First let me thank my pal and frequent commenter Aaron Aradillas for reminding me of Martin Scorsese's exceptionally clever bit of what I'll call triple-stunt-casting in The Aviator, in which three musical Wainwrights embody three different eras and musical styles, all whilst portraying singers at Hollywood's Coconut Grove.
Here's Rufus Wainwright in stylized crooner mode, doing the Gershwins' "I'll Build A Stairway to Paradise." The period is the late '20s, as The Aviator's protagonist, Mr. Howard Hughes, struggles to finish his epic Hell's Angels.

Obviously both Wainwright and Scorsese and company are taking some poetic license here, as Rudy Vallee never smoldered quite so...
Next we're in the mid-'30s, Hughes is happily courting Kate Hepburn, and Rufus' dad Loudon Wainwright III (discussed in a post below) is an animated presence in a peppy vocal harmony group that evokes (slightly) the era's own Yacht Club Boys (who are in the recently released Fox DVD of the early Judy Garland musical Pigskin Parade.) "Happy Feet" also sounds a bit like the arrangements Geoff Muldaur did on his spectacular Bix Beiderbecke exploration Private Astronomy, on which several Wainwright's appear...

Finally, here's Martha Wainwright, like Rufus, a child of Loudon and the great singer/songwriter Anna McGarrigle. Now the movie's in the '40s, Hughes is in confusion and, soon, decline...and Martha's singing a bluesy torchy version of "I'll Be Seeing You."

The Wainwright theme practically constitutes a mini-movie. It also represents a very particular, very Scorsese-esque approach to attention to detail. Sure, the choice of songs and song stylings to fit particular decades was going to be a given. But to then further conceptualize in order to execute a pretty sophisticated and affectionate in-joke—while maintaining the integrity of your initial prerogative—is something else entirely. For that and other reasons, The Aviator is a movie I admire ever more when I return to it.
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