DavesMusicDatabase.com is devoted to ranking, rating, and reviewing music of all genres and eras. The DMDB blog serves up album and song reviews, best-of lists, music history snapshots, and music-related essays.
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 | Dave’s Faves:Top 25 Music Movies |
These are my personal favorite music movies. The list includes on-screen musicals, documentaries, biopics, and feature films. Click here to see other media-based lists, such as best videos and best music books of all time.
1. All That Jazz (1979)
6. High Fidelity (2000)
11. West Side Story (2021)
16. A Star Is Born (2018)
21. Once (2007)
Resources/Related Links:
First posted 11/5/2023. |
"Help me! My career is slipping away!"
image from kdamos.es
I’m not talking about your recently failed marriage to Katie Holmes. We all saw that coming, right? This is much more serious. You, the man who’s starred in 17 movies grossing more than $100 million (see the box office for all his movies here), may have lost your Midas touch.
With $37 million banked, Rock of Ages won’t be joining that blockbuster club. You can’t shoulder all the blame, though. After all, the typical over-the-top intensity you infuse in rock star Stacee Jaxx has some critics hailing you performance as Oscar-worthy.
Still, with widespread derision heaped upon Rock of Ages, you’re left helplessly watching your personal and professional life tanking. You no longer have the luxury of a two-income household. You’re faced with being a single dad, scrounging enough cash to cover child support and alimony payments. Like Jerry Maguire, you need, a break—and soon—to get you out of this slump. You need to make another rock movie.
It might seem like risky business, but Mr. Top Gun, you can tap your own blockbuster-making talents, mix in the elements of critically successful music movies, and gift the world with a true rock film for the ages. Here’s how.
Tip #1: Start with a director who knows rock ‘n’ roll.
“Rock ‘n’ roll” is a specific genre, not an interchangeable term with “pop music”. My kids watched Camp Rock this week, after which I posted on Facebook that Disney owed them an apology for suggesting that the Jonas Brothers and rock have anything to do with each other.
Kudos to director Adam Shankman for adapting Broadway’s Hairspray to the big screen (itself a reworking of John Waters’ 1988 comedy film of the same name). However, when ‘80s hair-band and arena-rock anthems are put in the mouths of Julianne Hough and Diego Boneta, they are scrubbed free of whatever grit they first possessed, and the audience feels like its watching an episode of Glee (which Shankman also directed, by the way). Movie critic Richard Roeper said, “Every time an actor belts out a hit, you’re reminded that the original, however, cheesy, was better.” (15 June 2012, Rotten Tomatoes)
So, Tom – instead of Shankman, tap Cameron Crowe or Rob Reiner. They directed you in Jerry Maguire and A Few Good Men respectively – and both have helmed iconic rock films. More on those in a moment.
Tip #2: If any actors are going to sing, make sure they really know how to sing.
Rock of Ages cast member Malin Akerman told USA Today that you “made a good, good rock star, that’s for sure. I let him know if this acting thing doesn’t work out, he’s definitely got a second career as a rocker.”
Tom, you have all the right moves. You look the part and your stage presence could be a primer for wannabe rockers. However, if I’m listening to “Paradise City” and “Pour Some Sugar on Me” I’d rather hear Guns N’ Roses and Def Leppard than the man who slung drinks in Cocktail back when those songs were hits.
So, Tom – leave the singing to someone else. Maybe Jamie Foxx? You guys worked together in Collateral. The legendary Ray Charles approved Foxx to play him in the 2004 biopic Ray! and the result was an Oscar for Best Actor.
Tip #3: Musicians are not actors.
When it comes to pipes, Mary J. Blige is the 21st century version of Aretha Franklin. When it comes to acting, her role in Rock of Ages is akin to Lou Reed’s performance in 1983’s Get Crazy. That bad B-movie focused on a New Year’s Eve concert at a Fillmore East-type venue. Among the performers were a Mick Jagger type played by Malcolm MacDowell and a reclusive singer played by Reed. I’ll happily debate anyone who questions Reed’s contributions to the music world, but you can knock his acting ability all you want.
So, Tom, what can you learn from this? If you’re going to put musicians in your film, do it with documentary footage. Call up Martin Scorsese. He did great things for your career in The Color of Money. Since then, he’s won a Best Director Oscar and done a slew of music documentaries, including Living in the Material World, Shine a Light, No Direction Home, and The Last Waltz. The latter, about The Band’s farewell show, has been called the best concert film of all time. Watch Levon Helm. He looks convinced that if he pours enough energy and anguish into “The Night They Drove Ol’ Dixie Down” he might prevent The Band from breaking up.
Tip #4: Avoid rock clichés – unless you can make them farcical.
The best moment in Rock of Ages comes when we get a glimpse into Stacee Jaxx’s psyche as he unloads to a reporter about the burden of being a rock star. I imagined a hard-hitting and probing film built around this premise. Then you launched into Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead or Alive”.
