Musical Mondays Week 70 Eddie and the Cruisers

[Cameron H. 23786]

Once, if my memory serves me well, my life was a banquet where every heart revealed itself, where every wine flowed...

We watched:

[Cameron H. 23786]

I have to say, overall, I enjoyed the movie, but at the end, I couldn’t help feeling like it was a bit pointless. I’m not sure if anyone else agrees.

[Cinco DeNio 5290]

1 minute ago, Cameron H. said:

I have to say, overall, I enjoyed the movie, but at the end, I couldn’t help feeling like it was a bit pointless. I’m not sure if anyone else agrees.

I admit I haven't finished it yet because the Dailymotion app on my TV crashed so I will watch it on my PC.  However I will say that watching it after knowing they made a sequel subtitled "Eddie Lives!" makes the first one questionable.

[AlmostAGhost 2718]

The point seems to have been to steal everything from Bruce Springsteen

[Cameron H. 23786]

15 minutes ago, AlmostAGhost said:

The point seems to have been to steal everything from Bruce Springsteen

That was so weird. The music (for the most part) was pretty anachronistic. I guess they were trying to suggest that Eddie was ahead of his time, but it just felt really out of place.

Also, I had issues with him being referred to as a “genius.” Berenger wrote the music and lyrics for their only hit, but because Eddie arranged it into a three chord, boogie he’s suddenly the innovator?

[SlidePocket 707]

In the 18 years between flashbacks and then-present day, most of the band members didn't seem to age a day, but poor Joe Pantoliano got affected the worst mostly because of the gray wig that he had to wear.

[theworstbuddhist 572]

28 minutes ago, AlmostAGhost said:

The point seems to have been to steal everything from Bruce Springsteen

Yeah. I haven't seen the film since it came out (didn't have time to revisit it last week) but according to the wikipedia page it sounds like it was the classic situation of poor distribution and a bunch of other factors causing it to flop at the box office, but the soundtrack did well and the home video and cable markets gave it a second life.

Edit to add: as someone who was a teenager in the 80s this movie fits pretty squarely in with the torrent of baby boomer nostalgia horseshit that was being released at the time, from new albums by everyone from The Moody Blues to The Monkees and films like The Big Chill.

@Cameron H., apparently Roger Ebert shared your frustration with the ending, which he said spoiled an otherwise agreeable film.

[AlmostAGhost 2718]

44 minutes ago, Cameron H. said:

That was so weird. The music (for the most part) was pretty anachronistic. I guess they were trying to suggest that Eddie was ahead of his time, but it just felt really out of place.

Also, I had issues with him being referred to as a “genius.” Berenger wrote the music and lyrics for their only hit, but because Eddie arranged it into a three chord, boogie he’s suddenly the innovator?

Yea that's odd. Berenger should have been seen as the great lost musician! He was the Brian Wilson of this group. 

Even though they were all dead rips of Bruce and nowhere near what anything in 1964 would've sounded like, the music was pretty great. 

[Cameron H. 23786]

3 minutes ago, AlmostAGhost said:

Yea that's odd. Berenger should have been seen as the great lost musician! He was the Brian Wilson of this group. 

Even though they were all dead rips of Bruce and nowhere near what anything in 1964 would've sounded like, the music was pretty great. 

Oh yeah, I liked the music. In fact, I already owned some of it before watching. I guess I don’t see why they didn’t just set the movie in ‘73 (the year of Springsteen’s first album). Was ten years not long enough to build up a “He might have faked his death mystique?” But that can’t be right because they make a crack about him living with Jim Morrison in Paris and he died in ‘71...

[theworstbuddhist 572]

38 minutes ago, AlmostAGhost said:

Yea that's odd. Berenger should have been seen as the great lost musician! He was the Brian Wilson of this group. 

Even though they were all dead rips of Bruce and nowhere near what anything in 1964 would've sounded like, the music was pretty great. 

Oh man, that reference to Brian Wilson just reminded me of a pretty good Canadian film from the 90s that was about Brian Wilson and his late brother (through a thin layer of fiction) - Whale Music, starring Maury Chaykin and Paul Gross and a bunch of other folks you might recognize. Plus music by the Rheostatics, one of the great bands from this country that never quite caught on in the US. It's on Youtube here:
 

Enjoy.

[SlidePocket 707]

The saxophonist in this film that died of a drug overdose also happens to be the saxophonist of the group who contributed to the soundtrack, John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band!

[Cinco DeNio 5290]

I thought the lady in the bar where they go "Tell so-and-so Eddie and the Cruisers are here" was Deborah Van Valkenburg.  I looked up the timelines to see how long it was before she dumped Michael Beck and went to Michael Pare.  She's not in EatC so that theory is down the drain.   I guess that lady is the backup singer?

[Cameron H. 23786]

I don’t care how old he might have actually been, but watching people call Barenger “kid” was weird. 

[Cinco DeNio 5290]

Speaking of blown timelines I was expecting to justify Joey Pants' villain turn in The Matrix as justified by that bad gray wig.  Yet The Matrix was 16 years later.  That's a long time to hold a grudge.

