Makes Me (Stevie) Wonder

As much as I love motion pictures, I am almost as equally fond of music. And when I say music, I mean music in nearly all forms. In fact in my moments of of feeling awfully low, music is my refuge and salvation. The refuge almost takes on an obsessive immersion. My latest obsession/immersion experience into pop/rock/whatever escapism is Maroon 5. As I listened to their music, I started to think about Maroon 5/movie tie-ins, partly as a result of a conversation I had with my brother about Jennifer’s Body in which the character portrayed by Adam Brody asks his mates (prior to sacrificing Jennifer):

Do you wanna be a big loser, or do you wanna be rich and awesome like that guy from Maroon 5?

Maroon 5.

Okay. That’s what I thought.

Well with that my mission was clear. I started my obligatory research on IMDB and soon realized that I have only seen two theatrically released films of that met my requirement of having an awesomely placed Maroon 5 song. The first movie was Love Actually (2003) in which a version of “The Sweetest Goodbye.” I love this movie and I LOVE this song.

The second film, I was not so fond of – the 2005 Debra Messing vehicle The Wedding Date was a bit of a mess. The movie itself was a bit of a hodge-podge; the people behind the making of the picture thought it would be a great idea to take elements from a variety of wedding-themed movies from the past 10 years or so and put them in here (they even “borrowed” a star, Dermott Mulroney). That is the bad news. The one element that I enjoyed in the film was the use of the song “Secret.” It came at a very critical “interlude” between the primary characters. This was the one thing right about the picture in my opinion.

So there I was – this exercise was a pretty short one. But it really got me thinking … about other music that I love that has been featured in movies that I actually loved too? Since I was still in Maroon 5-mode I decided to look at some of their musical influences. Stevie Wonder immediately came to mind. In choosing Stevie I knew I had landed the motherlode of good movies and great music.In fact on my IMDB research I noticed that I had over 200 film and TV credits to choose from; I obviously stuck with the film selections.

So in order of the film’s release, here are some of my favorite Stevie music/movie combinations:

1988 Die Hard – “Skeleton”
1995 Dead Presidents – “I Was Made to Love Her”
1998 You’ve Got Mail – “Signed, Sealed Delivered I’m Yours”
1999 The Best Man – “As”
2000 Center Stage – “Higher Ground”
2000 High Fidelity – “I Believe When I Fall in Love It Will be Forever” – in this film, the closing credits use the songs but it is a great way to end a really enjoyable movie. What makes it even sweeter is that Stevie Wonder is mentioned in the film.

I may have missed a few but these are ones that stand out in my mind.

Overall this exercise was a lot of fun and I am thinking about broadening this out to other artists. In fact, I have already started to takes notes on another Motown legend, Marvin Gaye.

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