The documentary Anvil! The Story of Anvil doesn’t beat the viewer over the head with a clichéd tale of rockers who drink a lot, do drugs a lot, and have sex a lot. Instead, it probes the life of rock musicians who will never be stars, but keep slogging away at it anyway, because it’s what they love to do.
Tom, if you must deal with clichés, use This Is Spinal Tap! as your guide. Director Rob Reiner brilliantly mocked the absurdities of the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle in what some consider the best rock movie of all time.
Tip #5: There’s a fine line between goofy and joyful.
Rock of Ages opens with Julianne Hough as a small-town girl determined to make it big. She boards a bus bound for Hollywood and soon passengers are crooning advice to her via Night Ranger’s “Sister Christian.” I have no idea why no one on the bus broke into a screaming fit begging to get off at the next stop.
Tom – this brings us to Cameron Crowe, again. The man knows how to show power of music to create joy. Crowe explored his years as a Rolling Stone journalist in the fantastic Almost Famous. In one scene, the weariness of life on the road has clearly taken its toll. However, the tour bus travelers break into an impromptu sing-along with Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” and everyone on the bus – and in the theater – is left smiling.
Tip #6: Rock music has the power to heal.
The Music Never Stopped tells the real-life story of a 30-something whose short-term memory is robbed from him by a brain tumor. As a result, his mind is stuck in the teen version of himself in the early ‘70s. His father, desperate to connect with his son, realizes the only way to do so is through the music of his son’s youth. Despite vehement opposition to his son’s Deadhead tastes, the pivotal point of the movie is when father and son go to a Grateful Dead concert together.
Rock of Ages, however, just leaves viewers in pain. Tom, we know you’re hurting as well, but you can get through this. You can make a rock-themed blockbuster. After all, you’re the guy who taught us all to love old time rock ‘n’ roll – and in your tighty whiteys, no less.
 | Aural Fixation:The Music Never Stopped |
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“Aural Fixation” is a music-themed column I wrote for PopMatters.com from 2011-2013. They are no longer online there, but I have reformatted them here at the DMDB blog with additional videos, photos, and links, such as where to buy referenced albums. I have also used the title “Aural Fixation” for any essays I have written outside of PopMatters.com as well. To see the essays, check out the Dave’s Music Database Aural Fixation page.
The essays from PopMatters.com have been gathered in book form as Aural Fixation: Essays from a Music Obsessive. Essays written from 2009 to 2011 have been gathered in the book No One Needs 21 Versions of “Purple Haze”. You can purchase the essays in book format here. |
I just finished watching the movie The Music Never Stopped. Wow. It was even more powerful than I'd hoped. I don't know that I've ever felt like I really have been able to explain to anyone why music matters so much to me. I'm not sure myself. This movie touches on some of it, though. Music has a power to connect people, to bridge generation gaps. If people are open-minded to other people's tastes, they can discover whole new worlds. People speak often of how music touches their souls. How great a gift is it, then, to respect someone's music? To listen to it? To cherish it? To make an attempt to understand it - even if it may not be one's personal taste? It shows a respect for that person, for his soul, for his very essence. J.K. Simmons plays a dad (Henry) desperate to reconnect with his son Gabriel (Lou Taylor Pucci). It is 1986, but Gabriel is stuck in the late ‘60s. A month shy of his high school graduation, Gabriel left home for good. 20 years later, he is found wandering the streets, having long suffered the effects of a brain tumor. It is benign, but because it was left unchecked for so long, it has seemingly destroyed his ability to form new memories. When he is checked into the hospital, he answers basic questions like his name and when he was born, but can’t identify what year it is now or who is president. When a musical therapist plays the piece of music that opens the Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love,” Gabriel comes alive. He breaks into detailed conversation about how much he loves the song, the album, the group. Initially, Dad is angry and resentful that the music therapist is bringing Gabriel back to what, for Henry, was a time of pain. He wants to play his music for Gabriel, the songs he personally connected with and songs he thought bore a connection between himself and his son. The movie offers flashbacks where Henry quizzes his young son on songs like “Till There Was You” and “Young at Heart.” Henry certainly doesn’t want to listen to the Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Cream, and Buffalo Springfield. But he eventually does. In a touching scene, he even trades in his vintage records for “anything loud that was made after 1958”. He starts to listen to his son’s music – more importantly, he starts to listen to his son. When he plays the music for his son, he listens to the stories and memories his son recounts. He reconnects with the son he’d lost twenty years earlier. Henry becomes determined to take Gabriel to a Grateful Dead concert. Gabriel narrowly missed out on a chance to see them – on the same night he ended up leaving home for good. By now, the movie has reached the point that Henry isn’t just listening to the Dead and going to their concert for his son, but for himself. He has connected to the music. He has connected to his son. Resources and Related Links:
First posted 9/13/2011; updated 10/28/2023. |
