The Movie Soundtrack to Our Lives
Winter, 2006
Dave Housley
The Movie Soundtrack to Our Lives will be warm, funny, raucous, and soulful. Mostly, however, like the relationship that spawned the movie that required the soundtrack, it will be bittersweet. The Movie Soundtrack to Our Lives will feature new artists (Beth Orton, Morcheeba), old favorites (Bob Dylan, Cannonball Adderley), and more than a few surprises (like I'm going to list those out here, in the first paragraph). It will be like a mixtape from a really cool friend. It will not, in fact, be unlike the mixtapes I once made for you.
Which I would like back.
The Movie Soundtrack to Our Lives will probably open with "Tear Stained Eye" by Son Volt. The first scene of the movie will be a riff on the "Stayin' Alive" opening in Saturday Night Fever, which I don't think you've ever even seen because you haven't seen any of the Essential movies, like Cool Hand Luke or Office Space. And don't misinterpret that, in the way you know you do, either, into me saying that Saturday Night Fever is somehow Essential because it’s not Essential in the way True Romance or Harold and Maude might be considered Essential. It is, however, Seminal, in that it’s a movie almost everybody has seen and from which we take a lot of our modern movie touchpoints. I can see you now, sitting in Jimmy’s Brother’s basement, you and Jimmy’s Brother laughing about me considering Saturday Night Fever Essential when it is really Seminal and the difference is totally lost on the both of you.
So the opening is a steadycam shot, focused on my black Chuck Taylors, moving slow down the broken sidewalks of our shitty hometown. It will pan across to Jimmy’s workboots, moving alongside, with his trademark little limp. And then your Docs come into the frame. Slow pan up your long legs, the Army surplus cutoffs, CBGB t-shirt that I later learned you bought at Target (but, like me, for the opening sequence, at least, the audience will be fooled), and then the face with your little sunburned, upturned nose, your blue eyes with that look like they’re telling a joke that I guess I know now I’ll never, ever get, and the brown hair with the little streaks of blonde. All the while, Jay Farrar singing with that sugary rough alt country voice, “I would meet you anywhere the western sun meets the air…”
The Movie Soundtrack to Our Lives is going to be one motherfucker of a tearjerker.
From the intro, there will be a slow build-up. A progression of mellow to sunny to boisterous songs that will follow the movie version of me and you through the courtship phase, which I guess you’d also call the Month of July, seeing as how it’s now August and Jimmy’s Fucking Brother is probably nuzzling himself up to you right now, tracing your freckles with his hairy fingers, manhandling your buttonflys.
Some songs I’m thinking about for this part of the movie: “Concrete Sky” by Beth Orton, “Lotta Love” by Neil Young, “The Sea” by Morcheeba, some old Elvis Costello.
Now that I think about it, this part will only be like two songs, since we only had maybe four real dates and you spent most of one throwing up into the bed of my truck while I held your silky hair and watched the cars come in and out of the high school parking lot. And there was the one where we went to the movies and right after you said you had cramps and had to get home, with that look on your face like Women Problems and me with no counter to that move.
Still, there’ll be that one scene where it all comes together, where we’re driving around and the moon is bouncing off the alfalfa and you’re smiling and calm and not drunk or even smoking anything. That will be a nice part of the movie, the part that people remember, that makes them think about their own lives and loves, maybe reach across the theater seat with that I Love You look I see other people making at each other. For that part it’ll be something slow and rolling, maybe “It Makes No Difference” by the Band, if the irony of that wouldn’t be too heavy-handed.
But you never did notice irony very much anyway, or else I don’t think you’d be with Jimmy’s Brother right now and I wouldn’t have to even be creating the Movie Soundtrack of Our Lives.
I’m going to be watching eBay, and if you and Jimmy’s Brother try to sell those mixtapes, I’m going to be all over it.
The party scene out at Jimmy’s parent’s cabin will be the big shift in the movie, from the courtship/Month of July lead-in to the big First Time and what I know now to be the Beginning of the End. The Jimmy’s Parents Cabin Scene will be kind of like that “Louie Louie” scene from Animal House, all of us singing along, arms around each other, sopping drunk and loving life. Jimmy’s Brother will be like a shadowy presence in that scene, like Neidermyer sneaking around the background while you and me and Jimmy sing at the table like grown-ups and brothers in arms.
We’ll probably use Dylan’s “Quinn the Eskimo” for that scene, even though I know and I know you know it was really “Sister Christian” by Night Ranger.
You’d probably like “Sister Christian” better than “Quinn the Eskimo,” anyway. Sometimes I don’t know what I saw in you in the first place.
