The Perfect Storm (2000) is a Lesson in Using Needle Drops for Thematic Weight

Today’s issue of Dust On The VCR is a subscriber request! This film is brought to you by Mike Perrin, a fellow Martin McDonagh stan and an old Twitter buddy that I’ve been having pop culture conversations with ever since I started freelancing for The Birmingham News. (You know, back when Twitter was good.) Mike gave me some great options, but I landed on The Perfect Storm, a film I hadn’t seen in a good two decades. Mike told me that he has trouble seeing past the movie-star-ness of it (“I kept saying to myself ‘There’s George Clooney on a boat.’”), but within about 15 minutes, I knew what I was being called to write about. Just like these men were called to sail the stormy seas. Anyway. Wanna request a film for a future issue of Dust On The VCR, subscribe to the paid version!

Folks, there’s nothing like a great needle drop. Like most of my generation, I was raised on terrestrial radio and MTV, so I’ve always held a strong appreciation for the perfect marriage of audio and visuals.¹ If done well, the song and the images will elevate each other to the point where you can’t think of them separately.

I’ve always been fascinated by the role of music supervisors on studio films and TV shows. It’s a job that doesn’t really exist for truly independent films because no one can afford to license popular songs (and if you can then you should probably spend the money on something else). What a cool gig that must be, though. To sit with the director and the editor (or whomever), watch a certain sequence from the film, and make a decision like “Yeah, I think we should put When In Rome’s ‘The Promise’ here, that’ll amplify the main character’s emotional journey.”

But there’s an art to it, of course. Sometimes a song is chosen simply because it rocks, and in the context of that particular scene, no song could possibly rock harder. And those needle drops are worthy of praise, even if they seem obvious or easy. Sometimes, though, a song is chosen not just because it rocks but because it resonates on the same thematic frequency as the narrative journey.

In today’s newsletter, we’ll be celebrating the work of Maureen Crowe, the music supervisor on The Perfect Storm.² Because she really put her back into this one.

Now, Crowe didn’t treat every needle drop like a thematic anchor for this fatal voyage. There are a couple of selections that fall into the “songs that simply rock” category. When the boys are on the boat and things really get going, they crank up the rock ‘n roll.³ Alice in Chains’ “Man in the Box” comes on the stereo at one point, and while you could argue that a boat is a floating box and thus these men are the men in that box, I don’t think it’s meant to be interpreted in that way.⁴ The boys also listen to ZZ Top’s “Tush,” a song about butts and nothing other than butts, which makes it the purest kind of meaningless song that rocks.⁵

But Crowe earned her stripes with the film’s first act, before the main characters set sail. Because almost every song played at the dockside bar is perfect.

To set the scene, this is the calm before the storm, so to speak. The boys—Billy, Bobby, Bugsy, Sully, Murph, and Alfred Pierre—have just returned from a commercial swordfishing expedition, but they’re going back out on the high seas in just two days because they need the money. So they’re making the best of their time on land, drinking and laughing and womanizing and shooting pool. The drinks are flowing and the jukebox is rocking. It’s some of the best stuff in the film, honestly.

And in a movie where the score does most of the heavy lifting, this is where the soundtrack really gets a chance to shine.

Let’s start with the second song we hear: Bob Marley and the Wailers’ “No Woman, No Cry.” Did young men in Gloucester, Massachusetts, listen to reggae in the 90s? I couldn’t tell you, but even if they did, this is the least successful needle drop of the group. It’s a bit too slow to really fit the vibe, and though some of the lyrics are on point—“Good friends we have, good friends we’ve lost along the way”—and the chorus foreshadows a room full of women who will soon be crying indeed, the thematic weight really boils down to one refrain. “Everything’s gonna be alright” Bob tells us over and over, though we know from the jump that everything is not gonna be alright. It works, but it’s a bit on the nose.

