Around 1999, I discovered Wes Anderson’s Rushmore, Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain’s Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, and James Cameron’s infamous “scriptment” for his Spider-Man movie. Being young, and with entirely too much time to think, I made some connections that didn’t necessarily need to be made. Well, all but one, which was that any Spider-Man movie should prominently feature at least one Ramones song.
The James Cameron treatment for Spider-Man, despite the howls of early internet outrage that accompanied it, felt pretty revolutionary at the time, and not just because we had yet to actually get a big screen version of Spidey. To this day, its tone reads a little more like Stan Lee and especially Steve Ditko’s original, not-so-nice vision for Peter Parker. Go back and read the first few years worth of Spider-Man comics, and you’ll see that Peter isn’t a terribly nice guy. He hasn’t met his years of being bullied with the kind of good natured “aw shucks” attitude we’re accustomed to. Instead, Peter is a brooding, often resentful jerk, and his attitude towards the women who don’t have much time for him isn’t exactly great, either.
I’m sure I wasn’t alone in seeing some of Ditko’s Peter Parker in the overachieving, awkward, and often creepy Max Fischer of Rushmore. But it was that film’s eclectic soundtrack, which utilized no music less than 25 years old (other than Mark Mothersbaugh’s score), that really stood out. Late night dial-up internet sessions were set to that soundtrack, as well as bands I was discovering thanks to Please Kill Me, namely Television, The Talking Heads, and full Ramones albums (as opposed to their ubiquitous greatest hits collections).
Not that Peter’s musical taste has ever been explored in great detail in the comics. But it’s worth noting there was a period in the ‘80s when it was established, without question, that he was a big Elvis Costello fan. See for yourself…
See? Peter was always a little out of step with the musical zeitgeist.
It might be a coincidence that Elvis Costello looks an awful lot like how Steve Ditko drew Peter Parker. They even, at least on the cover of the 2nd Elvis album (my favorite), have a fondness for cameras.
Anyway, I digress…
The only thing crazier than the fact that it took until 2002 to get a Spider-Man movie on the big screen in the first place is the fact that it took an additional 15 years to get a Ramones song into a Spider-Man movie. Peter Parker hails from Forest Hills, just like the band’s original lineup. You can go to Forest Hills today, at the corner of 67th Avenue and 110th Street and find Ramones Way, right in front of Forest Hills High School. Sure, Andrew Garfield’s moodier Peter had a Ramones poster on his bedroom wall, but give me a 1-2-3-4 count off and some power chords or don’t bother.
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But while finally seeing some big screen Spidey action set to “Blitzkrieg Bop” is a treat, it wasn’t the biggest surprise, nor was it my favorite musical moment of the movie.
Now let’s get an Elvis Costello tune in the sequel.
further reading: The Doctor Strange and Pink Floyd Connection
Count it in with Mike Cecchini on Twitter. 1-2-3-4…!!! Read more of his work here.
