In amongst his 244 soundtrack appearances, Paul McCartney has
23 official credits as an actor, mostly voiceovers and Wings DVD
compilations. Of course, he did appear as himself in the Beatles movies
of the ’60s, including A Hard Day’s Night, Help and
Magical Mystery Tour. And in 1978, McCartney appeared in an
uncredited cameo in the Beatles-inspired Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts
Club Band, which also featured a VW-busload of the era’s stars in
cameo or playing thinly veiled versions of themselves, including The
Bee Gees, Peter Frampton and Aerosmith as “Future Villain Band.”
Rock stars, being natural performers, tend to be decent actors, as
long as they are playing musicians. Cameron Crowe—of course—cast
Seattle locals, including most of Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains, to add
authenticity to Singles and recruited Red House Painters’ Mark
Kozelek as Stillwater’s bassist in Almost Famous. John Carney, a
bassist as well as a director, cast The Frames’ Glen Hansard as the
troubadour lead in Once, against his real-life Swell Season
bandmate Marketa Irglova as a pianist. Justin Rice of New York
indie-pop outfit Bishop Allen has played musicians in the mumblecore
efforts Mutual Appreciation and the upcoming Harmony and
Me. Eminem’s B-Rabbit in 8 Mile stands as the thinnest
contemporary veil on celluloid.
The Commitments
Though a rock star can bring it finely enough, it’s usually more fun
to watch the pros do it. This is Spinal Tap is the go-to fake
movie band; Michael McKean, Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer are
touring together now and have to advertise that they will not be in
character. They’re followed closely by the late John Belushi and the
late-career-wise Dan Aykroyd in The Blues Brothers. The
Commitments has got a dozen years on Once in the Irish
musical department. In 1981’s Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous
Stains, teenaged Diane Lane, Laura Dern and Marin Kanter are The
Stains, a punk band with three practices under its belt that very
implausibly—yet, somehow, still awesomely and mostly without
pants—gets taken out on tour with Brit medium-stars The Looters and
becomes a national sensation. Bette Midler became a star and earned an
Academy Award nomination with The Rose, still the best filmed
unofficial version of Janis Joplin’s story (until Penelope Spheeris
manages to make hers).
The Fabulous Stains
Almost Famous
In Crowe’s Almost Famous, an autobiographical love letter to
the years he spent writing for Rolling Stone as a teen, Billy
Crudup and Jason Lee battle for supremacy over the serviceable yet
unremarkable ’70s rock band Stillwater. (Crowe, too, is responsible for
Lili Taylor’s proto-Riot Grrl Corey Flood in Say Anything, and
Campbell Scott’s grunge cool in Singles.) Ethan Hawke’s greasy
emo hair fronts grunge band Hey That’s My Bike in Reality Bites,
spitting out a cover of Violent Femmes “Add it Up” in a pivotal scene.
Terrence Howard and Taraji P. Henson begin Hustle & Flow as
pimp and prostitute but end as collaborators on D-Jay’s hit single
“Hard Out Here for a Pimp.” (The film also features Ludacris as rapper
Skinny Black.) Alessandro Nivola portrays the arrogant lead singer of a
band being produced by Frances McDormand in Laurel Canyon (which
also features a non-musical appearance by Lou Barlow).
Hustle and Flow
The best music-in-movies treatments come from a pair of Robert
Altman films 31 years apart. Nashville (1975) is a typically
sprawling, politically charged movie that uses country music as both a
backdrop and a distraction, as Joan Tewkesbury’s script pits starlet
against has-been, leech against meal ticket and old saw against
whippersnapper with literally dozens of stories unfurling during a
presidential primary.
Prairie Home Companion
A Prairie Home Companion (2006), Altman’s last film, takes
place almost entirely in a creaking theatre as a folksy,
middle-American radio show readies its last broadcast. (Anytime Meryl
Streep sings is a bonus feature all its own, by the way.) The stakes,
on paper, are lower than Nashville‘s—there will be no
assassination attempts in St. Paul—but both films are packed full of
dreamers, of entertainers, some who’ve lost and some who don’t realize
they’re losing, along with the tiniest handful of winners too. And if
movies and music, as art, are supposed to reflect our lives back to us,
they’re stronger together than apart: Every Joe does lie when he cries.
The Rest of the Best
Six more top music movie clips to watch
Give my Regards to Broad Street
Purple Rain
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Eddie and the Cruisers
Velvet Goldmine
Satisfaction
This article appears in Jul 9-15, 2009.