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Post by Kapitan on Mar 4, 2023 13:23:07 GMT
Sheriff John Stone posted in the Movies and TV thread about a movie based on the Springsteen song "Highway Patrolman." That got me thinking, there's a thread in there. A couple angles: 1) Can you think of other movies based on songs? Of course there are concept albums (e.g., Tommy, The Wall) that have been made into movies. But can you think of other songs that have been made into movies? 2) What songs can you imagine being turned into movies? They don't necessarily have to be limited to long, fully fleshed out storylines, either--they could just be evocative lyrics that you can imagine becoming movies. (If that is the case, please feel free to mention what you think could be done with them to fill out a story.)
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Post by jk on Mar 4, 2023 14:57:55 GMT
Sheriff John Stone posted in the Movies and TV thread about a movie based on the Springsteen song "Highway Patrolman." That got me thinking, there's a thread in there. A couple angles: 1) Can you think of other movies based on songs? Of course there are concept albums (e.g., Tommy, The Wall) that have been made into movies. But can you think of other songs that have been made into movies? 2) What songs can you imagine being turned into movies? They don't necessarily have to be limited to long, fully fleshed out storylines, either--they could just be evocative lyrics that you can imagine becoming movies. (If that is the case, please feel free to mention what you think could be done with them to fill out a story.) Good call there, Cap'n. 1) How about The Little Drummer Boy? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Drummer_Boy_(TV_special)2) Perhaps a Chuck Berry or Eddie Cochran song? Many have built-in story lines -- it would just be a question of fleshing them out.
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Post by Sheriff John Stone on Mar 4, 2023 14:59:14 GMT
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Post by kds on Mar 4, 2023 15:36:08 GMT
It wasnt a full length movie, but Rankin Bass did a stop motion special for The Little Drummer Boy.
Sloop John B could be a fun movie.
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sockit
The Surfer Moon
Posts: 234
Likes: 181
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Post by sockit on Mar 4, 2023 16:00:25 GMT
Spawned a movie nearly a decade later in 1976.
As far as a song that could easily be made into a movie of a true event, how about Gordon Lightfoot's "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald"? Unless one has been made and I totally missed it.
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Post by Kapitan on Mar 4, 2023 19:20:20 GMT
I had an idea pretty quickly after starting this thread, though it's admittedly an obvious one: "Bohemian Rhapsody." While I was on a walk around the neighborhood, I thought about what that movie might be, because the song is so ambiguous. I wanted to piece together something like the setting and plot.
The results are below. Please note I am under no illusions that I've taken this from the song. I don't think the song says these things. But I think the song, open to interpretation and extrapolation as it is, does indeed work in this way. I also tried to glean additional information from Freddie himself, as well as some nonlyrical aspects of the song.
Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality. Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see. I'm just a poor boy: I need no sympathy because I'm easy come, easy go; little high, little low. Anyway, the wind blows. Doesn't really matter to me.
The film opens with a focus on Farrokh, a young (closeted gay) man from a poor Persian family in Weimar Republic Germany near the border with Bohemia (their immediate roots being across the border in that Bohemian part of newly formed Czechoslovakia). It is around 1923, and the country is in shambles and facing hyperinflation that makes daily life almost impossible for families like Farrokh's. Making matters worse, he isn't a businessman or tradesman, but an aspiring artist, a small-B bohemian. Just out of school, he can't imagine that the world around him is real. The economy makes daily life almost farcical, with families wallpapering their houses with money because it was cheaper than wallpaper; and children making kites of money for the same reason. Meanwhile, the unrest also led to feuds between at least two major communities--socialist/communists and Nazis--spilling out from the political sphere into extrapolitical and extralegal combat. On one hand, Farrokh doesn't care about the "teams": he doesn't relate to, or even care about, either. He just feels lost and confused in a world gone crazy, and spends his time living exactly the life you assume for a young, aspiring artist: drinking, gambling, enjoying a carefree life while the world around him burns.