For that night, the First Time scene of Mellow Lovemaking on Jimmy Parent’s Cabin’s Porch, I’m thinking we stick with Dylan and use “Tonight I’m Staying Here with You.” I know what you’re thinking – too much Dylan, too fast a song for the scene. But as usual I’m thinking like three steps ahead of you, like Pele, but with music, and we’ll probably get Ryan Adams to Wonderwall it, same lyrics, but with a shitload of echo, just his own guitar and maybe a little organ in the background, slowed down and mournful. Are you understanding the irony that version will impart to the scene?
But like I said, you and irony never really connected, did you?
I’ll probably include something from that band Soundtrack of Our Lives, just because a band called Soundtrack of Our Lives in the Movie Soundtrack to Our Lives is just a total postmodern mind-fuck and I think it might make your little head explode just to see that in the song listing because you never did let me finish explaining what postmodern meant anyway, that night we watched Pulp Fiction and I wanted to concentrate on the dialogue and all you wanted to do was suck down as much peach schnapps as you possibly could.
For the record, just so you know, peach schnapps is not cool. I can tell you that now. If you go off to college and start telling people you drink peach schnapps, the jig is going to be up real fast.
But all of this is really leading up to the climax. The part where you break up with me, where you get all distant and stop returning calls and I can practically smell Jimmy’s Brother’s fucking scent on you, is going to be the real centerpiece of the movie.
“Telling detail” is what the critics will say. “A painfully accurate portrait of fading love.”
“What a freakin’ bitch.”
You thought that Garden State soundtrack was all mellow and sadsack? Sit back and listen. That “Scrubs” goofball has nothing on me. I’m talking about something from “Kind of Blue. ” Some Chet Baker. Iron and Wine, who are like a new, hip version of that Nick Drake from the Volkswagon commercial. “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” by Cannonball Adderley. Who is Cannonball Adderley, you might ask? Remember when that song came on the truck stereo and I said “that’s the song I want them to play at my funeral” and you kind of laughed until you realized I was serious and so was Cannonball Adderley and then we listened to it like ten times in a row outside the mall until you said you had to pee and I kind of suspected all along that you were just faking to ruin the moment and because Jimmy’s Brother worked at Sbarros? Remember that?
You wouldn’t.
And maybe that’s the whole point of the Movie Soundtrack to Our Lives – to set the record straight, not just for me but for you, for Jimmy’s Brother, everybody. Maybe the point is that even though a little shit like Jimmy’s Brother can tear us apart, music can still bring people together. The right people. The right music. Together.
So listen up. Think about it. You might learn something. Maybe we all will.
They make those sequels all the time.
Dave Housley
The Movie Soundtrack to Our Lives will be warm, funny, raucous, and soulful. Mostly, however, like the relationship that spawned the movie that required the soundtrack, it will be bittersweet. The Movie Soundtrack to Our Lives will feature new artists (Beth Orton, Morcheeba), old favorites (Bob Dylan, Cannonball Adderley), and more than a few surprises (like I'm going to list those out here, in the first paragraph). It will be like a mixtape from a really cool friend. It will not, in fact, be unlike the mixtapes I once made for you.
Which I would like back.
The Movie Soundtrack to Our Lives will probably open with "Tear Stained Eye" by Son Volt. The first scene of the movie will be a riff on the "Stayin' Alive" opening in Saturday Night Fever, which I don't think you've ever even seen because you haven't seen any of the Essential movies, like Cool Hand Luke or Office Space. And don't misinterpret that, in the way you know you do, either, into me saying that Saturday Night Fever is somehow Essential because it’s not Essential in the way True Romance or Harold and Maude might be considered Essential. It is, however, Seminal, in that it’s a movie almost everybody has seen and from which we take a lot of our modern movie touchpoints. I can see you now, sitting in Jimmy’s Brother’s basement, you and Jimmy’s Brother laughing about me considering Saturday Night Fever Essential when it is really Seminal and the difference is totally lost on the both of you.
So the opening is a steadycam shot, focused on my black Chuck Taylors, moving slow down the broken sidewalks of our shitty hometown. It will pan across to Jimmy’s workboots, moving alongside, with his trademark little limp. And then your Docs come into the frame. Slow pan up your long legs, the Army surplus cutoffs, CBGB t-shirt that I later learned you bought at Target (but, like me, for the opening sequence, at least, the audience will be fooled), and then the face with your little sunburned, upturned nose, your blue eyes with that look like they’re telling a joke that I guess I know now I’ll never, ever get, and the brown hair with the little streaks of blonde. All the while, Jay Farrar singing with that sugary rough alt country voice, “I would meet you anywhere the western sun meets the air…”
The Movie Soundtrack to Our Lives is going to be one motherfucker of a tearjerker.
From the intro, there will be a slow build-up. A progression of mellow to sunny to boisterous songs that will follow the movie version of me and you through the courtship phase, which I guess you’d also call the Month of July, seeing as how it’s now August and Jimmy’s Fucking Brother is probably nuzzling himself up to you right now, tracing your freckles with his hairy fingers, manhandling your buttonflys.
