This topic received a great deal of reader interest when I posted it as a guest blog previously so I thought I'd give it an encore here, including a bit of a refresh.


Anyone who has read my novel, Ladies and Gentlemen…The Redeemers, or has even seen the cover, knows that I have a passion for music.

I love how music can become so intertwined, so inextricably connected to a scene in a movie that its presence defines the scene or even the entire film.   Let me be clear.  I’m not talking about movie soundtracks, especially the ones on which movie producers put songs that are nearly impossible to detect in the film.  No, I’m talking about how a song can set a mood or elicit an emotional response from the viewer that is so strong that it is forever associated with the movie.

With that introduction, I thought I'd share with you my picks for the best use of music in movies and then give you the chance to share yours.

Almost Famous (2000)

This movie contains perhaps my all-time favorite movie scene.  The movie, written and directed by Cameron Crowe, tells the story of a teenage journalist who follows the fictional band, Stillwater, for Rolling Stone magazine.  At one point in the story, the band has had a long night that has left them not speaking with one another.  The following morning, as everyone sits in the tour bus stewing in silence, Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” comes on the radio.  Little by little, the travelers start singing along until the entire bus is singing the tune, all wounds healed.  I can’t tell you how many times this song and this scene played through my head while I was writing the book and how much the song energized me every time I heard it on the radio.

Blue Velvet (1986)

“A candy colored clown they call the sandman…”  Dennis Hopper’s off-the-wall crazy character is obsessed with Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” and this haunting opening lyric in David Lynch’s noir classic, Blue Velvet.   The movie is a creepy, psychological drama that I love for the way it makes me want to keep watching despite Lynch’s uncanny ability to make me simultaneously want to look away.  The peak of the creepiness occurs when Dennis Hopper kidnaps Kyle MacLachlan and takes him to a bizarre party where a ghostly Dean Stockwell lip-syncs the song while Dennis Hopper hypnotically mouths the words next to him.  Lynch is a master at using music to set the mood in his films and this scene may be his best.

Pulp Fiction (1994)

It’s difficult to single out one of Quentin Tarantino’s masterful music selections that so completely complement his storylines, but I have to give the nod here to his use of Dusty Springfield’s “Son of a Preacher Man” in Pulp Fiction.  What makes this one stand out is the scene’s near absence of dialog, or frankly, action.  John Travolta arrives at a spectacularly well decorated house to pick up Uma Thurman, who is shown secretly observing Travolta’s movements on security camera monitors.  The only words are exchanged over the room’s intercom shortly after Travolta arrives, and the remainder of the scene is little more than Travolta pouring himself a drink and admiring the room’s décor while he waits for Thurman.  I can’t explain why it works, but it does.  Right down to the moment when the needle lifts on the record and Thurman announces in person, “Let’s go.”

My teenage daughter recently returned from a community service trip to Nicaragua and it marked a rite of passage for both of us.  Traveling with an organization named Global Works, my daughter had been seeking something of significance to do for the summer and something a little off the beaten path.  I was seeking the same.
 
The difference is that I was the overprotective father, the guy who, fifteen years ago, carried the baby monitor from room to room to make sure that if she uttered a peep, I’d be there to hear it.  Now I was the guy who was willing to send her off to Central America for three weeks, to Nicaragua, a country whose only association I had was with the Sandanistas and the legendary Clash album of the same name (Sorry, I couldn’t resist the musical reference.  It’s a weak point of mine).
 
The group of eighteen teenagers worked in El Sauce, a city in the North Pacific section of the country, and Moyogalpa, a town on the island of Ometepe in the middle of Lake Nicaragua.  The community service involved planting trees to restore the Reserva Madronos nature reserve, painting a children’s nursery, and laying the foundation for walls that would protect a village’s water supply.  While the teens labored, the local villagers brought the group food.  I was stunned to learn that the same kid who rarely ventured beyond pizza or ribs at home ate what the villagers offered.
 
On a day spent at a local farm, my daughter milked cows and held chickens.  When I remarked my surprise, she told me that I couldn’t have cut it there.  Perhaps that was true, perhaps not, but more importantly, I felt a glow that my daughter, firmly planted in a cushy suburban existence, the girl whose idea of roughing it was going to a place without a cell phone signal, was able to venture out and experience what much of the world is really like.

As an author who loves writing character-driven stories, I loved hearing about the people that my daughter met there:  the small girl who took her hand and showed her around the local church and her home, the villagers that welcomed the teens into their homes, the others on the tour with whom she bonded.
 
One night in Ometepe, while the counselors slept, the teenagers snuck out for a midnight swim in the warm lake.  It was the kind of thing a father doesn’t want to know about until safely after-the-fact.  But as I reflected on my own youth, I couldn’t help but feel vicarious excitement at their breaking the rules for some harmless fun.
 
My instincts had been correct.  Allowing my daughter to explore and experience the world on her own provided immeasurable value.  She returned home with a newfound appreciation of what she has, a new outlook, and new friends who I have no doubt she will stay in touch with for years to come.  She contributed to a society so vastly different from her own and learned how great it feels to help others.

I am so proud of her…and a little proud of me.