Last night, after checking out the grand opening of the Fillmore Miami Beach, I made the short walk down Lincoln Road to the Colony Theatre, to check out a screening put on by the awesome arts organization GenArt.
The film? Wristcutters: A Love Story, directed by Goran Dukic. The main premise? People who kill themselves wind up in their own special afterlife. The punishment? It's basically as shitty as this one, only "a little worse." The jobs are boring, apartments uncomfortable, and stores full of kinda crappy food. Ha, ha! It's surprisingly a comedy, and kinda twee at that -- as twee as a movie whose opening scene involves major bloodletting can be.
But anyways, there's plenty of fun here for a morbid music dork. First, the main male character Zia is played by Patrick Fugit. You know him as the star of Almost Famous, pretty much the only big-budget movie so far about music journalism.
The second male lead character, Eugene, played by Shea Whigham, is a failed musician who committed a kind of rock-star seppuku onstage -- he electrocuted himself by dousing his guitar with beer. During the road trip that drives most of the plot, he and Zia are stuck listening to a cassette of his old band. The music therein is all original, and written by Gogol Bordello.
Who plays the next major male character? Tom Waits, as a sort of avuncular authority figure in this netherworld.
Finally, all the music available in the suicide afterlife also comes from bands whose prominent members have committed suicide.
So of course, "Love Will Tear Us Apart" by Joy Division is a popular jukebox choice in the afterlife bar scene. I also recognized in the background "Deathwish" by Christian Death and "A Song For You" by Gram Parsons. (I also thusly recognized my own creepy musical/mythological predilections -- and find Gram Parson's inclusion nebulous due to the murky circumstances of his overdose death. Perhaps he ended up classified as a suicide "by accident," much like Mikal, the main female character in the movie, played by Shannyn Sossamon).
I looked up the rest of the soundtrack listing; it's not out yet, but you can pre-order it on CDUniverse or Amazon. The track list, according to CDUniverse:
1. Dead And Lovely - Tom Waits
2. Deathwish - Christian Death
3. Love Will Tear Us Apart - Joy Division
4. Occurances At The Border - Gogol Bordello
5. Song For You, A - Gram Parsons
6. Through The Roof And Underground - Gogol Bordello
7. Oasis - Vivienne Dogan-Corringham
8. Telstar - Joe Meek
9. Cry Myself To Sleep - Del Shannon
10. Huliganjetta - Gogol Bordello
11. She's Fallen In Love With A Monster - Screaming Lord Sutch
12. 24 To Vector Z - Daniel Wang
13. Gloomy Sunday - Artie Shaw
14. Love Song - Mikal Lazarev
15. Brennan's Theme - Mushman
Allow me to be macabre and say that if you off yourself, at least you'd have a good soundtrack afterwards. (And maybe I just bought my own ticket to hell by typing that sentence). -- Arielle Castillo
