Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Persistent, beguiling innocence of ‘That Thing You Do!’
One sign of an enduring classic may be that you do not recognize it as such on first contact.
That’s probably because enduring classics don’t try too hard; they are more the result of an earnest filmmaker trying to tell a great story than a serious director trying to make a grand statement. Like the painter and film critic Manny Farber observes, “[g]ood work usually results when the creators … seem to have no ambitions toward gilt culture but are involved in a kind of squandering-beaverish activity … that goes always forward eating its own boundaries, and … leaves nothing in its path other than the signs of eager, industrious, unkempt activity.”
That’s not to say that there are not instances where award-seeking “prestige” films (what Farber called “white elephant art”) attain a certain purchase on our imaginations — John Ford, who was one of Farber’s nemeses with his proclivities for “rounded, declamatory acting” and who “silhouetted riders along the rim of a mountain with a golden sunset behind them,” happens to be one of my favorite directors, and I’m not certain that’s entirely due to his habit of employing termite actor John Wayne, who, Farber notes, was “infected by a kind of hoboish spirit, sitting back on its haunches doing a bitter-amused counterpoint to the pale, neutral film life around him.”
The point is that while movies can endure without being good, there is something in enduring movies that resonates with audiences. And that resonance is not always apparent on first viewing, and especially not in the immediate aftermath of that first viewing. The critic who files on deadline always risks missing what makes a special movie special — films often need time to marinate in the head.
I am thinking about the 1996 film “That Thing You Do!” It is a movie I enjoyed when it was released, but one I imagined would almost instantly slip out the cultural conversation. In 1996, it seemed like the point of “That Thing You Do!” was to provide proof of concept for the idea that Tom Hanks, who even then seemed like one of our last genuine movie stars, could also write and direct a motion picture. This didn’t seem like
an earthshaking proposition — I don’t think anyone who had given any thought to how motion pictures were manufactured in the late 20th century could have doubted Hanks’ ability to produce a charming, feel-good movie about a fictional ’60s garage pop band that termites its way to a hit record.
MAYBE NOT
On the other hand, it is fair to wonder if the film would have been made had its writer and director not been Hanks. Maybe not. “That Thing You Do!” is almost without any intimations of sex or violence, a movie that features a single mild expletive (delivered without malice, perhaps to secure a PG rating rather than a Pollyanna-ish G), a movie devoid of bad guys, in which there are few characters one can characterize as unsympathetic. About the worst one can say about the worst character is that he’s an immature and self-absorbed creep.
In the post-Tarantino landscape of 1996, “That Thing You Do!” presented as a kind of family film, and often family films do not age well — or are at least vulnerable to charges of corniness — because they cynically hunt a market niche by presenting a sanitized, dumbed-down version of the world. But probably what has saved “That Thing You Do!” from becoming a kind of camp relic like “The Sound of Music” or “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” is that it is also an intelligent and period particular ode to youth and innocence.
Hanks sets his story in a candy-colored 1964; months after the Kennedy assassination, just as the Beatles were beginning to break in America. He starts out in humdrum Erie, Pa., in a family-run appliance store beginning to feel the heat from the big chain store that’s opened out near the interstate. Guy Patterson (Tom Everett Scott), the owner’s No. 1 son, works in the store and lives in its basement in a room he has furnished with a drum kit and stacks of jazz records.
Absolutely un- neurotic, Guy possesses an almost beatific contentment — he’s the kind of guy a lot of us imagine ourselves to have been before whatever happened to us happened. Guy gets a break when the drummer for a local rock ’n’ roll band injures himself before the band’s first gig at a talent show. Guy sits in, the band wins the contest, and we’re off and running on a trip that follows the approximate trajectory of a thousand briefly successful pop groups.
A CLUMSY NAME
At first they’re called the One-ders, a clumsy name that gets replaced with its homonym “Wonders” (there were at least two real-life American pop groups who went by that name and scored minor hits in the ’60s) as they rise up the charts, and (spoiler alert) self-destruct before they get a chance to repeat their single success.
But the Wonders don’t succumb to drugs or money problems. They don’t die in a plane crash. They simply grow up and apart. There’s a great scene near the end where Guy, who finds himself in Hollywood as his band is disintegrating, goes to a jazz club and encounters his hero, pianist Del Paxton (Bill Cobbs). Paxton tells Guy that bands “come and go,” and assures him the journey is more important than the destination.
Aside from the promotional budget, it is in every sense a “small” film. Hanks is the only proven star, though Liv Tyler, who appears as the remarkably chaste girlfriend of lead singer/songwriter Jimmy (Johnathon Schaech) was considered a very promising newcomer at the time (she’d appear in four movies prior to this film).