The fourth and final song we hear on the jukebox—Tom Waits’ “(Looking For) The Heart of Saturday Night”—is also a slow one, and even more somber. But it’s a great “last call” kinda song as the night is coming to an end. Waits croons while we watch Bugsy attempt to seduce a woman named Irene—unsuccessfully in the short term, though there’s promise for the future.⁶ The lyrics paint a picture of “the crack of the pool balls” and the “neon buzzin’,” but the titular refrain is an important reminder of the kinds of men we’re being introduced to. Some of them have wives and girlfriends to come home to, but others are still searching for someone to give their life a deeper meaning.

Before Waits, we hear Rod Stewart’s “Rhythm of My Heart,” which is a perfect song for The Perfect Storm. For starters, it was released in March of 1991, seven months before the event happens, making it a likely jukebox selection. And it’s a lively, upbeat ballad that would be welcome to a wide audience. But just look at those lyrics. It starts with a reference to water (“Across the street, the river runs”), and Stewart doubles down in the chorus: “Never will I roam / Now I know my place is home / Where the ocean meets the sky, I’ll be sailin’.” I mean, come on. This is a song written for commercial fishermen.⁷ These men all have women, children, and friends that they care about in town, but in a very real way, they know the sea is their home.

But the first song we hear—the one that sets the scene—is just a little bit more perfect. Bruce Springsteen’s “Hungry Heart,” one of the Boss’s biggest and most iconic hits, is the kind of song that can have your head nodding and your heart breaking at the same time if you pay attention.⁸ It tells us everything we need to know about these characters even though we’ve just met them.

“Like a river that don’t know where it’s flowing,” these are the kind of men that’ll “[take] a wrong turn and just [keep] going.” The kind of men that will “[fall] in love” even if they “[know] it [has] to end.” The chorus has multiple meanings in this context as well. “Lay down your money and you play your part,” Springsteen commands them, indicating that they have a job to do but acknowledging that they’re gambling with their lives. Because that’s what a hungry heart does, right? And everybody’s got one.

I have to drop Maureen Crowe’s name one more time. Not just because of the excellent needles that she dropped on The Perfect Storm. Or because three of them have the word “heart” in the title. But because the bar where these songs are all heard is called—you guessed it—the Crow’s Nest. Take a bow, Maureen. You were born for this job.

The Perfect Storm is now streaming on AMC+, and it is available to rent elsewhere.

1. I really wanted to say VH1 here instead of MTV, but I can’t lie like Total Request Live wasn’t appointment television for teenage me. Also, if you’re under 30, MTV used to play music videos, get off my lawn, etc.

2. I’ll throw some additional flowers to Dirk Van Fleet, her assistant music supervisor. If there’s one name that screams “music supervisor” more than Maureen Crowe, it’s Dirk Van Fleet.

3. The source of their music on the boat is unclear, though I imagine there aren’t any radio stations that broadcast that far off the coast. And since Mark Wahlberg’s character tells us that they have exactly three videotapes on the boat, I like to think they have half a dozen CDs or cassette tapes that they keep in rotation.

4. There’s also the line “He who tries will be wasted,” which does ring true actually. Maybe there’s more to this selection than I thought.

5. ZZ Top bassist Dusty Hill claims that they wrote “Tush” in about 10 minutes during a sound check at a rodeo arena in Florence, Alabama. I have to say, I believe him.

6. It would’ve been pretty funny if Bob Marley had been playing during this moment instead, since Bugsy’s vibe is more like “No woman, much cry.”

7. I mean, it even features an accordion intro. (I’m not the only one that thinks of fishermen when I hear the accordion, am I?)

8. I’ve long believed that Bruce Springsteen is the greatest of all time at coming up with song titles that would also be great names for a racehorse. “Hungry Heart” has to be near the top of the list, but The River is full of excellent choices. “Sherry Darling”? “Cadillac Ranch”? “Stolen Car”? “Drive All Night”? Come on.