The Smiley Smile Message Board

At some point in the future, could a song like Summer of Love ever (ironically, perhaps?) be placed prominently during a scene in a film? Or in a commercial? Yes I realize that tune was on Baywatch back in 1995, but let's just start this discussion starting with films/commercials from today and the future.

Same question for any other number of odd/obscure BB tunes.

I, for one, could hypothetically see a tune like All I Wanna Do being used in a commercial, or perhaps Match Point of Our Love being placed by a music supervisor in a Judd Apatow type comedy film during a tennis scene between a guy and a girl.

Life Is For The Living in a commercial for a gym or protein shake or something like that!!

"Solar System", in one of Professor Brian Cox's BBC-TV programmes about the universe. ;D

Slightly off-topic, as this is an example of a REAL use of Beach Boys stuff in a soundtrack... but of a more obscure and inappropriate usage I couldn't conceive!

In the early 2000s UK comedy film Calendar Girls (about a load of middle-aged ladies in a chintzy English village who make a nude calendar featuring themselves to raise money for a good cause), a few bars of the Stereo instrumental version of Sloop John B could be heard at some triumphant, punch-the-air moment in the film. I nearly fell out of my seat.

So: wrinkly ladies remove kit for calendar, in Miss Marple-style English village, all hollyhocks, sundials and neatly manicured privet hedges... and you illustrate this in sound using the instrumental version of a song originally about a fishing trip in the Caribbean that doesn't go well, sung by a bunch of sliced-bread 1960s Californians, and played by a load of US West Coast jazz musicians. MMMM-mmmm. Great fit, right there!

I guess the director must have just really, really liked Pet Sounds...?

Apparently, it's played just after the one-hour mark:

http://www.subzin.com/quotes/M20233be17/Calendar+Girls/%28%23+%22Sloop+John+B%22+-+instrumental+version%29

The film can be watched at YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFPs6a_rEBk) and at http://www.vudu.com/movies/ but you have to pay...

Out of left field perhaps, but I can imagine a new Wes Anderson film being scored entirely with the Friends album.
(Note that he has already used Heroes and Villains in The Fantastic Mr Fox, to great effect.)

'Louie Louie' would fit perfectly as an ongoing 'theme' for 'Dumb and Dumber 3'. ;)

There are countless dramas (and other genres) of TV shows that do the same thing, where they put an often somewhat somber, plaintive songs near the end of the episode, often as part of some sort of montage where the main character is contemplating something or feels down or is gearing up for some sort of inspirational thing. There are countless BB and BW songs that could be used for this sort of scenario, and the main factor in picking a track would be the production/sound quality of the song.

A track from BW '88 might be good thematically, but a blast of late 80s synths probably wouldn't fit.

It's also trendy on shows to use old tracks, sometimes as a sort of novelty or to make something sound creepier or something.

But I think they could use some old BB tracks from the 60s or 70s, and/or have some modern indie artist re-record them. Another largely untapped element of the BBs that a good GROUP MANAGER would have been working on for some time now.

Darlin' on Big Bang Theory means anything is possible.

And I would guess that was entirely born from the mind of someone writing on that show, or the showrunner, or something like that.

The BBs could get even more visibility along those lines if they had someone shopping deeper cuts to TV and film.

I remember someone pointing out a few years ago that, while not the most substantive song of all time, "Spring Vacation" could have easily been placed in a movie or movie trailer (a whole separate type of song visibility) back in 2012 as extra cross promotion.

True, and it does have an impact. Cameron Crowe's placement of Feel Flows in, I want to say, Almost Famous?, really hit me when I was in the theatre. It went into my playlist on a much more regular basis after hearing it in the film.

It would be fascinating and hilarious if for some reason, a reissue of the film Fast Times at Ridgemont High couldn't get clearance to use Jackson Browne's song "Somebody's Baby" during the love scene with Jennifer Jason Leigh... and the song was replaced by the chorus for the song "Looking Back With Love".

The songs' choruses sound so similar, I would bet that there'd be some viewers who would think something was "off", but probably couldn't really place what was different in the scene.

Even if you didn't watch "Mad Men," you may know about this scene from being Brian/Beach Boys nuts, but this was a great use of a BB track.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpWlKCfSPcU

"Feel Flows" in Almost Famous was very effective.  I was unfamiliar with the group's 70s output when I heard that and I remember around the same time also hearing "Sail On Sailor" in The Departed peaking my interest in the group when I wasn't quite a huge fan yet.  Both songs sounded so unlike anything I had heard from the Beach Boys before.

Long Promised Road.

I could definitely see Diamond Head being used in a movie.

Old Man River was used in the same film, which is pretty damn obscure.

God Only Knows was used wonderfully in the montage near the end of Boogie Nights-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mbh2HtJQ4k

It combined the Endless Harmony/1970s take with the Friends-20/20/1960's version, which sounds great when actually put together (like I did).

I could definitely see songs from the Smile album used in a film. Child is the Father of the Man would be pretty sweet.

I think Slip On Through from Sunflower would work for the right t.v. show or movie.

Hey Little Tomboy might work in a horror movie about a pedaphile.....I'm sorry

Haha, I can see this, easily.

I couldn't believe it when I heard Love and Mercy on The Walking Dead.  Anything is possible!

Not Beach Boys but Brian solo..."Meet Me In My Dreams Tonight" from his 1988 self-titled album.....It could at least overtake Katrina and the Waves' "Walking On Sunshine" or New Radicals "Get What You Give". :) ;)

I could see "You Need a Mess of Help to Stand Alone" in a movie.

pdas! you just read my mind, I was about to say the same thing.  It's so ass-kickin' that it could be
another band!  Love to hear this on the start of a movie.  I'd love to see peoples reactions when they
discover it's 'The Beach Boys'.

For years I have imagined a car driving down a rainy highway or bridge with Make It Good paying.

A distraught and broken man walks along the beach, looking at the water, as "Til I Die" plays. 

that's sounds like my biography.

River Song being used in Marley and Me is a little unusual, but it kind of fits at the part it's played in.

Weirdly, when I heard "Big Sur" 4/4 1st time around, I said, "This could be used in the "Bounty" ad". It's chocolate with coconut. They show some people lying in the beach by the palm tree & their mouth when they enjoy the bits of chocolate. "Big Sur" would fit, with that tropical kind of sound, it's like they sing in relaxed way.

I could see "Games Two Can play" on a goofy romantic comedy

The only kind of movie I'd wish to have a BB soundtrack would be a documentary about the beauty of Nature. With a particular emphasis  on seascapes, of course.

I always thought Be With Me had the perfect eerie sound for a possible Lord Of The Rings film before that movie was made. Obviously Peter Jackson did not share my view.

Maybe something like Busy Doin' Nothin' in the Gilmore Girls sequels...

Solar System could be used in any sort of wacky scene about the cosmos .....perhaps in a movie about an inter galactic  alien love affair.......a sci fi romcom as the credits roll......

I was pleasantly surprised while watching a new HBO series, Divorce and Dennis Wilson's You and I played over the credits at the end of episode 8.  That series has a great soundtrack, good stuff from the 70s including Cold Morning Light by Todd R.

It's good song.

Not BBs but it would be nice if Brian's "Daddy's little girl" featured in famous TV series & as result got recognition, covers, inclusion to setlists (at least few gigs) etc.