Writing Life

Julie has long been a fan of musical sequences contained in nonmusical films. Don’t get me wrong, she loves musicals also. But she is always delighted when, for a moment or so, a nonmusical film bursts into song. She loves it when, in 27 Dresses, Katherine Heigl and James Marsden climb up onto a bar in a saloon in upstate New York and sing along with the Elton John song that is blasting from the jukebox (Benny and the Jets). She loves the brief fantasy sequence in 500 Days of Summer during which Joseph Gordon-Levitt, accompanied by a chorus of real-life musical performers as well as an animated bluebird, sings and dances to Hall and Oates’ You Make My Dreams Come True. She loves it when, in 10 Things I Hate About You, Heath Ledger grabs a microphone and struts through the grandstands of a Seattle high-school stadium singing Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You to Julia Stiles as she practices soccer on the field. She loves it when, in 13 Going On 30, Jennifer Garner strides out onto a dance floor and leads a group of hip thirty-something New Yorkers as they resurrect the Zombie Shuffle from Michael Jackson’s video Thriller while the song plays over the soundtrack. She loves it when, in 50 First Dates, Henry Roth (played by Adam Sandler) picks up a ukulele and sings a song of his own composition to Lucy Whitmore (Drew Barrymore) called Forgetful Lucy (Barrymore’s character suffers from short-term memory-loss syndrome). She loves the fantasy sequence at the end of The 40-Year-Old Virgin in which Steve Carell, Seth Rogan, Paul Rudd, and the rest of the cast sing and dance to The Fifth Dimension’s The Age of Aquarius.

Lest you think that musical numbers appear only in nonmusical films that contain numbers in their titles, here are a few more of Julie’s favorites. The scene in Must Love Dogs in which Diane Lane and her two screen siblings (played by Elizabeth Perkins and Ali Hillis) sing the theme song to The Partridge Family TV show, Come On, Get Happy. The scene in Definitely, Maybe in which Rachel Weisz sings I’ve Got A Crush On You to Ryan Reynolds. The scene in Practical Magic in which Nicole Kidman, Sandra Bullock, Dianne Wiest, and Stockard Channing make midnight margaritas and dance to Harry Nilsson’s Coconut. The scene in Dan In Real Life in which Dane Cook and Steve Carell sing Pete Townsend’s Let My Love Open The Door. The scene in Elf in which Zooey Deschanel’s character sings Baby It’s Cold Outside while taking a shower in a department store bathroom (what’s cute about the scene is that Deschanel doesn’t realize she’s singing a duet with an unseen Will Farrell, who’s sitting right outside the shower). The scene in Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion in which Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow dance to Cyndi Lauper’s Time After Time with the same man (Alan Cummings) at the same time. The scene in Ferris Beuller’s Day Off in which Matthew Broderick dances and lip-syncs to the Beatles’ version of Twist and Shout. Ferris Beuller is a largely unacknowledged rip-off of 1983’s Risky Business, which also featured a memorable musical sequence, this one performed by Tom Cruise, who lip-syncs Bob Seger’s Old Time Rock And Roll while dancing around his living room in his underwear. And speaking of Matthew Broderick (as we were just a moment ago), he features prominently in another famous musical sequence in a nonmusical film, the scene in The Cable Guy where Jim Carry warbles a Karaoke version of the Jefferson Airplane’s Somebody To Love while, just a few feet away in another part of the apartment, Broderick makes out with a hot stranger.

The list goes on and on and Julie and I occasionally argue about what should be included on it. Julie, for instance, believes that the musical numbers performed by Amy Adams in Enchanted (one of my favorite films, by the by) should qualify for inclusion on the list. In my opinion, Enchanted is an actual musical, and therefore it’s musical sequences shouldn’t be allowed to appear on a list that tallies musical numbers in nonmusical films. Julie argues that the film contains only three actual musical numbers, one of which appears in the animated prologue. Thus the main body of the movie (i.e., the non-animated portion of the story) contains only two truly musical sequences (she doesn’t count the scene near the end where Adams and Patrick Dempsey dance while a band plays the song So Close; that music is diegetic, part of the story’s actual background). In my opinion, Enchanted’s two big production numbers – Happy Working Song and That’s How You Know – are classic examples of the traditional show-stopping musical number and therefore cannot qualify for the list.

