There are some music cues that belong so indelibly to particular films that they shouldn’t be reused in any other context. “Be My Baby” is Mean Streets, “Miserlou” is Pulp Fiction, “Singin’ in the Rain” is The Hollywood Revue of 1929. And Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” belongs, now and always, to Blue Velvet:
So although there’s a lot about the new Westworld teaser that’s appealing, from Ed Harris’ weathered face to eye patches to a shot of the show’s genital-to-genital touching we’ve heard so much about, the end result is more blasphemous than enticing. By all means, use an old-timey saloon piano arrangement of “In Dreams,” it’s creepy and it suits Westworld fine. But before dropping the needle on Roy Orbison’s recording, you need Dennis Hopper in the wings waiting to holler “Let’s fuck! I’ll fuck anything that moves!” Or at least a robotic Dennis Hopper. Which, come to think of it, would have been the ideal premise for a Westworld reboot. The non-robot-Dennis-Hopper version of Westworld premieres on HBO on Oct. 2.
