BONUS CONTENT – INCLUDING A PLAYLIST LINK AND VIDEOS – AFTER ANSWERS
- “Summer Nights”, “You’re the One That I Want”, “We Go Together” – GREASE
- “My Favorite Things”, “Do-Re-Mi”, “So Long, Farewell” – THE SOUND OF MUSIC
- “Overture/And All That Jazz”, “Cell Block Tango”, “We Both Reached for the Gun” – CHICAGO
- “Mighty Wings”, “Playing With the Boys”, “Hot Summer Nights” – TOP GUN
- “Let’s Hear It for the Boy”, “Holding Out for a Hero”, “I’m Free (Heaven Helps the Man)” – FOOTLOOSE
- “There Is Nothin’ Like a Dame”, “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair”, “I’m in Love with a Wonderful Guy” – SOUTH PACIFIC
- “Let’s Go Crazy”, “Darling Nikki”, “I Would Die U” – PURPLE RAIN
- “It Had to Be You”, “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore”, “I Could Write a Book” – WHEN HARRY MET SALLY…
- “Science Fiction/Double Feature”, “Sweet Transvestite”, “Hot Patootie – Bless My Soul” – THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW
- “Twist and Shout”, “March of the Swivelheads”, “Oh Yeah” – FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF
- “If I Can’t Have You”, ” A Fifth of Beethoven”, “You Should Be Dancing” – SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER
- “Pink”, “Dance the Night”, “Speed Drive” – BARBIE
- “Main Title (film title), “Make ‘Em Laugh”, “Good Morning” – SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN
- “film title“, “Hot Lunch Jam”, “Red Light” – FAME
- “Under the Sea”, “Poor Unfortunate Souls”, “Kiss the Girls” – THE LITTLE MERMAID
- “In the Flesh?”, “Comfortably Numb”, “Run Like Hell” – PINK FLOYD – THE WALL
- “Sister Suffragette”, “A Spoonful of Sugar”, “Jolly Holiday” – MARY POPPINS
- “The Acid Queen”, “Sparks”, “Pinball Wizard” – TOMMY
- “film title!“, “Dance With Me Tonight”, “Shrimp Shack” – THAT THING YOU DO!
- “My Sharona”, “Locked Out”, “Tempted” – REALITY BITES
- “Misirlou”, “You Never Can Tell”, “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon” – PULP FICTION
As always, here is a playlist with the answers. Tell me how you did in the comments!
And finally, videos with bonus fun facts!
- Grease
FUN FACT: “You’re the One That I Want” was one of two songs written for Grease by Olivia Newton John’s longtime collaborator John Farrar. His other contribution, “Hopelessly Devoted to You”, was nominated for Best Original Song at the 51st Academy Awards; it lost to “Last Dance” from Thank God It’s Friday.
- The Sound of Music
FUN FACT: Charmain Carr, who portrayed eldest child Liesl in the Best Picture Oscar-winning musical, was 21 and just thirteen years younger than her on-screen dad, Christopher Plummer. Carr developed a massive crush on Plummer, and really, who could blame her? Anyway, The Sound of Music soundtrack was a massive success, selling a worldwide total of 20 million copies and reaching the top of the album chart in Australia, Norway, the US, and the UK, where it was the best-selling album of 1965, 1966, AND 1968. In 1967, it had to settle for second place. The #1 album that year? Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles.
- Chicago
FUN FACT: It had been thirty-four years since the last musical (1968’s Oliver!) won the Best Picture Oscar when Chicago took home the top prize for 2002. The film won five more awards, including Best Supporting Actress (Catherine Zeta-Jones). I absolutely adore this movie, and “We Both Reached for the Gun” is one of my all-time favorite scenes. Just absolute perfection.
- Top Gun
FUN FACT: The Top Gun soundtrack, featuring Kenny Loggins’ #2 hit “Danger Zone” and Berlin’s Best Original Song Oscar winner “Take My Breath Away,” made the Top 10 in fourteen countries, including the US, the UK, Australia, and Canada. Fans of the film likely remember the infamous “volleyball scene”, for which “Playing with the Boys” provides the soundtrack.
