While having an imaginary interview in my head with the execs at Rolling Stone magazine they put forward the question regarding what ideas I had for future features for the magazine. This shows two things. Firstly that my Rupert Pupkin attempts to actually evolve from my own blog into paid music journalism have grown into a whole new level of psychosis and also that I have a great pitch once in a blue moon.
The idea is:
The best music scenes from Movies…that aren’t actually concert films so slide that copy of 'The Last Waltz' back in the shelf it don’t count.
Its very easy when writing this type of thing to just flick through a few back copies of movie magazines or considering its not 1989 actually just Google “movie music scenes” and steal someone else choices, but where is the fun of that? I was born in 1981 and personally don’t have the attachment of Humphrey and Ingrid looking at each other while ‘As Time Goes By' plays. But on the other hand I will always be taken back to the scene in Superbad when Seth is dancing with a girl at a party and gets covered in what could only be described as ‘crimson love’ while grinding up to her during Notorious B.I.G’s ‘Big Poppa’.
Here are some others (tip…new screen on hand and get youtube primed)
1) Kick Ass – A great film, funny, killer soundtrack, matrix style violence and the foulest mouthed young girl ever seen on film. The music scene I’m talking about is the finale where our hero fly’s into the bad guy’s penthouse on a jet pack with attached machine guns and is supported by the golden tones of Elvis Presley singing ‘An American Trilogy’ as he annihilates everything in his path.
2) Superbad – I’ve mentioned this already and that indeed is a great scene, but the one that has got to pip it to the post here is Evan (Michael Cera) being mistaken for “Jimmy’s brother, the great singer” and being made to perform, and pulling ‘These Eyes’ by The Guess Who out of the bag.
3) House Party – This is the turning point where half the readers go “never seen it” and the other half go “seen it, it sucked”…personally for those of us who grew up renting videos from the video shop House Party and similar films (i.e. Class Act) will always remember Bilal (Martin Lawrence when he was funny) slow dancing with an unfortunate girl and crooning 'Always and Forever' by Heatwave into her ear.
4) Wild at Heart – Another left field choice but hey it’s my list so I’ll have whatever I like and if it happens to be a David Lynch film with Nicholas Cage serenading his girlfriend with Elvis’s ‘Love Me’ while being backed by a heavy metal band, then so be it. (The Quantum Leap-tastic Dean Stockwell stealing the scene in ‘Blue Velvet’ would also be right up there miming to Roy Orbison’s ‘In Dreams’.
5) Life of Brian – The crucified, messiahs and naughty boys all singing ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’ as they hang from the crosses. “Bernie, I said, they’ll never make their money back”
6) The Rules of Attraction – This early ‘naughties’ film starring James Van Der Beek also features a killer soundtrack and one particularly moving scene when the quiet girl character that is only ever seen in the background finally cracks and commits suicide in the bath. The scene brings a new found resonance to Harry Nilsson’s version of ‘Without You’, from being the song sung at weddings to it coming back full circle to the original intent and longing of Badfinger’s Peter Ham (who wrote and played the original) and showing its true beauty through heartbreak.
7) Snatch – Guy Ritchie. Where did it all go wrong? After ‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’ you followed a home run with ANOTHER home run, amazing, we won’t talk about ‘Swept Away’, ‘Revolver’ but instead remember the scene with Brad Pitt as the Gypsy bare knuckle fighter Mickey heading to the ring to the strains of ‘Fucking In the Bushes’ by Oasis, a track so good even people who believe they actually don’t like Oasis (add your own lame Beatles-comparison blah blah blah here) and always comment “I love this tune..Who is it?”…
8) Blow – ‘All The Tired Horses’ Another shot from the corner here with this Bob Dylan song that he himself doesn’t actually appear on, no verse or chorus as such...just the repeated refrain “All the tired horses in the sun, How'm I supposed to get any ridin' done? Hmm” apparently everything from the meaning of life to the proof that Dylan is a heroin addicted shape shifting mutant is hidden in this sentence but for me even though it’s not related as such to the movie when matched with Johnny Depps performance seems to make perfect sense.
9) Number 9, Number 9….ok Kill Bill – 'Bang Bang (My Baby Shot me Down)' by Nancy Sinatra. Quentin Tarantino has said in interviews that the music in his films is almost as important as the scenes themselves and dialogue, a trait he has picked up from Martin Scorsese who listens to music throughout the making and almost fits the scenes to the music that inspired it. Kill Bill starts in black and white with ‘The Bride’ half dead, covered in blood and trying to speak to her would be killer (Bill) as she gets to her last sentence Bill shoots her point blank in the head and this song kicks in as the titles roll…I’m not going anywhere for the next hour or so after that..in fact who am I kidding I’m gonna watch VOL 2 straight after.
10) Number 10? Here we are…Ferris Bueller’s Day off – ‘Danke Schoen/Twist and Shout’ this is all personal choice of course but one that I think deserves its place. Matthew Broderick has never been this good since, full of infectious charm and a guy that ‘can do anything’ to quote his best friend Cameron Fry. The ending parade scene where after ‘ditching’ his friend and girlfriend in the crowd he appears on the microphone on a moving parade through the city crooning Wayne Newton’s ‘Danke Schoen’, before unleashing one of those ‘this would never, never happen in real life but what the hell it’s a film’ moments, by mixing straight into The Beatles ‘Twist and Shout’ and getting everyone from builders, to little kids, to his unsuspecting dad (who’s watching from a nearby office block but cannot see his truant son’s face) to break into a massive street dance…
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