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Purple people eater11/30/2022 PURPLE PEOPLE EATER MOVIEThe movie stars a young Neil Patrick Harris, in the role for which he will certainly be remembered. Still, though, it’s worth remembering as you experience Purple People Eater that it was somehow all down hill from here. Also, it is not coherent, creative, or charming at all. It’s more coherent, more creative, and more charming than any of her other works. Purple People Eater represents Shayne at the absolute peek of her abilities. She’s also done two other films ( Little Ghost and The Undercover Kid), so I think it’s likely we’ll get a Linda Shayne retrospective for some future Rule of Three. Shayne has been in a number of films as an actress, but as a director she might be most famous for the notorious Flyin’ Ryan, perhaps the only magic-shoes movie that has no interest in letting its character use the magic shoes. Purple People Eater was written and directed by Linda Shayne, who I think it’s safe to say wouldn’t recognize narrative if it fell from space and moved into her garage. I somehow doubt that was the movie’s actual intention but, well, here we are, kids. It is an incantation so powerful that it at first summons and later banishes a horrifying demon. Now we have Purple People Eater, which treats its original song like suppressed scripture. So Harper Valley PTA included the original song and some instrumental variants and Convoy rewrote the lyrics to better fit the action on screen. Instead, this version of the song describes which characters are where at any point in time, which seems unnecessary considering the film also uses subtitles to establish that information, but what do I know. Perhaps they cut it because the “rockin’ through the night” part would have reminded people that they forgot to include a scene in which any such thing happens. We never hear the original “Convoy” at all, and we don’t get any kind of chorus. They feel very true to the sound, mood, and quality of the original song, and each reader is welcome to take that observation in whatever spirit they please. The film-specific verses aren’t great, but until I listened to the song again in comparison I wasn’t sure they were film-specific. (McCall is obviously credited for the song in the film, but whether or not that extends to the new verses, I don’t know.) McCall who performs the rewritten verses, which lends the rewrite an air of legitimacy, but I can’t be sure. In Convoy, the original song is both a recurring presence and completely absent.ĭuring certain establishing shots and scene transitions, “Convoy” kicks in like an omniscient narrator, only we don’t hear the original lyrics. It’s a really nice and creative touch that winks at the audience without being unbearably cutesy. We hear different versions everywhere from Alice’s beauty parlor to the merry-go-round Stella rides with Willis. That’s not all, though throughout the movie, various instrumental arrangements of “Harper Valley PTA” play as diegetic background music. The original song brings us into the world of the movie and then out of it again, with the closing credits giving us a chance to reflect on how the film expanded on the germs of characterization the song gave us. It’s the “tell ’em what you’re going to tell ’em then tell ’em then tell ’em what you told ’em” approach, and I actually kind of like it. Riley version of the song plays in its entirety during both the opening and closing credits, bookending the movie…which itself contains scenes and characters so true to the song that lyrics are lifted entirely. In Harper Valley PTA, for instance, the Jeannie C. I don’t mean that I haven’t talked about how they adapted their source material - I won’t fuckin’ shut up about that - but rather how these films use the actual songs upon which they were based. Though my Rule of Three theme this year has been films based on novelty songs, I haven’t actually talked about how these films use their own source material. FelixSH on Housekeeping post: moving forward.Lupin The 8th on Housekeeping post: moving forward.Olivia on Housekeeping post: moving forward.Zane on Housekeeping post: moving forward.Mike on Housekeeping post: moving forward.
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