Saturday, September 11, 2010: Dream Academy - Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want (Instrumental)

While Tangerine Dream made the best movie soundtracks, John Hughes definitely used the best music in his movies. Hughes' movies were always filed with little clips of the coolest music that fit their scene perfectly.

Just take Sixteen Candles as one example. Amazon.com has put together a list of all the incidental music used in the movie, for a Make Your Own Sixteen Candles soundtrack.

This, friends, is a cornucopia of coolness. Using the theme from Dragnet when Farmer Ted makes his moves on Molly Ringwald, or playing New York, New York as Ted mixes martinis for Jake after the party. "Rev-Up" by The Revillos, "Young Americans" by David Bowie, "Lenny" by Stevie Ray Vaughn, and this is just a fraction of what's there. All music used in perfect syncopation with the plot, the action, the characters and the scene. Brilliant.

Now, take that attention to detail and expand it to include most Hughes' body of work. Then, maybe just then, we can all start to fully appreciate the significance of his passing.

When I started thinking about Movie Week, I was always going to include something from Ferris Bueller's Day Off. It was a given, an absolute, like the firmness of the earth. Choosing the song itself, however, was a bit more difficult.

The first obvious choice was "Oh Yeah" by Yello. Sure, it works perfectly, magnificently in that famous Ferrari scene. But, upon listening to the song on it's own, it just falls flat. It's cool in the movie, sure, but on it's own?  Not so much.

Ok, yes, even more obvious that "Oh Yeah" was "Danke Schoen" by Wayne Newton, or "Twist and Shout" by The Beatles. But those were really, painfully too obvious.  Besides, Danke Schoen suffers the same shortcomings as "Oh Yeah", cool in the movie, not so much on it's own.

Next was March Of The Swivelheads by The English Beat. It's the chase scene near the end with Ferris on the run to beat his mom and sister home.  Good choice. Very good actually.  Close.  Very close.  But just. not. there.

I toyed around with using "Love Missile F1-11" by Sigue Sigue Sputnik, just for the novelty value, but then I realized this is Cool Song Of The Day, not Novelty Song Of The Day.

Which finally led me to my proper CSOTD selection: Dream Academy's instrumental version of The Smiths "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want."  Dream Academy had two songs in the movie, the other being "The Edge Of Forever", though I can't really remember where what was in the movie.

This song, however, is from the Art Institute Of Chicago scene, one of my favourite scenes in the movie. As those crazy kids go on their exploration of Chicago, smack dab in the middle of the mayhem, slapstick, angst and adventure there is this pause, this wonderfully touching scene where the trio roam around AIC looking at art.

And, man, what art!   I doubt paintings or sculptures were ever better presented in a better light than in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.  Fact.  Whether just standing in quiet meditation or getting caught up in a school trips daisy chain, this scene endures as a powerful advertisement for the joys of going to a museum.

Which all cumulates in Ferris and Sloane kissing in front of  Mark Chagall's "America Windows", an impossibly romantic backdrop to their moment of intimacy.  Running parallel, however, is Cameron's obsessive gaze into "Sunday Afternoon on La Grande Jatte" by Georges Seurat, to the point where he almost seems swallowed up into the canvas.

Being engulfed with art.  A perfect ending.

And thus ends MOVIE WEEK on CSOTD.    I hope you had as much fun as I did.

Onward to even more coolness next week!