Have you noticed that everything is intertwined, at least in the arts category? I'll be sitting down to watch a movie on Netflix and for the first five minutes there will be nothing but music and lyrics. No dialogue at all. Does the director do this to save time and energy inventing dialogue? Because if that's the case, he's expecting too much from his audience. I'll be munching on kettle corn when I spot the closed captioned words of lyrics set to music. Sometimes it's a recognizable tune, but more often, it's some country western ballad that I never heard of. (I'm convinced that a lot of country west tunes are made up on the spot by cowboy-type performers because after they run out of their repertoire, they're stuck for material. So they plunk a few chords on their guitar and say, hey, that sounds pretty discordant. I'll mumble words and wowee, I've got a new song. Maybe I'll even record it.) In fact the whole movie may be based on a country western song like the one about Billy Jo who did something naughty and then threw something off the bridge. Remember that one? I don't recall the actress who played Billy Jo, but it easily could have been Sissy Spacek, who starred in "Coal Miner's Daughter" the story of Loretta Lynn.
I love the movies totally inspired by songs. I mean no one even came up with an original idea. They stole the plot, the characters, and whatever else they could from a blockbuster hit of a song, maybe something from two decades before that hit Number One on the charts and stayed at the top for umpteen weeks. Take the Janis Joplin song "At Seventeen." There are close to a million movies (just a little exaggeration to keep you awake) that have this theme at its core. "The Breakfast Club" is one of those. In it you have six or so kids in detention for adolescent crimes like picking their pimples or passing dirty notes in class. These are all what the literary experts would call "coming of age" movies. I call them movies about the torture and boredom of those teenage years when you either wished you could hibernate until you were about 21 or contemplated cutting school just to see if anyone would notice.
Did you know that the Beatles song "The Fool on the Hill" inspired a remake of Psycho? It's true. People were humming the lyrics for weeks before they noticed that the fool on the hill was medical speak for a psycho in a motel. This was part of the era when nutsy people did not appear on TV talk shows or even buy stamps at the post office. They were pretty well shuttered. If you had an emotional disability, you bit the bullet, and there were a lot of bullets to bite--your parents just wanted you to "get into a better mood," and your teachers wrote up a lot of mysterious adjectives in your permanent file. Mental disorders were taboo insofar as community leaders and social bigwhigs were concerned. They were supposed to disappear gracefully into the nanosphere where they belonged, right next to pedophiles, communists, and rabid bats. In short, mental problems did not exist, so no one dared to flaunt their emotional deviance. However some composers coded it into songs. And a lot of those songs became films. Remember the pop hit by Paul Simon, "Still Crazy After All These Years"? Sure you do. Well, that was an autobiographical account of Simon's love life. He always seemed to pick the weird ones like Carrie Fisher. Well, that song inspired "Girl Interrupted," which not too subtly conveyed the message that all is not right with the world when kids end up in mental hospitals.
One website https://www.ranker.com/list/songs-about-being-crazy/ranker-music?ref=collections&l=2090537&collectionId=1827 lists dozens of songs about going crazy. No wonder there are so many films about people committing suicide or violent crimes because they're nutso. One website http://www.imdb.com/list/ls055910301/ lists 250 films in which disturbed, schizophrenic, and psychotic women play active roles. I'm sure there's a comparable website for guys, so don't get too smug out there, men. This was the age of insanity (in the '90s) in which it was cool to be crazy. Lots of those nuts outed themselves on reality or talk shows, declaring themselves to be compulsive door checkers, hoarders, or just wannabe serial murderers. Please note that I may use disparaging terms to identify those with mental challenges, but I use those terms in the most loving and charitable way possible.
So like I said the arts are coming together. Film imitates song which imitates true life, and it's all done with five-star actors, million-dollar budgets and deep tell-all conversations with psychiatrists and patients. Writers don't have to come up with screenplays. All they do is get themselves committed to a mental health facility for a few weeks and take copious notes especially at group sessions.
I'm waiting for the film to come out on yours truly. It should be a blockbuster since it's based on the song "When You're Strange" by the Doors. Of course the movie could go by the same name, but I'd like to suggest a few new titles. How about "Blogging to the Crazy Beat" or "I Wish I Were in the Land of Normal." Sound crazy enough? Can't wait until the movie comes out. Maybe Darren Arenofsky---oops Darren Aronofsky--will do the honors.
I love the movies totally inspired by songs. I mean no one even came up with an original idea. They stole the plot, the characters, and whatever else they could from a blockbuster hit of a song, maybe something from two decades before that hit Number One on the charts and stayed at the top for umpteen weeks. Take the Janis Joplin song "At Seventeen." There are close to a million movies (just a little exaggeration to keep you awake) that have this theme at its core. "The Breakfast Club" is one of those. In it you have six or so kids in detention for adolescent crimes like picking their pimples or passing dirty notes in class. These are all what the literary experts would call "coming of age" movies. I call them movies about the torture and boredom of those teenage years when you either wished you could hibernate until you were about 21 or contemplated cutting school just to see if anyone would notice.
Did you know that the Beatles song "The Fool on the Hill" inspired a remake of Psycho? It's true. People were humming the lyrics for weeks before they noticed that the fool on the hill was medical speak for a psycho in a motel. This was part of the era when nutsy people did not appear on TV talk shows or even buy stamps at the post office. They were pretty well shuttered. If you had an emotional disability, you bit the bullet, and there were a lot of bullets to bite--your parents just wanted you to "get into a better mood," and your teachers wrote up a lot of mysterious adjectives in your permanent file. Mental disorders were taboo insofar as community leaders and social bigwhigs were concerned. They were supposed to disappear gracefully into the nanosphere where they belonged, right next to pedophiles, communists, and rabid bats. In short, mental problems did not exist, so no one dared to flaunt their emotional deviance. However some composers coded it into songs. And a lot of those songs became films. Remember the pop hit by Paul Simon, "Still Crazy After All These Years"? Sure you do. Well, that was an autobiographical account of Simon's love life. He always seemed to pick the weird ones like Carrie Fisher. Well, that song inspired "Girl Interrupted," which not too subtly conveyed the message that all is not right with the world when kids end up in mental hospitals.
One website https://www.ranker.com/list/songs-about-being-crazy/ranker-music?ref=collections&l=2090537&collectionId=1827 lists dozens of songs about going crazy. No wonder there are so many films about people committing suicide or violent crimes because they're nutso. One website http://www.imdb.com/list/ls055910301/ lists 250 films in which disturbed, schizophrenic, and psychotic women play active roles. I'm sure there's a comparable website for guys, so don't get too smug out there, men. This was the age of insanity (in the '90s) in which it was cool to be crazy. Lots of those nuts outed themselves on reality or talk shows, declaring themselves to be compulsive door checkers, hoarders, or just wannabe serial murderers. Please note that I may use disparaging terms to identify those with mental challenges, but I use those terms in the most loving and charitable way possible.
So like I said the arts are coming together. Film imitates song which imitates true life, and it's all done with five-star actors, million-dollar budgets and deep tell-all conversations with psychiatrists and patients. Writers don't have to come up with screenplays. All they do is get themselves committed to a mental health facility for a few weeks and take copious notes especially at group sessions.
I'm waiting for the film to come out on yours truly. It should be a blockbuster since it's based on the song "When You're Strange" by the Doors. Of course the movie could go by the same name, but I'd like to suggest a few new titles. How about "Blogging to the Crazy Beat" or "I Wish I Were in the Land of Normal." Sound crazy enough? Can't wait until the movie comes out. Maybe Darren Arenofsky---oops Darren Aronofsky--will do the honors.
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