“The End,” Apocalypse Now
Doors singer Jim Morrison once said he initially wrote the lyrics for this deathly ditty about a break up with a girlfriend…but it evolved into something else.
“Every time I hear that song, it means something else to me. I really don't know what I was trying to say. It just started out as a simple goodbye song ... Probably just to a girl, but I could see how it could be goodbye to a kind of childhood. I really don't know. I think it's sufficiently complex and universal in its imagery that it could be almost anything you want it to be.”
Francis Ford Coppola used the song in updating Joseph Conrad’s novel of 19th century colonialism, Heart of Darkness, into a sprawling 20th century war drama. As far as I know, Coppola was the first director to use a sixties-era rock song to disturbing cinematic effect. In this case, to render young men stuck in hellish situations.
Goodbye, childhood.
“I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” The Big Chill
With The Big Chill in 1985, director Lawrence Kasdan dug a rich vein of Motown classics out of the pop music mines. And so began the highly profitable cross-marketing of sixties songs for nostalgic aims. Good Morning Vietnam, Forrest Gump and other hit-heavy blockbusters followed, with big residuals for the original artists through licensing and soundtrack sales.
Thanks to Kasdan, you could call The Big Chill the boomer’s coming-out movie.
“Don’t You Forget About Me,” The Breakfast Club
Hollywood went on a spending spree after the box office success of The Big Chill, licensing and commissioning songs from big name rock and pop artists. Though I wasn’t a fan of The Breakfast Club, it’s undeniable John Hughes’ overwrought detention-time melodrama offered every other high school kid an archetype to identify with: the A Student, the Nerd, the Jock, the Delinquent, and the Weird Kid.
The soundtrack was unmemorable, with the exception of track by Simple Minds. Singer-songwriter Jim Kerr deservedly hit the big time with this anthemic single.
“Bohemian Rhapsody,” Wayne’s World
One of the funnest and funniest movie scenes ever, at least when it comes to using a hit song in a contextually clever way. In this memorable moment, Wayne, Garth and their cruising buddies lip-sync to Queen's hit song in a 1976 AMC Pacer (which incidentally was one of the worst-designed cars ever spat off a factory floor. An idiot high school friend of mine had one).
The studio insisted on a song by Guns n Roses but Mike Myers fought for and won with Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Obviously a far better choice, by the headbanging crew in Garth’s “Mirthmobile.” On the strength of Wayne's World, Queen’s operatic number reached #2 in the United States.
The scene drew on Myer’s personal experience:
“Me and my brother, our friends' car was a powder blue Dodge Dart Swinger that had a vomit stain on the side of it that someone chiseled in the shape of Elvis Presley. We'd drive down the Don Valley Parkway, listening to Bohemian Rhapsody. We would time it to enter the Toronto city limits when the rocking part would kick in. I was "Galileo!" three of five. If I took somebody else's "Galileo!" or somebody took mine, a fight would ensue. It's just something that I always back-pocketed. Wayne's World was my childhood. I knew only to write what I knew.”
“It’s Christmas in Heaven,” The Meaning of Life
More funny stuff. A great piss-take on American entertainment schmaltz from the Monty Python brain trust.
“Lust for Life,” Trainspotting
Iggy Pop’s frenetic “Lust for Life” was originally recorded in 1977, when the ex-Stooge was hanging out and drying out in West Berlin with fellow rock star David Bowie. The song had a deservedly wider hearing two decades later, thanks to Danny Boyle’s comically squalid 1996 film about a group of young heroin addicts in Edinburgh jackknifing downward socially, bodily and spiritually.
“The Blue Danube,” 2001: A Space Odyssey
The brilliant filmmaker Stanley Kubrick preceded both Coppola and Kasdan in looking further afield than standard film scoring to set moods. If you’re like me, you can’t listen to Johann Strauss’ 19th century waltz without thinking of cinematographer Douglas Trumbull’s space station majestically pinwheeling above the Earth.
“Mickey Mouse Song,” Full Metal Jacket
Yet another excellent Kubrick creation (the title refers to the full metal jacket bullet used by US troops), with the director again scoring his film in an unconventional way - in this case to highlight the surreality of the Vietnam War. In a closing scene, “Joker” and his fellow marines break into the Mickey Mouse song as they march through the shattered ruins of Hué.
The choice of the song makes perverse sense, considering most US servicemen in Vietnam were within a few birthday candles of boyhood. From the Youtube video comments: “The duality of man. The happiest song in the most fucked-up scenario. Kubrick was a genius.”
Goodbye childhood, indeed.
“Mad World,” Donnie Darko
Richard Kelly closed his terrific genre-defying 2001 film - part science fiction, part psychological thriller, part metaphysical mystery - with Gary Jules’ powerful remake of an otherwise disposable Tears for Fears tune.
“Tiny Dancer,” Almost Famous
Another good musical choice before the credits roll. Elton John’s ballad is used to great effect in scriptwriter Cameron Crowe’s semi-biographical telling of his life as a (very) young Rolling Stone writer, scribbling his way around talented but out-of-control people in the rock music biz.
BONUS VIDEO
“Wake Me Up Before You Go Go,” Zoolander
Though I hate this Wham song, it was a perfect choice for Ben Stiller’s 2001 fashion comedy, Zoolander. In the film’s best scene, Stiller’s dimwitted supermodel character parties briefly and tragicomically with his dapper colleagues. What a blast.
The thing I found out about Don't You Forget About Me, apart from it not being an original Simple Minds song, and there's even a version of it floating around on the internet performed by Billy Idol; but it was also nearly used at the end of Pretty in Pink. When they're all dancing at the prom at the end of the film they're in fact dancing to that song which they then overdubbed in the films final edit with an OMD song.
Some of my all time faves in this collection ...big thank you!