- Footloose
FUN FACT: “Let’s Hear It for the Boy” and “Footloose” were both nominated for Best Original Song at the 57th Academy Awards; they lost – along with “Ghostbusters” and “Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)” – to Stevie Wonder’s atrocious “I Just Called to Say I Love You” from The Woman in Red. The “Willard learns how to dance” sequence was added to Footloose when Chris Penn revealed his own lack of dance experience (RIP, Chris, you were a treasure, and you left us way too soon).
By the way, I can’t think about “I Just Called to Say I Love You” without thinking of this hilarious scene from High Fidelity.
- South Pacific
FUN FACT: The South Pacific soundtrack went to #1 in both the UK and the US, where it spent seven months atop the Billboard 200 – the fourth-longest run ever. In the UK, the album holds the all-time record for most weeks at #1 with a whopping 115, which means it spent more than two years in the top spot.
- Purple Rain
FUN FACT: The Purple Rain soundtrack was an absolute juggernaut, selling more than 25 million copies worldwide since its 1984 release. The album spent 24 consecutive weeks in the top spot on the Billboard 200 and yielded two #1 hits (“When Doves Cry” and “Let’s Go Crazy”). It is widely regarded as the best album not only of 1984 but of the entire decade. Purple Rain currently ranks eighth – the highest of any ’80s album – on Rolling Stone‘s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Click the link below to read their entire list.
- When Harry Met Sally…
FUN FACT: Many soundtracks utilize various artists but When Harry Met Sally… features only one, a 21-year-old Harry Connick Jr. The album consists of Connick’s covers of standards by the Gershwins (“But Not for Me” and “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off”), Duke Ellington (“Don’t Get Around Much Anymore”), Benny Goodman (“Stompin’ at the Savoy”), and Rodgers & Hart (“Where or When” and “I Could Write a Book”), among others. The album also earned Connick a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Male Vocal Performance.
- The Rocky Horror Picture Show
FUN FACT: The midnight movie existed before 1976, but The Rocky Horror Picture Show made it a cultural craze. The viewings began at the Waverly Theater, an art-house theater in Greenwich Village, and featured costumes and audience participation. Over the next few years, the trend gradually spread, first to cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco, then to the rest of the country. I definitely remember being aware of midnight showings of the movie in the early ’80s, and my friends and I attended a screening as soon as we were old enough.
- Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
FUN FACT: “March of the Swivel Heads”, which plays over Ferris’s race home in the final minutes of the film, is not an original composition but an instrumental remix of “Rotating Heads” off The English Beat’s 1982 album Special Beat Service (a PBandJulie fave).
- Saturday Night Fever
FUN FACT: Prior to the release of Michael Jackson’s Thriller, the soundtrack to 1977’s Saturday Night Fever was the best-selling album of all time (it still ranks in the top ten). It also won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. The Bee Gees wrote much of the album’s material over the course of a weekend, but they weren’t involved with the production until after filming had been completed. Apparently, the rehearsal scene was originally set to Boz Scaggs’ “Lowdown”, but Columbia Records refused to allow its use in the film, and one of the Gibbs’ contributions – “More Than a Woman” – was used instead.
- Barbie
FUN FACT: Inspired by Saturday Night Fever, Barbie director Greta Gerwig requested that the dance sequence feature a disco song. The result, Dua Lipa’s “Dance the Night”, became the album’s lead-off single and earned a Song of the Year nomination at the 66th Grammy Awards. Two other Barbie songs – Ryan Gosling’s “I’m Just Ken” and Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For” – were nominated for Best Original Song at the 96th Oscars, with the latter taking home the prize.
- Singin’ in the Rain
FUN FACT: Singin’ in the Rain‘s songs were largely written by producer Arthur Freed – with his songwriting partner, composer Nacio Herb Brown – earlier in his career for features like The Broadway Melody and Babes in Arms, which makes the film one of the OG jukebox musicals.
If you’re like me, you probably think of one or both of the following clips when you hear “Singin’ in the Rain”:
The wholesomeness of Tom Holland…
Or the depravity of A Clockwork Orange…
BONUS FUN FACT: After four days of filming this scene, director Stanley Kubrick wasn’t happy with the results. He asked Malcolm McDowell if he could dance, and as it turns out, he could. Kubrick turned the cameras back on, and McDowell began to dance and sing the first song that popped into his mind – “Singin’ in the Rain”. Kubrick retroactively obtained the rights to the song for $10,000 so he could keep the scene in the film.
