May 2009 Archives

Continuing this train of thought, here are some more music videos featuring movie characters.

First of all, Robert was shocked that we somehow forgot "Straight To My Feet", by Hammer and Deion Sanders. Yes, that Deion Sanders. And yes, by 1994 he was just Hammer. He couldn't afford the MC anymore. The video features more than enough cameos from Street Fighter actors, including Jean-Claude Van Damme (as "Guile"). When asked to appear in character in this music video, Raul Julia instead died.

In case you forgot that the 90s sucked, here's "Come With Me" from the extremely-pre-9/11 Matthew Broderick vehicle Godzilla, by Puff "Yes, I was called Puff Daddy At That Time" Daddy and Jimmy "I Will Do Your Soundtrack At a Reasonable Price" Page.

Don't ask me to explain how I forgot "Dream Warriors" by Dokken the first time around. It features Patricia Arquette as the character she played in A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 3: This One Has Naked Boobs, and also Freddy Kreuger as himself. (Yes, he's real.) I don't know if the creepy girl on the tricycle was the same creepy tricycle girl from the film, but I guess it's likely.

Though easily defeated by the power of rock, Freddy did a lot of promos on MTV back then. Here's one he did when Part 3 was about to be released.

Scary, right? For the next movie, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: Shark Jumpin', they did a whole Freddy Kreuger Hour, featuring the Fat Boys' instant classic "Are You Ready for Freddy". Freddy old-school raps ("Well my name is Freddy and I'm here to say...") but I think you should let me bend my own rules a little for this one. (This clip is part 4 of a 5-part collection featuring the entire Freddy hour, which I recommend.)

So yeah, there are a lot of videos from movie soundtracks starring actors from the movie, preferably in character. I have to say that the most memorable one from my childhood is one that's almost totally fallen off the cultural radar.

The year: 1983. The place: Jacksonville, Florida. Little Jamie Furdell had moved there during a cross country trip in his mom's Volkswagen Rabbit with no air conditioning. In the middle of summer. And along the way, I discovered how to fiddle with the radio and find the pop music stations.

Once we set up shop in Jacksonville I really dove into the world of pop music. I was all about American Top 40 and MTV, and I was especially all about... and this is embarassing... Olivia Newton-John. We had her greatest hits two-cassette tape (awesome) collection, and I was a big fan of the whole shebang. And thus, I was especially excited about a movie that came out in December 1983, starring ONJ (I call her ONJ) and John Travolta: Two of a Kind.

I distinctly recall dragging Mom to the AMC Regency Mall 6 theaters (since replaced by a larger multiplex) to see this, in retrospect, dreadfully awful movie. It was clearly an attempt to recapture the magic from previous ONJ-Travolta vehicle Grease, but wound being just an absolute mess of a love story. The main characters are revoltingly unlikeable: she's a bank teller, he's... um... an inventor. That's believable. He is struggling financially and decides to rob her bank; she replaces the loot with teller slips before handing it over and keeps the cash for herself, thus prompting Travolta to pursue her for the cash. Hijinks ensue.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to them but knownst to us, a group of angels have wagered with God (voiced by, and I'm not making this up, an uncredited Gene Hackman) that they can get this pair together romantically, in an effort to... keep God from... ending the world? It sounds even stupider when I type it out like that. Basically they were trying to go for something Capra-esque, but it winds up making the exploits of these two dolts seem overly self-centered.

As a kid, I remember liking the fact that that the crew of angels had the power to freeze and rewind events in real time with a simple voice command. After rewatching this as an adult, I realize that the entirety of the film is a difficult experience to sit through and I must therefore take this moment to apologize profusely to Mom. Sorry, Mom. If you're still curious, here's a hilarious clip in which Travolta puts on his hero face and ONJ plays the victim.

The film was, super-sadly, not a hit, despite an all-star cast including Scatman Crothers, who at this point was being typecast as a magical black guy with a cool voice. And it was also the death knell for Travolta's film career... well, the first death knell, until its resurrection in Pulp Fiction and subsequent deathier knell Battlefield Earth.

But the soundtrack was actually a partial saving grace, and before the film came out, I'm pretty sure I succumbed to the hype of ONJ dancing around in her top single from the album, "Twist of Fate", on MTV. I still actually quite like this song, and I rediscovered it listening to an episode of American Top 40 from my collection.

Basically, ONJ, backlit and with super-high '80s hair, is defending her crush on Travolta, in a dark neon-lit courtroom suspended over some kind of body of water, while clips from the movie, including their plainly uncomfortable love scene, are presented as evidence. Then, the coup de grace at the end: John Travolta is there! Except that, hilariously, his scenes appear to have been filmed not at the same time as ONJ's, possibly in an entirely different country. They pretend to look directly at each other longingly, and fade to black.

That's the stuff right there.

All right, first of all sorry I've been not so much with the blogging. But there's at least two other Furdells who could be taking up my slack. So, I'm just saying, I'm not the only jerk.

OK, here's another one of those ridiculous lists you can help me with. I've decided that the best music videos of all fit the following criteria:

1. The song is from a movie soundtrack; and


2. one or more actors from the movie appear in the video. Preferably in character.

