Is there anything better than that moment in a movie when the main character lets down their guard, sings from their heart, and transforms through a song?
No, there isn’t. The Magical Transforming Song Moment (MTSM) combines music, story-telling, and visuals into one powerful moment. The MTSM has it all.
You know it’s a good MTSM when the first few notes settle your mind, the first verse slows your breathing and opens your mouth slightly, and 2nd chorus sends a shiver up your back as you witness - at that very moment - the character transforming. That’s a good one.
And here are two such scenes to enjoy…
Stranger Than Fiction Harold Crick is an IRS employee who discovers his life only when he is told that he is going to die. Although the plot is cliche, the premise to achieve it - hearing someone narrate your life — is novel. The turning point for Harold discovering ‘life’ comes in a MTSM:
About a Boy
Will is a playboy who doesn’t care about anyone else … until Marcus stumbles into his life and complicates things. Will rescues Marcus from making a fool of himself at a school assembly during a great MTSM.
What makes these MTSM work? The song and cinematography are obviously critical … but I think it’s the story-telling aspect that really makes ‘em work. And with regard to the storytelling: lots of things matter, but the never-gonna-happen dramatic foreshadowing is critical:
About a Boy explicitly narrates that Will never thought he’d be singing with his eyes closed … but there are many more: Will says he keeps the guitars around to “just look cool” (not to play) and there’s another scene where he just mumbles through a christmas song with Marcus’s family. All of these mis-directions make the MSTM what it is.
Stranger Than Fiction foreshadows Will’s coming MTSM with his trip to the guitar store. What’s slightly more subtle is that when Will chooses a guitar to represent himself at the guitar store, he purposefully skips past the acoustic guitars because they “are for a guys who wear their heart on their sleeve” (that’s paraphrased as I don’t feel like going back to see the particular scene). And when Will sings for his love, what guitar does he use? Of course.
Building up a character so that an MTSM is the furthest thing expected from the character is what makes it wonderful.
As a question to readers: is their foreshadowing in your own life-story indicating you’ll ever perform a MTSM?
In honor of the Fall Out Boy concert later this week — a concert where I will be the oldest person in attendance — I decided to post a true“kid’s song” today, to show these teeny-boppers the difference.
What Kind of Cat Are You is a catchy little tune by Billy Jonas. Like Peanuts, The Muppets, and all Nintendo DS games, the subtleties can really only be appreciated by adults.
If you’re asking yourself, “where in world did you find this song?”, you’d be wrong if you guessed I took my nephew’s/niece’s iPod. (They don’t even have iPods, yet.) The answer to your query is that I heard this song a couple months ago on WERS 88.9, a Boston radio station at Emerson College. The song was played during The Playground, a program devoted to kids songs.
Ah, Pearl Jam. I’ve been watching their new Immagine in Cornice DVD, listening to the new Into the Wild soundtrack by Eddie Vedder, and recently stumbled across an unreleased track. My two initial thoughts:
First: “Wow.”
Second: like most of Pearl Jam’s more recent efforts, the quality varies a bit. I found myself wanting to skip some of the tracks on the DVD and soundtrack … and was captivated by others. But don’t forget what I said first: those “wow” parts are mesmerizingly gorgeous. Here’s a brief run-down of the three new PJ items…
Immagine in Cornice: This is DVD documenting Pearl Jam’s 2006 tour of Italy. Much like their previous tour-DVD, Touring Band, the concert footage is nicely shot from on and just-off stage (plus a few neat angles), providing a viewpoint of the concert far better than any I’ve ever had actually attending a concert. Anyway, the quick take:
“Some fast and some quiet.” That’s Eddie’s response to an unbeknowing ‘director of local music school’ in Pistoia who asks Eddie what Pearl Jam’s “repertoire” is. My big criticism: the fast songs simply don’t play very well on a DVD. I found myself zoning out whenever PJ started jumping around and solo-ing. Seeing the band up close and playing hard is neat … but it just doesn’t feel that rocking.
The softer songs are the ones that actually ‘rock.’ And by rock, I mean ‘resonate’. Hearing the Italian crowd sing along to Better Man was thrilling. Come Back, a new song off Pearl Jam’s last 2006 self-titled album, was breathtaking. And Eddie’s solo rendition of Tom Wait’s Picture in a Frame near the end was beautiful. Thrilling, breathtaking, and beautiful … I’ve run out of adjectives … but I’ve also run out of slower songs to praise.
