Heave Media

The Roundtable: Biopic Soundtracks

Who would do the soundtrack to a movie about your life?

We at HEAVE all love music, but we love movies just as much.  We’ve probably all thought about the possibility of a movie being made about our lives, too. So this week’s roundtable question is simple.  Who does the soundtrack to your biopic?

Dominick Mayer - For the soundtrack to my biopic, I have several bands I'd like to use with varying degrees of accuracy to my mostly boring-ass life, but as far as an album, I have to go with "To Leave Or Die In Long Island" by Bomb the Music Industry!. Yeah, it's only eight tracks and barely an album, and I've also never been to the East Coast, but it nails perfectly the feeling of realizing that you're growing into the worst adult ever, because you really just want to continue to be an immature, sometimes drunken jackass ("Stand There Until You're Sober") and keep messing with ignorant meatheads at shows ("Happy Anterrabae Day!!!"). There's also a lot about how what I've come to call "real people jobs" are shitty and often have nothing to do with what you went to school for, and even worse can't pay back all that schooling that your job has nothing to do with.

But lest it sound like I picked something that embodies my angst, because angst is a word that makes me want to hit myself and others really fucking hard, it's also wonderfully goofy. I mean, they recorded a death metal song about how at a certain age the only thing you can really do to rebel is grow a beard. (A Beard of Defiance, as it were.) Plus, there's "Showerbeers!", which simply put is about how one of the most Zen things you can do in your everyday life is drink a beer while showering. I don't know why this is, as it doesn't get you drunk faster or anything, but damned if it's not the best way I've found to unwind after long days.

Then, there's "Syke! Life Is Awesome!" which I am convinced will be played at the eventual end of my life, I don't even care. It's kind of the ending of my biopic, when I give my big speech and get a slow clap, only then I punch somebody in the face and go off running, laughing like a lunatic as Jeff Rosenstock sings about how you gotta embrace the small things in life like meeting the lead singer of your favorite band or pulling a phone number in order to get through the day.

Amy Dittmeier - I don't lead an exciting life.  The majority of my time is spent on the computer, watching movies, or playing with my pet guinea pigs.  I am not joking.  And the best part is, I enjoy thi s.  I already know I'm a bad ass so there's no need to prove it to anyone else.  I just walk into a room and bitches know to kneel before me.  Also, my life has zero conflict.  I think the last big decision I had to make was whether I wanted to go see The Lady From Shanghai at the Musicbox or to go get wasted and stuff dollar bills down a dancer's briefs at the gay bar.  So I'm assuming if any hack director wanted to make a biopic about me their either crazy or Jim Jarmusch.  Either way, I picked out an awesome soundtrack to help them out in attempting to construct a narrative out of my awesome life.

Because of my age, most of this music has to be set during my high school and college years.  I don't want to be typical, but I have to pick Weezer's Pinkerton and Blue Album to lead the scenes of my awkward time at high school.  The agonizing time spent with the football players in gym, lugging around my string bass to jazz combo shows, staying up late to finish the school paper.  River Cuomo is the only man who could properly portray the teen angst I felt in these moments.  But college was a whole other story and a whole other set of problems.  Enter Queen of the Stone Age's Rated R.  Josh Homme knows how it feels walking home at 6 am still drunk wearing heels with his hair all messed up.  Well, maybe not the walking in heels part.  Plus "Quick and to the Pointless" would be a great song to play over the scene in the film where I steal a car and start a car chase on the highway.  There's still time.

Andrew Scott - I can’t sing.  I wish I could.  It’s even on my list of “Things that are tragically absent from my life, thus preventing me from having a complete and absolutely blissful existence,” along with being six feet tall and learning to color inside the lines.  Now even though my best attempt at singing in pitch can best be described as a road kill cat getting into an altercation with a raspy-voiced opossum, I’m no quitter. Why I once had to take a Spanish oral exam and decided it would be best to do so in singsong form.  In retrospect, I can no longer think of any possible reason I thought this would be an improvement upon my already atrocious Spanish accent, and upon receiving my grade, it was apparent that my teacher didn’t think so either.  I guess the moral of this story is that I sing ALL the time!  

I can think of a few bands with insufferable vocalists, but only one band expels such horrid singing with the same passion that I myself possess, Man Man.  Not only can I appreciate this gift (curse) of theirs, but I would be honored to have them supply the soundtrack of my biopic.  It’s not just that we share the same taste in low, raspy/ off-key falsetto singing, we also love to spew out complete nonsense.  In closing, I think they really said it best, “She's a warm bodega, high on Noriega, strung out in Brooklyn like it's 1983.  She wears her legs around her neck like a piece of ice, her smile's a neon marque hipsters eat for free.”  My sentiments exactly…

Ben Kessell - I'm not sure if I'd qualify for the title of "gritty hard-ass," but I'd like to think that I showed up for all the tryouts. I'm certainly not your average guy, either; the things I’ve come across in my scant 25 years would rattle anybody. From dealing with the very real possibility of death in a hospital bed to psychological abuse from a spouse, I've had my fair share of scrapes. I know, however, that as soon as I flip on my headphones and begin blasting anything aggressive, catharsis will take it's toll. My whole life I've tried my damnedest not to fill the role of the typical angry rocker. The image follows me, however unintentional, and I allow it now; finding it weeds out undesirable companions and the judgmental alike.

If some goofy sot like Terry Gilliam or Luc Besson wanted to make my stoner fantasies and seizure dreams a film they'd need an apt soundtrack. While the majority of my life is spent laughing, all the real lessons I've learned were harsh and sudden; leaving me time to brood and lick my wounds. Pretty picture, no? I think so, because the grit in some of my favorite records reflects the bittersweet truth of mortality. I'd have to insist that the songs from "The Seats are Soft but the helmet is WAY too tight" by Thulsa Doom be used for the more whimsical and offbeat things I’ve been up to. While the tried-and-true hard rock of We're All Gonna Die's "The Wreck of the Minot" consistently rings true for some of the more difficult times in my life. My close friends would ask: But what about your first love, Black Flag?

Henry Rollins lived in a tool shed, I didn't. 'Nuff said.

Posted by Wes Soltis on Oct 16, 2009 @ 9:00 am