of boulders and stones raining down on skinny bicycles; fun for a while, but it had to let up occasionally. I needed a tense, quiet interlude in the middle. My “big musical idea” during those weeks was what Jeff pointed out as “seconds” or “thirteenths” – a harmony of two consecutive notes but played an octave away from one another. This can have a wrenching, dissonant, squealing effect and was, within reason, what I was after – ascending chords that twisted and stretched forward, sometimes screaming with the effort. Jeff worked with me to refine the intervals, then suggested starting the ascending progression on the second beat of the measure, so the string arrangement seemed to be pursuing its own course while the rest of the song sawed its way through it.

Nothing, of course, that Bernard Herman hadn’t done fifty years before. But it was a watershed two days for me.

It’s now called “Attack” and was not used in the film. But Opening, which became the credit sequence cue, is a variation on the arrangement we did that weekend. And so is Lookout.

Then, there’s the simple music…

North and Girl At Sea were exercises I gave myself, remembering the Anglo-Irish folk songs I heard as a kid sung unaccompanied at various kitchen tables by my Uncle Leo and – much earlier – by my mother and her sisters. Simple, plaintive melodies sung without rushing. I had never started a song by creating its melody. I had always made chords and then poked around for a melody which suited them. This was just the opposite.

Boat Song is the first song I made for No Such Thing, mostly by banging around and pushing buttons on the XP80 to see what the machine could do. Days later it began to sound like a song and I followed on from where I left off with my melody exercises the year before.

Some of these tunes, like Rush Hour, Sacrifice, and Dear Jim, were begun in 1996 when I was making the score for Henry Fool.

Scared Of You and Night Flight are the same composition simply assigned to different sounds on the machine. It was made as a guitar piece as you hear it in Scared Of You on the little QY70 in the apartment in Rekjavik where Miho and I were living during the film’s production. As an experiment, I switched the sound patch and was met with this weird gasping, hyperventilating, wall of synthetic strings. When we returned to New York, I added flute, light percussion, and this strange sample called “Tape Echo” which is some sort of reversed orchestral noise. (I use it often in these pieces.) I left Scared Of You as it was, with its occasional, impossibly low notes – as if played on a guitar with an extra, lower, string below E.

No Such Thing (As Monsters) is a suite of the secondary musical themes. Worst News Possible is also a recurring theme in the film associated with the character of the Boss and her hi-jinx in the New York scenes.

In the end it’s just some movie music. But it is the most confident music I had made up till then. I’m glad I finally got the best of it organized and presentable.

Hal Hartley, March 2010

I remember perfectly a musician friend (who had a few tunes in my earliest movies) telling me in 1992 that I should make CDs of the music from my films. I remember replying: “why would anyone be interested in that?”

I guess I was so happy to be busy making films that I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Eventually, it became impossible to ignore and my various distributors in different countries were insisting on an album to help promote the films. In December 1992 True Fiction Pictures was made in a studio in upstate New York with my friend and music producer, Jeffrey Taylor.

I had been introduced to Yo La Tengo, Hub Moore, and the Brothers Kendall by my friend, the filmmaker, Kelly Reichardt, while editing my first film, The Unbelievable Truth, in early 1989. And for the next 36 months of insane, joyous productivity (roughly January 1989 to 1992) I sort of lived and worked in the cadence of their songs. Rue Des Jours by Ether was found on a cassette tape delivered by my new assistant editor’s friends, Ether, and Jim Coleman had been a friend and collaborator since college, always there to consult for music ideas.

I thank them all. And, also, the musicians who contributed songs to those early films but are not included here: Sonic Youth, Wild Blue Yonder, Bob Jewett, Cathy Crane, Kings Of Wyoming, Los Euclids, and Das Damen.

Hal, January, 2010

In 1995, Hal Hartley invited three musician friends from drastically different quarters of the contemporary rock scene to collaborate with him on some songs. For about a month they were a band called Ryful – a play on Hartley’s film-scoring pseudonym, “Ned Rifle”.

It was an odd mix: Hub Moore, an accomplished singer/songwriter whose pop/rock ballads had driven some of Hartley’s earlier films like Trust (1990) and Surviving Desire (1991); Lydia Kavanagh, one time member of The Golden Palominos, had performed the ethereal, choir-like  cadences for Hartley’s film Amateur (1994); and Jim Coleman, who made the opening tune for Hartley’s debut The Unbelievable Truth (1989) was the keyboardist and sample-king for the legendary thrash Metal outfit Cop Shoot Cop. Finally, they were joined by session drummer Bill Dobrow and recorded the album in five days.

Apart from the songs they developed together from scratch, the album includes renditions of Lydia Kavanagh’s beautifully haunting, King Of Boys, and Hub Moore’s resolute and yearning hymn, If I Could.

Six of these nine songs found places in Hartley’s movies Henry Fool and The Book of Life. But three have never been released until now: I Lost It, Complaint #36, and Finally.

Track List:
1. Often (3:42) Hartley / Coleman
2. If I Could (3:51) Hartley / Moore
3. Fugitive (3:30) Hartley / Coleman
4. I Lost It (3:31) Hartley / Moore
5. King Of Boys (4:04) Kavanagh
6. Finally (3:16) Hartley
7. Not Me (3:31) Hartley / Coleman
8. Gigolo (3:19) Hartley
Listen to this song at our website.

Hal Hartley – guitar, keyboards
Hub Moore – guitar, bass, vocals
Lydia Kavanagh – guitar, bass, vocals
Jim Coleman – keyboards, sampling
Bill Dobrow – drums

On December 1, Possible Films volume 2—or “PF2″—a collection of Hal Hartley’s most recent short films, premiered during a month-long retrospective of his work at the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Castilla y Leon, Spain.

Check out the interview Hal gave the newspaper Diario de Leon on December 2.