Posting’s been light thanks to the dynamic duo of remodeling and depression. I’ve been trying to channel my despair over the vicissitudes of the restaurant industry by learning code. It’s not going well. I have found someone to help where I’m sorely lacking in the sweet webby skills. Wish Chuck could be so lucky. (Actually, nothing wrong with my man’s skillz, yo.)
Go read this week’s roundtable question over at MamaPop, asking what you’d want on the soundtrack of your biopic. Maybe not your literal biopic, but a more dramatized, glossy version, like “Purple Rain” or an LMN movie. The question was, what songs would you want played over the opening and closing credits of a movie of your life, and pick a bonus song for the soundtrack, too. I typed out a lengthy and thoughtful response to the query, only to have it @#%&ing disappear, so I’m doing it here, where I have control of the “Save Draft” button.
Closing credits are easy – “Bittersweet Symphony” by the Verve. It’s imperative to give the audience something that sticks with them, and this loopy, hypnotic tune will resonate for hours, even days. It has just the right defiantly triumphant tone that I’m certain the story of my life would inspire.
In that climactic moment when I decide to break free and I’m driving down a desert highway, leaving all that has caused me pain and shame in my rearview mirror, will be Tom Petty’s “Running Down a Dream.” During the last minute and a half of the song, the movie flashes back to the sequence of what brought me to this new place of empowerment – clutching the receiver of a phone as I slide down the wall and collapse in a sobbing heap; sitting on the edge of a bed covered in a nappy chenille bedspread, holding a framed photograph and silently begging, “WHY? WHY??”; tearing through the apartment, stuffing clothes into an old rucksack like Julia Roberts has at the end of “Pretty Woman”; leaving an envelope with his name handwritten on it on his nightstand. And the earlier scene where my love interest realizes he can’t contain my free spirit will be underscored by David Coverdale plaintively wailing “Is This Love?” of course.
For the opening credits, I think the Carl Carlton version of “Everlasting Love” will do nicely. It’s ebullient and optimistic, and just a wee bit worshipful, which will be fitting, since the movie’s all about me. As a clever refrain, the U2 version will have to appear somewhere, too.
Seriously, I recently saw the mediocre Tina Fey-Amy Poehler movie “Baby Mama” and was knocked out by the use of “Be My Baby” over the end credits. I finally understood why music writers and Brian Wilson have called it the greatest pop record ever made. Wall of Sound?
No, Wall of Hair.
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Charlotte 07.11.09 at 4:59 pm
Interesting idea.
All I know is that my whole life, I’ve wanted “Take the Long Way Home” by Supertramp as the opening song in the film about me.
I totally get the “Bittersweet Symphony.” Love that.
Charlotte´s last blog ..Yuck!