Some songs I’m thinking about for this part of the movie: “Concrete Sky” by Beth Orton, “Lotta Love” by Neil Young, “The Sea” by Morcheeba, some old Elvis Costello.
Now that I think about it, this part will only be like two songs, since we only had maybe four real dates and you spent most of one throwing up into the bed of my truck while I held your silky hair and watched the cars come in and out of the high school parking lot. And there was the one where we went to the movies and right after you said you had cramps and had to get home, with that look on your face like Women Problems and me with no counter to that move.
Still, there’ll be that one scene where it all comes together, where we’re driving around and the moon is bouncing off the alfalfa and you’re smiling and calm and not drunk or even smoking anything. That will be a nice part of the movie, the part that people remember, that makes them think about their own lives and loves, maybe reach across the theater seat with that I Love You look I see other people making at each other. For that part it’ll be something slow and rolling, maybe “It Makes No Difference” by the Band, if the irony of that wouldn’t be too heavy-handed.
But you never did notice irony very much anyway, or else I don’t think you’d be with Jimmy’s Brother right now and I wouldn’t have to even be creating the Movie Soundtrack of Our Lives.
I’m going to be watching eBay, and if you and Jimmy’s Brother try to sell those mixtapes, I’m going to be all over it.
The party scene out at Jimmy’s parent’s cabin will be the big shift in the movie, from the courtship/Month of July lead-in to the big First Time and what I know now to be the Beginning of the End. The Jimmy’s Parents Cabin Scene will be kind of like that “Louie Louie” scene from Animal House, all of us singing along, arms around each other, sopping drunk and loving life. Jimmy’s Brother will be like a shadowy presence in that scene, like Neidermyer sneaking around the background while you and me and Jimmy sing at the table like grown-ups and brothers in arms.
We’ll probably use Dylan’s “Quinn the Eskimo” for that scene, even though I know and I know you know it was really “Sister Christian” by Night Ranger.
You’d probably like “Sister Christian” better than “Quinn the Eskimo,” anyway. Sometimes I don’t know what I saw in you in the first place.
For that night, the First Time scene of Mellow Lovemaking on Jimmy Parent’s Cabin’s Porch, I’m thinking we stick with Dylan and use “Tonight I’m Staying Here with You.” I know what you’re thinking – too much Dylan, too fast a song for the scene. But as usual I’m thinking like three steps ahead of you, like Pele, but with music, and we’ll probably get Ryan Adams to Wonderwall it, same lyrics, but with a shitload of echo, just his own guitar and maybe a little organ in the background, slowed down and mournful. Are you understanding the irony that version will impart to the scene?
But like I said, you and irony never really connected, did you?
I’ll probably include something from that band Soundtrack of Our Lives, just because a band called Soundtrack of Our Lives in the Movie Soundtrack to Our Lives is just a total postmodern mind-fuck and I think it might make your little head explode just to see that in the song listing because you never did let me finish explaining what postmodern meant anyway, that night we watched Pulp Fiction and I wanted to concentrate on the dialogue and all you wanted to do was suck down as much peach schnapps as you possibly could.
For the record, just so you know, peach schnapps is not cool. I can tell you that now. If you go off to college and start telling people you drink peach schnapps, the jig is going to be up real fast.
But all of this is really leading up to the climax. The part where you break up with me, where you get all distant and stop returning calls and I can practically smell Jimmy’s Brother’s fucking scent on you, is going to be the real centerpiece of the movie.
“Telling detail” is what the critics will say. “A painfully accurate portrait of fading love.”
“What a freakin’ bitch.”
You thought that Garden State soundtrack was all mellow and sadsack? Sit back and listen. That “Scrubs” goofball has nothing on me. I’m talking about something from “Kind of Blue. ” Some Chet Baker. Iron and Wine, who are like a new, hip version of that Nick Drake from the Volkswagon commercial. “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” by Cannonball Adderley. Who is Cannonball Adderley, you might ask? Remember when that song came on the truck stereo and I said “that’s the song I want them to play at my funeral” and you kind of laughed until you realized I was serious and so was Cannonball Adderley and then we listened to it like ten times in a row outside the mall until you said you had to pee and I kind of suspected all along that you were just faking to ruin the moment and because Jimmy’s Brother worked at Sbarros? Remember that?
You wouldn’t.
And maybe that’s the whole point of the Movie Soundtrack to Our Lives – to set the record straight, not just for me but for you, for Jimmy’s Brother, everybody. Maybe the point is that even though a little shit like Jimmy’s Brother can tear us apart, music can still bring people together. The right people. The right music. Together.
So listen up. Think about it. You might learn something. Maybe we all will.
They make those sequels all the time.