We have a similar argument about My Best Friend’s Wedding. Julie thinks the opening sequence, in which a female foursome (dressed as a bride and her three bridesmaids) performs the Burt Bacharach/Hal David song Wishin’ and Hopin’ belongs on the list. I would exclude it because, though wonderfully done, it stands outside the film’s narrative and could be used as the main title sequence for almost any rom-com or wedding-themed movie ever made (Bride Wars, The Wedding Planner, The Wedding Date, He’s Just Not That Into You, Valentine’s Day, etc.). I would however, include several other sequences from My Best Friend’s Wedding, most notably the totally hokey scene in which the entire cast sings I Say A Little Prayer (also by Bacharach and David) during a rehearsal dinner at a seafood restaurant. I would not include the cute little scene where Cameron Diaz performs a Karaoke version of the Bacharach/David song I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself, but only because Diaz’s performance is ear-piercingly wretched (intentionally so; the character has a horrid singing voice). I would include the scene near the end of the movie where Diaz and Dermot Mulroney dance while two of her cousins sing The Way You Look Tonight accompanied by the wedding band. One could even include the final scene in which Rupert Everett and Julia Roberts dance while he reprises I Say A Little Prayer (director P.J. Hogan must be a big Bacharach/David fan; the soundtrack also includes versions of Do You Know The Way To San Jose and What The World Needs Now Is Love). Julie is fond of pointing out that My Best Friend’s Wedding actually contains far more musical sequences than Enchanted. She thinks it is inconsistent of me to include songs from MBFW on the list while excluding those from Enchanted. Maybe so. But, except for the opening rendition of Wishin’ and Hopin’ (which I do exclude from the list), all the music in MBFW purports to arise naturally from real-life settings (family sing-a-longs, Karaoke excursions, wedding receptions, etc.) and therefore it makes my list.

We have other disagreements. I think the Baz Luhrmann film Strictly Ballroom is a movie musical. Julie thinks it is a movie with music in it. We agree, however, that it’s a wonderful film. And although we also agree that Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge is a musical, Julie loathes it while I kind of like it (I have a thing for Nicole Kidman). I liked Aerosmith’s Dude Looks Like a Lady until I saw Robin Williams dancing to it in drag in the wretched Mrs. Doubtfire. Now the song has nothing but negative associations for me. Julie, on the other hand, started liking the song only after she saw it featured in Mrs. Doubtfire, a movie she loves. I love Kristen Stewart’s performance of Angel From Montgomery in Into The Wild, but that’s probably just because I love Kristen Stewart. Julie hated Kristen Stewart’s performance of Angel From Montgomery in Into the Wild, but that’s probably just because she hated the whole movie.

Sometimes, even songs you can’t stand can be enjoyable when they are incorporated into a movie you like. Neither Julie nor I like the group Rush, but we loved watching Paul Rudd and Jason Segel rock out to the band’s song Tom Sawyer in the movie I Love You, Man.

Julie and I have long wished that some enterprising entrepreneur would put together a collection on videodisc of the best musical sequences from nonmusical films. That way we could pop just one disc into the DVD player and watch all of our favorite scenes. Julie has even threatened to compile a bootleg disc on her own, but she lacks the requisite technical skills. For years she has been saying, “If only I could get a few weeks off from work, I’d teach myself how to compile video clips on a single disc and put together a DVD of all our favorite musical numbers.” Last week, she got laid off from her job. For at least the next month or two, she should have plenty of time on her hands. So far, she hasn’t used any of that time to teach herself the art of creating homemade video mixes. But I keep wishin’ and hopin.’