Mama, just killed a man. Put a gun against his head, pulled my trigger, now he's dead. Mama, life had just begun! And now I've gone and thrown it all away. Mama, didn't mean to make you cry. If I'm not back again this time tomorrow, carry on, carry on as if nothing really mattered. Too late: my time has come. Sent shivers down my spine, body's aching all the time. Goodbye, everybody, I've got to go. Gotta leave you all behind and face the truth. Mama, I don't wanna die. Sometimes wish I'd never been born at all...
In the course of a night out with his friends, Farrokh ends up in the middle of a dispute between communists and Nazis. In serious danger, he shoots a Nazi with a gun he didn't own, but had come to be holding for one reason or another. He recognizes the severity of the situation immediately, and flees. First he is ushered away by communists, who offer him some semblance of protection and to get him out of the city to somewhere he is less well known. Simultaneously, he hopes the situation can be resolved through a bribe to relevant police and officials sympathetic to the communist cause. He hides out at his parents' house, explaining the situation to his mother. He knows he cannot stay, but doesn't know what to do. He knows that the question as to whether he'll be charged or whether the bribe will work will be resolved quickly. Hence, "If I'm not back again this time tomorrow..." At least until then, he has to escape. Morning breaks, the rest of his family awakens and congregates around them just as he takes his leave. He is terrified, but he goes into hiding.
I see a little sillhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the fandango? Thunderbolts and lightning, very very frightening me! Galileo, Galileo, Galileo, Figaro. Magnifico! I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me. He's just a poor boy from a poor family, spare him his life from this monstrosity. Easy come, easy go, will you let me go? Bismillah! No! We will not let you go! Never let you go! Oh, mama mia, mama mia, let me go. Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me.
Farrokh is passed from the initial communist partisans to an assortment of factions and groups, eventually landing with a motley crew of decadent artists in Berlin (a city with more than half of its voters either Democratic Socialists or Communists) whose figurehead is a Turkish-German musician called Scaramouche. There he participates wildly in that city's thriving underground arts, drug, and sex scenes, all with an eye toward the threat of being discovered and punished, either by legal authorities or by Nazi thugs. Scaramouche's group is not especially political, though they have communist leanings (as is often the case among artists without much in the line of wealth).
This portion of the film is presented as an almost psychedelic, decadent collage of confusion, joy, ecstasy, fear, sex, and mostly, drugs. But it all becomes too much for Farrokh, who is terrified of the entire situation: being arrested for his crime; being outed as gay; being arrested for any of the new (drug and sex) crimes he commits daily; being caught in the crossfire between the escalating street fights between communists and Nazis. He wants to leave, maybe to go back home, or maybe just to start over in a simpler way somewhere else. Scaramouche and the others--especially the more dedicated partisans--aren't willing to let him leave, afraid he will out them and their assorted crimes. Among those holding him back from leaving is a man he's fallen in love with during his Berlin phase, a man who happens to be among the more strident communist partisans.
So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye? So you think you can love me and leave me to die? Whoa, baby...can't do this to me, baby. Just gotta get out, just gotta get right out of here.
A climax of the film, Farrokh finds a rage within him and explodes on his lover (whom he feels has betrayed him by putting partisan interests over their personal relationship).
Nothing really matters. Anyone can see nothing really matters to me. Anyway, the wind blows...
Farrokh has gotten out of Berlin, but has not gone home. Here he is, young, impoverished, desperate for any material and emotional support. But a deep sense of ennui has set in. He never believed fully in any political or philosophical ideology, and especially doesn't anymore. He no longer believes in love, having felt betrayed in Berlin. He won't let himself admit his love for his family, whom he has already left and would endanger by returning to. And so he is in one sense fully free, and in another sense has no options on which to impose his freedom. The film ends inconclusively with Farrokh emotionally, materially, and psychologically lost.
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