‘What’s He Building?’: The Tom Waits song that should be made into a movie
Tom Waits the barfly. Tom Waits the drunkard. Tom Waits the wolfman, the night watchman, the executioner, and the junkman. Tom Waits the gravedigger and the grave robber. Tom Waits the broken-heart repairman. Tom Waits the timekeeper. Tom Waits the nightmare conjurer. Tom Waits the snake-oil shaman and healer. Tom Waits, the bad influence who sits on the Devil’s shoulder, whispering wicked ideas into his ear. Tom Waits—the myth and the legend.
Over the last 25 years, Waits has spent more time on movie sets than in recording studios or on stage. In that time, he’s crafted standout albums like Alice, Blood Money, Real Gone and Bad as Me, while also leaving his mark on cinema in films like Coffee and Cigarettes, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Seven Psychopaths, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, and Licorice Pizza, among others. He’s even rumoured to have inspired Heath Ledger’s legendary portrayal of the Joker in The Dark Knight.
Over the years, Waits has played such memorable characters in films by Sylvester Stallone as Mumbles in Paradise Alley, Jim Jarmusch as Zach in Down by Law, and Francis Ford Coppola, stealing every scene as R M Renfield in the audaciously brilliant Bram Stoker’s Dracula. But perhaps the greatest character Thomas Alan Waits has ever played is Tom Waits himself.
It goes without saying that cinema has always been important to Tom Waits. He even met his wife and creative partner, Kathleen Brennan, on the set of a movie, when he was writing the score and soundtrack for Francis Ford Coppola’s One from the Heart, and Brennan was working at the American Zoetrope studio as a script analyst.
In 1988, he brought his most recent songs first to the stage and then, at Brennan’s suggestion, to the screen in Big Time, his only concept concert film. The performances in the movie revolve around Waits’ then most recent songs, taken from his exemplary Swordfishtrombones, Rain Dogs and Franks Wild Years albums. The film was written off by many critics, but adored by the loyal following Waits calls his biggest fans.
Waits also tried to adapt his album Franks Wild Years into a stage play and was met with a similar response. But his catalogue is so vast—filled with fascinating characters and packed with vivid, provocative, evocative, picturesque, and captivating lyrics—that you could mine his songs for an entire cinema’s schedule worth of films.
‘Shore Leave’ is a short story just waiting for the right director to capture its late-night Hong Kong drizzle and the dangerous love story at its heart. Likewise, ‘The Earth Died Screaming’ deserves to be blown up for the big screen—perfect for an avant-garde stylist or a Lynchian disciple. ‘Starving in the Belly of a Whale’ and ‘God’s Away on Business’ from Blood Money already feel like films in themselves. But perhaps, among all his cinematic songs, ‘What’s He Building?’ from his 1999 masterpiece Mule Variations would make the best.
With its suspicion, intrigue, and disquieting build, the song—if you can even call it a song—dislocates and disturbs you. Much of the music already sounds like sound effects or foley, so if this terror were transposed to the silver screen, the score would be ready-made. It confounds expectations at every turn, alarming and unsettling you. It carries a nightmarish blend of icy terror, creeping tension, and a dry, dark humour shot straight through its heart. There’s a secret hidden beneath the floorboards of this song, beating like a drum, and each time Waits played it live, he delivered a performance that could rival any role played by Bogart, Brando, or Pacino—or even any of his own acting turns. He’s played the Devil. He’s played bank robbers, veterans, DJs and psychopaths. Here, though, he was acting out the part of the neighbour we all become.
But just what the hell would the movie version of ‘What’s He Building?’ look like anyway? We have a right to know…
