The velvet underground
TEN OF THE NEW YORK ALT-ROCK PIONEERS’ FINEST FILM TRIPS…
1 ‘Pale Blue Eyes’ ADVENTURELAND, 2009
Director Greg Mottola fell for the “longing and unhappiness” in the Velvets’ desperately plaintive song of doomed, adulterous love. So good, he indulges its sweet bummer beauty twice: once for the kiss, next for the comedown, both to be lingered on.
2 ‘Stephanie Says’ THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS, 2001
Song of regret or realisation? Sorrow or sweetness? Either way, the VU’s achingly pretty lament flutters into earshot with the graceful lilt of the homecoming hawk in Wes Anderson’s tender comedy of emotional befuddlement.
3 ‘Heroin’ THE DOORS, 1991
“I feel just like Jesus’ son…” Val Kilmer’s Jim Morrison meets Crispin Glover’s Warhol in a close-to-divinity drug haze, astutely backed by the double-mallet thump and dark seduction of the VU’s slow-building hymn to opiated self-dissolution.
4 ‘Venus In Furs’ LAST DAYS, 2005
Nirvana covered ‘Here She Comes
Now’; Kurt Cobain included ‘New Age’ on a famous mixtape. But it’s the Velvet Underground’s piercing S&M drone-song that accompanies Gus Van Sant’s Cobain quasiportrait, alight with fitting sorrow and severity. “Taste the whip…”
5 ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’ THE LORDS OF SALEM, 2012
“I locked down the rights to it in advance,” said director Rob Zombie. Good move: Salem’s climactic demonic ascension wouldn’t rise without the sulphurous insistence of the VU and Nico’s incantatory masterpiece.
6 ‘Oh! Sweet Nuthin’’ ZOMBIELAND, 2009
Not for the last time in 2009 (see also Adventureland), Jesse Eisenberg has a Velvets-based romantic epiphany on a night-time car ride. Here, Loaded’s forlorn hymnal accompanies his decision to stick with Emma Stone.
7 ‘I’m Sticking With You’ MORVERN CALLAR, 2002
Director Lynne Ramsay drops in the Velvets’ doleful sing-song devotional to smartly counter-intuitive effect in her mixtape-enriched film. Samantha Morton slices up her dead boyf’s body to the playful, proto-twee tune.
8 ‘Here She Comes Now’ ADVENTURELAND, 2009
Greg Mottola flaunts deep Underground love upfront in his summer romance. Adventureland drifts into view accompanied by the shortest, simplest song on White Light/White Heat:a dream-haze delight for die-hards.
9 ‘Sweet Jane’ FEAR STREET: 1978, 2021
In a cute double-era grab, director Leigh Janiak used the Cowboy Junkies’ dreamy VU cover in 1994 then steered back to the source. Shadyside “weird girl” Sadie Sink and cop-to-be Ted Sutherland flirt to Reed’s indelible riff.
10 ‘I’m Waiting For The Man’ MEN IN BLACK 3, 2012
Even the hokiest on-screen ’60s happening demands The Velvet Underground’s input. As Tommy Lee Jones’ K encounters an Andy Warhol impersonator, MIB3 scores with the lean proto-punk urgency of Lou Reed’s jonesing trip to Lexington 125 for drugs.