For Tom Berenger I thought sure his role in this prepped him for The Substitute.  Yet that was 13 years later so he could be out of touch with teaching.  Maybe that's why he was only a substitute in 1996.

[Cinco DeNio 5290]

1 minute ago, Cameron H. said:

I don’t care how old he might have actually been, but watching people call Barenger “kid” was weird. 

Berenger is over two years older than Joey Pants.  Tom was 34 in 1983 and Joe Pantoliano was 32.

[Quasar Sniffer 4174]

This movie is a strange collision of, as you smart people have said, the meaning of baby boomers nostalgia for the fifties and sixties and the immense popularity of Bruce Springsteen's music. Sure Springsteen and his image were backwards looking to the time of his childhood, and his songs had a ring of nostalgia to them, but they were also riddled with stories of people destroyed by their hometowns, by the morality of the 50s and 60s, and why people's inability to move on. Songs like "Born to Run" were fantasies of people who could get out, for people who could NEVER get out of that town this era was romanticizing. Hell, Glory Days hits the glorified cover band sequences of the film pretty on-the-nose, even if the literal characters of that song had their glory days in baseball. The nostalgia was really for a time when his characters had a future, not for the era itself.

[Cameron H. 23786]

48 minutes ago, Quasar Sniffer said:

This movie is a strange collision of, as you smart people have said, the meaning of baby boomers nostalgia for the fifties and sixties and the immense popularity of Bruce Springsteen's music. Sure Springsteen and his image were backwards looking to the time of his childhood, and his songs had a ring of nostalgia to them, but they were also riddled with stories of people destroyed by their hometowns, by the morality of the 50s and 60s, and why people's inability to move on. Songs like "Born to Run" were fantasies of people who could get out, for people who could NEVER get out of that town this era was romanticizing. Hell, Glory Days hits the glorified cover band sequences of the film pretty on-the-nose, even if the literal characters of that song had their glory days in baseball. The nostalgia was really for a time when his characters had a future, not for the era itself.

Absolutely! I always find it interesting how movies are always nostalgic for a period about 20 years ago. In the 80’s movies are littered with 60’s music. The 90’s seemed obsessed with the 70’s. Even now, if you look at Captain Marvel, we’re starting to see the 90’s come into prominence. I suppose it’s just the time period the writers grew up in, but it’s weird that they have to pull from the past to appeal to contemporary youth.

[AlmostAGhost 2718]

8 hours ago, Quasar Sniffer said:

This movie is a strange collision of, as you smart people have said, the meaning of baby boomers nostalgia for the fifties and sixties and the immense popularity of Bruce Springsteen's music.

Also maybe it's worth pointing out, this movie came out a year before Born In The USA made Bruce a super-mega-star. Obviously, he was still pretty big with "Born To Run" and stuff, but "Glory Days" and all the singles from USA came out after this movie.

[Cinco DeNio 5290]

8 hours ago, AlmostAGhost said:

Also maybe it's worth pointing out, this movie came out a year before Born In The USA made Bruce a super-mega-star. Obviously, he was still pretty big with "Born To Run" and stuff, but "Glory Days" and all the singles from USA came out after this movie.

Sure, but that means he was recording Born in the USA in 1983 (or even 1982!) so the filmmakers could have been aware of the songs.

[AlmostAGhost 2718]

11 minutes ago, Cinco DeNio said:

Sure, but that means he was recording Born in the USA in 1983 (or even 1982!) so the filmmakers could have been aware of the songs.

Hmm that seems unlikely to me - you don't usually know songs until they come out. But maybe Bruce played some of them live first. Still what I meant was, they basically told his story before he became a megastar, which is interesting.

[Cinco DeNio 5290]

Just now, AlmostAGhost said:

Hmm that seems unlikely to me - you don't usually know songs until they come out. But maybe Bruce played some of them live first. Still what I meant was, they basically told his story before he became a megastar, which is interesting.

I apologize that my tongue wasn't planted well enough in my cheek to be obvious.

[AlmostAGhost 2718]

4 minutes ago, Cinco DeNio said:

I apologize that my tongue wasn't planted well enough in my cheek to be obvious.

Oh haha, i just woke up so I didn't catch on

[SlidePocket 707]

This movie and Streets of Fire have a few things in common: Both of whom star Michael Pare, did better on VHS and cable, and their soundtracks produced hit singles ("On the Dark Side", "I Can Dream About You") that performed a lot better than these films' overall box office totals.

[Cinco DeNio 5290]

How much singing did Michael Pare do? The opening song looked and sounded like they played the Springsteen track. Other moments I wasn’t as sure about.

[Cinco DeNio 5290]

On 7/29/2019 at 11:35 AM, AlmostAGhost said:

Yea that's odd. Berenger should have been seen as the great lost musician! He was the Brian Wilson of this group. 

Even though they were all dead rips of Bruce and nowhere near what anything in 1964 would've sounded like, the music was pretty great. 

Especially since Tom Berenger was the first credited!  It would make him seem like the star.