Posted By BillHeise on March 23, 2010

A recent publicity tour for a film about the Runaways, the 1970s all-girl rock band, featured this quote from starlet Dakota Fanning:

“A lot of girls in my generation don’t realize there was a time when you couldn’t actually do something. And what the Runaways did at the time was actually not OK, not acceptable, not accepted,” Fanning said. “Because I’ve grown up thinking I could do and be whatever I want, and I’ve never thought for a second that I couldn’t because I’m a girl. So to do this movie, and see that it was not accepted at all, was really interesting.”

But such quotes are as much the result of habit as they are the result of true knowledge, for the ye-ye girls had been performing in France since the since the 60s, Billie Holiday had performed in the 40s, and Gloria Swanson had been performing in the 20s.

A more important point than the one made by starlet Fanning is made by Andy Tybout, who asks about the short lives of music biopics in the public imagination:

Heading back from a screening [of the film Crazy Heart] a few months back, my friend and I tried, and failed, to think of music biopics that had gone on to become classics. Countless standouts came to mind — “Ray,” “Walk the Line” — but we were at a loss when it came to films that had endured in the public mindset beyond a year or two.

He provides his own answer:

The answer can be found, surprisingly enough, in “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story” (2007). Ostensibly it’s a parody of “Walk the Line” (2005), but really, it’s a searing, and hilarious, indictment of all music biopics ever made. With sardonic ease, the film matriculates through the various motions of the genre — a tragic childhood, drugs, reuniting with an old flame — and by the end, you get the sense that you’ve just watched a thousand movies in one.

I would say that he means This is Spinal Tap, which is a movie (coincidentally) that has withstood the test of time.

But the question he’s asking has to do with the fact that music biopics are all the same and that it is the job of great parody to point out the similarity to us. Genres become become stale and lifeless, while life moves forward, so that what once was so exciting when the Beatles made Hard Day’s Night becomes tiresome by 2010, when every garage band is making a movie about themselves.

But people forget origins–Andy Tybout forgets Spinal Tap and the Scopitone. My point is not to bring Andy Tybout’s knowledge up to date but to make the point that human beings are not good at discovering origins, but it is one of the characteristic behaviors of human beings to search after them. (But being characteristic doesn’t make it right, right?)

So one of the many origins in the world of modern video is this classic video from France by France Gall (see my previous post on the Ye-Ye Girls) called “Laisse Tomber Les Filles.”

This is one of my favorite songs of all time. I am not alone. The song has become a standard in France, and has its own page on Wikipedia.

Leave the girls alone
Leave the girls alone
One day it’ll be you who’s left
Leave the girls alone
Leave the girls alone
One day it’ll be you who cries
Yes I’ve cried but when that day comes
No I won’t cry
No I won’t cry

But the song itself is sung by an innocent 16 year old girl.

An American remake of the song was featured in Quentin Tarentino’s Death Proof, one of the darkest films ever. I urge you to watch the video if for no other reason than to remind you of what a violent sex-fest that film actually is.)

So how did the sweet young girl singing a nice song get translated to one of the most violent films ever? Well for one thing, even in its day the lyrics were very dark. They have to do with a guy who is causing girls to “fall.” The singer urges him to “Leave the girls alone.” But, of course, the lyrics could be urging the man to allow the girls to fall. The Wikipedia article talks about the the difference between the light fare of ye-ye and the darker lyrics by Serge Gainsbourg.

So it was only natural that the song would be paired with a movie that was based on Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, a Russ Meyer film. This short promo clip is even better than Tarentino’s movie, and features the words

You name it, we got it! Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! delivers tons more than the opposition! [that's what it says] Unladylike karate chops! Ungentlemanly haling! Spirited gymnastics. Corrective table etiquette! Sandbox jousting! Or a musclebound cat wrestling with a sports car that’s intent on squashing him like a grape! Bizarre kidney- and chassis-rattling chases! And for the first time on the screen, a hay-making, belly-busting, karate-chopping, judo-flipping fight to win them all! Superwoman against man! The prize: life itself! Slashing, tackling, gouging, hacking, flipping, belting, smashing and blasting! Muscle-to-muscle! Bone-to-bone! For an incredible evening’s entertainment, a film so totally satisfying, see Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

Grammar be damned! I’m going to see it.

You can actually watch the whole thing on Google videos.

I am, of course, not the first to think of putting this video to France Gall’s song:

The song reminds us (or me, at least) of the power of forgetting the depth of content and only rediscovering the depths in modern instances. It just goes to show you how much we need to remember to be considered true historians. There’s almost always something older that we miss out on, so we’re better off not tying ourselves to the origins of things when we forge our identities.

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