Wednesday, January 4, 2012

"You Know the Movie Song..."


As a girl obsessed with movies, I suppose it's only natural that I enjoy the soundtracks as well. Frequently a song will come on that immediately triggers the corresponding scene in a movie to play in my head.

The other day I was driving and "Sorry (I Ran All the Way Home)" by The Impalas came on and my mind immediately flashed to poor Vern in Stand By Me, huffing and puffing in the tree house amongst his decidedly less plump friends, just trying to tell them a story, but constantly being interrupted by the guys singing the song in his face. Good times.

This got me thinking of other hits that conjure up movie scenes and a new post category, titled after a line in the Dire Straights song "Romeo and Juliet" from that '90's classic Empire Records, "You Know the Movie Song..."

Here are a few to get the ball rolling:

"Don't You Just Know It" by Huey "Piano" Smith in A Bronx Tale - The scene where Calogero and his friends are taunting Phil the Peddler by singing this up in his face while others are stealing fruit from his cart. My friend Anthony loves this movie and on many occasions I have tried to recapture the singing-into-the-camera-fisheye-lens effect of that scene; needless to say these videos have all been deleted. I apparently lack DeNiro's directorial skills.

"Dancing with Myself" the Billy Idol version (the original is apparently by a band called Generation X, thanks Wikipedia!) in Can't Buy Me Love - As one of the many people who finds New Year's Eve to be an over-hyped night that almost always ends poorly and/or dramatically, I think this song fits the scene of Ronald's downfall at Big John's NYE party perfectly. After overhearing Ronald/Donald use her cheesy sappy heartfelt love poem to seduce another chick at the party, a very drunk Cindy Mancini chooses to expose him for the creepy nerd he really is, telling the rest of the party guests that he paid her to go out with him (gotta love the excess of the '80's). And just like that Ronald goes from "King status to no status," as his brother Chuckie later succinctly sums up later. But who could ask for a better soundtrack to their demise?

"Wild Horses" The Sundays version (the original is of course by The Rolling Stones) in Fear - I'm willing to bet that you will be hard-pressed to find a girl who was a teen in the '90's who does not remember this scene where Mark "Marky-Mark" Wahlberg manually pleasures a teenaged Reese Witherspoon on a roller-coaster ride with this tune playing in the background. Nothing says committed relationship quite like going to third base in a rusted metal bucket with torn pleather seats. It truly captures young love at its finest. This definitely isn't the most ridiculous scene in the movie though; on occasion, say for instance when waiting for a friend to open the door for me, I like to repeat the line, "Mr. Waaaaaalker - LET ME INTO YOUR F*CKING HOUSE!"

More of these little gems to come.

Image courtesy of flickr.com user Joshua Rappeneker.

No comments:

Post a Comment