The absolutely best part of the DVD are the homemovie style clips/interviews. There’s an interview with Mike about his tattoos, a nice chat about how setlists and encores are decided, and some fun footage of Jeff skateboarding. Oh, and for the Eddie stalkers there’s some cute footage of Eddie chatting with his daughter .. and, well I could go on. These parts are priceless … or more specifically, the cost of the DVD.
further explanation: go check out Come Back on youtube. And you can buy it here.
Into the Wild: Eddie Vedder wrote an entirely original album for the soundtrack to the movie Into the Wild. The movie is about the true story of a 21-year-old American who graduates from college and then leaves ’society’ to take on nature, eventually dying in the Alaskan wild.
Jon Krakauer, the original writer of the Into the Wild book said that he identified with the protagonist from his own similar youthful experience: ”I thought if I picked a challenge that was hard enough and succeeded, everything thereafter would be alright. It makes no sense, but I was convinced of this. And it was not that I would get rich, it was just in some spiritual sense that you would feel so good after doing something this hard.” (go to 7:35 in this video to see the quote in context.)
If you know Eddie Vedder’s music, you can imagine how much he would relate to that sentiment. In Eddie’s own words: ”As soon as I was let in … to the story and the book and the film … which all happend in a matter of days, I was just inside it. I don’t even know … what I saw, because I was in it, looking out, I think.” Eddie says he did the album in 2 or 3 weeks and doesn’t “really remember much of what took place” while he was making the album. During that time he was just “waking up, and having done the work from someplace that I’m not really sure where it was, and just … [I was] getting out of the way.” (Go to 1:25 in this video to see Eddie.)
So given Eddie’s passionate, trancelike creation, how is the actual album? Initially unlistenable, later brilliant.
Into the Wild is not just a bunch of Pearl Jam songs written by Eddie Vedder. There are less backing arrangements than traditional Pearl Jam. The songs are all written in the first-person (Eddie is supposed to be the “internal voice” according to director Sean Penn) and while the lyrics maintain some elusiveness, they are more direct than standard Pearl Jam fare. Also, almost all of the songs are shorter than regular Pearl Jam songs, at just two and a half minutes or less.
So for fans that usually find they most-like the Pearl Jam songs written by Eddie with minimal instrumentation (like, cough, myself. See Come Back.), what could be wrong with this album? Well, some songs simply seem to be intentionally discordant: sort of off-tempo, off-melody, off-key. For example, the second track, No Ceiling, just plods along, the music unmatched to the lyrics, and the lyrics just tossed out without almost any feeling. Completely forgettable.
Unfortunately, many of the songs have the bad quality of No Ceiling … but thankfully only briefly. Setting Forth starts melodically, hits a verse that Eddie’s thrashes through, then segues into the passionate chorus of ‘keep setting forth in the universe.’ Still, the song varies between terrible and beautiful several times in just 1:37. That’s tough.
By far the best songs of the album are two of the quieter songs, Rise and Guaranteed. Rise,which is just Eddie and his ukulele, infectiously rises (pun intended) to become what I can only paradoxically describe a ’sweeping little song.’ Guaranteed, meanwhile is a fun lyrical gem, starting with ”On bended knee is no way to be” and continuing with many more nicely rhyming turns of phrase.
[interesting sidenote: Hard Sun, one of the more promoted songs on the album, is actually a cover. The original, by Gordon Peterson is pretty much the same … including the backup singers. And speaking of backup singers: if Eddie is supposed to be the internal voice of the protagonist, who are the backup singers supposed to be in the film? I’ll let the discrepancy go since the chorus builds so nicely in Hard Sun.]
I’m Still Here: I recently stumbled on this still unreleased and untitled track. Fans call it I’m Still Here. It was supposedly leaked when Lost Dogs came out in 2003, although the song wasn’t actually on the album. There is very little background to the song … but some rumors put it as being an unreleased track from Pearl Jam’s 1992 debut album Ten.
The song floored me, and it’s done something to everyone I know who has listened to it. I can’t implore you enough to listen to it, so I’ve embedded a fan-made video right here. Put down what you’re doing and spend a couple minutes alone with this song.
Is there anything better than that moment in a movie when the main character lets down their guard, sings from their heart, and transforms through a song?
Immagine 