So, we've already gone into I'll Do Anything and the tantalising case history of the hip and modern musical about life in Hollywood in the 1990s that was forced to jettison its array of songs by Prince, Carole King and Sinead O'Conner when the world decided that it wasn't ready for that kind of thing. There are further twists to the tale, however, ever more fingers in this supremely sticky pie and, happily, even more outlets in which the ghost of the film, as originally envisioned, is able to live on in its transmuted afterlife. If you're a fan of singer-songwriter Jackson Browne, then odds are good that you own a copy of his 1993 album I'm Alive, tucked away on which is a rather stirring track with the title of none other than "I'll Do Anything". The shared moniker is no coincidence, for at one time this was apparently slated to be the title track to James L. Brooks' ill-fated ex-musical. Browne brought this up in an interview he gave to host Sam Jones in a 2014 installment of the DirecTV series Off Camera, and he certainly does talk the talk. I was able to get hold of the interview in podcast form, and transcribed below are Browne's words on the matter. Note that in the actual interview Browne has a tendency to wander off into semi-comprehensible waffling, which I've done my best to scale down on here:
Browne: Since you brought up "I'll Do Anything", that was written for a musical, for a movie, called I'll Do Anything...
Jones: You're kidding me.
Browne: ...which before it was over, before it was released, they took...yeah, James Brooks movie, starring, uh, Albert Brooks, Nick Nolte, and uh, they had a lot of great music in that movie, and they didn't have the title song. They didn't feel they had the title song. And I never, never sign up for this kind of thing 'cos I'm all about reducing expectations and I can't, like, get on...but um, actually [David] Geffin called me and said look, you might as well take a crack at this, because other people have done it but they don't have the song, and if you write it...they need the song, give it a shot, and it's a good movie...But the song was about...it was gonna be sung by Albert Brooks, and it was funny...
Jones: No kidding.
Browne: It was about Albert Brooks singing to a test audience. I'm...I'm gonna ruin this song for you, right now...
Jones: It's ruined already!
Browne: Okay. Because in the movie he's a record producer. "I don't make art films, I make popcorn films!" And he's singing to a test audience that's about to view his latest film. He's pleading with them for a good report. He's singing to them, "Think of all we've meant to each other." And I knew this would be funny if it was really like, this is person who was basically [an] amoral person, pleading to be considered somebody of, you know like, think of what we've meant to each other. He's already told you he...has the crassest of ideals, all he does is make money...But I mean, it didn't get used in the movie. For whatever reason they took all the music out and I was left with a song that I would not have written for myself.
Jones: No kidding.
Browne: I wouldn't have written that song, at that time. As a matter of fact, one of the reviewers of the album when it came out was like, this is a co-dependency anthem...like, I'll do anything, I'll make the place a place for you and me, it was very, as you say, desperate. And that's what was gonna be so funny...I kind of tricked myself. I never take that kind of assignment, I'm adverse to it. But in that case I wrote one of my favorite songs.
If, like me, you're into I'll Do Anything and yearn for the vaporised musical that never was, then any window you can get into what might have been is a precious thing. Browne's story offers an intriguing new twist, as the song in question seems slightly out of sync with everything we've heard about the title song from other sources. "Tommy" (not his real name), who claimed on Joe Baltake's blog The Passionate Moviegoer to have worked on the film as an extra, informs us that it was going to be a tap number, and Browne's contribution doesn't really sound like a song to which you could feasibly tap dance. It also doesn't match the refrains of "I'll Do Anything" heard throughout the trailer on the VHS release of The Pickle (more on that later), which doesn't credit Jackson Browne as a contributor. This suggests two possible scenarios - either the version of "I'll Do Anything" that appeared on Browne's I'm Alive was drastically rewritten from that created for use in the film, or Browne's offering was rejected in advance of the film's all-out musical purge (Browne is vague on the circumstances of the song's rejection, although he does make it sound as if it was part of the wider cull). Nevertheless, if this is an indication of how Burke's big number was at one point intended to sound, then it's an unexpectedly tender plea to envision coming out of such a graceless character. In that regard it plays the perfect trick on you. For context, the reason why Jones insists that the song has been "ruined" is that, before Browne explains to him the genesis of the track, he cites it as an example of a song to which he was able to relate differently at separate stages of his life - firstly, on a "desperate, romantic" level back in 1993 at the album's release, and later in terms of his parental devotion. But, by its inception, it's a song that harbours a fundamental insincerity; it's an ostensibly pretty tune that, on close scrutiny, reveals a tortured desperation lurking at its core (the protagonist is clearly insecure as to whether of the object of their devotions reciprocates their commitment - there's a lot of talk about another potentially taking their place), one that readily bleeds into the kind of wretched spinelessness exhibited by Burke's character. And since this is the title number, it also encapsulates the entire ethos of the picture - that is, the near-total degradation of what once were grand motives. Rob a bank, steal a tank - whatever it takes to secure our share of bones.
So the mystery deepens. And the film's assortment of ghostly runoffs gets ever more bountiful.
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