10 Movies Inspired By Great Songs | Screen Rant
After a memorable halftime performance at the Super Bowl, Mary J. Blige was recently announced as the executive producer of a new movie entitled Real Love, inspired by her first hit single of the same name. A huge testament to any song's cultural impact and popularity, Blige is not alone in having her music turned into a feature-length film.
Many artists can say they feature in or give their names to a motion picture, but few can claim to be the central creative seed from which an entire narrative spawns or a movie is built. Funny, compelling, and weird films abound, owing their creative heritage to great songs - the best of which can incorporate the music's themes and tone intimately into their own.
Arlo Guthrie's 18-minute spoken-word rhapsody was begging to be turned into some form of narrative work -- a huge composition that presents an absurdist account of the American justice system, and freedom. Director Arthur Penn obliged, adapting the song into a feature-length film with Guthrie playing himself.
The song tells the tale so straightforwardly that it is easy to see how the movie transcribes this into its own plot. Simultaneously, however, the absurdism, silliness, and humor of Guthrie's original song shine through in the retelling. The movie captures a lot of the themes of disproportionate consequences and trying to be autonomous in a strange society while maintaining the same dark bite of its inspiration.
Across The Universe is a song about the transcendental nature of life and the oneness of being, inspiring a homonymous 2007 romantic-comedy film. Though the movie features many Beatles tracks, Across The Universe was the central theme of the movie, around which both the plot and music revolve.
Translating a love song to the universe into a personal story about the struggles of a group is compelling. However, what makes this movie truly special is the preponderance of Beatles music and references within the plot - presenting a path through the entire Beatles catalog through the anthological themes created in the story of the song.
An instance of the film and music industry crossing over was 1980s The Gambler. Like the Kenny Rogers song from which it is inspired - the movie creates themes of life, love, loss, and the analogy that poker and gambling have to wider existence as a human being.
Though the song does lend itself to a movie, the business aspects of cashing in on a huge hit should also be considered. In fact, the film's full title is Kenny Rogers as The Gambler, an indication of production studios wanting to capitalize on both the musical talents and celebrity of Rogers. These efforts were successful, as this song unbelievably spawned an entire franchise of five direct-to-TV movies.
When Jay Roach's misfit-filled comedy was released, Beatles fans were shocked: The original recording of A Fool On The Hill plays over the opening credits, a huge feat, given the exclusivity of music licensing around the Fab Four's music. The plot is based loosely on the French film Le Diner de Côns, but the Beatles' hit is central to its delivery.
To elaborate: Roach called Paul McCartney himself, to implore the use of the song, building on a filmography of drawing inspiration from the Liverpool foursome (ie: the A Hard Day's Night inspired the directing of the Austin Powers trilogy). Compelling here is not just the obvious importance of The Beatles in Roach's movies, but also the subtle ways that A Fool On The Hill touches the aesthetic and tone of Dinner For Schmucks.
The Rolling Stones' ballad is about wildly contrasting aspects of romantic relationships, inspiring the identically named 2006 film about the fiery relationship between pop-icons Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick. Sienna Miller plays Sedgwick in a performance spanning the entirety of the relationship.
The adaption, however, is more than a conceptual carry-over -- the song is used as an embodiment of the central gist of the film, bringing together true historical events into a cohesive narrative on the themes of polar-opposite individuals in a romantic relationship. Factory Girl (the song) thus represents a guide to the movie and its contents, as well as its central theme.
Sean Penn's directorial debut was based on the Bruce Springsteen song, Highway Patrolman, a tale of two brothers who arrive at a compromising situation on either side of the law. Penn's movie recreates the plot with additional details, delivered by an all-star cast (Viggo Mortensen, Sandy Denis, and Charles Bronson).
What makes the adaption compelling, however, is the way it mixes its inspiration with Penn's own artistic license (with the movie, and the Bruce Springsteen work deviating significantly at points). Through the directorial reinterpretation of a song, we are able to understand not just Springsteen's work; but also what it means to Penn, and how he relates to the song deeply enough to create a film about it.
Bobby Gentry's 1967 smash-hit Ode To Billy Joe became the impetus for a self-titled movie adaptation in 1976. The song tells the story of a suicide in a small Mississippi town and the subsequent reaction of the local people. With major additions to the song's story, the film was met with much fanfare, surpassing its budget 20 times over.
The film version had an interesting development, being intimately connected to Gentry in its production (with the artist needing assurances her story would be properly attended to). The result was a movie close to how the songwriter envisioned the story, even going further than the song in the way it looks to address the many questions the song puts forward.
1986's The Hitcher was an early project for writer Eric Red. The 2.5-hour thriller centers around a chilling hitchhiker who stalks a young man across West Texas. The inspiration for the movie, however, was The Doors' classic, Riders On The Storm, which Red listened to while driving across the States. His appreciation of the song's cinematic elements put a thought in the writer's mind, spawning The Hitcher.
Fascinatingly, The Hitcher is an example of a movie taking shape completely through the relationship between author and song -- not simply lifting a narrative from the story, but trying to elaborate on how the song made him feel. From the calmly dramatic rain sounds to Jim Morrison's ethereal and disembodied storytelling, The Doors' song shines through in the aesthetic, content, and tone of The Hitcher - showing how interpretive song-to-movie adaptions can be.
A tale of media cross-pollination is The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia, the 1981 musical drama directed by Ronald F. Maxwell (and starring a young Mark Hamill). The movie takes inspiration and its title from the 1972 Vicki Lawrence song of the same name.
The film's production is rife with cross-media features: though based on Vicki Lawrence's song, the movie also boasts its own version of the track, re-recorded with reworked lyrics to fit into the film's plot. This hopping from medium and version makes for a truly interesting piece of film and music history, showing how even original source material can be reworked for the purposes of the art that it inspires.
Among films inspired by music, Brazil is special. The 1985 Terry Gilliam feature takes inspiration from the song Aquarelo Do Brasil - a vibrant Brazilian folk ballad about the country's wonders - to create a dark comedy about a dystopian, hyper-bureaucratic society; and the relationship between individual and state.
What makes Brazil remarkable? The fact that its plot and content are thematically antagonistic to the song, and yet undeniably still inspired by it. The title tracks (original and movie re-recording) are used to highlight the disparity between the human yearning of the movie's characters and the reality of their settings. Gilliam's vision of the future is cold and uncaring, while the song shows the movie's characters through glimpses of life and humanity.