"One from the Heart" Original Motion Picture Soundtrack by Joe Cortez There are moments in my adult life when I have to wonder if I am living in an alternate, parallel dimension to a much more sane world where the economy is stable, the populous isn't filled with interminable sociopaths and "Star Wars" based video games kick ass (sorry, venting). The soundtrack to the film "One from the Heart" is one such example. Not because it's awful but because it's good, great in fact. That the collaboration of ambitious filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, country singer Crystal Gale and avant torch singer Tom Waits could produce one of the most varied, fun and flat out amazing soundtracks of the 1980's is all the more heartbreaking considering the film flopped, has been relegated to the level of curiosity piece for cineastes looking for yet another axe to grind on the Coppola chopping block in a post "Jack" world and the soundtrack LP left to collect dust in discount bins at Orange County record conventions (venting again, sorry). With the film, Coppola's intent was two fold: produce and direct a work under the auspices of his new Zoetrope Studios banner, formed out of the ashes of his American Zoetrope production company, and create a contemporary movie musical that was Busby Berkley-esque in its scope and celebrated all that was great and wonderful about the movie musical. The choice of Waits and Gale as voices for the original songs in the movie was an inspired move on Coppola's part and in its own way is about as fruitful a choice as the casting of Terri Garr and Frederic Forrest as the picture's leads. Film fans know Coppola for his uncanny ear in the casting of music and musicians in his films, good tunes just seems to follow the guy around where ever he goes. This is especially true of is work during the seventies and eighties. After all, there aren't many other filmmakers who can claim to have had Nino Rota and Stewart Copeland score his or her films within the span of a decade. With "One from the Heart" Coppola has in his film some of the most beautiful music ever committed to celluloid. There are far too many memorable tracks on this collection that to single just one out as definitive. "Old Boyfriends" is a standout. It puts Gale's voice front and center to pine about the misfortunes endured by past love affairs and is sung in a wistful voice that has echoes of pain and longing that only a vocalist as confident as Crystal can bring to life. Waits' wailing on "Little Blue Boy" is the stuff jazz hall's were made for. It's cool, not just cool but hip, catchy But it's the emotional centerpiece, "This One's from the Heart" that brings the entire album together. Waits and Gale share vocal duties on the track that is uplifting and heart-wrenching all at once. That it is not a standard recorded ad nauseam by this point is a mystery to me. So here we are at the end, a film that few have seen and an album that I suspect far fewer have even heard. Too often it's the tragedy of great work to go unnoticed while the mediocre rises to the surface. But listening to the soundtrack again, I get the feeling that fate wouldn't have had it any other way. Much of the music has a kind of melancholy bygone wistfulness. The film "One from the Heart" was not long for this world, it exited theaters after only days in limited release and it seems as though the music for the film was destined to suffer from the same fate. It's time in pop cultural gestation has gone on far too long and it's time both the album and film receive their due. "One from the Heart," both the album and film, deserve to be heard and seen by all that value taking part in a pure emotional experience realized without compromise.