18. Almodóvar's Global Musical Marketplace

Summary

In 2007 Pedro Almodóvar convened a news conference in Madrid to celebrate the release of the double CD B.S.O. Almodóvar (Banda Sonora Original, original film score) during which he also announced the beginning of shooting for his seventeenth feature film. Lest his audience fail to have noted the consistent imbrication of music and cinema, song and story in his body of work, the director called attention to this linkage. This chapter explores the global contours of the texts and contexts of the larger Almodovarian creative universe, focusing less on the films themselves than on what one might call the Almodovar discography. The Almodóvar the author proposes to study is not the film director contemporary of a Lars von Trier, Quentin Tarantino or Gus Van Sant but instead the musician-producer-transcultural impresario whose fellow practitioners are Ry Cooder, Paul Simon and David Byrne or even Almodóvar's own collaborator, Caetano Veloso.