- Fame
FUN FACT: Fame was one of the first (if not THE first?) R-rated movies I saw, and though some of the adult material (SA, abortion) went over my head at the time, I adored the musical sequences. I dreamed of attending a performing arts school, where musicians and dancers could break into unrehearsed musical numbers in the cafeteria – or even on 46th Street. Much of Fame‘s music was written by the team of Michael Gore and Dean Pitchford, who later composed the songs for Footloose; Gore and Pitchford won the Best Original Song Award for “Fame” at the 53rd Academy Awards.
- The Little Mermaid
FUN FACT: The film responsible for kicking off the Disney renaissance featured songs by the legendary team of Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, whose partnership was tragically cut short when Ashman died of AIDS in 1991. “Under the Sea”, the musical highlight of The Little Mermaid, earned the pair a Grammy and an Oscar. It was the first Best Original Song Oscar win for Disney since 1964’s Mary Poppins (more on that one shortly).
- Pink Floyd – The Wall
FUN FACT: Fame and Pink Floyd – The Wall were both directed by Alan Parker, one of my favorite filmmakers (he also made Midnight Express, Birdy, and The Commitments, among many others). If you aren’t already a fan of Pink Floyd or a stoned college student, you’ve probably never seen this surrealist mind-fuck of a movie, but it’s definitely worth a watch. Obviously, the vast majority of the film’s music came from the band’s 1979 album of the same name, but one new song – “When the Tigers Broke Free” – was written directly for the movie.
- Mary Poppins
FUN FACT: Mary Poppins’ music was written by the legendary Sherman brothers, Richard and Robert, who also scored The Parent Trap (1961), The Jungle Book (1967), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Charlotte’s Web (1973), and many more. The Sherman brothers won two Oscars for Mary Poppins – Best Original Score and Best Original Song for “Chim Chim Cher-ee”.
- Tommy
FUN FACT: The original rock opera, Tommy began life as a brilliant 1969 double album by The Who. The soundtrack to the 1975 feature film adaptation contained most of the same music but sung by the actors – including Ann-Margret, Oliver Reed, Elton John, and Tina Turner – instead of the band. Of course, since lead singer Roger Daltrey portrays the title character, there’s a little bit of crossover.
- That Thing You Do!
FUN FACT: This fucking delight of a movie – Tom Hanks’ debut as a feature film director – tells the story of the ultimate one-hit wonders, Erie PA’s own The Wonders (Tom Everett Scott, Johnathon Schaech, Steve Zahn, and Ethan Embry). The period-perfect details, from the costumes to the set decoration to, yes, the music, are exquisite. The late, great Adam Schlesinger should have won an Oscar for the exuberant title song (he was nominated but lost to – UGGGGGGGHHHHHH – Andrew fucking Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice for “You Must Love Me” from Evita).
- Reality Bites
FUN FACT: The Reality Bites soundtrack is a fun mix of ’70s and ’80s tunes like The Knack’s “My Sharona”, Squeeze’s “Tempted”, and U2’s “All I Want You Is You” and Gen-X artists like Juliana Hatfield, The Posies, Dinosaur Jr., and Lisa Loeb. The latter – with the help of her backup band Nine Stories – performed the album’s biggest hit, “Stay (I Missed You)”, which went to the top of the Billboard Hot 100. Loeb originally wrote the song to sell to Daryl Hall but eventually decided to keep it for herself. When her then-neighbor Ethan Hawke heard “Stay”, he convinced Reality Bites director Ben Stiller to use it in the film.
- Pulp Fiction
FUN FACT: Director Quentin Tarantino didn’t commission a musical score for his noir masterpiece, choosing instead to use existing pop, rock, and R&B songs by artists like Kool & the Gang, Al Green, Dusty Springfield, and Chuck Berry. He also used several surf rock songs by groups like The Centurians, The Tornadoes, and – most famously – Dick Dale (“Misirlou”) to score the movie; Tarantino has stated he chose surf rock because it reminded him of “rock ‘n’ roll Ennio Morricone music, rock ‘n’ roll spaghetti Western music.”
PB & Julie + Julie C. Trivia 