The Guardian ran a piece this week ranking the best songs in teen movies (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/mar/15/the-best-songs-from-teen-movies-ranked). Don’t You Forget About Me by Simple Minds came top as used in the John Hughes film The Breakfast Club. Famously not written by the band the song was passed around a few acts, each one rejecting it (including Billy Idol). Even Simple Minds weren’t convinced and only relented when Jim Kerr’s then wife, Chrissie Hynde, thought they should reconsider.
For a while John Hughes specialised in tapping into the mid-80s teen mindset and had a knack for giving a leg-up to British acts in the US (see also Psychedelic Furs in Pretty in Pink, The Dream Academy and..er..Sigue Sigue Sputnik in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Flesh For Lulu in Some Kind of Wonderful).
While considering The Guardian’s list I remembered that during the opening credits of The Breakfast Club some of the lyrics from Bowie’s Changes appear on screen: ‘And these children that you spit on/As they try to change their worlds/Are immune to your consultations/They’re quite aware of what they’re going through’. As good a summation of what the film is about as any film guide.
Bowie’s music is also used in one of my favourite “music in film” sequences. The film is Something Wild, directed by Jonathan Demme and released in 1986, the year I started university. It was one of those films that defined my change from all-knowing (but actually very naive) school boy to naive (but actually knowing just enough to get by) male under-graduate. Free from the pressure cooker of the 6th Form Stasi’s relentlessly humiliating peer review of personal music and film choices I was able to explore uncharted musical and cinematic preferences without having to mentally prepare myself for a verbal onslaught in the common room. Rarely though did my choices in the world of music and in the world of cinema come together as one…until, that is, Something Wild came along.
It was the first time that I’d encountered a band I liked and a film I was enjoying immensely converging in one scene. It was an “oh wow” moment when you realise that someone else inhabits the world you created and also gets a kick out of the same things you do, except they were actually putting it up there on the big screen for all to see. It felt like validation for all the hours sacrificed to the righteous cause of finding songs and films to fall in love with.
In the scene the band The Feelies play Bowie’s Fame while our romantic leads (Jeff Daniels and Melanie Griffith) – who are pretending to be husband and wife at Griffith’s high school reunion having only been together for a matter of hours – start to get to know each other better on the dancefloor. The song is perfect for the moments of carefree fun they’re sharing; he’s beginning to loosen up from his stiff-collared ‘9 to 5’ persona while she’s beginning to realise she doesn’t have to be “too cool for school” to have a good time. Demme’s masterstroke in the scene is to use the obligatory slow dance (The Feelies playing their own Loveless Love) as the cue to introduce us to Griffith’s ex-boyfriend (played by Ray Liotta) rather than allow our two love-birds to get even more up close and personal. If you’ve seen the film you’ll know that Liotta’s entrance completely changes the tone of the film and it’s this scene and the music that Demme weaves into it that acts as the game changer. As hard and tough as Liotta has been in many other films it’s his introduction in Something Wild that is his most chilling celluloid moment.
So Afterworders what’s your own favourite use of music in a film?
The shameless nostalgia of American Graffiti takes some beating. The music makes the film a beautiful evocation of (a probably completely mythical) Kennedy-era America. The film sold top-notch rock’n’roll and doo-wop to me at an age when I’d otherwise have just dismissed it as “olllllld”.
As with Scorsese’s Mean Streets, this was filmmaking partly as a means for the director to show off his record collection – now a familiar, perhaps overfamiliar, aspect of film and TV drama, but then quite revolutionary.
I love “American Graffiti”, a fantastic neon-lit evocation of everything we Brits imagine being a US teenager in the 60s to be… sunshine, diners, drive-ins, big cars, great music… and what a great title, too, nobody ever comments on that…
Released almost simultaneously (actually a few months before), here in the UK we had “That’ll Be The Day”, a very different nostalgic look back at (near enough) the same time period… still fantastic, as is the sequel “Stardust”… IIRC the compilation-of-hits TBTD soundtrack was the first of its kind, and the album was a massive hit, number 1 all summer of 1973, and included David Essex’ peerless “Rock On” (though I don’t think it was featured in the movie itself…)
I have the That’ll Be the Day album… it’s ace. And wasn’t Ringo great in the film?
Brilliant soundtrack, a tad obvious in retrospect, but in those days before ubiquitous compilations, a great R&R primer… it’s slightly weird now to think the movie is set only 12-15 years before it was made, like setting a film today in 2003, it would hardly seem “period” at all…
And yes, it’s Ringo’s best acting performance by quite a margin – it’s a shame he didn’t try more serious roles, he certainly had potential, even if I can’t imagine him being especially versatile… and Adam Faith is great playing the same character (or so we assume… they’re both called “Mike”, anyway) in “Stardust”, too…
“That’ll Be The Day” is surely still the go-to film for the pre-Mersey story.
Always thought Ringo stole it, but watching it again a year or so ago made me revise my opinion … Billy Fury’s walk across the ballroom – er, wow!
If you were to compile a double-bill, the better follow up would be “Slade in Flame,” not “Stardust.”
Billy Fury was coooooool.
Except Robbie didn’t play with them since the Last Waltz, and Levon, Rick and Richard are dead. Otherwise I suppose it could have happened ….
I think you may be on the wrong thread.
To be fair the music in The Last Waltz is probably its best attribute, notwithstanding Robbie’s bona cheekbones.
Not sure how that happened!
Yeah great use of music in The Last Waltz!
The rigged card game in Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is soundtracked by The Castaways Liar Liar. After he’s lost the game, I Wanna Be Your Dog is played.
Not exactly a discovery of a revelation but perfectly placed methinks
You may say choosing a musical is cheating. I love, love, love Cabaret and Joel Grey’s seedy club compere performance in particular. However, the most dramatic moment is when the fresh-faced young man stands up in the outdoor café and sings Tomorrow Belongs To Me. It always sends a shiver down my spine.
https://youtu.be/29Mg6Gfh9Co
Big Bottom?