I don't mean like they used footage from the film, I mean the actor or actors actually had to shoot special footage for the music video. And it doesn't count if the actor is the musician (like if Will Smith does a song for his own movie, for example).

Here are the ones I've come up with. Starting with the most obvious, "Gangsta's Paradise" by Coolio from the god-awful Dangerous Minds, prominently featuring Michelle Pfeiffer, in a speaking role no less.

Maybe it's because that video's from the mid-90s, but I generally expect the actor(s) not to show up until the very end of the video, after we've seen a lot of scenes from the movie. I don't recommend that you skip to the end of John Parr's "Man In Motion" -- if you do, you won't get to see the scenes from St. Elmo's Fire, which are hilarious. A character in this movie tries to kill herself by sitting in front of an open window, and this is seen by her friends as a credible suicide attempt. But if you just want to see John Parr interact with the cast of the film, you can fast forward to the last minute.

That's like Julia's favorite movie, by the way. Moving on, here's the music video that I would say is both the cheesiest ever, and the best ever: "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" by Starship, from the motion picture Mannequin. The real stars here are the lead singers, who ham it up in an un-self-conscious way that nobody can in a post-9/11 world. There's a brief cameo in the end by your favorite Mannequin character, Hollywood Montrose.

Here's one I was fond of as a kid: "When the Going Gets Tough the Tough Get Going" by Billy Ocean, from Jewel of the Nile. Michael Douglas, the super-sexy Kathleen Turner, and Danny DeVito just look like they're having so much fun as Billy Ocean's backup singers.

YouTube is having a two-for-one special on themes from movies about bustin' ghosts. These are interesting, because they also include a ton of cameos by celebrities who weren't even in the movie. The first one, "Ghostbusters" by Ray Parker, Jr. from the eponymous film, has about a dozen unrelated actors who help out with the chorus (Chevy Chase, John Candy, Teri Garr, Carly Simon, Jeffrey Tambor, and even maybe-senator Al Franken, to name a few), and all four Ghostbusters show up in the end. The second song is the completely hilarious "On Our Own" by godfather of soul Bobby Brown, from the terrible Ghostbusters II. It squeaks in a Rick Moranis cameo early, and then manages to include Donald Trump, Iman, Christopher Reeve on a bicycle, Jane Curtin for some reason, and the chick from The Man With One Red Shoe, among others.

I'm so glad I get to include the bizarre 2-part epic that is "Goonies 'R' Good Enough" by Cyndi Lauper. The plot is so complicated that it requires narration and frequent subtitles. When Cyndi and the Goonies get kidnapped by pirates, Cyndi breaks the fourth wall and asks Goonies writer/executive producer Steven Spielberg for a tip on what to do. (He has no ideas.) And, André the Giant shows up for some reason.

I admit it: we're now at the point where I can't think of any more off the top of my head, so I'm having to guess. I'm batting 1000 so far though. Here's El DeBarge's "Who's Johnny" from Short Circuit. Yep, sure enough this one has appearances by both Ally Sheedy, and a cardboard standup of Steve Guttenberg, who I guess was busy with Police Academy 4: Citizens On Patrol that day. El takes the witness stand in a trial against Ally and Cardboard Steve, but the bad news is that footage from the film is admissible as evidence. Luckily everyone in the courtroom is in love with Ally Sheedy.

OK, I specifically said it doesn't count if Will Smith does the song for his own movie. But I'd be remiss if I excluded James's favorite song, "Wild Wild West", from James's favorite movie. It prominently features Salma Hayek (worth, as always, triple the price of admission) and, in a casting move only slightly less distracting than Cardboard Steve Guttenberg, we have someone who is clearly not Kenneth Branagh playing the back of Kenneth Branagh's head.

So those are the ones I can think of. But I feel like there's another lurking on the edges of my brain. Help me out by naming some more music videos in the comment section...won't you?

Alex has learned that if he tells us something is scary we will not make him do it. Usually. (Haircuts excepted.) For example, he thinks his grandparents' garage is scary, so we don't make him go in. But because he is too smart for us, now anything he doesn't want to do is "too scary." Here are some things that have been "scary" just this morning:

Story time at the library

Reading a book about mice

Getting a poopy diaper changed

I assume the manipulation of the parents only gets more sophisticated from here.

Apparently equal rights organizers in New England really know what they're doing, because those activist legislators are at it again. Next stop: New Hampshire?

This is a major milestone, because 5 states is the exact number where I can't remember the names of the individual states without looking them up on Wikipedia. The next major milestone is 7 states, the number it takes before I look at the Wikipedia list and think, "wait, Iowa's on there?"

Hilarious observations from America's favorite everyman (emphasis mine, obviously):

In the last month, same-sex marriage has become legal in Iowa and Vermont. What do you think about same-sex marriage at a state level?

At a state level, it's up to them. I don't want it to be a federal thing. I personally still think it's wrong. People don't understand the dictionary—it's called queer. Queer means strange and unusual. It's not like a slur, like you would call a white person a honky or something like that. You know, God is pretty explicit in what we're supposed to do—what man and woman are for. Now, at the same time, we're supposed to love everybody and accept people, and preach against the sins. I've had some friends that are actually homosexual. And, I mean, they know where I stand, and they know that I wouldn't have them anywhere near my children. But at the same time, they're people, and they're going to do their thing.