Saturday, June 10, 2006

Hornswoggler! The Movie Soundtrack

If my life were a movie -- and I know that it is not -- but if my life were a movie, this would be its soundtrack (according to the meme I just picked up from Keith R.A. DeCandido):
  • Opening credit: "Baby Gonna Leave Me" by Tom Waits
    Well, that's suitably ominous, and it starts quietly enough to work.
  • Waking up: "Allegory" by Murray Attaway
    Again, it starts quietly and almost dreamlike, so it's plausible.
  • Average day: "Dona Nobis Pacem" by Tanya Donelly
    A capella chanting in Latin; whose average day is that?
  • First date: "Walls (No. 3)" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
    It works.
  • Falling in love: "Hard on Me" by Richard Thompson
    Pardon me while I snicker. This is completely random, though.
  • Fight scene: "Amity Gardens" by Fountains of Wayne
    It could work, maybe, as a wistful montage of scenes showing the broken-up people going about their separate sad lives afterward. It wouldn't go with a more active kind of fight.
  • Breaking up: "At the River's Edge" by New Colony Six
    A random old Sixties thing from Nuggets, which I don't recognize at all. But the lyrics work as a break-up song.
  • Getting back together: "In My Place" by Coldplay
    It's certainly sappy enough.
  • Life's Okay: "Ugly Truth Rock" by Matthew Sweet
    That seems to fit my personality, I suppose.
  • Mental Breakdown: "Lucifer Sam" by Pink Floyd
    A song about a cat, by Syd Barrett. Good enough.
  • Driving: "Pharoah (live)" by Richard Thompson
    Too slow and quiet to work that way.
  • Flashback: "I Just Don't Know What to Do With Myself (live)" by Elvis Costello and Steve Nieve
    If it's a very sad, depressing flashback, sure.
What kind of movie is this? No Ending Credits, no Getting Everything Done Very Quickly Montage, no I Am Now Depressed Montage, no Montages at all. And the order of events is very weird, too. Plus there seems to be lurking grammatical trouble. This will just not do.

My own version (and, this one, I'm going to cheat slightly and use a file of my four- and five-star songs; but there still are 3029 of them), with some new themes for songs and a new, more logical order for the plot, is below. I chose all of the themes and put them in this order before I ran the random songs.

  • Opening Credits: "Last Cigarette" by Dramarama
    I'd go see a movie that started with that song.
  • Introducing the Protagonist: "That's All, Amen, Close the Door" by Richard Thompson
    One would think a song with that title should be somewhat later in the movie.
  • Meet Cute: "Get It On (Bang a Gong)" by Power Station
    Hey, if I can't have a one-night stand in my own movie, I might as well give up, right? But I don't think "cute" is quite the appropriate word here.
  • Separated by Fate: "Where the Hell Is Bill?" by Camper Van Beethoven
    I'm laughing while typing this, and, honestly, really, this was the next random song.
  • Unhappy Montage: "When It Rains It Snows" by They Might Be Giants
    A quietly demented polka of quirky sadness. This movie is not going for pathos.
  • Reunited/Happy Montage: "Destroyer" by the Kinks
    Maybe this is as happy as I get...
  • The Big Break: "Message in a Bottle (live)" by the Police
    This version would actually be good over an action scene; maybe someone's being kidnapped?
  • Flashback: "Space Travel Is Boring" by Modest Mouse
    As we remember Commander Bill's tour of duty in the Astro Defense Forces...
  • "I Can Fix This!": "Human Behavior" by Bjork
    This is a creepy song that could work over a montage of unsettling stuff. But I don't think the audience is rooting for this relationship to succeed by this point.
  • Fight Scene and/or Car Chase: "Koka Kola" by the Clash
    Not a very long fight and/or chase, and one that loses energy about half-way through. Hey, I'm tired from all that stuff I did during "Human Behavior."
  • Clinch, Fades into End Credits: "Useless Stuff" by Cracker
    It actually could work, assuming the movie could survive a song that starts "I'm so f*cking sick, I'm the king of the world."

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