![]() His next role would be in Saving Private Ryan. Before That Thing You Do!, Hanks’ prior three live-action roles were in Apollo 13, Forrest Gump, and Philadelphia. I truly think Tom Hanks’ involvement as writer, director and co-star of That Thing You Do! helped make it a success, but is what also made it so easy to dismiss. I just kept waiting for it to happen - I’m sure he did, too – but no other role was quite built for him like the one Tom Hanks had written for him in That Thing You Do! (When Guy is still working at his father’s appliance store, the way Tom Everett Scott delivers the word “avocado” when listing washing machine colors to prospective customers makes me laugh every time.) And the truth is, he’s had a nice career (he recently appeared in the Scream television series), but when he was playing Shades, he was electric. When That Thing You Do! came out in 1996, I really thought Tom Everett Scott would be a huge star. Which, when you think about it, is probably a pretty common result from jumping over parking meters.) (The original drummer, played by Giovanni Ribisi, broke his arm after a freak “jumping over parking meters” accident. Fictionally written by lead singer of The One-Ders (later changed to The Wonders) James Mattingly (Johnathon Schaech), the song becomes a hit after fill-in drummer Guy “Shades” Patterson (Tom Everett Scott), in a dick move, really, speeds up the tempo of the song without telling anyone else in the band that this would be his plan. (Written by Fountains of Wayne bassist Adam Schlesinger, the song was actually No. 41 in 1996.)Īnd it’s a good thing “That Thing You Do” is such a good song, because, during the movie That Thing You Do! we hear it a lot. I honestly believe this song could have hit No. I remember a month in college where, blaring down the hallway between Blues Traveler and The Dave Matthews band, all of a sudden, I’d hear “That Thing You Do” by The Wonders. But yet, the song “That Thing You Do” is an honest to goodness earworm. It’s hard to make a fake believable cultural touchstone because it’s hard to make a real one. If Hyde really were the true sensation that we were told it became, there’d be a real Hyde movie starring Adrian Grenier coming to a theater near you this fall. Usually, this kind of thing winds up being like what we saw in this year’s Entourage movie: Vincent Chase directs this “amazing” movie, Hyde, but, when we see a clip from it, it looks awful and there’s no way any sane person would find Hyde appealing, let alone a runaway sensation.Īnd I’m not even picking on Entourage. It’s hard enough to just create a popular thing on its own, let alone create a fake popular thing on a relative whim because it’s needed for a movie. For this to work, a viewer has to accept that, yes, everyone really would love this popular thing that all of the characters on screen seem to like. This is not an easy trick to pull off, creating a piece of fictional art that becomes so fictionally popular that it drives the entire narrative. That said, the most remarkable thing, to me, about That Thing You Do! is that the song “That Thing You Do” is just so darn catchy. ![]() But it seems that a lot of people do love it, which got me thinking that maybe it’s a movie we should talk about more. ![]() The other night, I was on Twitter and referenced That Thing You Do, a tweet that led to a multi-person conversation about the movie, a movie I didn’t think had much of a following because not many people talk about it these days.
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