The rest of the core cast were unknowns — Scott, whose part is arguably the largest in what is essentially an ensemble film, was making his debut. His resemblance to a younger Hanks was noted at the time, and it almost cost him the part. Hanks thought it would be distracting (it was). But Hanks’ wife Rita Wilson, who appears in a small role (as does their son Colin and Hanks’ daughter from a previous marriage, Elizabeth) allegedly lobbied for him on the grounds that he was “cute.”
Because of Guy’s physical resemblance to Hanks, it is natural to see him as a standin for the director; Scott not only looks like Hanks but seems to be modeling his performance on Hanks’ TV and early film work. It’s as though, perhaps unconsciously, Hanks was looking to cast a younger version of himself in the role. And when, about halfway through the movie, Hanks’ record company executive shows up to take the band under his managerial wing, the casting brings a depth and poignancy to the film Hanks the director mightn’t have initially foreseen. (Though he certainly leaned into it when he saw what he had.)
IS THE CHARACTER GAY?
In the extended cut of the film — a two-hour and 28-minute version — it’s implied that Hanks’ character is gay (another point of congruency with the Beatles, who were managed by gay Brian Epstein) as he’s supplied with a driver/companion named Lloyd (played by former NFL defensive lineman Howie Long), who at the time was dabbling in action-hero movies. (Long had a reasonably big role in the Christian Slater/John Travolta thriller “Broken Arrow,” notable for a scene in which the 5-foot-8, 150-pound Slater tosses the six-foot-5, 265-pound Long off a moving train.) While Long’s brief appearance is delightful, it’s probably better that the scene was cut from the film as it might have served to undercut the general wholesome vibe. It’s an aside in a movie that is otherwise straightforward nostalgia.
That Scott never became the big-face movie star that his start seemed to augur probably says more about the difficulty of sustaining a film acting career in the late 20th century than anything about his talent; he has built a solid career as a working actor but didn’t come close to becoming the next Tom Hanks. (Who did?)
Schaech, who played moody, narcissistic Jimmy, the putative leader of the Oneders, has had a career path similar to Scott’s — he seemed to work a lot, but if he’s recognized in public it’s probably because of this movie. His character writes the song “That Thing You Do!” (in reality, it was written by Adam Schlesinger, whose band Fountains of Wayne was just getting started around this time).
Schlesinger wrote the song for a contest held by the producers; Hanks had approached several music publishers asking for a song that sounded like it could have been a pop hit in the immediate aftermath of the Beatles breaking in the U.S. Schlesinger, who died of complications from covid-19 in 2020, always said he didn’t expect to win; he simply took on the assignment to challenge himself. But he came up with a very sturdy song, with Beatlesque harmonies and chiming guitars.
LEGITIMATE POP HIT
It went on to become a legitimate pop hit in 1996, credited to “The Wonders,” with a lead vocal by Mike Viola, a friend of Schlesinger’s who fronted the band The Candy Butchers. Schlesinger sang backing vocals, but it’s difficult to say exactly who played on the record — two dozen session musicians and vocalists are listed in the movie’s credits.
None of the actors played on the track, though Steve Zahn, who plays the Wonders’ lead guitarist Lenny, and Ethan Embry, who plays the bass player who is never explicitly named (a joke about the relative obscurity of bass players) are competent to good instrumentalists, and Scott and Schaech underwent intensive coaching that made them credible on screen. While you don’t hear the actors on the soundtrack because their performances are replaced with the work of professionals, the actors are actually singing and playing.
Which led me to conclude in 1996 that they probably were all cast because of their musical aptitude. And the film’s producers were canny about who actually sang and played on the song — they didn’t imply the actors were actually The Wonders, but they didn’t say they weren’t either.
This rankled Viola, who publicly complained he wasn’t credited with singing on the hit. The film’s producers countered by pointing out that he was a contract employee and knew what he signed up for — though maybe no one anticipated The Wonders would become a real-life one-hit wonder.
There’s a meticulousness to the film that’s rare in Hollywood movies about rock ’n’ roll — the instruments are all period correct, and after the band signs a record deal, the musicians upgrade to professional-quality instruments. Jimmy’s song — which is heard in different versions 11 times in the film — is transformed from a nice mid-tempo ballad to a thrilling upbeat number by the happy accident of a nervous Guy simply cranking up the beats per minute (something similar happened with the Beatles’ “Please Please Me”).
I’m still not sure “That Thing You Do!” is a great movie, but, like the infectious ear candy it released into the culture, it still resolves on a pretty satisfying — if not entirely brutally honest — note.