What is it with indie films and their incessant need to mix in music by these obscure bands that no one has ever heard of and then beat us over the head with it? Is it not enough to simply *use* the music? To feature the song in your intro and prominently in some pivotal scene? Why must the characters engage in an existential debate about the meaning of the song and how it changed their lives and on and on, knowing full well that 99% of the audience has never heard of them and has NO idea what the characters are talking about (even though 80% of the audience will, as of tomorrow, be experts on the band, their history, their influences, and will profess to have been fans of theirs “before they went mainstream”). It’s stupid, it’s trite, and it’s obvious. Grow up, indie directors: we know you were a really great bassist in high school, but you’re never going to be a rockstar, and Rolling Stone is never going to hire you as a writer, no matter how amazing that characters’ analysis was of the meaning of the Editor-in-Chief’s favorite song was in that movie you made a few years ago that grossed like $10 million in the box office.
Seriously, just stop. You don’t have to stop using the music, but the next time two characters engage in that kind of discussion about some rando indie band that will immediately drop their label and sign with one of the big studios a week after the movie comes out (the soundtrack grossed twice as much as the film, and indie musicians need their Escalades too, you know) the next time they do it I’m going to walk straight out of the theater, drive home, log onto iTunes, and post a rant just like this one as a 1-star review of their (now iTunes front-paged) debut album on their soon-to-be-former label.
