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MUSIC The orchestral music for this film was recorded within Youth Music Australia's CAMERA CAMERATA project, Sydney 1998.
Artistic Director Edward Primrose Original Music performed by Australian Youth Orchestra Original music composed by Claire Jordan Camerata Violin solo Deborah White Conductor David Stanhope Music Recording Engineer Michael Paul Stavrou
Ruby BabyWritten by Jerry Leiber/Mike Stoller
© Jerry Leiber Music/Mike Stoller Music
Used by Permission of Rondor Music (Australia) Pty Ltd
If You're Happy And You Know It Clap Your Handsperformed by Garry Rowe, Evan Williams and James Niven
Yes, he's the producer's baby brother and his dulcet tones can be heard in all her films. In fact, the voice you hear shout "Get off the bloody road!" in Feeling Sexy is the same "Get off the bloody road!" you heard in Idiot Box (the old low-budget filmmaking trick - recycle your sound). But in Idiot Box it really is Garry sitting in the car being menaced by Ben Mendelsohn.
Que Sera Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)Written by Ray Evans/Jay Livingston
© 1955 MCA Music Publishing, a Division of Universal Studios, Inc/ Jay Livingston Music & St. Angelo Music. All rights for the world excluding the USA & Canada on behalf of Jay Livingston Music Inc administered by WB Music Corp. All rights reserved.Recording Arranged by Arthur Greenslade
Conducted by Edward Primrose
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Recording Que Sera Sera or How I Met the Legendary Arthur Greenslade by Glenys Rowe"Right up until the last minute of editing, we were going to use one of Claire's beautiful compositions to play out over the end credits, and then one afternoon, in the magical way things happen in films, Davida and I were talking about how great it is when you walk out of the cinema humming the theme song and how weeks later the theme comes back to you and you remember the film. The one Davida remembers most is the Dr Zhivago theme. I have too many to think of just one, but I know my fondness for Muriel's Wedding is in part because the soundtrack is so fabulous. I often put it on when I have to do boring chores like the ironing, or tidying up just so that I can dance around at the same time. Peter Allen's I GO TO RIO is especially good for vacuuming to.
Anyway Davida and I were just sitting around chatting, remembering songs and then just hit on the idea that we should have a well known tune to end our film too! Something that everyone would walk out humming, but also something whereby the lyrics had relevance to the story. Often that kind of layered meaning can be corny, but when you get it right, itís terrific and Feeling Sexy being a modern kind of soap anyway could maybe wear a bit of corn.
At EXACTLY the same moment, we both hit upon Que Sera Sera and knew that this was IT. Filmmakers are often ruthless without realising it because you are dictated to by the demands of the FILM, it kind of goes on asking things of you way after you are sick to death of it, but you know you have to OBEY THE DEMANDS OF THE WORK if the work is to have integrity, even if it means making people unhappy along the way.
I'm sure that on some subconscious level, each of us had realised that the wonderful sweeping finale that Claire had written, was in a sense too grand for Feeling Sexy and that what we needed was something that would bring it back to the realms of the suburban and the ordinary and well, Doris Day, how ordinary can you get?
But having the idea became just the start of a wild journey. We had an orchestra at our disposal, via Camera Camerata, but no arrangement of the tune for an orchestra.
Tracey, our fabulous Associate Producer spent two days on the phone trying to track down the original arrangement for orchestra that Doris Day had used because we wanted our orchestra to play the music. We also chose not to have Doris Day singing partly for economic reasons but also because we thought it would be cuter if our actors were the (not very good) singers - it worked the song into the story more.
No one, not even in America, had a copy of the original arrangement for orchestra. Locally there was a band version, but a guide tape of it, revealed a very primary school band sort of version, very oompah, oompah and not at all romantic. The person who did the school band arrangement was a saxophonist called Bill Barlow and when we explained what kind of arrangement we were looking for, he told us of a fellow called Arthur Greenslade who he said was very experienced and could work fast. We were running out of time by this stage- we only had the orchestra booked for one day and that day approacheth!
So we phoned Arthur and he was most excited and dismayed by our need for an arrangement of Que Sera Sera for a fifty piece orchestra, that needed to be delivered within 48 hours! But he understood. He was SHOWBIZ! He knew how mad it could be and he had been Shirley Bassey's arranger for years, as well as Englebert Humperdink's, played piano for Tom Jones and in short been a complete part of the swingin London musical scene- plus he'd done the music for one of the producers favourite films, an early British movie called Joanna. He'd also arranged the music for the Academy Award winner The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. It turned out he was actually FAMOUS!! And after a lifetime jetting between London and Hollywood he was now alive and well and living in downtown Caringbah, NSW!
What a find Arthur turned out to be. He stayed up till 4am finishing the arrangement that night, then had one of his musician mates copy out each individual part for all the various instruments in the orchestra and had the lot on our desk by 5pm the next evening. And every communication with him was a joy, full of stories, full of energy and completely charming in that old fashioned lady killer sort of way. Davida and I adored him. And the arrangement, when we heard the orchestra play it, brought tears to the eyes. It was superb and we were all delighted.
Some weeks later, after all the rush to get it done was over and we were listening to the Que Sera recording with the images that would go with it, there was another moment of pure synchronicity when we all looked at each other and Arthur said, "It's great, but it doesn't really GROOVE, does it?" He was right. "What you need, my little darlings, is an alto sax and an electric guitar and I know just the blokes".
So Arthur rang up another two mates, the same Bill Barlow who gave us the original band arrangments was also a great alto sax player, and guitarist Frank Holdforth, both 70 odd who turned up at the studio the next night with their instruments and proceeded to jam along with the digital tape of our very proper classically trained orchestra playing Que Sera Sera. Curiously, both of them wore little pork pie hats, a bit like the ones Elvis Costello wears, maybe it's some sort of musical code...and voila! One slightly more hipster version of Que Sera Sera for the end credits! Thanks to Arthur Greenslade and friends."
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